Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  He reached that coast after sixty days of sailing, the longest maritime journey made without a stop until then. Pigafetta found the new land most abundant but was shocked to find that its indigenous people did not seem to worship anything. Yet they lived, he reported imaginatively, from 125 to 140 years. Both men and women went about naked, and they slept in cotton hammocks, slung in large dormitory houses where there might be a hundred people. They had canoes made of one piece of wood. They ate their enemies, not, apparently, because human beings tasted good, but because it was the custom to try to acquire the qualities of others. There were pretty parrots. For a hatchet or a knife, the indigenous people were prepared to give almost anything: one or two daughters as slaves, or five or six fowls; for a comb, two geese; and for a small mirror or a pair of scissors, so much fish that “ten men could not have eaten it.” For a hawk’s bell, they gave a fruit called a battate. For a pack of cards, they gave five chickens.

  A pretty girl came on board, found a clove in a junior officer’s cabin, and put it “with great gallantry between the lips of her ‘natura,’ as he put it.” A clove was, of course, what Magellan would be seeking in the Moluccas above all. The girl’s action seemed to augur well.

  The indigenous people of Brazil certainly repay attention, for they provided the original “noble savage” of whom Dryden first wrote and in whom later European writers, above all Rousseau, exulted. Dryden’s play The Conquest of Granada speaks of one who considers himself:

  … as free as nature first made man,

  Ere the base laws of servitude began,

  When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

  Those generous men of the Enlightenment took their ideas from the intelligent observers of the sixteenth century. Peter Martyr, for example, told the Pope that “people coming back from Brazil had assured him that the people lived there in a golden age … and they naturally follow goodness.” Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly was inspired by Brazil, while Thomas More’s Utopia must have been near—for the place was described as “south of the Equator” yet in the New World. Rabelais would similarly be influenced in Pantagruel by what he heard of Brazil. The first European visitors, such as Vespucci, described these Indians as living in benign if primitive socialism, owning everything in common, with neither money nor trade. Pigafetta recalled how naked Indian girls climbed aboard the Spanish ships and gave themselves to the Europeans with natural innocence—an impression confirmed a little later by the astounding French sailor Parmentier, who in the 1520s described those girls as “colts who had never experienced a rein.”20

  In his famous essay “On the Cannibals,” the French writer Montaigne recalled how he had met people who had been to Brazil and how, forty years after Magellan, in the 1560s, some indigenous people were brought to France and presented to King Charles IX. By that time the French had reasonable interpreters. Montaigne asked one of these men what the natives had been saying. They were saying, it turned out, that they thought it extraordinary that so obviously splendid a country as France should have as their leader such a small man.21

  Great differences existed among the Indians of Brazil at the time of the coming of the Portuguese, and these differences survive. The original population of the vast territory that now constitutes Brazil may have been 2.5 million. The Indian population is now 100,000.22 So over the centuries a demographic catastrophe occurred.

  Magellan and his men stayed thirteen days in Brazil and then sailed on past the Rio Plate without entering it, and in what is now Argentina, Pigafetta said that they met giants, of whom he gave a vivid description. By then they were far beyond any coast seen by any European.

  Due to severe difficulties with the ships, the expedition stopped for five months in the bay and port of San Julián, five hundred miles north of Cape Horn. Magellan did not want to sail into icy waters without his ships being in perfect condition. The crews, left idle for so long, despaired of finding the mysterious strait; their food was rationed, and they were bored by both the sterility and cold of the land. Magellan thought that he should stay there till the spring. Many of his followers, though, desired to go home. They considered that they were involved in a pointless undertaking. There were also serious difficulties between the Portuguese and the Spaniards among the crews. It seemed odd to Spaniards, such as the Basque Elcano, the master of the Concepción, to hear Captain-General Magellan, a Portuguese, talking “in the name of the King.” A not surprising dispute developed between Magellan and his Spanish captains—especially Quesada and Cartagena. The quarrel had begun earlier when there had been an altercation as to whether—and if so, how—to salute Magellan. On such trivial matters, the fates of empires have always depended.

  On Palm Sunday, April 1, 1520, Magellan ordered his crews to go on shore to hear Mass. He invited the officers and pilots to lunch with him afterwards on the Trinidad. But only two men, Coca and Álvaro de la Mezquita (who had taken over command of the San Antonio), went to Mass and only Mezquita went to lunch. That night Quesada and Cartagena went to the San Antonio and, having seized Mezquita, told the crew of that vessel that it was under their orders, not those of Magellan. Juan de Elorriaga, from Guipuzcoa, the master, backed Magellan and was struck so hard by Quesada that he died two months later.

  No one at first dared to take over command of the San Antonio. In the end, Elcano did, with Quesada to help. Cartagena went to the Concepción. Luis de Mendoza went to the Victoria.

  The rebels had now captured most of the ships, and they sent word to Magellan that he should henceforth carry out the royal orders according to their interpretation. They added various irreverent statements. Magellan was furious. He ordered all the captains to come to the Trinidad, but the rebels asked him to go to the San Antonio. He dispatched Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa, his constable, with six men, to the Victoria, with a letter to Luis de Mendoza. Mendoza read the letter and allowed himself a malign smile; seeing it, Gómez de Espinosa stabbed him in the throat and another sailor gave him a blow in the side. He fell dead. The constable and his armed men then seized the ship.

  Much the same happened on the Santiago. The rebels on the San Antonio and the Concepción wished to flee, but Quesada sent Mezquita to Magellan to seek an accommodation. Magellan said that it was useless. Elcano hesitated. Magellan bombarded the San Antonio with some of his artillery; later, his men boarded it, and Elcano, Coca, and Quesada were arrested. Cartagena, on the Concepción, gave up without a fight.

  The voyage of Magellan and Elcano, 1519–22

  At dawn, Magellan sent the body of Mendoza on shore, cut him into four, and publicly denounced him as a traitor. Quesada was hanged and then quartered. Others met only slightly less horrible ends; Cartagena was left behind, marooned, with a priest (apparently French, named Calmette). Peter Martyr later wrote that he thought Magellan “had been within his rights in so acting, but others said that he was not.”23 Magellan then pardoned forty others who had compromised themselves in the rebellion, including Elcano.24 At the same time, Esteban and Gómez fled with the San Antonio, intending to sail back to Spain, taking with them “a giant” they had captured. Jerónimo Guerra made himself the captain, and they took Álvaro de la Mezquita with them as a prisoner. They reached Spain in May 1521.

  The Santiago was also lost, but all its crew were saved. The mutiny over, the ships surviving eventually continued, past a so-called Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, into the narrows leading to the “strait” of Magellan.

  The discovery of this strait, the goal of so much Spanish effort and the target of so many expeditions in previous years, was a triumph. It was, Pigafetta said, 110 leagues long, say 350 miles, and was surrounded on both sides by snowy mountains. The expedition at first assumed that it was a mere bay. But Magellan believed that he knew better, perhaps because of prior information gathered in Lisbon, and he insisted on sailing on. The winds were complicated. But Magellan persisted, weeping with happiness when they passed Cabo Deseado and entered the calm of the Southern Sea, the “P
acific,” as he would henceforth think of it. The nights at that time of the year were only three hours long, for it was October. They called the strait the Estrecho Patagónico after the territory of Patagonia, which received its name from the mythical country in the novel Sergás de Esplandián, written by Garcí Montalvo, the author, or re-creator, of Amadís de Gaula, and published in Seville by Cromberger in 1510.25

  Magellan and his party remained in the Pacific for three months and twenty days, meeting no storms and traveling, as Pigafetta says, four thousand leagues (about twelve thousand miles). At first he sailed north, along the coast of Chile, then afterwards in a northwesterly direction. But nineteen men died at this stage, as did “the giant.” They then set out across the ocean, turning west near what is now Valdivia, in Chile.

  Magellan seemed to have an instinctive sense of which winds to seize upon. No doubt he had learned something of their likely pattern when in the East Indies. Food, on the other hand, ran short; the members of the expedition had to eat rats and moldy ships’ biscuits and the water was foul. Many fell ill from scurvy, which at that time no one knew was best treated by eating lemons. One on the expedition wrote: “Had not God and His blessed mother given us good weather, we should all have died of hunger in that exceedingly vast sea. I truly believe that no such voyage will ever be made again.”26

  Magellan eventually reached the Marianas, the chain of islands that runs north to Japan, in March 1521. They called these the Islas de Ladrones, because the natives, who, of course, had never seen anything like a European, robbed them of whatever they could. For a time, Europeans thought of them also as the Islas de Velas Latinas, “of the Lateen Sails,” because of the shape of the sails that the natives used for their fishing expeditions. (The islands did not receive their name of “Marianas” until the late seventeenth century when the Spanish queen María Ana sent a Jesuit mission there.)

  Pigafetta described the natives with loving detail, saying that they lived in liberty, worshipped no deities, were naked (except that most women wore a thin piece of bark over their private parts); some wore their beards to their waists and hats of palm leaves “as if they were Albanians.” They had houses of wood covered with planks and fig leaves, and slept on palm mats and palm straw. There were numerous formal exchanges of gifts between them and Magellan; fish, palm wine, and figs or bananas, later rice and coconuts, were the most important indigenous offerings. A little gold followed. Later still came sweet oranges and chickens. The expedition’s fortunes varied. Magellan spent some time with a people whose monarch lived off rice on china plates, and drank pig’s broth, as well as a rather superior palm wine.

  So they continued. On the island of Satighan they found a bird as large as an eagle, and in Zzubu, in what is now Cebu in the Philippines, they heard news for the first time of the Portuguese voyages that had arrived ahead of them. Magellan’s interpreter explained to the indigenous people, firmly, that their master, the King of Spain, was more powerful than the King of Portugal. Always there were exchanges of presents: Pigafetta gave the King of Zzubu a robe of yellow and violet silk, a red cap, certain pieces of glass, and two gilt drinking glasses. That monarch probably appreciated such attentions, for when the crews of Magellan first saw him, he was wearing only a cloth around his middle, a loose wrapper around his head, a heavy chain around his neck, and two large gold earrings. His face was painted. He was eating tortoise eggs. His subjects played music on strange instruments, and the Europeans danced with them.

  In addition to presents, Pigafetta recalls fourteen pounds of iron being exchanged for ten weights of gold, and for other minor goods they obtained goats, pigs, and rice.

  Magellan tried to ensure the conversion to Christianity of the rulers whom he met. He acted on the principle that if one captured the soul of the ruler, the people would be sure to follow. Thus he told the King of Zzubu that if he wished to become a Christian, he must burn his idols and raise a cross. Everyone should worship the Christian god on their knees and make the sign of the cross. The King agreed, and when he was baptized, he became known as “Don Carlos,” and his brother, “Don Fernando”; and the same happened with the Queen and her ladies, who were much drawn to the image of Our Lady holding the baby Jesus. The Queen, who was heavily painted, with her lips and nails as red as those of a modern lady of fashion, became “Juana,” her sister “Isabel,” and her daughter “Catalina.” At various stages, Magellan fired his artillery to celebrate these developments.

  Often the descriptions by Pigafetta read as if they were passages in Tirant lo Blanc or some other chivalrous novel:

  One day, the Queen came in all her state. She was preceded by three damsels, who carried in their hands three of her hats. She was dressed in black and white, with a large silk veil with gold stripes that covered her head and shoulders. Many women followed her with their heads covered by a small veil, and a hat above that. The rest of their bodies were naked, except for a small wrapper of palm cloth that covered their private parts. Their hair fell flowing over their shoulders. The Queen, after making a bow to the altar, sat upon a cushion of embroidered silk, and the captain sprinkled over her and her ladies rosewater and musk, a perfume that pleased them … very much.27

  Later, the King and his family swore fealty to the King of Spain. The Europeans, for their part, watched a ceremony in which a pig was blessed, and they also saw a Zzubu funeral.

  Magellan agreed to fight the people of nearby Matan for the benefit of pleasing the King of Zzubu. It was a gratuitous adventure that deserved to end badly; and this battle on the island of Cebu, in the southern part of the archipelago, on April 27, 1521, concluded disastrously. Magellan entered the thick of the fighting, the ferocity of which he had underestimated. Almost immediately he was wounded by what Pigafetta calls “a scimitar,” and lying on the ground, “there fell on him many lances of iron and cane, so much so that they deprived of life our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our guide.”28

  Duarte Barbosa, a cousin of Magellan’s, also a Portuguese, now became captain. Pigafetta says that he was elected to that place, presumably by a show of hands. Juan Serrano, who had been chief pilot, also played a part in the new command, but he was soon left to be killed by the “Christian king” whom Magellan had believed an ally.29

  Magellan’s character was well described by Pigafetta: “One of his principal virtues was his constancy in the most adverse fortune. In the midst of the sea, he was able to endure hunger better than the rest of us. Versed in nautical charts, he also was better informed than any of us about the true art of navigation. It is certain that he knew, by his genius and by his intrepidity, without anyone having given him the example, how to attempt the circuit of the globe.…”30 Las Casas, who knew Magellan slightly, described him as “a man of spirit, brave in his thoughts and capable of undertaking great things,” even though as a person he had little authority, “being small of build.”31 Magellan’s achievement was incomplete, but it was his voyage that led to the circumnavigation of the world, his vision that made him contemplate it, and his courage that led his ships through the strait that bears his name and across the biggest sea on earth.

  The members of the expedition thought that they could now man only two ships, so they burned the Concepción and, after further curious meetings in the Philippines (also worthy, in the account of Pigafetta, to be incidents from Amadís or Tirant lo Blanc), returned to Spain across the Indian Ocean with the Victoria and the Trinidad. On their return journey, it was Borneo that most impressed Pigafetta, perhaps because he and some of his comrades were constrained to ride out from the royal presence on elephants. Here, there were some desertions among the remaining crew. Here, too, Christians for the first time on this journey encountered Islam, whose eastern transmogrification did not much remind them of old Granada.

  They also found small and squat cinnamon trees, the lemon tree, and the sugarcane (apparently indigenous there) that had been the goal of Magellan in the first place. They found metal coins with a
hole in the middle, heard stories of pearls as big as chicken’s eggs, discovered white porcelain from China, and gum. Some of these were exchanged for bronze, iron, knives, and, in particular, spectacles.

  Then the expedition reached the Moluccas, Tadore, and Ternate, “where the cloves grow,” and there, Pigafetta says with pleasure, they found access nothing like as difficult as the Portuguese had made out. These Spice Islands had been captured by Muslims fifty years before, but all the same, the forty-five-year-old Muslim king of Tadore (Rajah Sultan Manzor) quickly agreed to be a vassal of the King of Spain. He even agreed to change the name of his island to Castile. These Muslims, the Spaniards thought, were far more amenable than those of the Mediterranean.

  Despite the length of their journey, Magellan’s successors had plenty to give away as presents: a robe of Turkish yellow velvet and one of brocade, a chair of red velvet, four ells of scarlet cloth, some yellow damask, white cambaye linen, caps, glass beads, knives, and some large mirrors. Europe was presented to the East rather than just Spain or Portugal, even if that linen had been made in India. The beads must have been Venetian. Perhaps the scarlet cloth was from the Cotswolds in England. Northleach may thus have played its part in this early “globalization.”

  The members of the expedition showed the Rajah how to shoot with a crossbow and a swivel gun, a weapon larger than an arquebus. This monarch was delighted to negotiate with Spaniards, for he had earlier quarreled with Francisco Serrano, the Portuguese captain-general, a friend of Magellan’s, and had even tried to poison him with betel leaves.