On Monday after the octaves of Easter, the 9th of April, we set out from Barua, the Barnagais and we Portuguese, and the other three white men who were with us, on the road to Arquiquo. The Barnagais and his gentlemen and two that he sent for may have taken with them a thousand men on mules, and a large number on foot. This day we went to sleep at a distance of two leagues from Barua, at a place called Dinguil, encamped in a plain in which every Monday at night, and Tuesday in the morning, people assemble who are going to the fair of Arquiquo, and they go together in a caravan, because this road is not travelled over except by a great assemblage, from fear of the Arabs and wild beasts. Here there joined us fully two thousand persons who were going to the said fair, and they said that there were few people, and that they had failed to come from fear of want of water. With the people who came with the Barnagais and those who came from this place, Dinguil, we set out and went to sleep at the place of scanty water. And in the distance that there may be from Barua, whence we started with the Barnagais, to Arquiquo, of fourteen leagues or fifteen at most, we passed all the week till Saturday morning, and we took up our quarters close to the town of Arquiquo, not approaching our ships because the Barnagais had to present us, and his people were not yet assembled, because besides the people who came with him from Barua, he was expecting men and captains who were to go against Suaquem, which is towards Egypt. These men did not arrive till the Monday following. At night, and we at liberty, we went to see our people, and they us. On account of the heats, which were great and insupportable, the Barnagais and captains ordered dwellings to be made of wood and tall bushes, and they also ordered dwellings to be made for us Portuguese to sleep in, covered with sails above, as there was no man could endure the heat of the country from the great multitude of people and the suffocation of tents and huts. The Portuguese who came for us had made their dwellings over the sea where there was always a breeze; others lodged in good terraced houses, which were in the island. On Tuesday, in the morning, the Barnagais and his captains and me with him, he conducted us to where Hector da Silveira was, and delivered us up to him with much pleasure and joy. He ordered fifty cows and many sheep, fowls, and fish to be given him for the ships. On the Thursday following, Prester John’s ambassador reached us, he had travelled day and night, and as soon as the first message which we sent was given him he ordered mules to be put in readiness, in order that if a positive message came, he might travel day and night, which he did as soon as the message was given him. We Portuguese went to wait for him at the town of Arquiquo, to come with him, and the Barnagais also came to deliver him up. While we were thus waiting for the monsoon, that is, wind for departure, which always comes from the 26th and 27th of April till the 3rd or 4th of May, and if one does not go out with this monsoon there is no other till the end of August; on the 21st of April there reached us four calacems, that is, four messengers from Prester John to say that he had news by Zeila of the Portuguese fleet having entered the Red Sea, and that they thought they came for us; and since it was a long time that we had left his Court, and we might be sad, that we should at once return to him, and he would give us much gold and clothes, and would send us joyful and contented to the King of Portugal his brother. These calacems said that they had been sent in such haste that in each town they had taken fresh mules from the captains, and had travelled night and day, and they requested us very earnestly not to do anything else there except turn back: and they required the same of Alicacanate, the Prester’s ambassador, to return with us, and we with him: they moreover requested Hector da Silveira to send us because Prester John would feel displeasure at our going away vexed. Hector da Silveira answered, and we with him, to the said calacems, that by no means could we turn back, nor could he wait, nor did the monsoon allow of it, and that if we did not go away now at once, other ships would never come for us, and that his ambassador might return if he liked. This was told to the ambassador of Prester John, and he replied that by no means would he return without us, because he would order him to be thrown to the lions. So we all remained with great pleasure; and the calacems discontented because their labour had been in vain.
LAUS DEO.
IN NOMINE DN̄I, AMEN.
IN THIS PART IS RELATED THE JOURNEY WHICH WAS MADE FROM THE COUNTRY OF THE PRESTER JOHN TO PORTUGAL.
Cap. i.—Of how we departed from the port and island of Masua until arriving at Ormuz.
On the 28th day of April, of 1526, we set sail, the whole fleet together; it consisted of five sail, namely three royal galloons and two carvels. We reached the island of Camaran the 1st day of May, and there the wind wearied us. We were there three days, and whilst waiting I remembered how we had there buried Duarte Galvam, the ambassador to Prester John, who was sent by the king our sovereign. I was present at his decease, and I went to his burial, and with the licentiate Pero Gomez Teixeira, who was then judge, we marked the grave, so that if at any time any of his relations or friends came, they might know it, to remove his remains to a country of Christians if they chose. And I went with a slave of mine to where we had left him buried, and I ordered him to be dug up, and to dispose all his bones in order; but we did not find more than three teeth, and I put them in a small box, and we brought his remains to the galloon St. Leon, in which I went, without anyone knowing of it except one Gaspar de Saa, factor of the said fleet, and who was of his household. As soon as we had got the said remains on board the galloon, the wind changed to a stern wind, and that hour we set sail, and this factor said to me: “Certainly, as Duarte Galvam was a good man and ended his days in the service of God, so God gives us a good wind for him.” And we had the same wind till the 10th of May, when we were opposite Aden, and already in the open sea,[266] and the winter weather from India was facing us, and we facing it. The storm was so great that the second night we passed in it, what with the great darkness and high wind, we lost one another and were separated without seeing each other again, or knowing what course each ship was making. This galloon St. Leon, in which I went, had a large boat made fast astern with three ropes, and in it was a ship boy, a Frenchman by nation, who steered it. In the fourth night that we passed in this storm, the sea was so wild and high that we all thought we should be lost; and at midnight a little more or less, all three ropes of the boat broke, and the galloon gave so many and so great lurches, that we thought we should go to the bottom of the sea. The master of the galloon sounded his whistle and gave out a Paternoster through the ship to all hands[267] for the soul of the ship boy who was in the boat. On the following day an auction was held, that is, a valuation and sale of the pieces and things which the ship boy had with him, and with them and a slave of his a hundred and twenty pardaos[268] were made. We sailed with this storm[269] until we got to the strait of Ormuz, and on the 28th of May we reached the port of Mazquate, which belongs to the Kingdom of Ormuz, and pays tribute to the King of Portugal our sovereign. There we found one of the carvels of our convoy and fleet, which gave an account of the storm which it had passed, and three days after that the other carvel, companion of the first, arrived; and the same day a galloon arrived, and each related the storms. Ten days after our arrival at this port of Mazquate, they saw tacking about on the sea the galloon Sam Donis, the flagship of the fleet, and she could not fetch the port: two Portuguese fustas, which guarded the strait of the port of Mazquate, went out to her, and as soon as they reached the galloon they turned back, and with great haste they took provisions and water to succour the galloon and her crew, who were lost with hunger and thirst, more with thirst than hunger. The fustas passed the night there; and next day, in the early morning, all our boats and the town boats set out from the town to fetch the galloon, and they did bring her and arrived with her in the port in the afternoon. Here they related the great straits and danger in which they found themselves, saying that they had run before the storm which caught them at the entrance of the strait,[270] and they went as far as the bay of Cambay, from which they could not come out: and the Lord was pleased that the storm should not cease, by which the sea was secure from enemies. They also said that for three days they had not eaten, from being short of water. They spoke of the great virtue and compassion of Hector da Silveira, captain-major of this fleet, and they said that he was the first to leave off drinking, and that with tears in his eyes and a little water in his hand he went about distributing it among the sick: and after the time that they found themselves in these straits, he did not any more sleep in nor enter his cabin, that it might not be supposed that he went to fill himself with water and left the crews to suffer. So they said it was true that on the day when they sighted land and we succoured them, there was not a single drop of water in the galloon, nor had either the sound or the sick tasted it: and that they had sight that day miraculously of the land and port, and we of them; because they already despaired of their lives. I heard this from the ambassadors, Don Rodrigo de Lima who went to the Prester John, and Alicacanate, the ambassador of the Prester, who is going to Portugal; and generally all said it who were in the galloon. All the people landed to refresh themselves and recover from the fatigue of the sea. We were few days in this port of Mazquate, and from there our fleet sailed together, God be praised, and with us certain fustas of those which guard this port and strait. We went to the city of Ormuz, a fortress of the king our sovereign, and found there Lopo Vaz de Sampayo, captain-major and governor of the Indies for his Highness. When we reached the port, all the gentlemen and captains of the ships, carvels, galleys, and fustas, and all the other people, both of the fortress and of the fleet and company of the captain-major, came out to receive us on the beach; and the captain-major was on the beach in front of the fortress, and there they gave us our welcome. Then we went together to the church which is inside the fort, and the captain-major came down there to embrace the ambassadors, and me with them, and some others of our embassy. Then we went each to his quarters. The following day we all came to hear mass and to speak to the captain-major, and to give him a letter from Prester John, which we had brought for Diogo Lopez de Sequeira, who had been captain-major and governor of the Indies, and who took us to the country of the Prester: and we gave the letter to Lopo Yaz de Sampayo, as he had succeeded to the said charge. Besides, we gave him a silk robe with five gold plates before and other five behind, and one on each shoulder, which in all made twelve. Each one was the size of the palm of the hand, and Prester John sent it to Diogo Lopez. The governor, Lopo Vaz de Sampayo, gave the favour of two hundred pardaos to Don Rodrigo de Lima, the ambassador who had gone to the Prester, and another two hundred to the Prester’s ambassador, and to me he gave the favour of a hundred pardaos. Hector da Silveira remained few days at Ormuz, and soon returned with his fleet to wait for the ships which come from Jiddah to Dio, and come out with the monsoon with which we came, and they pass the winter at Aden, and with the first wind make their voyage; and we remained until being certain that the winter had passed.
Cap. ii.—Of the translation of the letter which Prester John sent to Diogo Lopez, and which was given to Lopo Vaz de Sampayo.