Further India : being the story of exploration from the earliest times in Burma, Malaya, Siam and Indo-China / by Hugh Clifford.

  • Clifford, Hugh Charles, Sir, 1866-1941.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Further India : being the story of exploration from the earliest times in Burma, Malaya, Siam and Indo-China / by Hugh Clifford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    between Ceylon and Sumatra. The man who was acting in this fashion, too, was no irresponsible free- booter, but the Portuguese viceroy of the Indies, and his piracies afford us a just index to the spirit and con- duct of his countrymen in Asia. It is true that sea- brigandage in the East has been suppressed finally by the nations of Europe, but it is well to remember that at an earlier period the white men themselves were the most ruthless and daring of all the rovers who infested Asiatic waters. The first port touched at by Dalboquerque was that of Pedir in Sumatra, where he found one Joao Viegas and “ eight Christians of the company of Ruy de Araujo, who had arrived thus far in their flight from the city of Malacca, and Joao Viegas recounted to him how the king of Malacca had endeavoured to force them to become Moors, and had ordered some of them to be tied hand and foot and circumcised; and they had suffered many torments because they would not deny the faith of Jesus Christ.” All of which was probably true, and was, of course, excessively improper, though the Sultan of Malacca’s conduct still compares favourably with that of Siqueira in the matter of the arrow passed through the skulls of a man and a woman. Viegas also told Dalboquerque that “ a principal Moor of Malacca,” named Naodabegea, [Nakhoda Begak] who had instigated the Sultan to cut off Siqueira, and had subsequently joined with the Bendahara of Malacca in a plot against the throne, was even then in hiding in the neighbouring Sumatran kingdom of Paseh. To Paseh, therefore, Dalboquerque forthwith sailed, and