Magellan's Voyage

Written in the 1520s by an Italian volunteer who sailed with Ferdinand Magellan, this is a day-by-day journal of the expedition that left Spain in 1519 to reach the Moluccas by a western route. Pigafetta records the Atlantic crossing, the mutinies, the discovery of the strait at the tip of South America, the long Pacific passage, and landfalls in the islands later called the Philippines, where Magellan is killed in a local war. The surviving ships reach the spice islands and one vessel returns to Spain under Juan Sebastian Elcano. The account mixes navigation, ethnography, and shipboard discipline. It is a participant's log, not a later official history.

Bound in dark blue cloth with a design in purple and gold by Elisa Trimby. Map endleaves. Mottled pale blue slipcase.