PREFACE

Summary

The English text was printed from a manuscript copied from Hakluyt's version published in 1601.

We learn from his “Epistle Dedicatorie,” that “it was first done into our language by some honest and well affected marchant of our nation.”

Hakluyt was not the man to be contented with a translation if better materials could be obtained, and he appears to have made diligent inquiry after the original, but without success.

More fortunate than he, the Hakluyt Society has been able to obtain sight of a copy of the original, published in 1563, and believed to be unique. This valuable work is the property of an American gentleman, Mr. John Carter Brown, of Providence, Rhode Island, who kindly permitted Mr. E. H. Major, of the British Museum, to have it copied ; from this copy the Portuguese text has been printed. The Nouvelle Biographie Générale calls this work “rarissime,” but speaks of two copies, one in the National Library at Lisbon, the other in the Library of D. Francesco da Mello Manuel.

On comparing Hakluyt's version with the original, some omissions and additions have been noticed. It is not possible at this date to trace the causes of the former, probably they arose from inadvertence in the translator ; they have been supplied within brackets: the latter are due to Hakluyt, who, failing to obtain the original work, supplied what he thought necessary from the “original histories,” and to him also are probably due the marginal references.