Part 18 (2/2)

Their s.h.i.+ps were becoming unseaworthy.

They were reduced to two s.h.i.+ps, the Victoria and the Trinidad, and these shaped their course for the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, by the way of Borneo. Del Cano began to represent the spirit of Magellan among the crews.

They came to the Bornean city, Brunei, ”a collection of houses built on piles over the water, where were twenty-five thousand fires or families.” On the sh.o.r.e was the palace of a voluptuous Sultan, its walls hung with brocades of silk. Here was also one of the most curious markets in all the world, carried on at high tide, when there gathered a great army of canoes.

On November 8, 1521, the two s.h.i.+ps anch.o.r.ed off Tidor on the Spice Islands, saluting the King of the place with a broadside.

They concluded a treaty of peace with the King, and began to load the two s.h.i.+ps with spice, and especially with cloves, a kind of spice at that time regarded as a great luxury in Spain.

If Pigafetta had desired above all things to see the wonders of the ocean world, he must again have been gratified here at some of the presents sent to the s.h.i.+ps by the natives. Columbus had brought to Spain gorgeous parrots or macaws. But the King of Batchian sent to him a bird whose plumage surpa.s.sed anything that he had ever seen.

”It is the bird of Paradise,” said the agent of the royal almoner.

The Italian did not doubt it. He wished to learn the history of this superb inhabitant of the air.

He did in a way that excited his wonder beyond measure.

The bird, after the Mohammedan account, was born in Paradise. It came down from Heaven where dwelt departed souls, who had died true to the Moslem faith.

These birds were found dead, and they had no feet. If Pigafetta inquired the cause of this, he doubtless was answered:

”They do not need feet; they never alight on the ground.”

But as greatly as the Chevalier must have wondered, he was not induced to accept the Moslem faith.

They overcrowded the s.h.i.+ps while receiving the favors of the Sultan of Tidor.

An account of their voyage about the Spice Islands, ”most delightful to read,” as we are told in the t.i.tle, was written by one Maximilia.n.u.s Transylva.n.u.s, from which we gather the following incidents (Hakluyt Society) of great pearls and strange men:

”They came to the sh.o.r.es of the Island of Solo, where they heard that there were pearls as big as dove's eggs, and sometimes as hen's eggs, but which can only be fished up from the very deepest sea. Our men brought no large pearl, because the season of the year did not allow of the fishery. But they testify that they had taken an oyster in that region, the flesh of which weighed forty-seven pounds. For which reason I could easily believe that pearls of that great size are found there; for it is clearly proved that pearls are the product of sh.e.l.lfish. And to omit nothing, our men constantly affirm that the islanders of p.o.r.ne told him that the King wore in his crown two pearls of the size of a goose's egg.

”Hence they went to the Island of Gilo, where they saw men with ears so long and pendulous that they reached to their shoulders. When our men were mightily astonished at this, they learnt from the natives that there was another island not far off where the men had ears not only pendulous, but so long and broad that one of them would cover the whole head if they wanted it (_c.u.m exusu esset_). But our men, who sought not monsters but spices, neglecting this nonsense, went straight to the Moluccas, and they discovered them eight months after their Admiral, Magellan, had fallen in Matan. The islands are five in number, and are called Tarante, Muthil, Thidore, Mare, and Matthien; some on this side some on the other, and some upon the equinoctial line.

”One produces cloves, another nutmegs, and another cinnamon. All are near to each other, but small and rather narrow.”

The world to-day thinks little of spices, for commerce has made common the luxuries of the Indian Ocean. Cloves, nutmegs, allspice, cinnamon, ginger are found in every home in all civilized lands, and even children make few inquiries about them.

This was not so in the early days of the Viceroys of India. Spices which were gathered and sold by Arabian merchants, were held in Europe as a gift of Arabia, and esteemed to be the greatest, or among the greatest of luxuries. A s.h.i.+p laden with spices was hailed in the ports of the Iberian peninsula as next to a s.h.i.+p freighted with gold, as the Golden Hynde was welcomed in the days of Sir Francis Drake. It used to be said that the odors of the spice s.h.i.+ps from the East Indies could be breathed through the breezes that wafted them toward the land.

The princ.i.p.al Spice Islands were the Moluccas, or the islands of the East India Archipelago between Celebes on the west and New Guinea on the east, Timor on the south and the open Pacific Sea on the north. They are distributed over a wide ocean area. Of these the Moluccas form the princ.i.p.al group. Here are the paradises of the seas.

It was to these islands where could be procured the products of ”Araby the Blessed” that Magellan had hoped to find a new way. There were brighter sh.o.r.es than Spain, and to these he sought the shortest routes over which s.h.i.+ps could travel.

The Peruvian adventurers wished to find gold; the voyagers to the Antilles, magical waters and new productions of the earth; but Magellan's dream was of the spiceries of the Indian seas. They all found what they sought, except Ponce de Leon, who hoped to find the Fountain of Eternal Youth.

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