active 15th century-16th century João de Sá

“ The king sent a brother of the bale, who was a lord of this country, to accompany the captain, and he was attended by men beating drums, blowing anafils and bagpipes, and firing off matchlocks. In conducting the captain they showed us much respect, more than is shown in Spain to a king. The number of people was countless, for in addition to those who surrounded us, and among whom there were two thousand armed men, they crowded the roofs and houses. ”

“ Our King of Portugal is very keen in this matter and has already ordered four vessels to be got ready, besides two caravels, well armed, to sail in January with plenty of merchandise.379 Should the King of Calicut not allow the Portuguese to trade in those countries, the captain of these vessels is instructed to capture as many native craft as he can. In my opinion he will be able to capture as many as he chooses, for they are frail, and so badly constructed that they can only sail before the wind. ”

“ He may be supposed to be the Sheikh Wagerage (Wajeraj) , who in 1515 wrote a letter to D. Manuel, in which he begged for permission to send annually one vessel to Goa and to Mozambique. He very humbly (or sarcastically?) addresses the king as the “fountain of the commerce of all cities and kingdoms, the most equitable of sovereigns, and the enricher of all people”; when, indeed, the Portuguese had crippled the trade of Malindi, which had received them with open arms. Another letter addressed to King Manuel was written by “Ali, King of Melinde”, in 1520. ”

“ Being animated by an ardent desire to continue the work initiated by the Infante and our predecessors, and being assured that Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of our household, was well qualified for rendering us this service, and would disregard the perils to his person and the risk of life which he ran in accomplishing the task set him, we sent him to India as captain-major of our fleet, and with him Paulo da Gama, his brother, and Nicolau Coelho, likewise a gentleman of our household. ”

“ On the accession of D. João II, in 1481, the discovery of Africa was resumed with renewed vigour, and the councillors of that King acted wisely when they advised him to decline the offers of Columbus,6 for the resources of Portugal were quite unequal to pursuing at one and the same time a search for a western route and continuing the efforts for opening a practical route around the southern extremity of Africa. And thus it happened that Columbus “discovered a new world for Castile and Leon”, and not for Portugal. ”

“ The king said no! He might take all his people with him, securely moor his ships, land his merchandise, and sell it to the best advantage. Having taken leave of the king the captain returned to his lodgings, and we with him. As it was already late no attempt was made to depart that night.
[Return to Pandarani, May 31.] On Thursday morning a horse without a saddle was brought to the captain, who declined to mount it, asking that a horse of the country, that is a palanquin, might be provided, as he could not ride a horse without a saddle. ”

“ Vasco da Gama brought one of these instruments with him to Portugal, but the astronomer of Cabral’s expedition, who had been instructed to test its qualities, reported unfavourably (Alguns documentos, 1892, p. 122) . Yet the results obtained by means of this instrument by the pilots of the Indian Ocean were very satisfactory, and the charts prepared by these very practical men were far more correct than the abortions produced by “scientific” Arab geographers. ”

“ Linen cloth is highly prized by the people, who were always willing to give large quantities of copper in exchange for shirts. They have large calabashes in which they carry sea-water inland, where they pour it into pits, to obtain the salt [by evaporation] .
We stayed five days at this place, taking in water, which our visitors conveyed to our boats. Our stay was not, however, sufficiently prolonged to enable us to take in as much water as we really needed, for the wind favoured a prosecution of our voyage.
We were at anchor here, near the coast, exposed to the swell of the sea. ”

“ These are, of course, the letters referred to by Barros and other historians, which were given to Gama when he left Portugal. Correa’s story, that Vasco and his brother Paulo concocted the letters whilst off Calecut, and forged the king’s signature, is therefore quite incredible. Nor is Gama made to say in the “Roteiro” that he had been sent with a fleet of fifty ships, and that the voyage took two years (Stanley’s Vasco da Gama, pp. 168, 173) . The “grand” Vasco has many sins to answer for, and we ought not, without good proof, to fasten upon him the charge of forgery. ”

“ These Lendas the editors consider to be “far superior in substance (quanto á substancia) to the Decades of João de Barros, and to the exuberant but evidently honest narrative of Castanheda.” After praising Correa “for depicting in firm contours and vivid colours” the human passions brought into play by close companionship within the narrow limits of a ship, they admit that as to “facts” “he is often vague, forgetful, or ambiguous”. ”

“ The first of these we called Ilha do Açoutado (“Island of the flogged-one”) , because of the flogging inflicted upon our Moorish pilot, who had lied to the captain on Saturday night, by stating that these islands were the mainland. Native craft take their course between these islands and the mainland, where the water is four fathoms deep, but we kept outside of them. These islands are numerous, and we were unable to distinguish one from the other; they are inhabited. ”

“ The S. Gabriel and S. Raphael were specially built for this voyage. Bartholomeu Dias, who superintended their construction, discarded the caravel in which he himself had achieved his great success, in favour of square-rigged vessels of greater burthen, which, although slower sailers and less able to ply to windward, offered greater safety and more comfort to their crews. He took care, at the same time, that the draught of these vessels should enable them to navigate shallow waters, such as it was expected would be met with in the course of the voyage. ”

“ And when they shall have thus been fortified in the faith there will be an opportunity for destroying the Moors of those parts. Moreover, we hope, with the help of God, that the great trade which now enriches the Moors of those parts, through whose hands it passes without the intervention of other persons or peoples, shall, in consequence of our regulations (ordenanços) be diverted to the natives and ships of our own kingdom, so that henceforth all Christendom, in this part of Europe, shall be able, in a large measure, to provide itself with these spices and precious stones. ”

“ When we were at anchor, a message arrived informing the captain-major that the king was already in the city. At the same time the king sent a bale,152 with other men of distinction, to Pandarani, to conduct the captain-major to where the king awaited him. This bale is like an alcaide, and is always attended by two hundred men armed with swords and bucklers. ”

“ On the day after that [August 15] there came an almadia, with four young men, who brought precious stones for sale; but it appeared to us that they came rather by order of the Moors, in order to see what we should do to them, than for the purpose of selling stones. The captain, however, made them welcome, and wrote a letter to his people on shore, which they took away with them. When the people saw that no harm befell them, there came daily many merchants, and others who were not merchants, from curiosity, and all were made welcome by us and given to eat. ”

“ Santa Cruz is the largest of a group of islands in the western part of Algoa Bay. It is 4 cables in length, rises to a height of 195 ft., and is nearly all bare rock. There are no springs. The Ilhéos chãos are readily identified with a cluster of low rocky islets about 7 leagues to the east. The Cape Padrone of the charts marks the site of the last pillar erected by Dias, and 5 leagues beyond it rises “Ship Rock,” in the locality where Perestrello claims to have discovered the Penedo das Fontes of Barros and other writers. ”

“ King Manuel, in his letter of 1505, to King Ferdinand of Castile (“Centenario do descobrimento da America”, Lisbon, 1892) , says that João da Nova sailed to the Terra de Santa Cruz (Brazil) , and thence to the Cape. He does not mention Ascension (Conceiçao) . This, however, is not conclusive, for Kings, unlike Popes, are not infallible. ”

“ There still is a roadstead or bay called Mtangata, which “the long roll of the Indian Ocean renders a place of trembling to the coast trader” (Burton, Journal Royal Geographical Society, 1858, p. 200) . A “town” of this name exists no longer, but Burton describes the ruins of what was once an extensive city near the village of Tongoni.
There are no “mountains” close to the coast corresponding to the “Serras de S. Raphael”, but the mountains of Usambara, rising 20 to 25 miles inland to an altitude of 3,500 ft., are visible in clear weather for a distance of 62 miles. ”

“ These Indians are tawny men; they wear but little clothing and have long beards and long hair, which they braid. They told us that they ate no beef. Their language differs from that of the Arabs, but some of them know a little of it, as they hold much intercourse with them.
On the day on which the captain-major went up to the town in the boats, these Christian Indians fired off many bombards from their vessels, and when they saw him pass they raised their hands and shouted lustily Christ! Christ!131
That same night they asked the king’s permission to give us a night-fête. ”

“ One day, when we approached this island for our amusement, we counted, among large and small ones, three thousand, and we fired among them with our bombards from the sea. On the same island there are birds as big as ducks, but they cannot fly, because they have no feathers on their wings. These birds, of whom we killed as many as we chose, are called Fotylicayos, and they bray like asses.61
Whilst taking in water in this bay of Sam Brás, on a Wednesday, we erected a cross and a pillar.62 The cross was made out of a mizzen-mast, and very high. ”