Page 12 - History of Portuguese in the Gulf_Neat

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xvi INTRODUCTION.
at once delivered over the sword of office to his successor,
who placed at his disposal for his homeward voyage the
ship he himself had come out in. In this vessel, the largest
and most richly-ladcn that had ever sailed from India,
Manoel de Sousa, with his wife and all his possessions, left
for Portugal on January loth, 1592 ; but, in attempting to
make Mozambique, the ship was lost on the shoals of
Garajao, and all on board perished.1 How or where
Teixeira spent the year 1592 he gives no hint; but it was
probably somewhere on the west coast of India.2
Judging by casual references in his book, it appears prob­
able that in or about the year 1593 our author left India
for Hormuz,3 where he seems to have resided until
1597
(see infra, pp. 241, 208, 209, 166). Whatever the object of
his visit, he evidently devoted considerable time to the
acquisition of the Persian language, to the study of the
histories of Persia and Hormuz, and to the translation, in
a summarised form, of the chronicles of Mir Khwdnd and
Turdn Shah. Regarding this, Teixeira tells us something
in the prefatory note to his book (see infra); and scattered
throughout the latter are to be found references to
occur-
rences of which he was eye-witness while in Hormuz, or
which took place during his residence there (see infra, pp.
192, 201, 206, 210, 221, 234, 238).4 He also, in his Kings
1 The S. Bartholomeu, one of the same fleet, was lost at sea. The
Madrc de Dcos, and the Santa Cruz, which left India at the same
time, were attacked near the Azores by an English fleet under Sir
John Burrough, who captured the former, while the latter was burnt
by her captain.
s So far as can be gathered from his book, Teixeira never visited
the Coromandel coast or Bengal.
5 He may possibly have called at Diu on his way : a statement in
the Kings of Persia, Bk. I, chap, xxii, is so worded as to leave it
doubtful if Teixeira ever was in Diu.
4 The captain of Hormuz, during most of the time that Teixeira
was resident there, was Diogo Lopes Coutinho. The latter was suc­
ceeded by Antonio de Azevedo (regarding whose romantic marriage
see Linschoten, vol. ii, p. 187); but he died soon afterwards, in 1597
(see Couto, Dec. XU\ Liv. 1, cap. viii). The loss of Couto’s
Ktyi
i
r S':'] f
INTRODUCTION. xvii
of Hormuz, gives a brief description of the island as it
appeared during his residence there (see infra, pp. 164-168,
and cf. p. 252). r
In 1597 our author paid a visit to the city of “ Mazan-
daron ” (Sari), in the north of Persia (sec infra, p. 204), and
in the same year he must have left Hormuz for India, since
he himself informs us that in that year he sailed from Goa
for Malacca (sec infra, p. 226). We may reasonably con­
clude that Teixeira accompanied the fleet under the
command of Lourenqo de Brito, which left Goa on •1;
;
24th September, 1597, for Malacca, in consequence of the
tidings received in India of an intended attack by the
w
Dutch on the Portuguese possessions in the Far East.1 !
The becalming of the fleet in the Strait of Malacca gave
Teixeira the opportunity of going ashore on Pulo Jarak,
li
and adding to his store of information in the field of natural
history.
Reaching Malacca, our author apparently remained
there for the next two years and a half,2 utilising his stay
in acquiring knowledge regarding the fauna and flora of
the Malayan Archipelago (see infra, pp. 198, 215, 222, 224, '
225-226, 230, 232, 235-236.)
Thus far we have had to rely on casual and sometimes
vague references for our information regarding Pedro
Teixeira’s wanderings, but now we come to solid ground.
In the first chapter of his Narrative of my Journey from
Dcctuhi XT has deprived us of any detailed account of events in or
near Hormuz at this period ; but the royal letters in the Arehivo
Poriugucz-Oriental, fasc. iii, supply this want to a certain extent (sec,
for instance, pp. 415, 432, 446, 450, 458, 4S2, 505-506, 574, 586, 592,
67S-679, 689, 704, 711, 7S6-791, 80S, 813).
1 See infra.
5 The captain of Malacca during Teixeira’s residence was Martim
Affonso de Mello Coutinho (see infra, pp. 1, //., and 225, //., where
“ 1599” should be “ 159S”). Some of the stirring events that took place
in the Malayan Archipelago while Teixeira was in Malacca, but L
regarding which he is silent, will be found recorded further on.
I