The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez provided a memorable introduction to Antonio Pigafetta’sFirst Voyage around the World(Viaggio attorno al mondo) when he evoked, at the beginning of his 1982 Nobel Lecture, the Renaissance traveller ‘who went with Magellan on the first voyage around the world’ and wrote ‘a strictly accurate account that nonetheless resembles a venture into fantasy.’ In the words of the Colombian novelist, the Italian witnessed ‘hogs with navels on their haunches, clawless birds whose hens laid eggs on the backs of their mates, and others still, resembling tongueless pelicans, with beaks like spoons. He wrote...

[1] Antonio Pigafetta, patrician of Vicenza and Knight of Rhodes, to the most illustrious and excellent Lord, Philipe Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, renowned Grand Master of Rhodes, his most honoured lord¹ [1].

[2] Inasmuch as, most illustrious and excellent Lord, there are many curious persons who not only take pleasure in knowing and hearing the great and wonderful things that God has permitted me to see and suffer during my long and dangerous voyage, herein described, but who also wish to know the means and manners and paths that I have taken in making that voyage; and who do not lend...