Note 351 — PRIMO VIAGGIO INTORNO AL MONDO (continued 3)

MS. 5,650 gives this name as Duart Bobase, although lower it is spelled Barbase. Duarte or Odoardo Barbosa, the son of Diogo Barbosa, who after serving in Portugal, became alcaide of the Sevilla arsenal, was born at Lisbon at the end of the fifteenth century. He spent the years 1501–1516 in the Orient, the result of that stay being his Livro emque dà relação do que viu e ouviu no Oriente, which was first published at Lisbon in 1813 in vol. vii of Collecçao de noticias para a historia et geographia das nações ultramarinas, and its translation by Stanley, A description of the coasts of East Africa and Malabar (Hakluyt Society publications, London, 1866). He became a clerk in the Portuguese factory at Cananor under his uncle Gil Fernandez Barbosa, and became so expert in the Malabar language that he was said to speak it even better than the natives. On account of his facility in the language he had been appointed commissioner by Nuno da Cunha to negotiate peace with the Zamorin. He was commissioned in 1515 to oversee the construction of some galleys by Alboquerque. While at Sevilla, Magalhães lived in the household of Diogo Barbosa, where he married Duarte’s sister Beatriz. Duarte embarked on the “Trinidad” as a sobresaliente, and it was he who captured the “Victoria” from the mutineers at Port St. Julian, after which he became captain of that vessel. Failing to recover Magalhães body from the natives of Mactán, he was himself slain at Cebú at the fatal banquet May 1, 1521. Besides the above book, which is a most valuable contribution to early Oriental affairs, there is extant in the Torre do Tombo a letter written by him from Cananor, January 12, 1513, complaining of the Portuguese excesses. See Guillemard’s Magellan; Stanley’s Vasco da Gama; Birch’s Alboquerque; and Hoefer’s Nouvelle Biographie Générale (Paris, 1855)