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The early part of Monte Cristo, down to the finding of the treasure, is a piece of perfect story-telling; the man never breathed who shared these moving incidents without a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing of packthread and Dantès little more than a name.
Both as in a great measure unconnected with the Portuguese transactions, and as not improbably derived from the worse than suspicious source of Fernand Mendez de Pinro, these very problematical occurrences have been kept by themselves, which indeed they are in de Faria.
Though not mentioned by De Faria, it appears that the siege was now raised; as at a subsequent period, after the natives had reduced almost the whole of the island, the kings of Candy, Uva, and Matale again laid siege to Columbo with an army of 20,000 men.
The infant Don Henry of Portugal died in 1463; so that there must have been an interval of six or seven years between the second voyage of Cada Mosto and this of Piedro de Cintra: Though de Faria seems to put this voyage as having been executed before the death of that excellent prince, yet Cada Mosto, who then actually resided at Lagos, could not be mistaken is this important particular. Astl.
As we thought it best to strike away to the S.E. from Cabango to our old friend Katema, I asked a guide from Muanzanza as soon as the funeral proceedings were over. He agreed to furnish one, and also accepted a smaller present from me than usual, when it was represented to him by Pascoal and Faria that I was not a trader.
Alas, it is not the death of the body I regret; for is not the destruction of the vital principle, the repose to which everything is tending, to which every unhappy being aspires, is not this the repose of matter after which I so long sighed, and which I was seeking to attain by the painful process of starvation when Faria appeared in my dungeon? What is death for me?
As this is the only instance within my knowledge of a military force surrendering itself and the province which it defended, to a stratagem of this nature, I shall append the documents by which a result so desirable was effected. To Don Agostinho Antonia de Faria, the commandant, I wrote as follows: Pedro Primiero, July 26, 1823.
Faria y Souza, writing in the seventeenth century, estimated the forces of Bahadur, king of Cambay, in 1534, as 100,000 horse, 415,000 foot, and 600 elephants. As late as 1762 the Mahrattas are said to have had an army of 100,000 horse.
In an instant a space three feet long by two feet broad was cleared, and Dantes could see an oaken coffer, bound with cut steel; in the middle of the lid he saw engraved on a silver plate, which was still untarnished, the arms of the Spada family viz., a sword, pale, on an oval shield, like all the Italian armorial bearings, and surmounted by a cardinal's hat; Dantes easily recognized them, Faria had so often drawn them for him.
This Michael Jougue or Joghi, is said to have been a bramin, or Malabar priest; one of these devotees who wander about the country, girt with chains and daubed with filth. Those wanderers, if idolaters, are named Jogues; and Calandars if Mahometans. Astl. I. 47. a. The rajah who then reigned at Cochin is named Triumpara, or Trimumpara, by De Faria, De Barros, and other early writers. Astl.
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