66

REMARKABLE TRAVELLERS.

BY WILLIAM DALTON,

Author of "The Wolf-Boy of China," "The Tiger Prince," &c.

PINTO THE ROVER,

SERVANT, SOLDIER, SAILOR, PIRATE, AND JESUIT.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.

ERDINAND MENDEZ PINTO was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude," Shakespeare puts into the mouth of one of his characters. "Pinto, thou Prince of Liars," writes Cervantes, the great traveller's contemporary. Hence, to verify the old proverb, "Give a dog an ill name and hang him," writers, from his own day down almost to our time, have sought to hold him up to furthermost posterity, as one whose adventures are totally unworthy of belief. "Hit him hard, he has no friends," must indeed have been in the minds of the majority of authors who have had occasion to mention our hero's name, and who, that has written of the East, has not? Yet never was the platitude, "Truth is stranger than fiction," more completely verified than in his marvellous autobiography.

There is, however, to be said, in excuse of his detractors, that with respect to foreign travel, and more especially anterior to the wide diffusion of books, the extension of commerce over the world, and the facility of transit, that "stay-at-homes" had, at least, a show of right to believe that "travellers tell strange tales;" for were they not like a certain little mouse, who, having been born in a box, was, when for the first time lifted to the top, so stricken with wonder at the vast space around, that he cried to his parent, "Why, mother, there is a world outside ours!" But now that those far-off countries have become better known, Pinto's story of his adventures is no longer regarded as fiction.

As an earnest of his truthfulness, let it be remembered that he was an unlettered man, that he wrote from memory, that he is nowhere boastful of his own exploits, but, on the contrary, he seems to have been the least important among his shipmates; and neither let it be forgotten that the strange tales he relates he knew would not redound to the credit of himself or his countrymen. In truth, he was emphatically "a man who had something to say, and said it to the best of his ability."

"I find in Pinto," says the earliest of his vindicators, Purchas, "little boasting, except of other nations, none at all of himself, but as if he intended to express God's glory, and make man's merit of nothing but misery. And, however it seems incredible to remember such infinite particulars as this book is full of, yet an easy memory holdeth strong impressions of good and bad, especially new-whetted, filed, and furbished with so many companions in misery, their best music in their chains and wanderings being the mutual recounting of things seen, done, and suffered. More marvellous is it, if a liar, that he should not forget himself and contradict his own relations."

Let me add, in conclusion to these introductory observations, that although the countries in which our hero's adventures chiefly happened, now are better known, they still remain comparatively unexplored; but the more and more they have been travelled through, the more has Pinto's story been verified. The editor of the Annales des Voyages tells us, that having had occasion, in preparing the volume of that work on China, to consult all accessible works about that country, he had been more and more confirmed in his opinion of the reality of Pinto's adventures, and the general correctness of his memory--an opinion which is endorsed by the great Chinese scholar, Remusat. Adding to the foregoing my own. humble testimony to my hero's general truthfulness-a testimony based upon many years' study of the peoples and nations of the far East-I will now introduce Pinto to the reader.

Fernam Mendez Pinto was born about the year 1511, in the city of Monte mor Ovelho, in Portugal. His parents were in a very humble position of life. Like most of the children of the very poor of great cities, Master Pinto seems to have been precocious in mind and habits, for, at the age of ten, his uncle, desirous, perhaps, to rescue him from the streets, and reform his habits, but certainly to advance him in life, placed him in the service of a great lady, in the city of Lisbon, where he remained but one year and a half-a short time, truly, yet sufficiently long enough for the young gentleman to exhibit his talent -perhaps propensities would be the better word, for at the end of that term the eleven-and-a-half-year-old page met with (he tells us) an accident, which, had he been caught, would have placed his life in the hands of the law. To avoid, however, such a mishap, the precocious lad fled to a port named Pedra, and, with apparent good fortune, at once obtained a small service in a ship just about to sail.

So far, he had escaped the consequences of his crime; it proved, however, to be but a "jump from the frying-pan into the fire," for the vessel had scarcely got out of sight of land before it was captured by a

French pirate. But worse, at least, for the time being, the pirate, shortly afterwards capturing a more valuable prize, became so much enraged with the poverty of Pinto and companions, that he severely beat and otherwise ill-treated them; then, after frightening them nearly to death by a threat that he would sell them all as slaves to the Moors in Barbary-a threat only not carried out to suit his own convenience, he set them ashore on the Portuguese coast, stripped of their clothes and covered with stripes.

Quitting his shipmates, Pinto, now like another Gil Blas, set out upon his adventures inland, and in a short time succeeded in obtaining a situation in the family of a great man, named Francisco de Faria. This master he seems to have served well, for the latter introduced him to the service of a still greater man, the Commander of the Knights St. Jago. These two noblemen he served for five years; but the vocation was too monotonous and too ill-paid to satisfy an enterprising lad like Pinto, who had resolved, by "hook or by crook," and at any risk, to make his fortune. He had, in fact, become seized with the mania of his age-a voyage to the Indies, where the Portuguese were then, day by day, becoming paramount, the priests making converts, or burning natives whom they were pleased to call pagans; the soldiers taking countries; and the merchant adventurers amassing wealth. Neither was there much difficulty then of a young man obtaining service and promotion, for it was by the daring enterprise and rapacity of such men as Pinto that the Portuguese, who, up to his day, had but few regular troops in the East, had already acquired so extensive an empire there.

For the better understanding of our hero's adventures, I may here note, that at the same time that the Portuguese were making their conquests, a similar set of adventurers, under Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, and their followers, had acquired, and still were extending, a vast Spanish empire in America. Curiously, the two nations, in their circuit round the globe, meeting at the Moluccas, fought desperately for the supremacy over those rich islands, the Portuguese being ultimately the conquerors. Equally necessary, in a brief sketch of Pinto's times, is it to understand, that while the power of the Spaniards and Portuguese was growing in America and the East, the Turks were the dread and terror of all Christian nations. In the West they had lately occupied Hungary, laid siege to Vienna, and possessed themselves of all the fortresses hitherto held by the Venetians in the Archipelago and the Morea. Having obtained supremacy in Egypt by dethroning the Mameluke sovereigns, and by the renunciation of the caliphs (long exiles in Egypt), of the headship of the Mahometan Church, they were now waging against the Portuguese a

war of extermination, both in the East and in the Red Sea, at both of which points we shall see it was our hero's fortune to see service against them. But to resume our narrative.

So much fighting was just then going on all over the world, that Pinto found no difficulty in obtaining a passage to Diu, a Portuguese settlement on the coast of Hindostan; indeed, he reached there just in time to have a few bouts with the Turks, who had for some time been besieging Diu in great force, although ultimately without success.

In was in the year 1537 that Pinto arrived at Diu. Shortly after the defeat of the Turks, he fell in with a sea captain of his acquaintance. This man, being about to proceed to the Court of Abyssinia on a political mission, that is, to make a treaty of offence and defence between his own countrymen, who already possessed great influence among the Abyssinians against the Turks, who at the time were moving heaven and earth to convert those semi-Christians to Mohammedanism-“ here,” thought Pinto, "is an opportunity of making a fortune by a royal road;" and so he begged and obtained permission from the captain to join the mission.

On the voyage thither, and, indeed, during their arduous and toilsome journey inland, across the vast mountains, deserts, valleys, and lakes of Abyssinia, they met with no adventure worthy of note. On their reaching the capital of the Ethiopian empire, they were received in great state by the son of the empress, who escorted them with a body of horse to the palace of the sovereign. Her majesty was delighted with her visitors, telling them that their arrival was as grateful to her as the nightly dew to the fresh garden, and as the arrival of Queen Helena had been to the Holy Land. Moreover, she lodged them magnificently, and upon their departure presented them with a sum of money, equal to 240 ducats.

Here let me observe, by way of parenthesis, that the sovereigns of Abyssinia trace their descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the last of whom, the present reigning emperor, as appears by despatches, which arrived in England in the month of March last, is likely to get into trouble with the English Government. Taking affront at some imaginary failure of ceremonial on the part of three Protestant missionaries, his sable majesty caused two of these gentlemen to be beaten to death, and another, the Rev. Mr. Stern, to be flogged, and then incarcerated in a dungeon, so foul that, at the time of the departure of the despatches, his life was despaired of.

So far, the Portuguese mission was successful; but on the seas in those days there were dangers not dreamt of in the present. The grief,

however, that they came to on their return was the consequence of their own avarice. Setting sail from Arkiko, on the Abyssinian coast, they saw at a distance three Turkish ships. These they resolved to seize; but they "caught a Tartar." The prize would be valuable, and so they rowed incredibly hard and reached them, but proving to be armed galleys, instead of peaceable merchant-vessels, a terrible fight took place, the result of which was the capture of the Portuguese, eleven only of whom, out of fifty, remained alive after the contest. The killed were cut into quarters and hung at the main-yard as a token of victory. Pinto and other survivors were taken to Mocha, and paraded through the streets in chains. Then, even as now, the hatred of the Mussulman to the Christian was intense and cruel. The priests excited the people, assuring them that any insult or injury that they might offer to such infidels, would obtain for them plenary indulgence for their sins. At this, an unbounded zeal arose to maltreat the poor wretches; even the women and children, though confined in the houses, came to the windows, collected, and threw over them all manner of filth. At night, they were thrown into a dungeon, and kept there for fifteen days, without any food except a little barley-meal soaked in water.

The Portuguese were conducted several times to the market-place and exposed to sale; but, owing to civil commotions which raged in the town, no purchaser came forward, and they were glad to fly back for shelter to their dungeon. At length, when the disturbances were over, the captives were sold, and as for Pinto, "fortune, his sworn enemy," he tells us, "made him fall into the hands of a Greek renegado, who used him so cruelly, that he was several times upon the point of poisoning himself." But this tyrant, afraid of losing his slave, disposed of him to a Jew, who carried him to Ormuz, in the Persian Gulf, where he was ransomed by the Portuguese Governor.

About the time of Pinto's arrival at Ormuz, Gonzalo Vaz Coutinho, in a well-armed galley, and in conjunction with the Queen of Onor, was about to go in search of Turkish prizes. Pinto took service with Coutinho. Soon they fell in with a Turkish galley. The queen, however, with, as it proved, better judgment than the Portuguese warriors, told them not to attack the Turkish vessel, as it would prove too much for them. Nevertheless, they did make the attack, and were beaten with a dreadful loss, and a great number killed. Among the latter was the Governor's son. Enraged at this defeat, the cowards unreasonably upbraided the Queen, nay, even threatened to avenge it upon her. But the lady, a Hindoo, solemnly protesting that her dismay could not have been deeper had she been compelled to eat cow's-flesh at the principal gate of