  THE discovery of an ocean route to India, in 1497-98, marks an epoch in the history of geographical exploration no less than in that of commerce. It confirmed the hypothesis of a circumambient ocean, first put forward by Hecataeus, but rejected by Ptolemy and his numerous followers; and, at the same time diverted into a new channel the profitable spice trade with the East which for ages had passed through Syria and Alexandria. In consequence of this diversion Venice lost her monopoly, and Lisbon became for a time the great spice-market of Europe. But Portugal was a small country whose resources were hardly even equal to the task of waging the continuous wars with the Moors in which she had so unwisely been engaged for generations past. And when, in addition to her African forces, she was called upon to maintain great fleets in the Vasco da Gama. Vasco da Gama. Portugal, however, notwithstanding the sad ending of her vast Eastern enterprises, is still justly proud of the achievements of her “great” Vasco da Gama, and boldly places him by the side of MagelhÃes Vasco da Gama was born, about 1460, We know next to nothing of Vasco da Gama’s youth. When King JoÃo, after the return of Bartholomeu Dias, decided to fit out an armada to complete the discovery of an ocean highway to India, he selected Vasco da Gama as its captain-major, and this choice of the King was confirmed by his successor, D. Manuel. Castanheda (I, c. 2) speaks of Vasco as having done good service in the time of King JoÃo II, and as being experienced in the affairs of the sea. Mariz (Dial., iv, c. 14; v, c. 1) calls him a young man (mancebo), high-spirited and indefatigable, who had such a thorough knowledge of navigation (arte maritima) that he would have been able to hold his own with the most experienced pilots of Europe. We know, moreover, from Barros and Goes that He was, moreover, well qualified for his post in other respects. His indomitable firmness made him shrink from no obstacle which opposed itself to the success of his expedition; and notwithstanding the unheard-of length of the voyage and the hardships endured, he retained the confidence of his men to the very last. The question whether Da Gama can fairly be ranked with Columbus and MagelhÃes, has frequently been discussed. The first place among these three undoubtedly belongs to MagelhÃes, the renegade Portuguese, who first guided a ship across the wide expanse of the Pacific. The second place is almost universally accorded to Columbus, whose unconscious discovery of a new world, fit to become the second home of the European races, was immensely more far-reaching in its consequences than the discovery of an ocean highway to India, now largely discarded in favour of the shorter route across the isthmus of Suez. It is maintained, in support of the claims of Columbus, that he was the originator of the scheme the success of which covered him with everlasting There is much truth in this contention. The scheme of reaching the East by a westward course across the Atlantic had no doubt been entertained in Portugal in the reign of Affonso the African [1438-81]. FernÃo Martinz, the Royal Chaplain, had discussed its prospects with Paolo Toscanelli, when in Italy, and had been instructed to apply for further particulars to the Florentine physician, in response to which he had received the famous letter of June 25th, 1474, and the chart which accompanied it. But practically nothing was done, except that an adventurer or two Columbus, on the other hand, made the discarded scheme his own; he, too, applied to Toscanelli for counsel, On the accession of D. JoÃo II, in 1481, the discovery of Africa was resumed with renewed vigour, and the councillors of that King acted wisely when they advised him to decline the offers of Columbus, When, however, we come to consider the physical difficulties which had to be overcome by these great navigators in the accomplishment of their purpose, the greater credit must undoubtedly be awarded to Vasco da Gama. Columbus, trusting as implicitly to the chart and sailing directions Once beyond the Cape, Vasco had to struggle against the Agulhas current, which had baffled Bartholomeu Dias, and against the current of Mozambique; and it was only after he had secured a trustworthy pilot at Melinde that the difficulties of the outward voyage can be said to have been overcome. In one other respect Vasco da Gama, or, perhaps, we ought to say his pilots, proved themselves the Verily, the Portuguese of those days were superior as navigators to their Spanish rivals and the Italians. Posterity is fortunate in possessing a very full abstract of the Journal which Columbus kept during Apart from these, our chief authorities regarding this voyage are still the Decades of JoÃo de Barros and the Chronicle of King Manuel, by DamiÃo de Goes. Both these authors held official positions which gave them access to the records preserved in the India House. Castanheda relied almost wholly upon the Roteiro, but a few additional statements of interest may be found in his pages. As to the Lendas of Gaspar Correa, we are unable to look upon his account of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage as anything but a jumble of truth and A few additional facts may be gleaned from Faria y Sousa’s Asia Portuguesa, from Duarte Pacheco Pereira and Antonio GalvÃo; but in the main we are dependent upon the Roteiro, for recent searches And now we shall proceed to give an account of the Roteiro. The Manuscript of the “Roteiro”. In giving an account of the manuscript of this Journal, we entrust ourselves to the guidance of Professors Kopke and Antonio da Costa Paiva, the two gentlemen who first published it.
That is:—
The manuscript originally belonged to the famous Convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, whence it was It is not an autograph, for on fol. 64 (p. 77 of this translation), where the author has left a blank, the copyist, to guard against his being supposed to have been careless in his task, has added these words: “The author has omitted to tell us how these weapons were made”. This copy, however, was taken in the beginning of the sixteenth century, as may be seen from the style of the writing as exhibited in the facsimile of the first paragraph of the work, shown on preceding page. The MS. is in folio, and is rudely bound up in a sheet of parchment, torn out of some book of ecclesiastical offices. The ink is a little faded, but the writing is still perfectly legible. The paper is of ordinary strength, and of rather a dark tint; the manufacturer’s water mark is shown in the above facsimile. Blank leaves of more modern make, and having a different water-mark, have been inserted at the front and back, and the first of these leaves contains the following inscription in a modern hand, which is still legible, although pains have been taken to erase it:—
Immediately below this we read:—
and near the bottom of the page, in a modern hand,
Prof. Kopke suggests The Author of the “Roteiro”. It is quite possible, as suggested by Prof. Kopke, that the title by which the Roteiro was known at the convent of Santa Cruz misled certain bibliographers into a belief that Vasco da Gama himself had written this account of his voyage. Thus NicolÁo Antonio, in his Bibliotheca Hispana Veta (1672), lib. 10, c. 15, § 543, says:—
The words “quae lucem vidit” need not, however, be understood as conveying the meaning that this narrative was actually printed and published, for the same author, in his Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, makes use of the same equivocal expression when describing another voyage to India, expressly stated by him to be still in MS. Moreri, in his Dictionnaire (1732), quoting as his authority a Bibliotheca Portuguesa in MS., which he had from “a man of judgment and of vast erudition”, states that Vasco da Gama is said to have published an account of his first voyage to India, but that no copy of it had up till then been discovered. Similarly, Barbosa Machado, the author of the standard Bibliotheca Lusitana (t. iii, p. 775), 1752, accepting NicolÁo Antonio as his authority, says We are quite safe in assuming that no such a narrative has ever been published, although it is equally certain that Vasco da Gama furnished official reports of his proceedings, which were still available when JoÃo de Barros wrote his Decades, but are so no longer. No one has yet succeeded in discovering the author of the Roteiro. Prof. Kopke attempts to arrive at the name by a process of elimination, and in doing so starts with several assumptions which we cannot accept. First of all he assumes that Castanheda must have known the writer of the MS. of which he made such excellent use in writing his history. But Castanheda only became acquainted with this MS. after 1530, when he took up his residence at Coimbra on his return from India, that is, more than thirty years after it had been written. Of course, the author might then have been still alive, notwithstanding the lapse of years; but had this been the case, and had Castanheda been personally acquainted with him, he would surely have obtained from him an account of the termination of the voyage, instead of abruptly breaking off in the same way as the Roteiro does, with the arrival of the fleet at the shoals of the Prof. Kopke assumes further that the writer was a common sailor or soldier, and most probably the former: first, because he frequently makes use of the expression “nÓs outros” (we others) as if to draw a distinction between the officers of the ships and the class to which he himself belonged; and, secondly, because “the style of his narrative would seem to point to his humble condition”. We can admit neither of these conclusions. The author by no means uses the expression “we others” in the restricted sense in which Prof. Kopke understands it. In proof of this we may refer to such sentences as are to be found at pp. 57 and 61:—“When the King beckoned to the captain he looked at us others”; “as to us others, we diverted ourselves”—the “others”, in both these cases, including the thirteen men who attended Vasco da Gama to Calecut, and among whom were the three pursers, the captain-major’s secretary, and others who may We shall now follow Prof. Kopke in his “process of elimination”:— 1. The author, in the course of his narrative, mentions a number of persons by name, and these 2. We know further that the author served on board the S. Raphael. 3. The author mentions certain things as having been done by persons whose names he does not give. The name of one of these is supplied by Castanheda and Barros. We thus learn from Barros that FernÃo Martins was the sailor mentioned by the author (p. 23) as being able to speak the language of the Moors; and from Castanheda (I, p. 51) that he was one of the two men sent with a message to the King of Calecut (p. 50). The convict who was sent to Calecut on May 21st (p. 48) was JoÃo Nunez, according to Correa. The author states (p. 64, line 18, and p. 65, last line) that the captain-major sent three men along We may therefore strike out all these names from the list of possible authors. 4. Three members of the expedition are reported to have died during the voyage, namely, Pedro de CovilhÃo, the priest; Pedro de Faria de Figueredo, and his brother Francisco, all of them mentioned by Faria y Sousa alone. 5. Lastly, there are four convicts whose names are given by Correa, none of whom is likely to have been the author of the MS. The presence of some of these convicts is, moreover, very doubtful. We have thus accounted for all the members of the expedition whose names are known, with the exception of eight. Four of these—JoÃo de SÁ, Alvaro Velho, JoÃo Palha and JoÃo de Setubal—are stated to have been among the thirteen who attended Vasco da Gama to Calecut (p. 51), and of these, JoÃo de SÁ was clerk in the S. Raphael, the author’s ship. He certainly might have been the author. Prof. Kopke thinks not, first, because of the author’s supposed humble position; secondly, because. JoÃo de SÁ, if we may credit an anecdote recorded by Castanheda (I, p. 57), Castanheda only mentions six out of the thirteen who were present at Vasco da Gama’s audience of the Zamorin. Correa mentions two others—JoÃo de Setubal and JoÃo Palha. Five remain thus to be accounted for; and, although these may have included servants and trumpeters, not likely to have troubled about keeping a journal, our author may have been among them. It will thus be seen that this process of elimination has led to no result, and that we cannot even tell whether the author’s name occurs in any single account of this expedition. Comparing his “Journal” with the contents of Sernigi’s first letter, it almost seems as if he had been the person from whom the Florentine derived the bulk of his information. In that case his name may perhaps turn up some day in the Italian archives. If our choice were limited to Alvaro Velho and JoÃo de SÁ, we should feel inclined to decide in favour of the latter. Correa mentions three other persons as having been with Vasco da Gama: namely, JoÃo Figueiro, whose diary he claims to have used, and who cannot therefore have been the author of a “Journal” the contents of which are so widely different; AndrÉ The Portuguese Editions of the “Roteiro”. The Roteiro was printed for the first time in 1838. The editors, Diogo Kopke and Dr. Antonio da Costa Paiva, both teachers at the Academia Polytechnica of Oporto, furnished it with an introduction, in which they give an account of the manuscript and discuss its authorship, add sixty-nine notes, explanatory of the text, and append King Manuel’s letters patent of January 10th, 1502 (see p. 230). The illustrations include a map, the facsimile of a page of the MS., a portrait, and an illustrated title-page of poor design. The book was published by subscription. Three hundred and ninety-two copies were subscribed for, including two hundred and thirty-seven by residents in Oporto, among whom British wine-merchants figure prominently. Only five copies went abroad, and three of these were subscribed for by Captain Washington, R.N., the Royal Geographical Society, and the Geographical Society of Paris. A second edition appeared at Lisbon in 1861. The French Translations of the “Roteiro”. Two have been published. The first of these, by M. Ferdinand Denis, will be found in the third volume of Charton’s Voyageurs Anciens et Modernes, Paris, 1855. It is based upon the first Portuguese edition, and ends with the arrival of the two vessels at the Rio Grande. The notes by Professor Kopke are embodied in those of the translator, who has added an introduction, giving a short but excellent biography of Vasco da Gama, and a bibliography. The map of the original is retained, and there are twenty illustrations, including two portraits of Vasco da Gama, the one stated to be from Count Farrobo’s painting, as published in the Panorama, the other from a Paris MS. of Barretto de Rezende. For the second French translation The English Translation. In 1869 the Hakluyt Society published Lord Stanley of Alderley’s translation of the Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, from the Lendas of Gaspar Correa, with numerous foot-notes indicating those instances in which Correa differs from Barros, Goes, Castanheda and other historians, as well as from the poetical version of this voyage presented in the Lusiadas of CamÕes. It was intended at the same time to bring out an English version of the Roteiro, but no definite arrangements were made, and thus the matter was left in abeyance until the present Editor revived the idea, and suggested that the volume proposed might prove acceptable as an interesting though humble contribution to the literature of the Fourth Centenary of Vasco da Gama’s arrival in India, which Portugal is about to celebrate. The translation of the Roteiro itself is literal and complete. The notes of the Portuguese editors have, however, been abridged, and only the substance of what they say in their introductions has been retained. On the other hand, the Editor has added translations of the letters of King Manuel and Sernigi, and of three Portuguese accounts of the voyage. He has, In conclusion, the Editor fulfils an agreeable duty in acknowledging the kindly help and advice extended to him by a number of gentlemen. To Capt. E. J. de Carvalho e Vasconcellos and Senhor JosÉ Bastos, of Lisbon, he is indebted for the fine portraits which ornament this edition; to Prof. Gallois for a tracing of the unpublished portion of Canerio’s chart; to Dr. M. C. Caputo for a photograph of the African portion of the Cantino chart; to Prof. Biagi for a copy of Sernigi’s letter in the Biblioteca Riccardiana; to Sir J. Kirk for several illustrations and important notes; to the late Rt. Rev. Dr. J. M. Speechley, and the Rev. J. J. Jaus, of the Basel Missionary Society, for notes on Calecut; and for help in minor matters to Dr. Garnett, of the British Museum; Baron Hulot, Secretary of the Paris Geographical Society; M. Marcel, of the BibliothÈque Nationale; Prof. Dalla Vedova, of Rome; Prof. Berchet, of Venice; and Capt. B. B. da Silva, of Lisbon. His special thanks are due to three members of the Hakluyt Society, namely, Sir Clements Markham, the President; Admiral Albert H. Markham, who acted as the Editor’s nautical adviser; and Mr. William Foster, the Secretary, whose careful reading of the proofs kept this volume free from many a blunder. London, March, 1898. HAKLUYT. S. I. v. XCIX A CHART |
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