On September 8, 1522, the crew of the Victoria cast anchor in the waters off of Seville, Spain,

having just completed the first circumnavigation of the world. On board was Antonio Pigafetta, a
young Italian nobleman who had joined the expedition three years before, and served as an
assistant to Ferdinand Magellan en route to the Molucca Islands. Magellan was dead. The rest of
the fleet was gone: the Santiago shipwrecked, the San Antonio overtaken, the Concepcion burned
and the Trinidad abandoned. Of the 237 sailors who departed from Seville, eighteen returned on
the Victoria. Pigafetta had managed to survive, along with his journal—notes that detailed the
discovery of the western route to the Moluccas. And along the way, new land, new peoples: on
the far side of the Pacific, the fleet had stumbled across the Marianas archipelago, and some
three hundred leagues further west, the Philippines. 

Pigafetta’s journal became the basis for his 1525 travelogue, The First Voyage Around the
World. According to scholar Theodore Cachey Jr., the travelogue represented “the literary
epitome of its genre” and achieved an international reputation (Cachey, xii-xiii). One of
Pigafetta’s patrons, Francesco Chiericati, called the journal “a divine thing” (xl), and
Shakespeare himself seems to have been inspired by work: Setebos, a deity invoked in
Pigafetta’s text by men of Patagonia, makes an appearance in The Tempest (x-xi). 

First Voyage, Cachey points out, is intent on marveling at what it encounters—and therein lies
much of its appeal. It is a work that is intent on wonder. On astonishment. In travel writing, one
often must recreate the first moment of newness, that fresh sense of awe, on the page for the
reader; Pigafetta does it again and again, by reveling in odd and odder bits of detail. We watch
Pigafetta wonder at trees in Borneo whose leaves appear to walk around once shed, leaves that
"have no blood, but if one touches them they run away. I kept one of them for nine days in a box.
When I opened the box, that leaf went round and round it. I believe those leaves live on nothing
but air.” (Pigafetta, 76). We marvel, in the Philippines, at sea snails capable of felling whales, by
feeding on their hearts once ingested (48). On a stop in Brazil, we see an infinite number of
parrots, monkeys that look like lions, and "swine that have their navels on their backs, and large
birds with beaks like spoons and no tongues" (10). 

And yet, the very newness that can give travel writing so much of its power creates problems of
its own. For the travel writer there is, on the one hand, the authority of his or her observational
eye, and on the other, the call for humility in confronting the unknown. Pigafetta, encountering a
new people, tries to earn his authority through a barrage of detail. He attempts to reconstruct
their world for us--what they look like, where they live, what they eat, what they say--he gives us
pages and pages of words, from Patagonia, from Cebu, from Tidore. But there is little humility,
and one can hardly expect there to be so, not early in sixteenth century, a few decades after the
Pope had divided the unchartered world between Spain and Portugal,and certainly not on this
expedition, where Magellan and his partners have been promised, in a contract agreement with
the Spanish monarchy, the titles of Lieutenants and Governors over the lands they discover, for
themselves and their heirs, in perpetuity. And cash sums. And 1/20th of the profits from those
lands. 
In First Voyage is great gulf between what Pigafetta sees and what Pigafetta knows. I grew up, in
the Marianas, hearing about this gulf. It is part of why travel writing can be so fraught for me
now. On reaching the Marianas after nearly four months at sea with no new provisions,"The
captain-general wished to stop at the large island and get some fresh food, but he was unable to
do so because the inhabitants of that island entered the ships and stole whatever they could lay
their hands on, in such a manner that we could not defend ourselves." (27). The sailors did not
understand that this was custom, that for the islanders, property was communal and visitors were
expected to share what they had. 

So in that first moment of contact, Magellan and his starving crew retaliated. They went ashore
and burned, by Pigafetta's account, forty to fifty houses. They killed seven men. Mutual
astonishment at the new and the wondrous took a dark turn: 

“When we wounded any of those people with our crossbow shafts, which passed completely
through their loins from one side to the other, they, looking at it, pulled on the shaft now on this
and now on that side, and then drew it out, with great astonishment, and so died; others who
were wounded in the breast did the same, which moved us to great compassion. [...] We saw
some women in their boats who were crying out and tearing their hair, for love, I believe, of their
dead.”(27) 

Magellan named the archipelago Islas de los Ladrones, the Islands of Thieves. The name would
stick for the next three hundred years, long after the islands were absorbed into the Spanish
empire. The name, the bold, condemnatory stroke of it, has long been anchored to my past, to
those old history lessons. There is no feeling in it but rage. So I was surprised to see, in
Pigafetta's text, the sailors moved to compassion. They seem to understand, in that moment of
astonishment, that the islanders are defenseless against the unknown. 

From the Marianas, the fleet moved on to the Philippines. They linger there, exploring the land,
exchanging gifts with the chiefs, observing the people. And I know what's coming for the people;
I know that we're seeing, through Pigafetta, the hush of a world just before it changes, wholly
and entirely. And there is Pigafetta, marveling, at the coconuts and the bananas and the naked,
beautiful people. It's happening even now in the text, as the Filipino pilots are captured to direct
the way to the Moluccas, the way to the spices. There is Pigafetta, roaming and cataloging and
recording, caught up in the first flush of a new world, and as I read I can start to hear my father
describing his country, wondering at it, my father traveling as a young man up and down Luzon,
across the sea to the Visayas, across the sea to Mindanao. I can hear the ardor and the sadness
and the terror and the delight. I can hear the wonder. I can feel the pulse to move. 

I suppose this is what great travel writing gives us: a way to wholly enter a moment, a feeling, a
body. A way to be changed. I can be my father, marveling at his country, our country,
transformed by its vast expanse. I can be Pigafetta, on the deck of the Trinidad, moved to write
from shock and wonder. And I can be the woman on a boat in the Marianas, crying out of love
for the dead. 
Antonio Pigafetta was a key player of one of the most amazing world exploration trips.He was
born in Vicenza in 1492, and he was an Italian seafarer and geographer.
The relevance of his own venture, fundamentally lies in the fact that he took part to the first
globe circumnavigation, between 1519 and 1522, and he was able to accomplish it after the
murder of Ferdinand Magellan, leaving a detailed description of the journey in the Report of the
first trip around the world, a lost manuscript that was rescued later, in 1797, and today is
considered one of the most important documentary evidence relating the geographical
discoveries of the Sixteenth Century.
Antonio Pigafetta, fascinating and fleeing personality, for scholars he still represents a partial
mystery. About him too little is known to define a satisfactory profile on the biographical side.
Documents and the testimony of contemporaneous are scarces, and his own character primarily
appears from what he wrote in his own report.
His own narration about the first world circumnavigation was one of the greatest achievements in
the history of navy exploration and discovery.
In this narration can be found descriptions of peoples, countries, goods and even the languages
that were spoken, of which the seafarer was trying to assemble some brief glossaries.
Pigafetta tells how, being in Barcelona in 1519, he heard about Magellan’s expedition, and being
wishful to learn about the world, he asked for and obtained the permission to join in the voyage.
Magellan’s fleet weighed anchor from Seville on August 10th of the same year with five smaller
vessels, heading towards Canary Islands and down along the African coast, and across the
Equator. From there they sailed towards Brazil coast , where they stayed for some time, making
supplies and weaving friendly contacts with the cannibalistic natives who dwelled there.
Moving on, then they arrived in Patagonia, where they spent winter months in a desolate
solitude. They met local people, who looked like giants in their eyes full of wonder, because of
their robust body types.
They survived the mutiny of one of the captains and some disgruntled sailors, and continued the
exploration of the coast. One of the vessels was drowned, but the whole crew managed to be
saved.
They proceeded until the discovery of the strait, named after, Magellan himself, on October 21st
1520, and went through, although one of the ships deserted, sailing back to Spain.
Finally, they arrived in the Philippines, where they became acquainted with the natives who
proved hospitable and welcomed them as guests in the king’s palace. The indigenous people,
affected by the celebration of Mass and the crucifix planted in the island, promised to convert to
Christianity.
Quickly they developed commerce and trade, and the king, the queen and other notables of Cebu
were converted, until the entire population rapidly followed them in the new religion.
Shortly after, happened the disastrous episode that changed the course of the expedition.
Magellan took part in a conflict between some local tribes and was killed. The rest of the
expedition managed to escape and retired, preparing to leave, but a trap set by Magellan’s
interpreter and the king of Cebu, led to another massacre of the Europeans.
The surviving ships continued toward Borneo and to the city of Brunei, where they managed to
stock up, then from there, traveling southbound, they came to the Moluccas, 27 months after the
departure from Spain, finding a warm welcome by an astrologer king who had predicted their
arrival.
But at this point, despite the perspective of good business and the rich exchanges that would lie
ahead, their desire to return to Spain urged them and pushed them to a quick return.
*That land of Verzin is wealthier and larger than Spagnia, Fransa, and Italia, put together, and
belongs to the king of Portugalo. The people of that land are not Christians, and have no manner
of worship.
They live according to the dictates of nature, and reach an age of one hundred and twenty-five
and one hundred and forty years. They go naked, both men and women. They live in certain long
houses which they call boii and sleep in cotton hammocks called amache, which are fastened in
those houses by each end to large beams. A fire is
built on the ground under those hammocks. In each one of those boii, there are one hundred men
with their wives and children, and they make a great racket. They have boats called canoes made
of one single huge tree, hollowed out by the use of stone hatchets. Those people employ stones
as we do iron, as they have no iron. Thirty or forty men occupy one of those boats. They paddle
with blades like the shovels of a furnace, and thus, black, naked, and shaven, they resemble,
when paddling, the inhabitants of the Stygian marsh. Men and women are as well proportioned
as we. They eat the human flesh of their enemies, not because it is good, but because it is a
certain established custom.
That custom, which is mutual, was begun by an old woman, who had but one son who was killed
by his enemies. In return some days later, that old woman’s friends captured one of the company
who had killed her son, and brought him to the place of her abode. She seeing him, and
remembering her son, ran upon him like an infuriated bitch, and bit him on one shoulder. Shortly
afterward he escaped to his own people, whom he told that they had tried to eat him, showing
them [in proof] the marks on his shoulder. Whomever the latter captured afterward at any time
from the former they ate, and the former did the same to the latter, so that such a custom has
sprung up in this way. They do not eat the bodies all at once, but every one cuts off a piece, and
carries it to his house, where he smokes it. Then every week, he cuts off a small bit, which he
eats thus smoked with his other food to remind him of his enemies. The above was told me by
the pilot, Johane
Carnagio, who came with us, and who had lived in that land for four years. Those people paint
the whole body and the face in a wonderful manner with fire in various fashions, as do the
women also.
The men are [are: doublet in original manuscript] smooth shaven and have no beard, for they pull
it out. They clothe themselves in a dress made of parrot feathers, with large round arrangements
at their buttocks made from the largest feathers, and it is a ridiculous sight.
Almost all the people, except the women and children, have three holes pierced in the lower lip,
where they carry round stones, one finger or thereabouts in length and hanging down outside.
Those people are not entirely black, but of a dark brown color. They keep the privies uncovered,
and the body is without hair, while both men and women always go naked. Their king is called
cacich [i.e., cacique].
They have an infinite number of parrots, and gave us 8 or 10 for one mirror: and little monkeys
that look like lions, only [they are] yellow, and very beautiful. They make round white [loaves
of] bread from the marrowy substance of trees, which is not very good, and is found between the
wood and the bark and resembles buttermilk curds.
They have swine which have their navels [lombelico] on their backs, and large birds with beaks
2bThe men gave us one or two of their young daughters as slaves for one hatchet or one large
knife, but they would not give us their wives in exchange for anything at all. The women will not
shame their husbands under any considerations whatever, and as was told us, refuse to consent to
their husbands by day, but only by night. The women cultivate the fields, and carry all their food
from the mountains in panniers or baskets on the head or fastened to the head. But they are
always accompanied by their husbands, who are armed only with a bow of brazil-wood or of
black palm-wood, and a bundle of cane arrows,
doing this because they are jealous [of their wives]. The women carry their children hanging in a
cotton net from their necks. I omit other particulars, in order not to be tedious. Mass was said
twice on shore, during which those people remained on their knees with so great contrition and
with clasped hands raised aloft, that it was an exceeding great pleasure to behold them. They
built us a house as they thought that we were going to stay with them for some time, and at our
departure they cut a great quantity of brazil-wood [verzin] to give us. It had been about two
months since it had rained in that land, and when we reached that port, it happened to rain,
whereupon they said that we came from the sky and that we had brought the rain with us.
Those people could be converted easily to the faith of Jesus Christ.
At first those people thought that the small boats were the children of the ships, and that the latter
gave birth to them when they were lowered into the sea from the ships, and when they were lying
so alongside the ships (as is the custom), they believed that the ships were nursing them. One day
a beautiful young woman came to the flagship, where I was, for no other purpose than to seek
what chance might offer. While there and waiting, she cast her eyes upon the master’s room, and
saw a nail longer than one’s finger. Picking it
up very delightedly and neatly, she thrust it through the lips of her vagina [natura], and bending
down low immediately departed, the captain-general and I having seen that action.