502 NOTICES OF EUROPEAN INTERCOURSE WITH BORNEO. 
mission for the Portuguese to trade in the island. To gain the king’s 
good will and consent, he presented him with some very costly tapes¬ 
try, on which the marriage of king Henry the Sth. of England with 
Catherine of Arragon was wrought to the life. The king of Borneo 
asked him what all the figures represented, but on being told what 
they vrere, and that the king of England was a crowned prince like 
himself, he suspected that the Portuguese intended to play him an ill 
trick by bringing to life all the figures, and through them destroying 
himself and his whole kingdom. He ordered the tapestry to be has¬ 
tily removed, and would have maltreated the Portuguese, if Affonso 
Pires and some Moorish [Maliomedan] merchants hacl not explained 
the nature of the gift to him. However he forbade the Portuguese to 
come and trade, and ordered them to quit the island immediately.* 
Three years later Gonsalo Pereira, fourth governor of Ternate, visited 
Borneo on his way from Malacca, and made friends with the king.f 
De Barros gives the following account of this visit. “ Gonsalo Pe¬ 
reira, whom the king Don Joa5 sent from Portugal as Governor of 
the Moluccas, before sailing received instructions from Governor 
Nuno da Cunha to sail from Malacca to Borneo, where he was to vi¬ 
sit the king and take in the necessary merchandize for the Moluccas. 
Leaving Malacca in August 1530, and passing amongst many islands, 
he arrived at the port of Borneo, from which the island is named, 
as it is the chief city on it. He sent Luis de Andrade with presents 
to the king, and desired him to say that the king of Portugal and his 
Governor of India had sent Mm, Gonsalo Pereira, to serve the king 
in what he should order, because he greatly desired his friendship, 
and that his vassals should repair to Malacca to trade as they had 
compilation it is said 11 it does not appear that before the year 1527 the 
Portuguese were acquainted with anything more than the name of Borneo, 
and with its situation, by reason of their frequently passing by its coasts. 
About that time Captain Edward Coni! had orders to examine it more nar¬ 
rowly, and being once acquainted with the worth of the country they made 
frequent visits thither,” Harris’s Voyages and Travels, vol. I. p. 688. 
* Abridged from the Butch of Valentyn, Oud en Nieu Oost—Indian, 
vol iii. p. 248. The same account is given by de Barros (D. 4. P. I. p. 
106) on the authority of Diago do Conto and other Portuguese writers. 
The Affonso Pires was a Portuguese, apparently from Malacca, whom Lou- 
rcnso found at Brund in command of a junk, which confirms our conjecture 
that the Portuguese were previously acquainted with the port. 
t Yalenlyn, p. 248, 
