Page 47 - History of Portuguese in the Gulf_Neat

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lxxxviii INTRODUCTION. INTRODUCTION. Ixxxix
that the city of China1 was sending to Andre Knrtado for the
twenty-eight ships:1 so that in the seven years beginning
relief of the licet. The fortress of Malaca is without provisions,
with 1595, when Cornell’s de Houtman made his first
nor can it obtain any, because the Hollanders stopped those that
voyage round the Cape of Good Hope, no less than Mxty- the Jaos were bringing to it, and the city of Malaca wrote to us
to supply it with provisions, as they were perishing from famine.
five ships in fifteen fleets had sailed from the Netherlands
The remedy for these things is very far off, because it is in your
eastward and westward to Insulindia.2 With the con­ Majesty, and they call for it very urgently, and may it please God
stitution of the first English East India Company in 1600, that when He shall see lit to grant it, they will attain it; and let
not your Majesty reckon on its being given from here, because
and the amalgamation in 1602 of the two Dutch companies the Achem sent ambassadors hither to ask permission for a
into the United East India Company,3 matters became fortress in his territories, but the Stale could not grant it, and
they returned, and he has sent others to England to the same
even worse for the Portuguese; and by the time that
effect,2 and he says, that he will give it to the one that goes first;
Teixeira arrived in India again, at the end of 1603, the wherefore your Majesty must provide the South from that King­
position was so critical as to evoke from the Chamber of dom with a suitable fleet, and directed to Malaca, and not to
come to India, because however good it be, if it should come
Goa the following “ bitter cry ” to the King :—1
here, the needs are so great, that peradventure it would not be
Although the affairs of the South demanded a full relation, able to go thither, and without the South there is no India.
we shall do it very briefly, because they are such that they speak
for themselves. It is full of Hollanders, and this year they Such was the condition of affairs in the Far East when
captured the ship that was making the voyage from Samtome Pedro Teixeira left India on his land journey homewards
to Malaca laden, which was worth more than three hundred
thousand cruzados,5 and three or four that were going with at the beginning of 1604.
money to Bengala ;6 and have since captured the most powerful
and richest ship that ever left China, which was . . ? for this 1 Macao.
city, and was bringing the means of subsistence of the whole 2 See Voyages of Sir Jas. Lancaster, pp. S5, 95-97 ; Letters Received
of India, which they went to wait for at the Strait, a little beyond by the East India Company, etc., vol. i, pp. 1-4 ; Hunter’s History oj
Malaca,8 where they also captured a junk laden with provisions, British India, vol. i, p. 278.

1 Details of the doings of these ships will be found in the Intro­
duction to the Voyage of Capt. fohn Saris, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv.
2 See the Table in Hunter’s History of British India, vol. i, p. 334.
3 The attempt of the French, in 1601, to gain a share in the trade
of the East ended in disaster (see Introduction to Gray’s Pyrani).
4 Annual letter of December, 1603, in Archivo Portugucz-Oriental,
fasc. i, Pt. 11, pp. 112-113.
6 This capture took place in conjunction with Lancaster’s ships on
October 13th, 1602 (see Voyages of Sir fames Lancaster, pp. 91-93 ;
also Hunter’s History of British India, vol. i, p. 27S). In the Dutch
account of Spilbergen’s voyage there is a picture of the fight.
0 In May, i6o3,Sebald de Weerd captured four Portuguese vessels,
bound from Cochin to Negapatam, off the east coast of Ceylon (see
Orientalist, vol. iii, pp. 72-73).
1 Sic in orig.
8 This capture was effected in June, 1603, off Johor, by two Dutch \
ships under Heemskerk. The chronicler of Spilbergen’s voyage,
after describing the rich lading, adds : “ So that, besides the plunder­
ing, she was estimated at over seventy hundred thousand guilders ”
(Reyse van I oris va?i Spilbergeji, p. 38).