The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

by Antonio Pigafetta

^[409] MS. 5,650 adds “and seigniors.”

^[410] Stanley makes the unhappy translation “with naked daggers in their hands, which they held on their thighs.”

^[411] Cf. the account of the reception accorded the captain of a Portuguese vessel in Borneo in 1578, Vol. IV, pp. 222, 223, where the king is found playing chess.

^[412] This clause is omitted in MS. 5,650.

^[413] The city of Brunei or Brunai. See Guillemard’s Magellan, pp. 269–373. See also descriptions of Bornean villages in Wallace’s Malay Archipelago; and Forest’s account of Brunai quoted by Crawfurd (Dictionary, p. 70), who mentions the boat-markets held by the women.

^[414] MS. 5,650 reads: “twenty or twenty-five thousand.” Crawfurd (Dictionary, p. 70) thinks that Pigafetta overstates the population, and that he probably gained his information from a Malay courtier.

^[415] MS. 5,650 reads: “the women and daughters.”

^[416] Cherita-tulis, “writers of narratives” (Stanley, p. 114); jurutulis, “adepts in writing” (Crawfurd’s Dictionary, p. 61).

^[417] MS. 5,650 reads: “timghuly.”

^[418] Ortelius (Theatrum orbis terrarum) calls this region “Lao” (see also chart on p. 210) and Mercatore (Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes) “Lave.” It may possibly be the modern island of Laut off the southeast of Borneo. (See Mosto, p. 87, note 3). Crawfurd (Dictionary, p. 72) conjectures that it is some place in Banjarmasin.