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lxii INTRODUCTION. INTRODUCTION. Ixiii
We must now return to the year 1598. On January 13th are seen in the treatment accorded by the Achinesc to De
of that year, as we have seen (supra, p. xxxvii), King Houtman’s expedition. In his last Decada, Couto gives us
Philip II wrote to the Viceroy of India that he had advice the Portuguese version of this affair. In Liv. II, cap. x,
“ that this year are being got ready many ships of the said we read :—
Hollanders for the purpose of again making that journey” D. Luiz da Gama having left for Ormuz,1 the Count proceeded
(to Sumatra and Java). This was literally true; and it is to the dispatching of certain ambassadors who had come to him
from the Achem, whom he had received with great honour in a
to these fleets that we now turn our attention.
decorated chamber with all the fidalgos and captains that
The first Dutch ships to leave for the East in 1598 were happened to be in Goa at the time, and entertained them right
well, ordering them to be provided with everything necessary
two, the Leeuw and Leeuwin (Lion and Lioness), under the
until it was time for them to return, when he dispatched them
command of the famous (or notorious1) Cornelis dc Hout- with satisfaction. The principal points that they came to treat of
man, the chief pilot being the Englishman John Davis, to are not known to me, as I have not found them in the Secretariat,2
where it was proper that the record of such a matter should be ;
whose pen we are indebted for the only existing detailed
but I know that they were satisfied : and the Count Admiral
account2 of the expedition, which cost the lives of the com- gave orders to embark them in the galleon going to Maluco, the
mander and others of the company. These ships sailed captain of which was Luiz Machado Boto, and commanded them
to be very well provided with everything necessary for the voyage :
from Flushing on March 15th, 1598, and on June 21st,
and he sent the Achem a suitable present in return for another
1 599, arrived at Achin, the entrepot of the pepper trade in that his ambassadors had brought. They set sail on the third of
May of this year of 1599; and of their voyage we shall give an
the Malay Archipelago. This was the first time that
account further on.
European ships other than Portuguese had put into this
port, and this first attempt to break the Portuguese This promise Couto fulfils in Liv. v, cap. ix (with which
! this Decada abruptly ends), as follows :—
monopoly ended disastrously.
We have noted above (pp. xxxviii) how important the Since we left Luiz Boto Machado [sic] departed for Amboina,
it is necessary for us to continue with his voyage, as it also falls
King considered it was for the Portuguese to keep on good in the time and government of the Count Admiral, as we have
terms with the king of Achin. The effects of this policy said above.3 This galleon, with good weather, arrived at the
fortress of Malaca, where the ambassadors of the Achem were
disembarked, and received with much welcome, because of the
who gives an abstract of the letter in his Collection of Voyages and
Travels (vol. i, pp. 252-254), describes it as “very tedious, and scarce
intelligible,” and adds : “ The Letter, however, gives no light into the 1 To enter on the captaincy vacant through the death of D.
Voyage itself, nor by what Accident the Ships, which set out for the Antonio de Lima (cf. supra, p. I,;/.).
East Indies, came into the West Indies; nor what became of them ; 2 Couto, as historiographer of India, had the charge of the archives.
nor the Nature of the Sickness which reduced the Men to four.”
(He wrote this in 1611.)
1 He was suspected of having, on his previous voyage, poisoned 3 In the previous chapter Couto records the arrival at Goa, on
Moelenaer, the skipper of the Mauritius, with whom he was on bad October 3rd, 1600, of the Sdo Francisco, one of the fleet by which the
terms, and was actually put in irons for three days, being then released ! new Viceroy, Aires de Saldanha, was coming (cf. supra, p. xl, n.); and
for want of proof (see De Jonge, op. tit., vol. ii, p. 345 ; also Davis’s also the dispatch by D. Francisco da Gama of various fleets. He
description of him in the narrative referred to below). then adds: “The successes of these fleets, which the Count sent off, are
* It was first printed in Purchas his Pilgrimes, Pt. I, Bk. ill, left for the time of Ayres de Saldanha, in which they took place. But
pp. 116-124 ; and is reprinted in this Society’s Voyages and Works I before we finish with the Count Admiral, we shall give an account of
of fohn Davis the Navigator, pp. 129-156 (see also the Introduction, what happened to the three galleons that in his time he sent to
pp. lxiii-lxix; Markham’s Life of John Davis, chap, x; and De Jonge, Maluco, because it is also an expedition of his.” The three galleons
op. tit., vol. i, pp. 220-230, vol. ii, pp. 210-216). spoken of were those dispatched in May, 1600, as mentioned below.
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