[1882.—"Fits of Must differ in duration in different animals (elephants); in some they last for a few weeks, in others for even four or five months."—Sanderson, Thirteen Years, 3rd ed., 59.]
MUSTEES, MESTIZ, &c., s. A [half-caste]. A corruption of the Port. mestiço, having the same meaning; "a mixling; applied to human beings and animals born of a father and mother of different species, like a mule" (Bluteau); French, métis and métif.
1546.—"The Governor in honour of this great action (the victory at Diu) ordered that all the mestiços who were in Dio should be inscribed in the Book, and that pay and subsistence should be assigned to them,—subject to the King's confirmation. For a regulation had been sent to India that no mestiço of India should be given pay or subsistence: for, as it was laid down, it was their duty to serve for nothing, seeing that they had their houses and heritages in the country, and being on their native soil were bound to defend it."—Correa, iv. 580.
1552.—"... the sight of whom as soon as they came, caused immediately to gather about them a number of the natives, Moors in belief, and Negroes with curly hair in appearance, and some of them only swarthy, as being mistiços."—Barros, I. ii. 1.
1586.—"... che se sono nati qua di donne indiane, gli domandano mestizi."—Sassetti, in De Gubernatis, 188.
1588.—"... an Interpretour ... which was a Mestizo, that is halfe an Indian, and halfe a Portugall."—Candish, in Hakl. iv. 337.
c. 1610.—"Le Capitaine et les Marchands estoient Mestifs, les autres Indiens Christianisez."—Pyrard de Laval, i. 165; [Hak. Soc. i. 78; also see i. 240]. This author has also Métifs (ii. 10; [Hak. Soc. i. 373]), and again: "... qu'ils appellent Metices, c'est à dire Metifs, meslez" (ii. 23; [Hak. Soc. ii. 38]).
" "Ie vy vne moustre generalle de tous les Habitans portans armes, tant Portugais que Metices et Indiens, et se trouuerent environ 4000."—Moquet, 352.
[1615.—"A Mestiso came to demand passage in our junck."—Cocks's Diary, Hak. Soc. i. 216.]
1653.—(At Goa) "Les Mestissos sont de plusieurs sortes, mais fort mesprisez des [Reinols] et Castissos (see [CASTEES]), parce qu'il y a eu vn peu de sang noir dans la generation de leurs ancestres ... la tache d'auoir eu pour ancestre une Indienne leur demeure iusques à la centiesme generation: ils peuuent toutesfois estre soldats et Capitaines de forteresses ou de vaisseaux, s'ils font profession de suiure les armes, et s'ils se iettent du costé de l'Eglise ils peuuent estre Lecteurs, mais non Prouinciaux."—De la Boullaye-le-Gouz, ed. 1657, p. 226.