Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen Page A

sea, he did have funds and impeccable papal credentials to recommend him. Accepting a salary of just 1,000 maravedís, he joined the roster as a sobrasaliente, a supernumerary, receiving four months of his modest pay in advance.
    Magellan, who left nothing to accident, had an assignment for Pigafetta; the young Italian diplomat was to keep a record of the voyage, not the dry, factual pilot’s log, but a more personal, anecdotal, and free-flowing account in the tradition of other popular travel works of the day; these included books by Magellan’s brother-in-law, Duarte Barbosa; Ludovico di Varthema, another Italian visitor to the Indies; and Marco Polo, the most celebrated Italian traveler of them all. Making no secret of his ambition to take his place in letters beside them, Pigafetta readily accepted the assignment. His loyalties belonged to Magellan alone, not to Cartagena or to any of the other officers. For Pigafetta, the Armada de Molucca was the tangible result of Magellan’s daring, and if the expedition succeeded, it would be the result of Magellan’s skill and God’s will—of that Pigafetta was quite certain.
    From the moment the fleet left Seville, Pigafetta kept a diary of events that gradually evolved from a routine account of life at sea to a shockingly graphic and candid diary that serves as the best record of the voyage. He took his role as the expedition’s official chronicler seriously, and his account is bursting with botanical, linguistic, and anthropological detail. It is also a humane and compassionate record written in a distinctive voice, naïve yet cultivated, pious yet bawdy. Of the handful of genuine chronicles of foreign lands available at the time, only Pigafetta’s preserved moments of self-deprecation and humor; only his betrayed the realistic fears, joys, and ambivalence felt by the crew. His narrative anticipates a modern sensibility, in which self-doubt and revelation play roles. If Magellan was the expedition’s hero, its Don Quixote, a knight wandering the world in a foolish, vain, yet magnificent quest, Pigafetta can be considered its antihero, its Sancho Panza, steadfastly loyal to his master while casting a skeptical, mordant eye on the proceedings. His hunger for experience makes it possible to experience Magellan’s voyage as the sailors themselves experienced it, and to watch this extraordinary navigator straining against the limits of knowledge, his men’s loyalty, and his own stubborn nature.
    Pigafetta was not the only diarist on the voyage. Francisco Albo, Trinidad’s pilot, kept a logbook, and some of the surviving sailors gave extensive interviews and depositions on their return to Spain, or wrote their own accounts from memory. The plethora of firsthand impressions of the voyage, combined with the fantastically detailed Spanish records, make it possible to re-create and understand it from a variety of perspectives, ranging from the deeply personal and casually anecdotal to the official and legalistic; royalty and ordinary seamen alike have their voices in this epic of discovery.
    An important limitation governed all the accounts, varied as they are. They provide only the European perspective on a voyage that affected nations and cultures around the world, often profoundly. There is no testimony from the individuals whom Magellan’s fleet would visit. Occasionally, we can glean disturbing hints of the reactions of those whom the armada would visit, and what they thought of the intruders in their black ships, the men who had come from a great distance, men bearing gifts but also guns.
     
    M agellan’s departure deeply affected the fortunes of those he left behind. His wife, Beatriz, pregnant with their second child, lived quietly in the city under the protection of her father. She received a monthly stipend, as specified in Magellan’s contract, but she was, in fact, a hostage to the Spanish authorities. If word should reach Seville that Magellan had done anything