Page:First Voyage Round the World.djvu/142

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64
MAGELLAN ENTERS THE PACIFIC.

All these words are pronounced in the throat, because they pronounce them thus.

These words were given me by that giant whom we had in the ship, because he asked me for capac, that is to say bread, since they thus name that root which they use for bread, and oli that is to say water. When he saw me write these names after him, and ask for others he understood (what I was doing) with my pen in my hand.[1] Another time I made a cross and kissed it in showing it to him; but suddenly he exclaimed Setebos! and made signs to me that if I again made the cross it would enter into my stomach and make me die. When this giant was unwell[2] he asked for the cross, and embraced and kissed it much, and he wished to become a Christian before his death, and we named him Paul. When these people wish to light a fire they take a pointed stick and rub it with another until they make a fire in the pith of a tree which is placed between these sticks.

(In the Milan Edition here begins Book II.)

Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of November, 1520, we came forth out of the said strait, and entered into the Pacific sea, where we remained three months and twenty days without taking in provisions or other refreshments, and we only ate old biscuit reduced to powder, and full of grubs, and stinking from the dirt which the rats had made on it when eating the good biscuit, and we drank water that was yellow and stinking. We also ate the ox hides which were under the main-yard,[3] so that the yard should not break the rigging:[4] they were very hard on account of

  1. This passage is not quite clear:—"Quand il me veyt escripre ces noms après luy demandant des aultres il mentendoit auecq la plume en main."
  2. The printed edition of Milan has: "ammalato dell' infermita di cui mori."
  3. "Antena magiore."
  4. "Sartia."