Japan and the Japanese

FERNAM MENDEZ PINTO. 23
the only one known to us is Fernam Mendez Pinto, who, in his
Peregrinations in the East, first published in 1614, about thirtysix
years after his death, seems to represent himself and two com-
panions as the original Portuguese discoverers.
Pinto's veracity has been very sharply called in *
question ; but
the main facts of his residence in the East and early visits to Japan
are amply established by contemporary letters, written from Malacca
as early as 1564, and published at Home as early as 1566, includ-
ing one from Pinto himself. In the introduction to his Peregrina-
tions he describes himself as the child of poor parents, born in
the city of old Montemayor, in Portugal, but placed in the year
1521, when he was about ten or twelve years old, he fixes the
year by the breaking of the escutcheons on the death of king Man
uel, a ceremony which he witnessed, and the oldest historical fact
he could remember, through the interest of an uncle, in the ser-
vice of a noble lady of Lisbon. Having been with her for a year
and a half, some catastrophe occurred, he does not tell what,
which led him to fly in terror for his life ; and, finding himself upon
a pier, he embarked on a vessel just about to leave it. That vessel
was taken by French pirates, who threatened at first to sell him
and the other captives to the Moors of Barbary ; but having taken
another richer prize, after much ill treatment, they put
him and
several others ashore on the Portuguese coast. After this he passed
into the service successively of two noblemen; but finding their
pay very small, he was prompted to embark to seek his fortune in
the East ; and, in pursuit of that object, landed at Diu in 1537.
It was by the daring and enterprise of just such adventurers as
Pinto, that the Portuguese, who, up to this time, had few regular
troops in the East, had already acquired so extensive an empire
there ; just as a similar set of Spanish adventurers had acquired,
and still were extending, a vast Spanish empire in America ; the two
nations, in their circuit round the globe, meeting at the Moluccas,
the possession of which, though about this very time, as we shall
Bee, contested by the Spaniards, the Portuguese succeeded in main-
taining, as indeed they had been the first to visit and occupy them.
The Turks at this time were the tenor and dread of all the
* See Appendix, Note D.