The Portugal Story by John Dos Passos

Author:John Dos Passos [Dos Passos, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78706-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

Along with Caminha’s letter went another letter from a certain Mestre João, an astrologer and geographer who was probably a pupil of the great Abraham Zacuto, author of the tables so essential to navigation in southern waters. Since Mestre João wrote in Spanish he was probably another Jew who had come to Portugal at the time of the expulsion of his people from Castile. Mestre João included in his letter a diagram of the stars which make up the Southern Cross and told of his observation of the sun with his astrolabe by which he reckoned that the situation of Pôrto Seguro was at 17° south latitude. He admits that Pero Escolar and other pilots had made calculations with different results. “As regard the situation of this land, my Lord, Your Highness should order a mappa mundi to be brought which Pero Vaz Bisagudo has, and on it Your Highness will be able to see the location of this land. This mappa mundi, however, does not show whether this land is inhabited or not. It is an old mappa mundi, and there Your Highness will also find la Mina marked. Yesterday we almost understood by signs that this was an island, and that there were four, and that from another island canoes come here to fight with them and they take them captive.”

Mestre João apologized for not being able to give a better account of the position of the antarctic pole. The ship he traveled in was very small and so heavily laden that there was no room to make observations even if the tossing of the seas had permitted. He had been unable to check the instruments the Arab pilots used to observe the stars which Vasco da Gama had brought back with him. He was suffering from an infected leg. A sore larger than the palm of his hand had developed from a mere scratch. “At sea,” he concluded, “it is better to direct oneself by the height of the sun than by any star.”

From their letters it is pretty evident that both Mestre João and Vaz de Caminha believed that Cabral’s fleet had landed on an island. If they had known of previous discoveries of the mainland it is likely that they would have mentioned them. Perhaps King Manoel, who had access to all the records of the voyages of the last few years, knew better.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.