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

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I 76 PORTUGUESE ROTEJROS, I 500-J700
Enough has been said to show that the works of Dom J oao de
Castro form a veritable landmark in the history of nautical
science, and as regards Portuguese Roteiros, the standard they
set was never surpassed, though personally I consider that the
works of Gaspar Ferreira Reimao in the early seventeenth century
come near to equalling them. Passing over some Roteiros
of Sumatra and the Moluccas by Antonio Dias and Manoel
Godinho, believed to have been written about I 520-5, but of
which all trace has long been lost, we come to the second division
of our classification, namely:
(B) Sixteenth-century Roteiro~ after Dam Joaf! de Castro
(IH0-99)·
VII. Omitting, for lack of space, all mention of a few
Roteiros of this period of which little has been preserved, save
the citation of their authors in subsequent works, we come to
the Roteiros of Manuel Alvares and Aires Fernandes of circa
I 540-50.
A Codex of the works of these two pilots is cited by the
Visconde de Santarem and other nineteenth-century writers,
as being in the National Library at Paris, but no trace of it could
be found during Commander da Costa's visit there in 1932.
Fortunately, however, a sixteenth-century Roteiro, acquired by
the present writer in London a short while ago, turned out on
examination to be the original manuscript of Manuel Alvares,
or at least a contemporary copy thereof, since it bears the autograph
signature of Andre Thevet, the celebrated French
traveller, and the date I 56 3 in the text. That this Roteiro was
written by Alvares himself is placed beyond all doubt by the
fact that referring to the banks of Judea off the East African
coast, he states inter alia" ... and I Emanuel Alvares, and Ayres
Fernandes, saw the banks of Judea from afar, by steering N.E.
etc"; but whether the observations of Fernandes are also included
in the work, as Commander da Costa suggests, is open
to some doubt. Alvares refers also to the loss of the Bam Jesus
in 1533, so that this work must have been written between
1533 and 1563. It is also worth noting that Manuel Alvares