But The Earliest And Most Complete Relation Of This Discovery Was Composed By Francisco Alcaforado, Who Was Esquire To Don Henry The _Infant_ Or Prince Of Portugal, The First Great Promoter Of Maritime Discoveries, And To Whom He Presented His Work.

No person was more capable of giving an exact account of that singular event than Alcaforado, as he was one of those who assisted in making the second discovery.

His work was first published in Portuguese by Don Francisco Manoel, and was afterwards published in French at Paris in 1671[3]. From this French edition the following account is extracted, because the original Portuguese has not come to our knowledge, neither can we say when that was printed; but as the anonymous French translator remarked, that "Don Francisco _keeps_ the original MS. with great care," it may be concluded, that the Portuguese impression did not long precede the French translation. The French translator acknowledges that he has altered the style, which was extremely florid and poetical, and has expunged several useless and tedious digressions, etymologies, reflections, and comparisons; but declares that he has strictly presented, the truth and substance of the history, so as not to vary from it in the least, or to omit the smallest material circumstance.

It is remarkable that there is no mention whatever in any of the English histories of Machin, Macham, or Marcham, the supposed author of this discovery; so that Hakluyt was beholden to Antonio Galvano for the imperfect account he gives of that transaction[4]. By the following abstract the complete history becomes our own, and we shall be no longer strangers to an event which has for several ages, rendered an Englishman famous in foreign countries, while wholly unknown in his own.

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