In 1953 Academician Damião Peres published the 1684 text, together with a 1669 text, which he proved to be by the same author, being an earlier and shorter version of the same account. He further proved that the author’s name was Francisco de Lemos Coelho, and he briefly discussed Lemos Coelho’s life and career. Three long notes on the Portuguese administration of Guinea in the seventeenth century concluded this edition, no attempt being made to annotate the text in detail. But the 1973 French translation of the first chapter of the 1684 text, by Nize Izabel de Moraes, was accompanied by full annotation and some useful comments on the author’s life. The texts published in 1953 were transcribed from manuscripts preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon. The 1669 text exists in autograph, the 1684 text, which is - as I shall shortly demonstrate - an extended more often than an updated version, exists only in a copy made, a little after 1700, by a writer who occasionally interpolated comments of his own. As the fuller text, the 1684 version has been chosen for the translation; but differences between the two versions will be detailed in the present edition.
P.E.H. Hair, editor (1985)



























