Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (33 page)

That would have been the end of the Treasure Fleet, had Zhu Gaozhi lived. But he died a few years later, and his twenty-six-yearold son—Zhu Di’s grandson—turned to the palace eunuchs, who quickly restored the Treasure Fleet to its former glory. In 1431, on its seventh voyage, the fleet consisted of 300 ships and 27,500 men. Cheng Ho was charged with restoring peaceful relations between China and the kingdoms of Malacca and Siam. After completing the mission, part of the fleet sailed on and probably reached northern Australia. This much has been strongly suggested by Chinese artifacts recovered in Australia and by the oral traditions of the Aborigines. The remarkable journey turned out to be the Treasure Fleet’s last adventure; Cheng Ho, who inspired the enterprise, died on the voyage home.

The emperor mothballed the Treasure Fleet, shut down the Nanking shipyards, and destroyed records documenting its accomplishments. Chinese science and technology, especially regarding exploration, fell into decline. By 1500, an imperial edict made it a capital offense for a ship with more than two masts to put to sea; in 1525, officials set about destroying the larger ships of the Treasure Fleet. China abandoned the huge transoceanic trading empire created by the Treasure Fleet and, guided by Confucian precepts, turned inward, never to explore the ocean again.

Cheng Ho’s voyages demonstrated that China was once the most powerful nation in the world, a seagoing empire that Spain or Portugal would have feared and envied, had they known of its reach. The reputation of the Treasure Fleet never made it to European shores. Portuguese and Spanish explorers sailed into the vacuum of power left by China. Like the Chinese, they came in search of wealth, but quite unlike them, they fiercely battled for territory, for commercial and political advantage over one another, and for religious conquest. Driven by these imperatives, European progress into the regions formerly under the spell of Chinese commerce was swift. In 1498, Vasco da Gama and his men came across evidence of the vanished Chinese presence in East Africa: natives wearing green silk caps adorned with fringe. The inhabitants spoke of white ghosts wearing silk: a distant memory of the Treasure Fleet, which had visited these shores eighty years before. Now, in 1521, Magellan’s Armada de Molucca arrived in the Philippines, claiming vast territories renounced by China. Magellan, like other Europeans, had no direct knowledge of the Treasure Fleet, but he and his men kept stumbling across artifacts of the vanished Chinese empire: silk, porcelain, writing, and sophisticated weights and measures were everywhere in evidence.

The Chinese experiment in maritime diplomacy and trade lasted for a single generation, but the rapacious and daring Europeans were here to stay. By the time Magellan arrived in the Philippines, Chinese influence was rapidly waning, and even a modest fleet such as the Armada de Molucca could have a major impact on the region. The era of Chinese colonization had ended; the era of Spanish colonization was just beginning.

T
he sprawling Philippine archipelago did not exist on European maps, and neither Magellan nor his pilots knew what to make of their discovery. Magellan led his ships closer to the island of Samar, but within a mile or two of the shore, he found only unforgiving cliffs rising from the water, and nothing resembling a safe harbor. He changed course once more, heading for diminutive Suluan, where the armada dropped anchor for a few hours’ respite.

It was the fifth Sunday in Lent, with Easter fast approaching. Appropriately, Lent is dedicated to Lazarus, risen from the dead, and like him, the surviving crew members had overcome illness to regain their strength and persevere. Magellan decided to name the archipelago after Lazarus, but twenty-two years later, another European explorer, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, reached these islands and later named them Las Islas Filipinas—the Philippines—after King Philip of Spain.

Magellan’s next landfall proved more satisfying than Samar. Homonhon Island did have a safe harbor, and Magellan, with tremendous relief, finally gave the order to drop anchor. He led his men ashore, to an oasis of dense rain forest, palm trees, and abundant water, where they erected two sheltering tents. At last they were free of the stench of the ships’ holds. Instead, their nostrils twitched with the mingled fragrances of palm trees, wet sand, and decaying vegetation. They slaughtered a sow they had brought from Guam and prepared a great feast for themselves. For a time, their bellies were full, and the long-suffering sailors content.

On Monday, March 18, they saw a boat bearing nine men approach from the direction of Suluan. Calculating the risks and rewards inherent in their second encounter with the peoples of the Pacific, Magellan made certain that arms were at the ready; at the same time, he assembled a different sort of arsenal: shiny trinkets, in case the encounter turned out to be peaceful.

This time, Magellan handled the situation confidently. “The Captain General ordered that no one should move or say anything without his leave,” Pigafetta wrote. “When those people had come to us in that island, forthwith the most ornately dressed of them went toward the Captain-General, showing that he was very happy at our coming. And five of the most ornately dressed remained with us, while the others who stayed at the boat went to fetch some who were fishing, and then they all went together. Then the captain, seeing that these people were reasonable, ordered that they be given food and drink, and he presented them with red caps, mirrors, combs, bells . . . and other things. And when those people saw the captain’s

fair dealing, they gave him fish and a jar of palm wine, which they call in their language
vraca,
figs more than a foot long [bananas] and other smaller ones of better flavor, and two coconuts. . . .A nd they made signs with their hands that in four days they would bring us rice, coconuts, and sundry other food.”

Perhaps they had found Paradise, after all, or at least a respite from an expedition well into its second year. Each day Magellan fed coconut milk supplied by the generous Filipinos to the sailors still suffering from scurvy. Pigafetta meanwhile became intrigued with the Filipinos’ method for fermenting palm wine. “They make an aperture into the heart of the tree at its top . . . from which is distilled along the tree a liquor . . . which is sweet with a touch of greenness. Then they take canes as thick as a man’s leg, by which they draw off this liquor, fastening them to a tree from the evening until next morning, and from the morning to the evening, so that the said liquor comes little by little.”

Perhaps under the influence of too much Filipino palm wine, Pigafetta marveled at the coconut and all its uses. “This palm bears a fruit, named
cocho,
which is as large as the head or thereabouts, and its first husk is green and two fingers thick, in which are found certain fibers of which those people make the ropes by which they bind their boats. Under this husk is another, very hard and thicker than that of a nut. . . . And under the said husk there is a white marrow of a finger’s thickness, which they eat with meat and fish, as we do bread, and it has the flavor of an almond. . . . From the center of this marrow there flows a water which is clear and sweet and very refreshing, like an apple.” The Filipinos taught their visitors how to produce milk from the coconut, “as we proved by experience.” They pried the meat of the coconut from the shell, combined it with the coconut’s liquor, and filtered the mixture through cloth. The result, said the chronicler, “became like goat’s milk.” Pigafetta was so moved by the coconut’s versatility that he declared, with some exaggeration, that two palm trees could sustain a family of ten for a hundred years.

Their idyll lasted a week, each day bringing with it new discoveries and a growing intimacy with their genial Filipino hosts. “These people entered into very great familiarity and friendship with us, and made us understand several things in their language, and the name of some islands which we saw before us,” Pigafetta commented. “We took great pleasure with them, because they were merry and conversable.”

B
ut Magellan nearly destroyed the idyll when he invited the Filipinos aboard
Trinidad.
He incautiously showed his guests “all his merchandise, namely cloves, cinnamon, pepper, walnut, nutmeg, ginger, mace, gold, and all that was in the ship.” Clearly he felt he was no longer among thieves. His trust was amply rewarded when the Filipinos appeared to recognize these exotic and precious spices and tried to explain where they grew locally, the first indication that the armada was approaching the Spice Islands. Magellan’s reaction can be easily imagined. Perhaps he would reach the Moluccas after all.

He then did his guests a signal honor, or so he thought, by ordering his gunners to discharge their “artillery”—the awkward arquebuses. The roar shattered the silence and reverberated against the distant hills of Homonhom, terrifying the Filipinos who, afraid for their lives, “tried to leap from the ship into the sea.” This might have been a gaffe, an excess of enthusiasm. Or was Magellan trying to impress these defenseless islanders, and himself, with the power of his weapons? At the very least, the display was a cruel practical joke on a tranquil tribe that had only helped and protected him and his men. Magellan quickly reassured the frightened Filipinos and coaxed them into remaining on board; at the same time, he could not fail to notice that his weapons conferred absolute power over the islanders, should he ever feel the need to exert it.

A
fter a week in Homonhom, Magellan gave the order to weigh anchor on Monday, March 25, while light rain dappled the water’s surface. As the three black ships were about to head out of the harbor on a west southwest course, deeper into the Philippine archipelago, toward the Moluccas, Pigafetta committed a rare lapse of judgment.

“I went to the side of the ship to fish, and putting my feet upon a yard leading down into the store room, they slipped, for it was rainy, and I fell into the sea, so that no one saw me. When I was all but under, my left hand happened to catch hold of the clew-garnet of the mainsail, which was dangling in the water. I held on tightly, and began to cry out so lustily that I was rescued by a small boat. I was aided, not, I believe, indeed through my merits, but through the mercy of that font of charity”—by which he meant the Virgin Mary. Had Pigafetta not been rescued, he would have drowned on the spot, or been rescued by the Filipinos, and would have spent the rest of his life with them, unable to tell his incredible tale.

The following night, the crew spied an island distinguished by a dull red glow, the unmistakable sign of campfires, and they knew they were not alone. In the morning, Magellan decided to risk approaching, and in a now familiar ritual, they were greeted by another small boat, this one bearing eight warriors with unknown intentions.

Magellan’s slave, Enrique, addressed them in a Malay dialect, and to Magellan’s astonishment, the men appeared to understand him and replied in the same tongue. No one, not even Magellan, knew how Enrique managed to converse with the islanders, but the slave’s background provides some valuable clues. Magellan had acquired Enrique ten years earlier in Malacca, where he was baptized, and he had followed his master ever since across Africa and Europe. If Enrique had originally come from these islands, been captured as a boy by slave raiders from Sumatra, and sold to Magellan at a slave mart in Malacca, the chain of circumstances would account for his understanding the local language. But beyond that, it meant that Magellan’s servant was, in fact, the first person to circle the world and return home.

As the islanders “came alongside the ship, unwilling to enter but taking a position at some little distance,” the Captain General attempted to entice them with a “red cap and other things tied to a bit of wood.” Still, they remained at a distance. Finally, Magellan’s peace offerings were set out on a plank pushed in the canoe’s direction. The men in the boat enthusiastically seized the gifts and paddled back to shore, where, Magellan presumed, they displayed their trophies to their ruler.

“About two hours later we saw two
balanghai
coming. They are large boats . . . full of men, and their king was in the larger of them, being seated under an awning of mats. When the king came near the flagship, the slave spoke to him. The king understood him, for in those districts, the kings know more languages than the other people. He ordered some of his men to enter the ships, but he always remained in his
balanghai
, at some little distance from the ship, until his own men returned; and as soon as they returned he departed.” Magellan tried to conduct himself as a gracious visitor, but he was outdone by the generosity of the king, who proffered a “large bar of gold and a basketful of ginger.” Magellan politely but firmly refused to accept this tribute, but he remained on such friendly terms with the natives that he moved his ships’ anchorage closer to the king’s hut for the night, as a symbol of their newfound allegiance.

This encounter with indigenous people was shaping up as the armada’s most peaceful and successful since their delirious layover in Rio de Janeiro. A king willing to give gold and ginger might have other resources, and perhaps even women, but experience had shown Magellan that opening gestures could be deceptive, if not outright dangerous.

T
he next day, Good Friday of 1521, Magellan put his relationship with the islanders to the test. He sent Enrique ashore on the island of Limasawa. Even today, as part of southern Leyte in the Philippines, Limasawa is a remote, inaccessible island remarkable for its broad, clean, inviting beaches, occasionally interrupted by unusual rock formations and caves. Although Magellan was the first European explorer to reach Limasawa, he was not the first outsider to find safe harbor here. Without realizing it, he had arrived at an important trading post. Chinese traders had been calling at the island for five centuries, their junks bearing sophisticated manufactured items such as porcelain, silk, and lead sinkers; the islanders traded for these items with products from their beaches and forests: cotton, wax, pearls, betel nuts, tortoiseshells, coconuts, sweet potatoes, and coconut leaf mats. The Limasawans enjoyed a reputation for hospitality and, more important, honesty. In 1225, Chau Ju Kuo, a Chinese merchant, described the orderly process of trading; the Limasawans, he said, efficiently carried away the Chinese goods they had been given and always returned with the arranged payment. So the appearance of the armada, while unusual, was not wholly unanticipated by the islanders, who were prepared to engage in trade with their guests.