Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

by Laurence Bergreen

Pigafetta relished telling the tales he heard of Java, beginning with its funeral rites. “When one of the chief men of Java dies, his body is burned,” he wrote. “His principal wife adorns herself with garlands of flowers and has herself carried on a chair through the entire village by three or four men. Smiling and consoling her relatives who are weeping, she says, ‘Do not weep, for I am going to sup with my dear husband this evening and to sleep with him this night.’ Then she is carried to the fire, where her husband is being burned. Turning toward her relatives, and again consoling them, she throws herself into the fire, where her husband is being burned. If she did not do that, she would not be considered an honorable woman or a true wife to her dead husband.”