Description

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This 1874 volume contains an account of the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519-1522 by Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian member of Magellan's expedition. It also contains Pigafetta's treatise on navigation, and other material relating to Magellan's voyage, including log-books, records by the pilot and others, and details of the crew and the cost of the fleet. Pigafetta vividly recorded the geography, climate, flora, fauna and the inhabitants of the places that the expedition visited, as well as Magellan's death in the Philippines.