III.—Pedro Barretto de Rezende, 1646.
Captain Pedro Barretto de Rezende, a professed Knight of the Order of St. Benedict of Aviz, and a native of Pavia,[389] is the author of a Livro do Estado da India, consisting of three Parts and an Appendix, of which MS. copies exist in the British Museum (Sloane Collection, No. 197) and the Bibliothèque Nationale (Port. 1, and Port. 36). Part I of this work contains a succinct account of the doings of the Viceroys of India up to 1634, and gives portraits of all of them; Parts II and III contain plans of the Portuguese forts between the Cape of Good Hope and China, with descriptions; whilst the Appendix furnishes an account of the “armadas” or fleets which were sent to India up to 1605.
Dr. Walter de Gray Birch (Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, i, pp. vii-xiii) has given an account of the MS. of this work existing in the British Museum.
Vasco da Gama as Viceroy.
(After Correa’s portrait in the Palacio do Governo, at Goa.)
If this valuable document should ever be printed, it will be necessary to collate the copies existing in London, Paris, and probably also elsewhere, for they are not in all respects identical. Port. 36 seems to me to deserve the preference as far as respects Part I, but Part II (the description of the forts) has been abridged, as compared with Port. 1. The portraits in this latter are more neatly done than in Port. 36. No reference to the source of these full-length portraits is made by the author. They certainly differ from the portraits designed in 1547 by a native artist under the supervision of Gaspar Correa, and published in the Lisbon edition of his Lendas (see t. iv, p. 596). Lord Stanley (Vasco da Gama, p. ix) says that Correa’s portraits are “better” than those in Rezende’s work. All that we can say is that they are not worse. Our full-length portrait is from a MS. of Barretto de Rezende in the Bibliothéque Nationale, as reproduced in Charton’s Voyageurs anciens et modernes. The small oval portrait is from a copy of Correa’s painting which was made by order of D. Francisco, da Assumpção de Brito, who was installed Archbishop of Goa in 1774. It was first published in 1817 in a work entitled Retratos e Elogios de Varões e Donas.
First Voyage, 1497; Four Sails.
King John II of Portugal having died without a legitimate son, Dom Manuel was proclaimed King on October 27th, 1495; and as this fresh dignity entailed that he should prosecute the undertakings initiated by his predecessors, he proposed to himself to go on with the discovery of Oriental India by sea, which, seventy-five years before, had been set going.
In 1496 he had many councils on this affair, and in consequence of the resolutions arrived at he agreed (assentou) to despatch on this enterprise one Vasco da Gama, and forthwith arranged for the fleet to be sent, the work upon which was carried on with such expedition that rigging and all was ready by Saturday, July 8th, 1496.
The fleet (armada) only included three ships of from 100 to 320 tons, and there went in them, between sailors and soldiers, 260 persons. In addition there was a ship carrying provisions.
The flag-ship, in which Vasco da Gama, the captain-major, embarked, was called the São Gabriel, and Pero de Alemquer was the pilot. The second ship was called the São Raphael; Paulo da Gama, the brother of said Vasco, was captain, and João de Coimbra, pilot.
The third vessel was called the Berrio; Nicolao Coelho was her captain and Po. Escolar her pilot.
Gonsalo Nunes, a retainer (criado) of Vasco da Gama, was captain of the cargo-ship (nao); only provisions went in her. These, as also the crew, having been transferred to the other ships at the Cape of Good Hope, they set fire to her.
They set sail from the bar of Lisbon on July 8th, 1497, arrived at Moçambique on March 1st, 1498, made Mombasa on Palm Sunday, the 7th of April,[390] and Melinde on the 15th of the same month.
There he took pilots to guide him to India, and on May 16th of the same year, ’498,[391] he made the land at a port on the coast of Mallavar (Malabar), in the kingdom of the Samorim, two leagues below Callecut, which is the principal city and capital of that kingdom. There he remained seventy-four days, in the course of which, induced thereto by the Moors who live in that country, he practised upon us a thousand deceits. But having discovered that for the sake of which he had been sent, namely, India, of which he was able to take home such good intelligence, he determined to return to Portugal, and set sail on August 29th of this same year, namely, ’498. At the Anjediva islands he careened the ships and took in water, and there he took a Jew who, by order of Sabayo, the King of Goa, had visited him, it being the intention, immediately after the return of this Jew, to send a fleet against him (Vasco da Gama).
Vasco da Gama departed thence and made the coast of Melinde. Wishing to depart thence for this kingdom, the ship São Raphael, in which was his brother, was lost on the same shoals on which she had already once grounded on the way out to India. The loss of this ship did not give much concern to Vasco da Gama, for he was short of men, and those in her were distributed among the two other vessels. He passed Moçambique, doubled the Cape of Good Hope on March 20th, 1499; when near the Cape Verde Islands a severe storm separated the two vessels, namely, that in which he (Vasco) was from her consort in which was Nicolau Coelho, who, leading, lost sight of Vasco da Gama, and reached the bar of Lisbon[392] on July 10th of said year.
Vasco da Gama only arrived on August 29th in a caravel, for his brother, Paulo da Gama, being very ill, he went from the island of São Thiago to that of Terçeira, allowing his ship to be taken to Lisbon by João de Sá.
And Vasco da Gama buried his brother, whose death much afflicted him, in the island of Terçeira, and after that landed at Lisbon on August 29th, as stated above, or two years after he had started on his discovery.
From the Livro das armadas e capitaes que forão a India, which, as already stated, forms an Appendix to Rezende’s Livro do estado da India, we take the following:—
Vasco da Gama, captain-major, 1497.
He departed on July 8th, by order of King Dom Manuel, with four ships to discover India, viz.:
Vasco da Gama in the S. Gabriel.
Paulo da Gama, his brother, in the S. Raphael.
Nicolao Coelho in the ship Berrio.
Gonçalo Nunes in a store-ship.
The people and provisions in the ship of Gonçalo Nunes were distributed among the other ships after the Cape of Good Hope had been passed, and beyond the Aguada (watering-place) of S. Braz, and this ship, having been stripped, was set on fire.
The ship of Paulo da Gama stranded on the voyage home to Portugal on the shoals between Guilva [Kilwa] and Mombaça, and these shoals were named after the S. Raphael which had now run aground upon them. Her people were distributed among the two companion-ships.
Vasco da Gama, captain-major, 1497.
He departed on July 8th, by order of King Dom Manuel, with four ships to discover India, viz.: