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

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PORTUGUESE ROTEIROS, I500-I700
I77
was the pilot of Dom J oao de Castro on his outward voyage to
India in I 53 8, whilst the manuscript contains an interesting
Roteiro of the Red Sea, so that all things point to its being influenced
by the works of Dom Joao, although the first part is
practically identical with that of Diogo Affonso, of whom
more anon.
VIII. The Roteiro do Cabo de Boa Esperanfa ao das Correntes
of Manoel de Mesquita Perestrelo (I 57 5) is also a notable piece
of work, and has been reproduced in whole or in part several
times, the earliest being in a French translation by Thevenot
in I 664. The original has been lost, but two contemporary
(or nearly so) manuscript copies exist at Evora and Oporto
respectively.
IX. Still more famous are the Roteiros compiled by two great
India pilots of the sixteenth century, Diogo Affonso and
Vicente Rodriguez of Lagos. The original work of the former
pilot has long since disappeared; but fortunately the greater part
of it was copied by Linschoten circa I 58 3 and reproduced by
him in his famous Itinerario, first printed at Amsterdam in r 596
and subsequently reprinted in English, French, Latin and
German in editions too numerous to mention here. Commander
da Costa suggests that this Roteiro was compiled about
I 570, but personally I am inclined to date it some twenty years
earlier. Diogo Affonso himself states that he was on board the
Santa Clara as pilot when he saw the Bom Jesus founder off the
Cape of Good Hope, and as we know that this disaster occurred
in I 53 3, it is more reasonable to suppose that the Roteiro would
have been compiled about I 5 40-50 than in I 570, when Diogo
Affonso, if still alive at that date, must have been a very old man.
As we have seen, Manuel Alvares also refers to the loss of the
Bom Jesus in I 53 3, and as both these Roteiros have much in
common it seems probable that they are both of the same
decade, 1 540-50; but which is the earlier of the two it is difficult,
if not impossible, to say.
X. Vicente Rodriguez has left us two Roteiros, both dating
from between I 570-go, the second being a slightly expanded
and corrected copy of the first. A contemporary copy of the
second Roteiro is preserved in the National Library at Lisbon,