That is, ‘I fear much evil because I have done much evil.’ For they had not only made many such pieces of artillery for the infidels, to the great damage of Christians, and contempt of the holy name of Christ and his religion, but had also taught the idolaters both the making and use of them; and at my being there I saw them give a model or mould to certain idolaters, whereby they might make brazen pieces, of such bigness that one of them may receive the charge of a hundred and five tankards (cantoros) of powder. At the same time, also, there was a Jew, which had made a very fair brigantine, and four great pieces of artillery of iron. But God shortly afterwards gave him his due reward; for, when he went to wash him in the river, he was drowned.”
Nor did the two Christians escape much better. The Portuguese commander agreed to pardon them; but, in attempting to escape to him, they were killed. Maffei, in his Indian History, refers to the aid which the native princes derived from these and other Christian renegadoes.
Note D
FERNAM MENDEZ PINTO
The ill fortune of which Pinto complained as having pursued him through life did not spare him even after he was laid in the grave, the narrative of his adventures which he left behind him having been assailed by the wits and critics with hardly less ferocity than poor Pinto himself was while alive by the corsairs, infidels, and barbarians, with whom he came in contact. He is indeed chiefly known to English readers by an ill-natured fling of Congreve, who, in his “Love for Love,” makes one of his characters address another in those oft-quoted words: “Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude!” It is said also that Cervantes, three or four years before whose death Pinto’s book was published, speaks of him somewhere as the “prince of liars.” I have not been able to find the passage; but likely enough Cervantes might have been a little vexed to find his “Persiles and Sigismunda,” a romance, under the guise of a book of travels, first published about the time with Pinto’s book, so much outdone by what claimed to be a true narrative of real adventures.
As Pinto, however, in spite of all his ill luck, found, in writing his memoirs, some topics of consolation, so also his character as an author and a narrator has by no means been left entirely in the lurch. Though little read now, he has enjoyed, in his day, a popularity such as few authors attain to. To the first edition of his “Peregrinations,” in the original Portuguese, succeeded others in 1678, 1711, and 1725; and second, third, and fourth editions are compliments which Portugal very rarely pays to her authors. A Spanish translation appeared at Madrid in 1620, in which, however, great and very unwarrantable liberties were taken by the translator. A French translation was published at Paris in 1628, and an English translation in 1663. To the Spanish and French translations defences of Pinto’s veracity are prefixed, and both passed through several editions. Purchas, who gives a synopsis of that part of Pinto’s book relating to China and Japan, strongly defends his credibility, observing that he little spares his own company and nation, but often and eagerly lays open their vices. “I find in him,” says Purchas, “little boasting, except of other nations, none at all of himself, but as if he intended to express God’s glory, and man’s merit of nothing but misery. And, however it seems incredible to remember such infinite particulars as this book is full of, yet an easy memory holdeth strong impressions of good and bad, especially new-whetted, filed, furbushed, with so many companions in misery, their best music in their chains and wanderings being the mutual recounting of things seen, done, and suffered. More marvel is it, if a liar, that he should not forget himself and contradict his own relations.
“I would not have an author rejected for fit speeches framed by the writer, in which many historians have taken liberty; nor if sometimes he doth mendacia dicere (say false things), so as that he doth not mentiri (lie); as I will not sware but of himself he might mistake, and by others be misled. The Chinese might, in relating their rarities to him, enlarge and de magnis majora loqui (exaggerate things really great), so as he still might be religious in a just and true delivery of what himself hath seen, and belei not his own eyes.... All China authors, how diversified in their lines, yet all concur in a certain centre of Admiranda Sinarum (admirable things of the Chinese)[131], which if others have not so largely related as this, they may thank God they paid not so dear a price to see them; and, for me, I will rather believe, where reason evicts not, ejectione firma (with a firm ejection), than seek to see at the author’s rate; and if he hath robbed the altars of truth, as he did those of the Calumplay idols, yet, in Pekin equity, we will not cut off his thumbs (according to Nanquin rigor), upon bare surmise, without any evidence against him.”
The countries in which Pinto’s adventures chiefly lay, still remain, for the most part, very little known; but the more they have been explored, the more has the general correctness of Pinto’s statements been admitted. The editor of the great French collection, “Annales des Voyages,” who gives a full abstract of Pinto, remarks that, having had occasion, in preparing the volume of that work on China, to consult all accessible works about that country, he had been more and more confirmed in his opinion of the reality of Pinto’s adventures and the general correctness of his memory. Rémusat, the eminent Chinese scholar, cites Pinto as good authority for facts, and it was, I believe, by his procurement, or that of the “Société Asiatique,” that the French translation of his travels was reprinted at Paris in 1830.
Note E
EARLIEST ENGLISH AND DUTCH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST—GOA
Prior to the first Dutch and English India voyages, both Englishmen and Dutchmen had reached India, some by way of Lisbon and the Cape of Good Hope, others over land. Pinto speaks of Christians of various nations as among the adventurers with whom he acted. Hackluyt gives (Vol. II) a letter written by Thomas Stevens, an English Jesuit, dated in 1579, at Goa, which he had reached by way of Lisbon and the Cape of Good Hope. This curious letter was addressed by Stevens, who was attached to that very seminary of St. Paul (or the Holy Faith), of which we have had occasion to make mention, to his father in England. Hackluyt also gives in the same volume some very interesting memorials of the adventures of John Newbury, who, attended by Ralph Fitch, Story, a painter, Leeds, a jeweller, and others, was sent over land in 1583, simultaneously with the first English attempts at exploration and settlement in North America, by some London merchants of the Turkey company, as bearer of letters from Queen Elizabeth to Zelabdim Echabar, king of Cambia (Ackbar, the Great Mogul) and to the king of China—both which letters, proposing trade and commerce, Hackluyt gives at length. Newbury proceeded by way of Ormus, which he had visited before, and where he found merchants of almost all nations, not Portuguese only, but Frenchmen, Flemings, Germans, Hungarians, Greeks, Armenians, Turks, Arabs, Jews, Persians, Muscovites, and especially Italians, who seem by this time to have recovered a great share of the trade to the East. By one of these Italians Newbury and his company were accused as spies of Don Antonio (the claimant as against Philip II, of the Portuguese throne, and at that time a refugee in England). The fact also that Drake, in his recent voyage round the world, had, while at the Moluccas, fired two shots at a Portuguese galleon, was alleged against them. They were sent prisoners to the viceroy at Goa; but, by the good offices of the English Jesuit, Stevens, above-mentioned, and of John Huigen Van Linschoten, a Dutchman in the service of the archbishop, they were released on giving sureties not to depart without leave of the viceroy, which sureties they procured by placing goods in the hands of certain parties who became bound for them.
Story, the painter, had indeed previously procured his discharge by joining the Jesuits of St. Paul, where he was admitted as a probationer, and was employed in painting the church. The others, finding that the viceroy would not discharge their sureties, left secretly, or, as Fitch expresses it, “ran from thence,” April, 1585, and, passing to Golconda, travelled north to Agra, then the capital of the Great Mogul. Here Leeds, the jeweller, entered into the Mogul’s service, who gave him “a house, five slaves, and every day six S. S. (qu. sequins?) in money.” Newbury went from Agra to Lahore, expecting to go thence to Persia, and, by way of Aleppo and Constantinople, to reach England; and he sent Fitch meanwhile to Bengal and Pegu, promising to meet him in Bengal in two years in a ship from England. Fitch passed on to Benares, and thence to Bengal, and November 28, 1586, sailed for Pegu, whence the next year he proceeded to Malacca. Returning again, in 1588, to Pegu, he went thence to Bengal in the following November; whence, in February, 1589, he took shipping for Cochin, touching at Ceylon on the way, a “brave island,” where he spent five days. At Cochin he stayed eight months before he could get a passage to Goa. From Goa he proceeded to Ormus, whence, by way of Basora, Mosul, and Aleppo, he reached England April 29, 1591.