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



369 



C 7. 



Summary of Letter of Affonso de Albuquerque to King 

 Manuel. 1 



[4 November 1510.] 



******* 



Cochy, in his opinion, should be the principal staple and factory 

 for the whole of India, on account of its being in the centre of 

 everything and the port of shipment for all the factories, which 

 you must needs have in India in order to obtain profit. 



And that all the others should be assisted from there. 



And that the loading of your ships must never be done except in 

 Cochy, because the pepper supplies the loading of the ships ; z 

 all the rest of the other goods is superfluity. 3 



It is very near to Bengalla, and has Ceilao very close at hand. 



And the ships can go to Ceylao in August and September, and 

 return in November and December, when, he says, our ships are 

 loading. 



And that with this port of shipment and arrangement your 

 highness can have in Cochy all the riches of India. 4 



He gives in the last paragraph of this letter an estimate of the 

 spicery that went out of India that year, and from what places, and 

 by what means he ascertained this. 5 



1 This summary of a letter that has disappeared is printed in 

 Cartas de Aff. de Alb. i. 423-27. 



2 According to the Com. of Af. Dalb. ii. 49, in November 1509 D. 

 Fernando Coutinho asked the king of Cananor " to command his offi- 

 cers to get ready fifteen thousand quintals of pepper which were required 

 for loading the cargoes of the ships, for the viceroy had told him that 

 he would load them all with pepper for them if he pleased." The king, 

 however, was not able to satisfy the marshal's desire. How largely 

 pepper bulked in the cargoes of the homeward-bound Portuguese ships 

 in the early part of the 16th century may be judged from the figures 

 given by Leonardo Ca' Masser {op. cit. supra, A 23). Towards the end 

 of the century the spice still formed the most important item in the 

 cargoes (see Linschoten, Hak. Soc. ed., i. 41, ii. 220-25). 



3 In original sobernal, to which the editor affixes a mark of interro- 

 gation. The word appears to be not Portuguese but Spanish. Capt. 

 John Stevens in his Span.-Eng. Diet. (2nd ed.) has: " Soborndl, the 

 overplus in measure ; also what is laid on a beast over and above its 

 due burden ; Quasi sobre al, above the rest." 



4 D. Francisco de Almeida, in writing to the king two years earlier, 

 had said (Cor. i. 906) : " Any other place of loading apart from here is 

 unnecessary, because in Cochym there is pepper so that never will there 

 come ships from Portugal that will finish carrying it away, and the 

 other spiceries and rich drugs would come to this coast and here to 

 Cochym, but they dare not through the inducement of the Moors who 

 put them in fear." 



5 It is tantalizing to have this fact mentioned by the summarist, 

 and not to have the estimate itself. 



