Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1
PRIMUS
It all began with a death. Not an especially noble death. In fact,
when Ferdinand Magellan was brutally felled by a rain of iron-tipped,
bamboo spears on 27 April 1521, he suffered a fate he had arrogantly
and needlessly brought upon himself. The swarthy, black-bearded
Portuguese who had driven his diminishing band of sailors and ad-
venturers through seventeen thousand miles of unimaginable hell,
now involved them recklessly in the petty rivalries of two island
princes:
Zzula, lord of the aforesaid island of Mactan . . . begged that on
the following night he would send but one boat with some of his men to
fight [against his rival, Lapulapu]. The captain general resolved to go
there with three boats . . . we set forth, sixty men armed with corselets
and helmets . . . and arrived at Mactan three hours before daylight.
When day came we leaped into the water, being forty-nine men,
and so went for a distance of two crossbow flights before we could
reach the harbour, and the boats could not come farther inshore be-
cause of the stones and rocks which were in the water. The other eleven
men remained to guard the boats.
Having thus reached land we attacked them. Those people had
formed three divisions, of more than one thousand and fifty persons
*
and immediately they perceived us, they came about us with loud voices
and cries, two divisions on our flanks, and one around and before us.
When the captain saw this he divided us in two, and thus we began to
fight. The hackbutmen [i.e. men armed with primitive handguns] and
crossbowmen fired at long range for nearly half an hour but in vain,
