In the account given by Antonio Pigafetta, the companion of Ferdinand
Magellan, of the famous circumnavigatory voyage performed by the
Spaniards in the years 1519 to 1522, it is stated that, from their
apprehension of falling in with Portuguese ships, they pursued their
westerly route from the island of Timor, by the Laut Kidol, or southern
ocean, leaving on their right hand the island of Zamatra (written in
another part of the journal, Somatra) or Taprobana of the ancients.
Mention is also made of a native of that island being on board, who
served them usefully as an interpreter in many of the places they
visited; and we are here furnished with the earliest specimen of the
Malayan language.

PORTUGUESE EXPEDITIONS.

Previously however to this Spanish navigation of the Indian seas, by the
way of South America, the expeditions of the Portuguese round the Cape of
Good Hope had rendered the island well known, both in regard to its local
circumstances and the manners of its inhabitants.

EMANUEL KING OF PORTUGAL.

In a letter from Emanuel King of Portugal to Pope Leo the Tenth, dated in
1513, he speaks of the discovery of Zamatra by his subjects; and the
writings of Juan de Barros, Castaneda, Osorius, and Maffaeus, detail the
operations of Diogo Lopez de Sequeira at Pedir and Pase in 1509, and
those of the great Alfonso de Alboquerque at the same places, in 1511,
immediately before his attack upon Malacca. Debarros also enumerates the
names of twenty of the principal places of the island with considerable
precision, and observes that the peninsula or chersonesus had the epithet