The Lusiads (Oxford World's Classics)
Page 32
If being earth’s salt: see Matthew 5. 13 and John 4. 44.
To return to the coast: in just six stanzas, Tethys covers some, 3,000 miles on a sweeping tour of the Bay of Bengal from Madras up India’s east coast past Narsinga (cf. canto 7. 21), past Orissa, past the vast delta of the Ganges, to Chittagong where the coast turns southwards, past Pegu (of strange tales) and the Arakan mountains of Burma, past the Siamese coastal cities of Tavoy and Tenasserim, past Kedah in northern Malaya and Malacca and the island of Sumatra, to Singapore ‘at the land’s very tip’.
The coast points east: touring the Gulf of Siam, Tethys indicates Pahang and Patani on the east coast of the Malaysian peninsula, then the Menam River flowing into the Bight of Bangkok. Camões’s knowledge of the interior, however, is shaky. Chieng-Mai is not a lake but a city, and his accounts of the peoples of Laos and Burma are travellers’ tales.
the great River Mekong: the last stage is from Cambodia, pausing at the vast delta of the Mekong River where Camões was shipwrecked (see Chronology, p. 25 and cf. canto 7. 80), past Tsian Pa and Cochin China (both now in Vietnam) to the Gulf of Tonkin and Hainan Island, and finally to China with its Great Wall and civilized politics. Japan, where St Francis Xavier founded his mission in 1549, is glimpsed in the distance.
islands beyond number: the return voyage, with its theme of islands, takes us east of the Philippines through the Molucca Passage. Tidore and Ternate are the tiniest of the islands; then come the countless islands of the Banda Sea with Borneo well to the west; then Timor and, turning sharply west,. Java, Sumatra, and back to Ceylon and the Maldive Islands, then Socotra at the entrance to the Red Sea and others off Somalia, and finally Madagascar (see st. 38).
with its burning summit: Camões distinguishes the volcano at Ternate, with its leaping flames, from the one on Sumatra (see st. 135) which merely smoulders.
never alight: the first bird-of-paradise skins sent to Europe had their legs removed, giving rise to the belief that they were unable to perch.
it is fitting you glance westwards: Tethys concludes with the achievement of another Portuguese Fernão de Magalhães (Magellan: cf. canto 2. 55) who, believing himself snubbed by King Manuel, offered his services to Carlos V of Spain and set out in 1519 to circumnavigate the globe. The Straits of Magellan were discovered in October 1520. Tethys refers to the Spanish conquest of Latin America (st. 139), the Portuguese discovery of Brazil (st. 140), and the tall people of Patagonia (st. 141).
No more, Muse, no more: Camões concludes with a further address to King Sebastião, again notable for its anxiety over the state of the nation, drawing a sharp contrast between Portuguese serving overseas and Portuguese at home, giving the young king some sound advice, and offering his own services as warrior and as poet.
Phormio: the philosopher of Ephesus, who lectured Hannibal on warfare (Cicero, De Oratore, II. xviii. 75).
Mount Atlas . . . : cf. cantos 3. 77 and 5. 11. Taroudant remained a city closed to Christians until the nineteenth century. For Sebastião’s invasion, see Introduction, p. x.
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