Page 11 - History of Portuguese in the Gulf_Neat

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xiv INTRODUCTION.
already besieged from the land side by an immense force
of cannibal blacks, called Zimbas, who, advancing from the
south, had spread terror and devastation wherever they
had come.1 These savages now gaining an entrance to the
{
island, a terrible slaughter began, many of the unhappy
Turks being drowned in their attempts to escape. To the
credit of Thom6 de Sousa it must be said that he saved as
many as he could by means of his boats, among them the
leader, Mfr AH Bey. On the same day (March 15th) the
two missing galliasses arrived at Mombasa.
After restoring the king of Pemba to his throne (from
which he had been driven by his people), Thom£ de Sousa
U- left Mombasa, on March 22nd, with his fleet and the
vessels captured -from the Turks, and arrived two days
later at Malindi. Here he left Matheus Mendes de
Vasconcellos, and two of the vessels of the fleet and some
soldiers, to protect the place from the Zimbas, who were
expected to pay it a visit shortly.2 Calling at Lamo,
Thom£ de Sousa carried the king of that place a prisoner
to Pate, where he was formally beheaded for his betrayal
of Roque de Brito and the other Portuguese in 1586;
while other offenders also suffered the same fate. Having
devastated the island of Mandra, and bound the prince of
. ! Ampaza and the kings of Pate and Sio by solemn treaty
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to be faithful to the crown of Portugal, Thomd de Sousa
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set sail on April 15th, called at Socotra on the 28th for
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1 Regarding these people, see Dos Santos, Ethiopia Oriental, Pt. I,
Liv. II, caps, jcvii-xxi (English translation in Theal’s Records of South-
* » Eastern Africa, vol. *vii, pp. 290-304) ; and Theal’s Beginnings of
1 Regarding the “ Mocegueios,” whom Teixeira must have met at
; South African History, pp. 268-274. (Cf. also Strange Adventures of
. < A?idrew Battell, p. 150.)
I 1 For a description of their attack on Malindi, and their utter
! destruction by the force of three thousand “ Mosseguejos," who came
to the help of the garrison, see Dos Santos, Ethiopia Oriental, Pt. 1,
Liv. 11, cap. xxi (English translation in Theal’s Records of South-
Eastern Africa, vol. xvii, pp. 302-304). See also Theal’s Beginnings of
1 South African History, p. 268. For Teixeira’s reference to this event,
n see infra, p. xv, n., and p. 237.
* I
f I
i
INTRODUCTION. XV
;
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water and provisions, and arrived on May 16th at Goa,
where he was welcomed by his brother, the Governor, who
also received Mir AH with great cordiality.1 p
f
Now, although Teixeira does not, as in the case of the
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two previous expeditions, tell us even casually that he ac­
companied this one, I think it is absolutely certain that he
i
did so (see his statements on pp. 6,237, 23S, and 223, infra} :
and the references on pp. 198, 202, 204, 227). How or where
he spent the remainder of 1589 we know not ;3 but during i
!
the next two years, 1590 and 1591, he seems, from his own
statement (p. 205 infra), to have been resident in Cochin,
!
which city, he tells us (p. 231 infra), was during those two
years devastated by a terrible epidemic of the “ Chinese
Death,” or Asiatic cholera.4
On May 15th, 1591, the new Viceroy of India, Mathias
de Albuquerque, arrived at Goa in the Bom Jesus, which
had left Lisbon in May, 1590, with four other ships, all of
which had, however, returned to port shortly afterwards
owing to unfavourable weather. Manoel de Sousa Coutinho
1 Details of this expedition are given by Fr. Joao dos Santos in his
Ethiopia Oriental, Pt. I, Liv. v, caps, vii-xii. These have been
reproduced, with verbal alterations, in the makeshift Dccada Undecima,
caps. v-x. A faulty English translation, from the French version of
Dos Santos, is printed in Pinkerton’s Collection, vol. xvi, pp. 728-735.
1 In the passage referred to on p. 237 Teixeira says : “ And less evil
is this than to devour human flesh, as ... do the black Zinbas to­
day, not sparing their own people, as was seen ten or twelve years
ago, when seventy or eighty thousand of them went in a body through
the interior of Africa in search of the lands of India, or of the Cloths
[Pannos], as they said : and when any of them fell sick they killed
and divided them amongst them and ate them : these came to an end
before Malinde and Monbasa at the hands of the Portuguese.”
Malindi in 1589, see, in addition to the authorities referred to in the
footnote on p. 237, Dos Santos, Ethiopia Oriental, Pt. 1, Liv. v,
cap. xiii.
* Ralph Fitch, according to his own account, was in Cochin from
March 22nd to November 2nd, 1589, when he left for Goa (see
infra, p. xxvii).
4 It is very possible that (if he was a physician, as I suspect) it was
this outbreak that brought Teixeira to Cochin.