Historical Sketches.
It serves to show how carefully and minutely Linschoten elicited information at Mozambique, that he mentions a harbour on the coast which is not named by any of the Portuguese writers of the time except Dos Santos, whose book was not then published, and who only refers to it incidentally, though it is now known to be the best port between Inhambane and the Zambesi. This is Beira, as at present termed, then known to the sailors of the pangayos that traded to the southward as Porto Bango. Linschoten gives its latitude as 19½°, half a league north of Sofala. He mentions also Delagoa Bay, that is the present Algoa Bay, and gives its latitude as 33½°. He describes the monsoons of the Indian ocean, and states that ships from Portugal availed themselves of these periodical winds by waiting at Mozambique until the 1st of August, and never leaving after the middle of September, thus securing a safe and easy passage to the coast of Hindostan.
First Voyage of the Dutch to India.
He frequently refers to the gold of Sofala and the country of the monomotapa, of which he had heard just such reports as Vasco da Gama had eagerly listened to eighty-six years before. Yet he did not magnify the importance of these rumours as the Portuguese had done, though it was mainly from his writings that his countrymen became possessed of that spirit of cupidity which induced them a few years later to make strenuous efforts to become masters of South-Eastern Africa.
Linschoten’s treatises were collected and published in a single large volume, and the work was at once received as a text-book, a position which its merits entitled it to occupy. The most defective portion of the whole is that referring to South Africa: and for this reason, that it was then impossible to get any correct information about the interior of the continent below the Zambesi west of the part frequented by the Portuguese. Linschoten himself saw no more of it than a fleeting glimpse of False Cape afforded on his outward passage, and his description was of necessity based upon the faulty maps of the geographers of his time, so that it was full of errors. But his account of India and of the way to reach its several ports was so correct that it could serve the purpose of a guide-book, and his treatise on the mode of navigation by the Portuguese was thus used by the commander of the first Dutch fleet that appeared in the eastern seas.
The four vessels which left Texel on the 2nd of April 1595 were under the general direction of an officer named Cornelis Houtman. In the afternoon of the 2nd of August the Cape of Good Hope was seen, and next day, after passing Agulhas, the fleet kept close to the land, the little Duifke sailing in front and looking for a harbour. On the 4th the bay called by the Portuguese Agoada de São Bras was discovered, and as the Duifke found good holding ground in nine or ten fathoms of water, the Mauritius, Hollandia, and Amsterdam entered and dropped their anchors.[32]
Historical Sketches.
Here the fleet remained until the 11th, when sail was again set for the East. During the interval a supply of fresh water was taken in, and some oxen and sheep were purchased from the inhabitants for knives, old tools, and pieces of iron. The Europeans were surprised to find the sheep covered with hair instead of wool, and with enormous tails of pure fat. No women or habitations were seen. The appearance of the Hottentots, their clothing, their assagais, their method of making a fire by twirling a piece of wood rapidly round in the socket of another piece, their filthiness in eating, and the clicking of their language, are all correctly described; but it was surmised that they were cannibals, because they were observed to eat the half-raw intestines of animals, and a fable commonly believed in Europe was repeated concerning their mutilation in a peculiar manner of the bodies of conquered enemies. The intercourse with the few Hottentots seen was friendly, though at times each suspected the other of evil intentions.
A chart of the inlet was made,[33] from which it is seen to be the one now called Mossel Bay. A little island in it was covered with seals and penguins, some of each of which were killed and eaten. The variation of the compass was observed to be so trifling that the needle might be said to point to the north.
Account by John Davis.