In this and the succeeding volume, we present various documents (notably the Relation of Antonio Pigafetta) which could not be obtained in season for publication in regular chronological order, and which it has seemed advisable to insert as addenda at this point.

With the present volume is begun the publication of Antonio Pigafetta’s relation of the first circumnavigation of the world—the greatest single achievement in all the history of sea exploration and discovery. Written by a participant of the expedition, Pigafetta’s relation has a greater value than any other narrative of the voyage. Its great value and the fact that it has never been adequately presented to the English-speaking public have induced the editors to insert this relation in the present series both in the original Italian (rigidly adhering to and preserving all the peculiarities of the original manuscript) and in English translation. This relation is especially valuable for its descriptions of the various peoples, countries, and products, of Oriental seas, and for its vocabularies, as well as for its account of the first circumnavigation. From its very nature, the relation has called for an unusual amount of annotation, which has been drawn freely from various sources: chiefly Mosto’s annotations in his publication of Pigafetta’s relation in Part V, volume iii, of the Raccolta di documenti e studi, published by the Royal Columbian Commission of the fourth centenary of the discovery of America under the auspices of the Minister of Public Instruction (Roma, 1894); Navarrete’s Col. de viages, iv (Madrid, 1837); various publications of the Hakluyt Society; and F. H. H. Guillemard’s Life of Ferdinand Magellan (New York, 1891). The publication of the original Italian and the English, page for page, renders it necessary to place the annotations at the end of the volume instead of in footnote as hitherto. The various charts of the Italian manuscript are all presented in facsimile in the course of the work. In order that the various peculiarities of the manuscript might be preserved, it has been necessary to specially design and cast certain characters that appear in Pigafetta’s narrative. None of these characters have been reproduced by Mosto, who also writes out all abbreviations. Throughout we have aimed to present the document as it exists in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (even to the spacing of words) with the exception that paragraphs in the manuscript begin with a hanging indention and usually end with a series of dots and dashes. A brief synopsis of