This arrogance seems to have been wholly absent from the admirable Pigafetta, who (though himself wounded at the time of Magellan’s death) described the entire voyage—its natural wonders, the peoples they visited, the desperation of the crew, and Magellan’s own character, with its heroism, its candor, its mystical depths, its fatal flaws—with the sympathy of a naturalist, a psychologist, and a historian.
