Word: pintos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Grand Peregrination, by Maurice Collis. The 16th Century travels of the Marco Polo-like Portuguese, Fernao Mendes Pinto, whose Far East adventures cast him as soldier, merchant, pirate, slave, ambassador and Jesuit novice (TIME, March...
...Pinto piled up enough conspicuous "firsts" to make him the most renowned traveler in Asia after Marco Polo. He was the first European to describe alligators, cobras, orangutans and flying foxes (giant bats). "I shall not be surprised," he wrote, "if my readers who have not traveled refuse to believe in such creatures, for those who have seen little believe not much...
Even today, no one knows quite where fact leaves off and Pinto's fertile imagination takes over. His account of a meeting with the Dalai Lama is obviously grandiose fancy. His most disputed claim is that he was the first European to see Japan, and taught the Japanese how to use firearms. As Pinto tells it, he and two other Portuguese were on a Chinese ship which was blown off course and landed at an island off Kyushu. A Japanese prince sent for him, asked him if he knew of a cure for the gout. The prince was delighted...
Ardor & Conscience. By 1554 Pinto was in Goa again, a wealthy man yearning for home after 17 years. But he had seen much and his conscience was troubled. His adventurer's gusto had always been tempered by suffering and a sense of sin. At just that time the body of St. Francis Xavier was brought to Goa. Xavier had died on a lonely island while on his way to China to convert the Chinese. Profoundly moved, Pinto became a novice in Xavier's order, the Society of Jesus, and determined to return and convert the Japanese. It took...
...adventures. It was never published in his lifetime, but he had official recognition of a sort anyway. In 1583, in his 74th year, the Portuguese government awarded him a pension of two hogsheads of corn annually "for his services in India." Four months later, Fernão Mendes Pinto was dead...