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Hello and welcome back to the penultimate episode of my story of Magellan and his men's voyage around the world, the first circumnavigation

of the globe.

If you remember last time, we were in the Philippines, Mijlian and his men were in the

Philippines, the island of Cebu.

So let's pick up the story there.

So Lawrence Burgreen, in his excellent book, Over the Edge of the World,

which I've been reading from, tells us that Pigafetta wrote this. Quote,

at noon on Sunday, April the 7th, and we're in the year 1521, remember, we entered the port

of Cebu, passing by many villages where we saw many houses built upon logs. On approaching

the city, the Captain

General ordered the ships to unfurl their banners. The sails were lowered and arranged as if for

battle and all the artillery was fired, an action which caused a great deal of fear to those people,

end quote. Yeah, Magellan loves doing this. It's one of his sort of signature things,

is firing off aqua buses or even their bigger artillery pieces from their ships.

And of course, it, you know, of course it causes massive fear and confusion among the indigenous peoples.

They've never, ever heard or seen such a thing before. And of course it would

be terrifying, wouldn't it? It's like, it's the only thing they would ever know even remotely

close to it would be thunder. But he even does it. Sometimes they try to explain to these

island people that, no, it's meant as, it's meant as a nice or good greeting. If they're going

to celebrate an important day,

a feast or a festival or a mass or something, to sort of celebrate that.

...