Читать книгу A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century - Anonymous - Страница 9

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This volume was published by the Hakluyt Society as the work of Duarte Barbosa on the authority of Ramusio, for neither the three Spanish MSS. of Barcelona and Munich, nor the Portuguese MS., give his name; it is probable that Barbosa contributed a largo part of it, for Damian de Goes refers his readers for an account of Malabar and its religion and customs to a book by Duarte Barbosa, who is stated to have spoken the language of Malabar with great correctness, and who resided a long time in that country; yet the authorship must be ascribed to Magellan, for I have just seen, in the possession of Don Pascual de Gayangos, another Spanish MS. which states at the top of the first page—"Este libro compuso Fernando Magallanes Portugues piloto lo qual el vio y anduvo." "This book was composed by the Portuguese Fernando Magellan the pilot, the things narrated in which he saw and visited." This heading is in the same writing as the rest of the MS., which is clear handwriting of the sixteenth century, and like that of the second part of the MS. No 571 of the Munich Library. The MS. of Mr. Gayangos appears to be part of a larger book, since its second leaf is numbered 111 (the corner of the first is worn off), and the last is numbered 170, and ends with the description of the Lequeos. The Epitome de la Biblioteca Oriental, Occidental, Nautica y Geografica of D. Antonio de Leon Pinelo, Madrid, 1737, mentions, at p. 667 a work of Magellan's under the following heading: Fernando de Magallanes, Efemerides, or Diary of his Navigation, a MS. which existed in the possession of Antonio Moreno, Cosmographer of the House of Trade, according to Don Nicolas Antonio.

The Translator.

Madrid, February 1867.