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Pigafetta thus describes the idols which were seen by him: "They are of wood, and concave, or hollow, without any hind quarters, with their arms extended, and their legs and feet bent upwards. They have very large faces, with four powerful teeth like boars' tusks, and are painted all over." In conclusion, let me take a brief account of the religion of the ancient Bisayans from Fr.
Perhaps the same reason induced the Chinese to purchase crucifixes at the time of their first intercourse with the Portuguese; for Pigafetta says: "The Chinese are white, wear clothes, and eat from tables. They also possess crucifixes but it is difficult to say why or where they got them." One line here omitted.
That Magellan did not himself believe the strait was laid down in Behaim's chart from any authority is evident, from a circumstance mentioned by Pigafetta, who expressly informs us, that Magellan was resolved to prosecute his search after it to latitude 75°, had he not found it in latitude 52°. Now, as Behaim undoubtedly was the greatest cosmographer of the age, and had been employed to fit the astrolobe as a sea instrument, it is not to be supposed that, if he had good authority for the existence of a passage round South America, he would have left it in any chart he drew, with an uncertainty of 23 degrees.
Along with the king and his nobles, Magellan sent two persons on shore, one of whom was Antonio Pigafetta, the historian of the voyage. On landing, the king and his attendants all raised their hands to heaven, and then the two Christians, who imitated this ceremony, which was afterwards observed in drinking.
Decidedly it is not from Pigafetta that we should seek to acquire botanical knowledge; we should run a great risk of deceiving ourselves if we took in earnest the nonsense that the Moor told him from whom he drew his information.
"He added that he was so convinced of what he said," relates Pigafetta for it is as well to quote the author verbatim in such a matter "that he agreed to lose his head if what he promised did not happen immediately.
PIGAFETTA, however, probably alluded to families, fires I think is the word he makes use of, and more than one family is often found occupying a Brunai house. The present population perhaps does not number more than 12,000 or 15,000 natives, and about eighty Chinese and a few Kling shop-keepers, as natives of India are here styled.
These people were extremely credulous and of good disposition and thus, as Pigafetta says, they could easily have been converted to Christianity, for they assisted in silence, and with gravity, at the mass which was said on shore, a remark that Alvarez Cabral had already made.
The ships touched also at Paloan, where they found pigs, goats, fowls, different kinds of bananas, cocoa-nuts, sugar-canes, and rice, with which they provisioned the ships. This was for them, as Pigafetta expresses it, "a promised land."
After entertaining them in their respective palaces, the king and prince of Buthuan dismissed Pigafetta and his companion with noble presents, filled with admiration of their guests, whom they believed to be men above the rank of common mortals, being especially astonished at Pigafetta's writing, and reading what he had written, which was too mysterious for their comprehension.
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