[Endorsed: "To his majesty, xxjx of August from Cochin, December 23, 1522.
Advices of the voyage of Magallanes and of his death, and news from
Portuguese India.">[
De Molvccis Insulis
Most Reverend and Illustrious Lord: my only Lord, to you I most humbly commend myself. Not long ago one of those five ships returned which the emperor, while he was at Saragossa some years ago, had sent into a strange and hitherto unknown part of the world, to search for the islands in which spices grow. For although the Portuguese bring us a great quantity of them from the Golden Chersonesus, which we now call Malacca, nevertheless their own Indian possessions produce none but pepper. For it is well known that the other spices, as cinnamon, cloves, and the nutmeg, which we call muscat, and its covering [mace], which we call muscat-flower, are brought to their Indian possessions from distant islands hitherto only known by name, in ships held together not by iron fastenings, but merely by palm-leaves, and having round sails also woven out of palm-fibres. Ships of this sort they call "junks," and they are impelled by the wind only when it blows directly fore or aft.
Nor is it wonderful, that these islands have not been known to any mortal, almost up to our time. For whatever statements of ancient authors we have hitherto read with respect to the native soil of these spices, are partly entirely fabulous, and partly so far from truth, that the very regions, in which they asserted that these spices were produced, are scarcely less distant from the countries in which it is now ascertained that they grow, than we are ourselves.
For, not to mention others, Herodotus, in other respects a very good authority, states that cinnamon was found in birds' nests, into which the birds had brought it from very distant regions, among which birds he mentions especially the Phoenix—and I know not who has ever seen the nest of a Phoenix. But Pliny, who might have been thought to have had better means of knowing the facts, since long before his time many discoveries had been made by the fleets of Alexander the Great, and by other expeditions, states that cinnamon was produced in Ethiopia, on the borders of the land of the Troglodytes. Whereas we know now that cinnamon is produced at a very great distance from any part of Ethiopia, and especially from the country of the Troglodytes, i.e. dwellers in subterraneous caves.
Now it was necessary for our sailors, who have recently returned, who knew more about Ethiopia than about other countries, to sail round the whole world and that in a very wide circuit, before they discovered these islands and returned to Europe; and, since this voyage was a very remarkable one, and neither in our own time, nor in any former age, has such a voyage been accomplished, or even attempted, I have determined to send your Lordship a full and accurate account of the expedition.
I have taken much care in obtaining an account of the facts from the commanding officer of the squadron, [221] and from the individual sailors who have returned with him. They also made a statement to the emperor, and to several other persons, with such good faith and sincerity, that they appeared in their narrative, not merely to have abstained from fabulous statements, but also to contradict and refute the fabulous statements made by ancient authors.
For who ever believed that the Monosceli, or Sciapodes [one-legged men], the Scyrites, the Spithamæi [persons a span—seven and one-half inches—high], the Pigmies [height thirteen and one-half inches], and such-like were rather monsters than men? Yet, although the Castilians in their voyages westwards, and the Portuguese sailing eastwards, have sought out, discovered, and surveyed so many places even beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, and now these countrymen of ours have sailed completely round the world, none of them have found any trustworthy evidence in favor of the existence of such monsters; and therefore all such accounts ought to be regarded as fabulous, and as old wives' tales, handed down from one writer to another without any basis of truth. But, as I have to make a voyage round the world, I will not extend my prefatory remarks, but will come at once to the point.
Some thirty years ago, when the Castilians in the West, and the Portuguese in the East, had begun to search after new and unknown lands, in order to avoid any interference of one with the other, the kings of these countries divided the whole world between them, by the authority probably of Pope Alexander VI, on this plan, that a line should be drawn from the north to the south pole through a point three hundred and sixty leagues west of the Hesperides which they now call Cape Verde Islands, which would divide the earth's surface into two equal portions. All unknown lands hereafter discovered to the east of this line were assigned to the Portuguese; all on the west to the Castilians. Hence it came to pass that the Castilians always sailed southwest, and there discovered a very extensive continent, besides numerous large islands, abounding in gold, pearls, and other valuable commodities; and have quite recently discovered a large inland city named Tenoxtica [Mexico] situated in a lake like Venice. Peter Martyr, [222] an author who is more careful as to the accuracy of his statements than of the elegance of his style, has given a full but truthful description of this city. But the Portuguese sailing southward past the Hesperides [Cape Verde Islands] and the Fish-eating Ethiopians [West Coast of Africa], crossed the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn, and sailing eastward discovered several, very large islands heretofore unknown, and also the sources of the Nile and the Troglodytes. Thence, by way of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, they arrived at the shores of India within the Ganges, where now there is the very great trading station and the kingdom of Calicut. Hence they sailed to Taprobane which is now called Zamatara [Sumatra]. For where Ptolemy, Pliny, and other geographers placed Taprobane, there is now no island which can possibly be identified with it. Thence they came to the Golden Chersonesus, where now stands the well-peopled city of Malacca, the principal place of business of the East. After this they penetrated into a great gulf, as far as the nation of the Sinæ, who are now called Schinæ [Chinese], where they found a fair-complexioned and tolerably-civilized people, like our folks in Germany. They believe that the Seres and Asiatic Scythians extend as far as these parts.