Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (29 page)

Magellan and his captains held morning and evening prayers each day. The nights brought respite from the heat, and the sailors remained on deck to escape their cramped, stinking, and suffocating sleeping quarters. At rest, they observed the diamond-bright stars etched on the canopy of the heavens. Pigafetta turned his ever curious mind to making astronomical observations: “The Antarctic Pole is not so starry as the Arctic. Many small stars clustered together are seen, which have the appearance of two clouds of mist.”

Without realizing it, Pigafetta had just recorded an observation of great consequence. These “clouds” are in fact two irregular dwarf galaxies orbiting our own galaxy and containing billions of stars enveloped in a gaseous blanket; they are known today as the Magellanic Clouds. The larger one, Nubecula Major, is about 150,000 light-years away, the smaller, Nubecula Minor, even farther, about 200,000 light-years. To the naked eye, they resemble pieces of the Milky Way torn off and flung across the heavens. Until 1994, they were considered the galaxies nearest to ours. The larger of the two covers an area in the night sky about two hundred times greater than that covered by the moon, while the smaller covers an area fifty times larger.

Pigafetta’s observations continued: “In the midst of them are two large and not very luminous stars, which move only slightly. Those two stars are the Antarctic Pole.” He may have been referring to the constellation Hydra, which is near the southern celestial pole. And as the fleet moved away from land into the open expanses of the Pacific, he noted, “We saw a cross with five extremely bright stars being exactly placed with regard to one another.” This has usually been taken to be the Southern Cross, the most familiar constellation in the Southern Hemisphere, but that constellation would have been very low in the night sky, and Pigafetta might have confused it with Orion’s Belt or another constellation. Although the Southern Cross is small, the mere sight of it was so compelling to Magellan’s sailors that it became an important marker for both faith and navigation.

The absence of visible landforms meant the fleet’s pilots relied on celestial navigation, using the Southern Cross and other constellations as their guide. Magellan, ever vigilant, constantly doublechecked their course, lest they change direction under cover of night, as Pigafetta relates. “The Captain General asked all the pilots, always keeping our course, what sailing track we should prick [that is, mark] on the charts. They replied, ‘By his course exactly as laid down.’ And he replied that they pricked it wrong (and it was so) and that the needle of navigation should be adjusted.”

O
n December 18, 1520, Magellan finally changed course. At this

point, they were between the mainland and the Juan Fernández Islands, which lie roughly west of what is now Santiago, Chile. Their new course took them west, away from South America into the Pacific. Soon the mainland, hardly more than a smudge on the horizon, disappeared from view, increasing the crew’s sense of isolation and anxiety. If there was ever a time for a monster to appear on the horizon, for the ocean to boil, or for a magnetic island to pull the nails from the hulls of their ships, this was it.

Nothing quite that supernatural occurred. Instead, the armada encountered a different kind of miracle: the steady trade winds at its back. The wind still lacked a name, and the crew did not realize how extraordinary this current of air was until they had experienced it for some weeks. As they reached higher and higher latitudes, the Pacific, so forbidding when they first encountered it in the south, gradually metamorphosed into an undulating silken sheet. The mysterious change was brought about by solar heating— the effect of the sun warming the atmosphere. Solar heating is greatest at the equator, where heated air rises high into the atmosphere and then divides into two streams, one flowing to the north and the other to the south. As the streams move toward the poles, they cool down, and the air, now relatively heavy, descends at about 30 degrees of latitude north and south. Eventually, the streams encounter what is known as the Coriolis force; the earth’s easterly rotation causes the wind to veer in a westerly direction; in the Southern Hemisphere, the location of the Armada de Molucca, the winds come from the southeast. These are the trade winds, named for the crucial role they played in facilitating transoceanic trade routes. Even better, from Magellan’s perspective, the Coriolis force increases toward the equator. As the fleet worked its way north, it was getting the benefit of some of the steadiest winds on the planet.

A
succession of placid, soporific days ensued. For hours on end, the waves slapped rhythmically against the hulls, the sails sighed and swelled contentedly in their fittings, and seamen spent their idle hours playing card games or sleeping. Pigafetta, short on patience, diverted himself by attempting to converse with their captive, cooperative Patagonian giant. In the process, he became the first European to learn and to transcribe the Tehuelche language of Patagonia. He was undoubtedly influenced by earlier explorers, such as Columbus, who had attempted to record South American languages with simple phonetic notations, but Pigafetta faced a complex language that defied reduction. Linguists have identified about one thousand languages in South America, and Tehuelche, or some variant of it, was the principal tongue of Patagonia. Exactly what dialect the Patagonian giant spoke is unknown. Despite their limitations, Pigafetta’s vocabulary lists rank among the expedition’s most significant discoveries. They lacked the commercial value of spices or gold, or the prestige of conquered territories, but they marked the beginning of the modern study of linguistics, and to later generations of scholars they offered clues to the migrations of various tribes across the South American continent.

Pigafetta described the modus operandi that evolved between the two of them: “When he, asking me for
capac,
this is to say, bread (for so they call the root which they use for bread) and oli, that is to say, water, saw me write down these names, and afterward, when I asked him for others, pen in hand, he understood me.” Their collaboration resulted in a phrase book called “Words of the Patagonian Giants.” “All these words are pronounced in the throat,” he advised, for they pronounce them thus.” Pigafetta began with the Tehuelche word for “head,” which he transcribed as
her.
“Eyes” sounded to him like
other.
Nose:
or.
Ears:
sane.
Mouth:
xiam.
And so on through subjects of interest to him.

Armpits:
salischen.
Breast:
ochii.
Thumb:
ochon.
Body:
gechel.
Penis:
scachet.
Testicles:
sacaneos.
Vagina:
isse.
Intercourse with women:
iohói.
The thighs:
chiaue.

Hour after hour, the tall, bronzed, clean-shaven, nearly naked Patagonian huddled in earnest conversation with the much shorter and paler European in his breeches and loose-fitting shirt, scratching eagerly with his pen, gesticulating, querying with his hands and fingers, the two of them engaged in a game of mutual comprehension, surrounded by an ocean of incomprehensible dimensions.

Pigafetta was plainly delighted by the captive’s range of vocabulary and his willingness to follow directions; at the same time, he was pleased with his own ability to capture the Tehuelche language on paper. Displaying the transcriptions to the giant, Pigafetta introduced the Patagonian to writing, and the power of the written word to speak silently across widely separated cultures, and, ultimately, across time. Imagine the captive’s sense of wonder at the use of magic symbols to capture and transmit his language and thoughts. The use of linguistic symbols became the best way—in fact, the only way—for these two men to understand one another. Of all the weapons the Europeans brought to the Pacific, guns included, none was more powerful and more capable of effecting lasting change than written language.

As their intellectual labors continued, Pigafetta’s queries moved from the concrete to the conceptual. What was the Patagonian word for the sun? he asked.
Calex cheni.
The stars?
Settere.
The sea:
aro.
Wind:
oni.
Storm:
ohone.
How does one say “Come here”?
Haisi,
replied the giant. To look?
Conne.
And to fight?
Oamaghce.

P
igafetta also introduced his cooperative prisoner to Catholicism. “I made the sign of the cross,” Pigafetta recalled, “and kissed the cross, showing it to him. But at once he cried out
Setebos,
and he made signs to me that, if I made the sign of the cross again, it would enter my stomach and cause me to burst.”
Setebos,
Pigafetta learned,

meant “the great devil,” the opposite of everything the cross represented in Christendom. The giant intuited that the cross represented a spiritual power, and eventually Pigafetta persuaded him that it symbolized a source of strength rather than danger. At about that time, the Patagonian began to weaken and fall ill. No one could say what afflicted him; perhaps it was the change of diet, or a virus he caught from the Europeans. The sicker he became, the more he relied on the cross. Pigafetta gave him a real cross to hold, and, as instructed, the giant brought it to his lips, seeking its strength and healing power. But the illness worsened— Pigafetta does not supply any symptoms—and it became apparent that the giant was dying. Their conversations turned to religion, and Pigafetta persuaded the prisoner to convert to Christianity. He was baptized, and the giant, whose original name Pigafetta never mentioned, became known as Paul. He died shortly thereafter, a Patagonian Christian who met a unique and tragic fate. Pigafetta did not record what kind of funeral rites Father Valderrama accorded Paul, but presumably he was given a proper burial at sea.

A
bout ninety years later, Pigafetta’s affecting account of the curtailed education and conversion of the Patagonian giant drew the attention of William Shakespeare, who read an English translation by Richard Eden of Pigafetta’s diary. Distinctive fingerprints in Shakespeare’s resulting play,
The Tempest,
first performed in 1611, could only have come from Pigafetta’s account.

In Shakespeare’s imagination, the humble details of Pigafetta’s encounter with the Patagonian giant are woven into an immense cosmological tapestry. The playwright sets the scene on an enchanted magical island ruled by Prospero, the duke of Milan, who, with his daughter Miranda, had been set adrift by his brother Antonio, a usurper. Shipwrecked, Prospero learns magic and manages to remain on good terms with spirits inhabiting the island, especially Ariel, a sprite whom Prospero had freed from an evil sorceress known as Sycorax. But Sycorax also has a son, Caliban, one of the most compelling yet enigmatic characters in the Shakespearean canon, and a character inspired in part by the Patagonian giant.

The clash between Prospero and Caliban offers a vivid image of the impact of European discovery and conquest on indigenous peoples throughout the world, and Shakespeare dramatizes the encounter with wit and a frisson of horror.

You taught me language; and my profit on’t
Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you,
For learning me your language!

Later, Caliban quotes Pigafetta’s account of the Patagonian giant:

I must obey: his art is of such power,
It would control my dam’s god, Setebos,
And make a vassal of him.

Although Shakespeare keeps the setting vague, this mystical play demonstrates, if nothing else, that the New World, with its splendor and barbarism, had taken up residence in the European consciousness.

A
lthough the weather remained perfect, the winds strong and constant, the armada failed to encounter islands with the food and water needed to sustain life. The ships had passed east of the Juan Fernández Islands, then north of the Marshall Islands: Bikar, Bikini, and Eniwetok. Had their course varied by only a few degrees south, they would been able to explore Easter Island or, farther west, the Society Islands and Tahiti. Had their course varied by only a few degrees north, they might have eventually encountered the Marquesas or Christmas Island. At the same time, the ship also narrowly avoided marine hazards such as razor-sharp reefs that could have sliced their hulls. A roaring surf concealed subsurface coral towers. Magellan’s ships passed within a hundred miles of such hazards, and emerged unscathed.

To look at Magellan’s course through the Pacific, it may seem as though he deliberately avoided the islands, and the chance to seek supplies, but he had no such plan in mind. None of these islands appeared on maps in his day, and if Magellan or anyone else spied telltale signs of landmass—a faint soaring plume, or the water turning light green—no one left any record of it. The two most reliable accounts, Pigafetta’s diary and Albo’s log, are silent on the subject of avoiding islands. Even if Magellan had known of their existence, he would not have felt any special urgency to land on their shores, for he expected to reach the Spice Islands or some other point in Asia within days. Headed toward an illusory destination, the fleet remained isolated in the Pacific, three little ships suspended in an infinite cerulean sea.

Thirst and hunger tormented the crew. The seals they had butchered and salted in Patagonia turned putrid and became infested with maggots, which devoured the sails, rigging, and even the sailors’ clothing, rendering them all useless. Pigafetta chronicled the appalling deterioration in their food supply. “We were three months and twenty days without getting any kind of fresh food. We ate biscuit which was no longer biscuit, but powder of biscuits swarming with worms, for they had eaten the good. It stank strongly of the urine of rats. We drank yellow water that had been putrid for many days. We also ate some ox hides that covered the top of the mainyard to prevent the yard from chafing the shrouds, and which had become exceedingly hard because of the sun, rain, and wind. We left them in the sea for four or five days, and then placed them for a few moments on top of the embers, and so ate them; and often we ate sawdust from boards. Rats were sold for one-half ducado apiece, and even then we could not get them.”