And we were only eighteen men, the most part sick

The publisher Dover does a wonderful job of delivering out-of-copyright texts at affordable prices. I have long rows of their books whose titles and topics are obscure and unlikely to be read but made available at a sufficiently low price that it justifies the acquisition on the off-chance that I will read them. Such is Magellan's Voyage A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation by Antonio Pigafetta. He was a Venetian scholar who travelled with Magellan on his 1519 voyage of exploration which led to the first circumnavigation of the globe. Just. 270 men departed in five ships. 18 men in a single worn out battered ship limped home to Spain.

I find these accounts fascinating. 50,000 years after mankind's departure from Africa, we actually have firsthand accounts of the beginning of the reconnection of the human diaspora.

On Saturday the sixth of September, one thousand five hundred and twenty-two, we entered the bay of San Lucar, and we were only eighteen men, the most part sick, of the sixty remaining who had left Molucca, some of whom died of hunger, others deserted at the island of Timor, and others had been put to death for their crimes. From the time when we had departed from that Bay until the present day, we had sailed fourteen thousand four hundred and sixty leagues, and completed the circuit of the world from east to west. On Monday the eight of September we cast anchor near the Mole of Seville, and there we discharged all the artillery. And on Tuesday we all went, in our shirts and barefoot, and each with a torch in his hand, to visit the shrine of Santa Maria de la Voictoria and that of Santa Maria de Antigua.

Men from a different world.