The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 34 of 55, 1519-1522; 1280-1605

by Antonio Pigafetta

Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

This volume of The Philippine Islands, 1493 to 1898, edited and translated by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson, concludes Antonio Pigafetta's account of Magellan's voyage around the world, begun in the previous volume and given in the original Italian with an English translation and notes. It adds the earliest authentic description of the islands, written probably in the thirteenth century by the Chinese geographer Chao Ju-kua, and a series of documents from 1565 onward: letters to Philip II, royal instructions and titles for Miguel López de Legazpi, the first settlements at Cebu and Manila, the work of the first missionaries and their quarrels with the civil government, and the founding of the cathedral of Manila. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.