PACHECO
PEREIRA, Duarte. Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis.
Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional,
1892.
Dubbed the "Lusitanian Achilles" by Luís de Camões, Duarte Pacheco Pereira
was a man of great learning. Setting out for the East in 1503 as captain of the ship
Conceição in the squadron Led by Afonso de Albuquerque, he gained prestige and
fame through the many victories he won in the two years he remained there.
Around 1505-1508, he wrote Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis,
a work that was to total five volumes but remained an unfinished manuscript.
Being what historian Luís Filipe Barreto sees as
a sort of global treatise of sailing in the second phase of Atlantic navigation, one of the
features of Duarte Pacheco Pereira's work is the reproduction of one of the first Portuguese
solar regimes and one of the oldest itineraries with latitudes, as well as the descriptions of
the coasts and entrances to the harbours along the coast of Africa.
Duarte Pacheco Pereira's book – from whose title the denomination situ orbis
reproduces Pomponio Mela's geographic treaty, though the reason for the denomination
Esmeraldo remains unknown – was published in Lisbon in 1892 by Rafael Eduardo de
Azevedo Basto, Curator of the Royal Archive at the Torre do Tombo, in an edition to commemorate
the fourth centenary of the
Discovery of
America
. This publication was revised by Augusto Epifânio
da Silva Dias in a critical edition brought out in 1905.
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