When Loaisa’s expedition reached the Ladrones, they found still alive a Galician, one of three deserters from Espinosa’s ship (see Vol. II, pp. 30, 34, 35, 110). See the reception accorded Legazpi, and a description of one of those islands in 1565, Vol. II, pp. 109–113. The “Roteiro” (Stanley, p. 9) says that the expedition reached the Ladrones, March 6, 1521 (with which Albo, Navarrete, iv, p. 219 agrees); and that after the theft of the skiff, Magellan landed with fifty or sixty men, burned the whole village, killed seven or eight persons, both men and women; and that supplies were taken aboard. The anonymous Portuguese (Stanley, p. 31) says that the Ladrones (which lay in 10°–12° north latitude, were 2,046 miles by the course traveled from the equator. Brito (Navarrete, iv, p. 308) says: “Thence [i.e., the Unfortunate Islands] they laid their course westward, and after sailing 500 leguas came to certain islands where they found a considerable number of savages. So many of the latter boarded the vessels that when the men tried to restore order in them, they were unable to get rid of the savages except by lance-thrusts. They killed many savages, who laughed as if it were a cause for rejoicing.”
[186] MS. 5,650 adds: “or superior.”
[187] MS. 5,650 reads: “cloth.”
[188] At this point, MS. 5,650 begins a new sentence, thus: “There are found in that place.”
[189] MS. 5,650 reads: “Those women.”
[190] MS. 5,650 makes use of the Italian word store for stuoje or stoje meaning “mats,” and explains by adding: “which we call mats.”
[191] They also (according to Herrera) received the name Las Velas, “the sails” from the lateen-rigged vessels that the natives used (Mosto, p. 67, note 7). See also Vol. XVI, pp. 200–202.
[192] In MS. 5,650 this sentence reads as follows: “The pastime of the men and women of the said place and their sport, is to go in their boats to catch those flying fish with fishhooks made of fishbone.”
[193] Mosto (p. 68, note 5) says that these boats were the fisolere, which were small and very swift oared-vessels, used in winter on the Venetian lakes by the Venetian nobles for hunting with bows and arrows and guns. Amoretti conjectures that Pigafetta means the fusiniere, boats named after Fusine whence people are ferried to Venice.
[194] MS. 5,650 reads: “The said boats have no difference between stern and bow.” Albo (Navarrete, iv, p. 219), in speaking of the boats of the Chamorros, uses almost identically the same expression: “They went both ways, for they could make the stern, bow, and the bow, stern, whenever they wished.” The apparatus described by Pigafetta as belonging to these boats is the outrigger, common to many of the boats of the eastern islands.