Background
Fernao Mendes Pinto was born in 1509 in the Portuguese town of Montemor-o-Velho not far from the ancient university city of Coimbra.
(Originally published in 1897. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1897. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
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Fernao Mendes Pinto was born in 1509 in the Portuguese town of Montemor-o-Velho not far from the ancient university city of Coimbra.
Fernao Mendes Pinto was born in the Portuguese town of Montemor-o-Velho not far from the ancient university city of Coimbra.
He stayed there a year and a half until "something happened that placed me in such great jeopardy that I was forced to leave the house at a moment's notice and flee for my life. "
We do not know what had happened.
Fifteen miles from their destination it was captured by French pirates.
He sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, stopped in Mozambique, and arrived at the Portuguese fortress of Diu on the northwestern coast of India on September 5, 1537.
Leaving Ethiopia, his ship was captured by the Turks and the crew was taken tothe port of Mocha in Yemen and sold into slavery.
He arrived in Malacca in 1539 and worked for the captain of the fortress there as an emissary to the kingdoms of Sumatra and Malaya.
Robbed by pirates, he and his partners got revenge by becoming pirates themselves.
He then traded along the coast of Indochina.
(Mendes Pinto claimed to have been shipwrecked, captured, and sold into slavery 16 or 17 times. )
Helping Tartar invaders penetrate into China, Mendes Pinto was freed and returned overland to Indochina.
He then returned to Canton in south China and told Portuguese merchants there of the wealth to be gained by trading with Japan.
He accompanied a group of them, and they were shipwrecked in the Ryukyu Islands where they were saved by the pleas of the women of the island.
He then went back to Malacca. From Malacca he was sent on a mission to the Burmese who had just captured the Kingdom of Pegu.
He was taken prisoner by the Burmese and traveled as far as Luang Prabang in what is now Laos.
He escaped and returned to Goa.
He then undertook a trading mission to Java where he got involved in a local war and left just in the nick of time.
Trying to travel on to China, his ship was attacked by Japanese pirates and was shipwrecked on the coast of Thailand.
He and his men built a raft that ended up once again in Java, where they were reduced to cannibalism in order to survive and sold themselves into slavery.
Freed again, Mendes Pinto borrowed money to start a trading operation with Thailand.
On his departure, he brought back a Japanese stowaway whom he handed over to St. Francis Xavier in Malacca and thus inspired Xavier's effort to travel to Japan and Christianize the inhabitants.
Sometime during these years in Asia, Mendes Pinto had accumulated a large fortune.
He was a wealthy merchant when he made his third voyage to Japan in 1551, where Francis Xavier was installed at the court of one of the feudal lords of southern Japan.
He then traveled back to Japan in the company of a group of these missionaries.
At some point following his final departure from Japan in 1557, he voluntarily separated himself from the Jesuits, although he remained on good terms with the Church. Mendes Pinto returned to Portugal on September 22, 1558.
He stayed at court for four years hoping for some reward or recognition for his years of service in the Far East.
(Originally published in 1897. This volume from the Cornel...)
Fernão Mendes Pinto married Maria Correia Barreto with whom he had at least two daughters.