In Other Respects It Is Full Of Variety; And
If Some Parts Of It Be Dry And Unamusing, These Make Amends By Their
Usefulness To Geographers And Navigators, While Other Parts Are
Calculated To Instruct And Give Pleasure On Other Accounts.
- Astley.
* * * * *
So far the foregoing introduction is taken from Astleys collection. In
our edition of the Journal of Don Juan de Castro, we have used the
earliest known copy as given by Purchas, Vol. II. p. 1122-1148, under the
title of A Rutter or Journal of Don John of Castro, of the Voyage which
the Portugals made from India to Zoes, &c. and here abbreviated.
The original of which is reported to have been bought by Sir Walter
Raleigh, at sixtie pounds, and by him caused to be done into English
out of the Portugal.
Of this Journal Purchas gives the following account in a marginal note,
which is inserted in his own words: "This voyage being occasioned by
sending the Patriarch Bermudez to Ethiopia, and relating how that
state decayed, invaded by the Moores, and embroiled with civil
discontents, contayning also a more full intelligence of the Red Sea,
than any other Rutter which I have seene, I have here added; and next
to it, Bermudez own report, translated, it seemeth, by the same hand
(not the most refined in his English phrase, which yet I durst not be
too busie with, wanting the original) and reduced to our method; here
and there amending, the English, which yet in part was done, as I
thinke, and many marginall notes added, by Sir Walter Raleigh
himselfe." - In the present edition, while we have adhered closely to
that of Purchas, with the assistance of that in Astleys Collection, we
have endeavoured, little more busy than Purchas, to reduce the
language to a more intelligible modern standard; and have divided it
into Sections, in imitation of the editor of Astleys Collection of
Voyages and Travels. On purpose to carry on the series of events, we
have inserted as a necessary introduction, an account of the Portuguese
Transactions in India, from the discontinuance of the siege of Diu and
retreat of Solyman Pacha in November 1538, to the commencement of the
expedition of Don Stefano de Gama to the Red Sea in December 1540, when
the journal of Don Juan de Castro begins; which first section of this
chapter is taken from the Portuguese Asia of De Faria. - E.
SECTION I.
Portuguese Transactions in India, from the Siege Diu by the Turks, to
the Expedition of Don Stefano de Gama to Suez[259].
Soon after the retreat of Solyman Pacha from Diu in November 1538, but
in the beginning of the subsequent year 1539, when the new viceroy Don
Garcia de Noronha had returned from his tardy expedition to relieve Diu,
Don Gonzalo Vaz Confino[260] came with five small vessels from
Onore, where he had been sent by the former governor Nuno de Cuna on
the following occasion. One of the gallies belonging to the fleet of
Solyman Pacha had been forced into the port of Onore[261], and it was
thought the queen of that province, then a widow, had violated the
treaty subsisting between her government and the Portuguese, by giving
protection to that vessel.
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