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A visita is a small hamlet or village with no priest of its own, and dependent upon its largest neighbor for its religious ministrations. Pigafetta mentions that the female musicians of the King of Cebu were quite naked, or only covered with an apron of bark. The ladies of the Court were content with a hat, a short cloak, and a cloth around the waist.
Here the Spanish expedition procured cheaply, in exchange for looking-glasses, pieces of ribbon, scissors, hawks' bells or fish-hooks, a quantity of provisions, amongst which Pigafetta mentions pine-apples, sugar-canes, sweet potatoes, fowls, and the flesh of the Anta, which is thought to be the tapir.
"To see if our journals were correctly kept," says Pigafetta, "we inquired on shore what day of the week it was. They replied that it was Thursday, which surprised us, because according to our journals it was as yet only Wednesday.
They were already knee-deep in the water when several islanders rushed all together upon Magellan, who, wounded in the arm, was unable to draw his sword; they gave him such a sabre-cut upon his leg that he immediately fell down in the water, where he was speedily despatched. His remaining companions, and among them Pigafetta, every one of whom had been hit, hastily regained the boats.
It may easily be conceived that an animal, the body of which is surrounded with a kind of armour, must be nearly indifferent to the saltness of the water. Pigafetta relates in his journal recently published at Milan that he saw, on the shores of the island of Borneo, crocodiles which inhabit alike land and sea.
Lucar in 1519, and eighteen men, with Pigafetta, to the same harbor, and thus accomplished the first voyage round the world in three years and fourteen days. 1565 is the date for what is now the Philippines. Villalobos gave this name to one of the Southern islands and Legaspi extended it to the entire archipelago. "According to recent authors they were also named after Villalobos in 1543.
Thus perished the illustrious Magellan on the 27th of April, 1521. "He was adorned with every virtue," says Pigafetta, "and ever exhibited an unshaken constancy in the midst of the greatest adversity. At sea he always condemned himself to greater privations than the rest of his crew.
"Then Magellan caused one of our number to be fully armed," says Pigafetta, "and ordered three men to give him blows with the sword and stiletto, to show the king that nothing could wound a man armed in this manner, which surprised him greatly, and turning to the interpreter he said to the captain through him, 'that a man thus armed, could fight against a hundred. 'Yes, replied the interpreter, in the name of the commandant, 'and each of the three vessels carries 200 men armed in this manner." The king, astonished by all that he had seen, took leave of the captain, begging him to send two of his men with him, to let them see something of the island.
As if to give point to the concluding remarks, a Russian man-of-war visited Muara and Brunai early in 1887, and shewed considerable interest in the coal mines. The fairest way, perhaps, of giving my readers an idea of what Brunai was and what it is, will be by quoting first from the description of the Italian PIGAFETTA, who was there in 1521, and then from that of my friend the late Mr.
Our chief source of information for the events of the voyage is the journal kept by a gentleman from Vicenza, the Chevalier Antonio Pigafetta, who obtained permission to accompany the expedition, "for to see the marvels of the ocean." After leaving the Canaries on the 3d of October, the armada ran down toward Sierra Leone, and was becalmed, making only three leagues in three weeks.
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