It related* the adventures of Alphonso de Albuquerque, detailing how he and Tristan da Cunha, each with seven caravels, had sailed from Europe and touched at Teneriffe, while there was an eruption from the crater of the great peak, during which a mighty mass of rock fell down, and brought to light the great diamond, which had since shone at times with such wondrous brilliance in the night, but the exact locality of which baffled all search during day.
* I subsequently learned from Marc Hislop that the work was probably a volume of the Collection de los Viages y Descubrimientos de los Espanoles en Indias.
Sailing from thence to the isles named Tristan da Cunha, a storm dispersed the fleet; but Alphonso, after being separated from Don Tristan discovered the island, which he named from himself, and had his name cut on one of the rocks, in the year in which Philip, King of Castile and Emperor of Austria, died; and this was the rock which we had discovered.
Then, in the following year, he sailed to India, of which he became viceroy, for Ferdinand the Catholic. It detailed how, thereafter, he went from the city of Cochin unto the Straits of Malacca, and sent a certain valiant Portuguese knight, named Ruy Nunnez da Cunha, as ambassador to the king of the Seguiers: how he sailed to Java, where he found the wonderful birds of paradise, that came in flights from the southern isles of India, and were fabled to be always on the wing without the power of alighting, till they found some that were drunk with the strength of the nutmeg, which always intoxicates them.
In that sea huge lampreys adhered to the keels of his caravels, and for a time retarded their progress, which was deemed to be enchantment.
Sailing thence, Alphonso discovered an island where the sea-serpent coiled up his monstrous length for certain seasons, guarding caverns that were filled with piles of golden ingots, and casks of orient pearls, rubies, and diamonds; and in this isle were deep bights and bays, where ships with all their crews lay spell-bound by necromancers.
On another island he found a white nation, whose cavaliers were arrayed in fine shirts, slashed doublets of taffeta, and trunk hose, with long swords and short mantles, exactly like the Portuguese; and having money of silver, with many other incredible statements, all tending to assure the reader that this settlement was one of the seven Christian colonies that, under seven bishops, had fled from the Spanish Peninsula when the cross was trampled under the feet of the Moors, and when the churches of Christ were converted into mosques for the worship of Mohammed, as a punishment for the wickedness of Roderick the Last of the Goths.
Returning westward from this wonderful voyage, in 1513, Don Alphonso went from the city of Goa to the straits of Mecca, and passing with twenty caravels through the narrow Gate of Tears into the Red Sea, he bombarded the city of Aden, after which a cross appeared in heaven, shining before his ship, like the pillar of fire that shone before the children of Israel; and two years after, this worthy cavalier, just as he was about to make Shah Ishmael, king of Persia, pay tribute to his master the king of Castile, "passed away to the company of the saints," dying like a true Hidalgo, with his armor on, and his toledo at his girdle.
The real and the marvellous were so curiously blended in these voyages, that I read on, forgetful of all about me, and charmed in spite of my deplorable situation.
At last I came to the history of a valiant mariner who invented a steamship in the time of Charles V.—a narrative which seemed to illustrate the old aphorism, that there is nothing new under the sun.