NO. 59.— 1907.] PORTUGUESE IN CEYLON. 



315 



over the Calicut armada, and of his "discovery" of Ceylon, 

 the viceroy at the end of December* dispatched Cide Barbudo 

 in his ship, the Julioa^ via Cananor for Portugal. By him 

 Dom Francisco sent a long letter to the king, J recording the 

 events of the year since February, when Vasco Gomes de 

 Abreu and Joao da Nova sailed, and doubtless some cargo, 

 including the tribute cinnamon from Ceylon. Cide Barbudo 

 left Cananor probably in January § 1507; and, although his 

 voyage is not recorded by any of the historians, || we have 

 good grounds for supposing that he reached Lisbon in 



* I infer this from the date of the viceroy's letter (27 December). 



f I have no certain proof of this ; but it is most probable. 



J This is the letter already frequently referred to, a summary of 

 which is printed in Cartas ii. 391-97. It occurs in a document in the 

 Torre do Tombo at Lisbon, entitled " Summary of all the letters that 

 came from India to our lord the king, and of other messages that like- 

 wise came in the ships of which there came as captain-major Antonio 

 de Saldanha, and in the ship of Cide Barbudo, who came after him." 

 The letters themselves are, unfortunately, for the most part lost, which 

 is the more vexatious in that the summarist has in some places evidently 

 misinterpreted the original. Although the summarist has mixed up 

 the two batches of letters referred to in the title, it is pretty easy to 

 separate them. Of Antonio de Saldanha I shall speak presently ; but 

 the letters brought by Cide Barbudo (so far as the summaries printed 

 tell us) were as follows : — -A letter from Diogo de Alcacova dated 

 22 November 1506 (text in Cartas ii. 385-89, summary in ditto, 

 390); letter from the viceroy dated 27 December 1506 (summary in 

 Cartas ii. 391-97) ; letter from Lourenco de Brito dated January 1507 

 (summary in Cartas ii. 397). It was in this long letter, ended on 27 

 December 1506, that Dom Francisco de Almeida reported to King 

 Manuel the "discovery " of Ceylon by his son (see B 2, infra). Judging 

 by the summary, the viceroy would seem to have been chary in detail 

 in writing of this event ; and I see no reason to doubt what Correa tells 

 us (see end of B 10, in/ra),that Dom Francisco sent to Portugal a man 

 who had accompanied the expedition to Ceylon to report verbally to 

 the king what he as an eye-witness had seen. To this reporter 

 apparently are due the interesting details given in King Manuel's 

 letter to the pope (see B 3) and copied by Castanheda (see B 8). 



§ I infer this from the fact that the letter from Lourenco de Brito 

 is dated in that month, as stated in the previous footnote. 



|| Cast. (ii. c. xxxii.) is the only one that refers to Cide Barbudo's 

 return. He says : " And by this Cide Barbudo the viceroy wrote to the 

 king of Portugal what had been done in India since the departure of 

 the other ships : but if this ship reached Portugal I do not know." 

 As regards this last statement see next note. 



d 36-07 



