Chapter 17
Mazaua
Limasawa, the Philippines
At Mazaua, now Limasawa, the islanders understand Magellan’s interpreter Enrique, and Magellan and the king agree to be blood brothers. On Easter Sunday, 31 March 1521, a Mass is said ashore and a cross planted on the highest hill.
Thursday, 28 March 1521
On Thursday morning, having seen a fire on an island the night before, the fleet anchors near it. A small boat with eight men comes out towards the flagship and stops at a cautious distance.
Then Magellan’s slave, Enrique, calls out to them. And they understand him.
Magellan acquired Enrique in Malacca ten years earlier, and Pigafetta says he came from Sumatra. He speaks Malay, the trading language of all these seas. Magellan has kept him close through the whole voyage for exactly this moment. The ships have sailed west until they reached a world where the language on the other side of the globe can be understood.
The islanders will not come aboard, so Magellan throws them a red cap and other gifts tied to a piece of wood. They take them gladly and hurry off to tell their king. Two hours later two large boats, balanghai, arrive, full of men. The king sits in the larger one under an awning of mats. He talks with Enrique, sends some of his men aboard, and offers Magellan a large bar of gold and a basket of ginger.
Magellan thanks him warmly and refuses the gold. He does not want the islanders to think that Europeans value gold above everything else.
Good Friday, 29 March 1521
The next day the king comes aboard himself and embraces Magellan. He gives him three porcelain jars of raw rice covered with leaves, and two large fish. Magellan gives him a robe of red and yellow cloth made in the Turkish style, and a fine red cap.
Through Enrique, Magellan says he wants to be casi casi with him, blood brothers. The king says he wants the same.
Then Magellan puts on a show of strength. He has the guns fired, which terrifies the islanders. He has one of his men put on full armour and stand among three others armed with swords and daggers, who strike him all over his body. The king is left almost speechless. One man in armour like that, Magellan tells him, is worth a hundred of the king’s men, and he has two hundred like him in each ship. The king says that is a fact.
Magellan leads him up to the stern deck and has his chart and compass brought. He explains how he found the strait, and how many moons he sailed without seeing land. The king is astonished. Then Magellan asks whether two of his men might go ashore with the king to see how his people live. The king agrees, and Pigafetta goes.
Good Friday evening
On the shore the king takes Pigafetta by the hand and leads him under a bamboo shelter, where a great boat eighty palms long is drawn up. They sit on its stern, talking in signs, while the king’s men stand around them with swords, daggers, spears and shields. A plate of pork is brought, and a large jar of wine. With every mouthful they drink a cup.
Before drinking, the king raises his clasped hands to the sky and then towards Pigafetta. Then he thrusts out his left fist towards him, which alarms Pigafetta. “At first I thought that he was about to strike me,” he admits. It is a gesture of friendship, and he learns to return it.
“I ate meat on holy Friday,” he confesses, “for I could not help myself.”
When he starts writing down the names of things in their language, and then reads the words back to them, everyone is astonished. They eat rice and pork from great porcelain dishes, and go to the king’s house, built high on posts like a hayloft and reached by ladders. The king’s eldest son joins them. Pigafetta’s companion gets drunk. Their lamps are resin wrapped in leaves. That night Pigafetta sleeps on a bamboo mat beside the prince, with a pillow of leaves.
30 March 1521
In the morning another king comes out to the ships with his brother, the first king. He rules the lands of Butuan and Calagan, on the great island of Mindanao, and he has come to Limasawa to hunt. His name is Raia Siaui, and he is the finest-looking man Pigafetta sees in all these islands.
His black hair hangs to his shoulders. He wears silk wrapped around his head and two large gold earrings. A cotton cloth embroidered with silk covers him from the waist to the knees. At his side hangs a dagger with a long hilt made entirely of gold, in a carved wooden sheath. He is tattooed all over and perfumed with storax and benzoin. And he has three spots of gold on every tooth, so that his teeth look as if they are bound with gold.
In his own lands, he says, gold is found in pieces the size of walnuts and eggs by sifting the earth. All his dishes are made of gold, and part of his house as well.
The Europeans have not seen the Spice Islands yet. But they are beginning to think they have sailed into a country of gold.
Easter Sunday, 31 March 1521
On Easter Sunday, about fifty men go ashore in their best clothes, without armour but carrying their weapons, to hear Mass. As the boats touch the beach, six guns are fired as a sign of peace. The two kings embrace Magellan and walk with him to the place prepared for the altar.
Magellan sprinkles both kings with musk water. When the host is raised, all the ships’ guns fire together, on a signal of musket shots from the shore. The kings kneel and worship with clasped hands. Afterwards there is a fencing display, which delights them.
Then Magellan has a cross brought out, with nails and a crown of thorns. He explains that it was given to him by the emperor to set up wherever he went, so that any ship arriving later would know his men had been there and would treat the people as friends. It should stand on the highest mountain, he says, so that they can see it every morning and adore it, and then thunder, lightning and storms will never harm them. The kings agree.
Asked what they worship, the kings say they raise their clasped hands and faces to the sky and call their god Abba. That afternoon everyone climbs to the top of the highest hill and plants the cross. Asked where the best port is for food, the kings name three. The largest, with the most trade, is called Zubu.
Magellan decides to go there, “for so did his unhappy fate will.”
Early April 1521
The departure is delayed. The first king asks Magellan to wait two days while he brings in his rice harvest, and to lend him some men to speed it up. Magellan sends them, but the kings eat and drink so much that they sleep all day, and nothing gets done until the day after.
Meanwhile Pigafetta watches the trading. One man offers a bowl of rice and some bananas for a knife worth three coins at most. Magellan offers him a silver real instead, then a gold ducat, then a double ducat. He refuses them all and takes the knife. Another man offers a crown of solid gold for six strings of glass beads. Magellan forbids the trade, so that the islanders will learn from the start that the Europeans value their goods more than gold.
Everyone here chews areca nut wrapped in betel leaf with a little lime, which turns the mouth bright red. After seven days the ships sail northwest, the king of Mazaua following in his own boat as their pilot. On one island there are bats as large as eagles. The sailors kill one and find that it tastes like chicken. There are also large birds that bury their eggs in hot sand and let the heat hatch them.
The king cannot keep up with the ships, and they have to wait for him. When he catches up, he is amazed at how fast they sail.