First in the list, by seniority, stands Linschoten, a native of Haarlem, who travelled to the capital of Portuguese India about 1583, in company with the Archbishop Fre Vincent de Fonçega. After many years spent in the East, he returned to his native country, and published his travels, written in old French. The book is replete with curious information. Linschoten’s account of the riches and splendour of Goa would be judged exaggerated, were they not testified to by a host of other travellers. It is described as the finest, largest, and most magnificent city in India: its villas almost merited the title of palaces, and seemed to be built for the purpose of displaying the wealth and magnificence of the erectors. It is said that during the prosperous times of the Portuguese in India, you could not have seen a bit of “iron in any merchant’s house, but all gold and silver.” They coined an immense quantity of the precious metals, and used to make pieces of workmanship in them for exportation. They were a nation of traders, and the very soldiers enriched themselves by commerce. After nine years’ service, all those that came from Portugal were entitled to some command, either by land or sea; they frequently, however, rejected government employ on account of being engaged in the more lucrative pursuit of trade. The viceroyalty of Goa was one of the most splendid appointments in the world. There were five other governments, namely—Mozambique, Malacca, Ormus, Muscat, and Ceylon, the worst of which was worth ten thousand crowns (about two thousand pounds) per annum—an enormous sum in those days.
The celebrated Monsieur Tavernier, Baron of Aubonne, visited Goa twice; first in 1641, the second time seven years afterwards. In his day the city was declining rapidly,[13] and even during the short period that elapsed between his two voyages, he remarked that many whom he had known as people of fashion, with above two thousand crowns revenue, were reduced to visiting him privately in the evening, and begging for alms. Still, he observed, “they abated nothing, for all that, of their inherent pride and haughtiness.” He pays no compliment to the Portuguese character: “They are the most revengeful persons, and the most jealous of their wives in the world, and where the least suspicion creeps into their saddles, they rid themselves of them either by poison or dagger.” The baron had no cause for complaint in his reception at Goa by the viceroy, Don Philip de Mascaregnas, who “made him very welcome, and esteeming much a pistol, curiously inlaid,” which the traveller presented to him, sent for him five or six times to the Powder-house, or old palace. That viceroy seems, however, to have been a dangerous host. He was a most expert poisoner, and had used his skill most diligently, ridding himself of many enemies, when governor of Ceylon. At Goa he used to admit no one to his table—even his own family was excluded. He was the richest Portuguese noble that ever left the East, especially in diamonds, of which he had a large parcel containing none but stones between ten and forty carats weight. The Goanese hated him, hung him in effigy before his departure, and when he died on the voyage, reported that he had been poisoned in the ship—a judgment from Heaven.
Monsieur Tavernier visited the Inquisition, where he was received with sundry “searching questions” concerning his faith, the Protestant. During the interview, the Inquisitor “told him that he was welcome, calling out at the same time, for some other persons to enter. Thereupon, the hangings being held up, came in ten or twelve persons out of a room hard by.” They were assured that the traveller possessed no prohibited books; the prudent Tavernier had left even his Bible behind him. The Inquisidor Mor[14] discoursed with him for a couple of hours, principally upon the subject of his wanderings, and, three days afterwards, sent him a polite invitation to dinner.
But a well-known practice of the Holy Tribunal—namely, that of confiscating the gold, silver, and jewels of every prisoner, to defray the expenses of the process—had probably directed the Inquisitor’s attention to so rich a traveller as the baron was. Tavernier had, after all, rather a narrow escape from the Holy Office, in spite of its civilities. When about to leave Goa, he imprudently requested and obtained from the Viceroy, permission to take with him one Mons. de Belloy, a countryman in distress. This individual had deserted from the Dutch to the Portuguese, and was kindly received by them. At Macao, however, he lost his temper at play, and “cursed the portraiture of some Papistical saint, as the cause of his ill-luck.” For this impiety he was forthwith sent by the Provincial Inquisitor to Goa, but he escaped the stake by private interest with the Viceroy,[15] and was punished only by “wearing old clothes, which were all to tatters and full of vermin.” When Tavernier and his friend set sail, the latter “became very violent, and swore against the Inquisition like a madman.” That such procedure was a dangerous one was proved by Mons. de Belloy’s fate. He was rash enough to return some months afterwards to Goa, where he remained two years in the dungeons of the Holy Office, “from which he was not discharged but with a sulphured shirt, and a St. Andrew’s cross upon his stomach.” The unfortunate man was eventually taken prisoner by the enraged “Hollanders,” put into a sack, and thrown into the sea, as a punishment for desertion.
R. Burton delᵗ. Printed by Hullmandel & Walton.
VIEW OF OLD GOA FROM THE MANDOVA OR CREEK.
London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1851.
About twenty-five years after Tavernier’s departure. Dellon, the French physician, who made himself conspicuous by his “Relation de l’Inquisition de Goa,” visited the city. By his own account, he appears to have excited the two passions which burn fiercest in the Portuguese bosom—jealousy and bigotry. When at Daman, his “innocent visits” to a lady, who was loved by Manuel de Mendonça, the Governor, and a black priest, who was secretary to the Inquisition, secured for him a pair of powerful enemies. Being, moreover, an amateur of Scholastic Theology, a willing disputer with heretics and schismatics, a student of the Old as well as the New Testament, and perhaps a little dogmatical, as dilettanti divines generally are, he presently found himself brouillé at the same place with a Dominican friar. The Frenchman had refused to kiss the figure of the Virgin, painted upon the lids of the alms boxes: he had denied certain effects of the baptism, called “flaminis,” protested against the adoration of images, and finally capped the whole by declaring that the decrees of the Holy Tribunal are not so infallible as those of the Divine Author of Christianity. The horror-struck auditor instantly denounced him with a variety of additions and emendations sufficient to make his case very likely to conclude with strangling and burning.
Perceiving a storm impending over him, our physician waited upon the Commissary of the Inquisition, if possible to avert the now imminent danger. That gentlemanly old person seems to have received him with uncommon urbanity, benevolently offered much good advice, and lodged him in jail with all possible expedition.