[Cortar & Editat] Artigo - BOXER, C.R - Portuguese Roteiros, 1500-1700_removed

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PORTUGUESE ROTEIROS, I500-I700
extended from the original, and with extracts taken from a
Dutch Roteiro 1 in the part describing the island of Mauritius,
and some brief extracts from some of the Roteiros of Japan,
China, Siam and the Philippines which had already been reproduced
(and in full) by Linschoten in I 596. This version was
issued without a frontispiece, and is found bound up with
either the edition of I 6 I 4 or, more often, with that of I 62 5.
It should further be noted that all of these editions-save that
of I 609 and the second edition of Rodriguez's Roteiro-are
prefaced by an Arte de Navegar of about 30 pages, divided into
a number of chapters in which are explained the rules of elementary
mathematics, geometry, and astronomy together with
illustrations of the use of navigational instruments, sufficient,
as the author states rather naively, to make a good pilot of
anyone who studies them. Another point worth noting is that
the first edition of this Arte de Navegar of I 6o8 is very different
from the subsequent issues of I 6 I 4-3 2, as in these latter
editions it appears in a much altered and expanded form.
Stockier, in his work on the history of Mathematical studies in
Portugal, accuses Manoel de Figueiredo of arrant plagiarism
and states that all of value in his work has been taken wholesale,
and without acknowledgment, from the works of his sixteenthcentury
predecessor, Andre de Avellar. This may be true as
regards the purely theoretical and mathematical part of his
work; but Portugal at least owes him a debt of gratitude for
collecting, editing and publishing all the Roteiros of the East and
West Indies which his various editions contain, and which
would otherwise have been lost for ever. The works of Figueiredo
(who served as Cosmographer-Major of Portugal from
I 6o7 until his death in I 62 2 ), or rather these Roteiros as published
by him, became the basis of all future publications of a
similar kind in Portugal, and continued to be reprinted, with
little or no alteration, under differing titles throughout the
next two centuries. Actually, however, of more value and
I8I
I At least I presume these additions were copied from a Dutch source. The
chapter in question starts by saying that the Hollanders frequent the island; and
as the Portuguese seldom or never went there, it seems probable that the account
was taken from the Hollanders. I know of no Portuguese version.
MM