[转帖] [2011.12.17] Early colonial adventures 奇范特的奇幻冒险之旅

showcraft

http://www.ecocn.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=61945
Early colonial adventures
早期殖民冒险

Pirate, colonist, slave
海盗、殖民者、奴隶

The admirable adventures and strange fortunes of Master Anthony Knivet
安东尼•奇范特船长的可敬的奇幻冒险之旅

Dec 17th 2011 | from the print edition



ONE cold morning in 1591 an English sailor found himself shivering on Ilhabella, now an island of yacht clubs and well-appointed weekend houses that is to Brazil what Martha’s Vineyard is to America. He had been left for dead—again—the fourth or fifth time Fate had deserted him in his short career as a pirate. He survived for eight days by catching crabs in his stockings and cooking them over a fire, and then for a further two weeks by picking at the carcass of a beached whale.

1591年某个寒冷清晨，一个英国水手发现自己在伊利亚贝拉岛醒来并瑟瑟发抖，伊岛现在是巴西设施完备的一个岛屿，有不少游艇俱乐部和周末度假房，如同美国的玛莎葡萄园岛。在有限的海盗生涯中他再次濒临绝境，他都记不清这是第四次或是第五次他一个人面对死亡。在岛上前八天里，他用袜子捕捉螃蟹，并在火上烤来吃；后来二星期他找到了一个搁浅的鲸鱼尸体，以鱼肉为食活了下来。

He was naked, alone but for the savages who lurked inland and a man-eating dragon he had spotted in the shallows, and far from Virginia, where England would subsequently found a colony: here was a man in the wrong hemisphere at the wrong time. Yet painful as they were to him, Anthony Knivet’s misfortunes offer a fascinating, if mostly overlooked, insight into an early stage of colonialism. Unusually, Knivet was both an exponent and a victim of it. He experienced both the thrill and enchantment of contact with remote tribes and the brutality of enslavement. And he recorded all that (with the odd embellishment) in his memoir.

他衣不覆体，得独自面对潜伏内陆的野人，还在浅滩发现一种食人龙，这里离弗吉尼亚州还很远，英格兰后来在那里开发了一个殖民地：但这次他一个人在错误的时间，到了错误的半球。从故事大局上看安东尼•奇范特经历了一些痛苦、有些不幸，但同时这是一个引人入胜的经历，使他内窥到殖民主义早期阶段。不同寻常的是，奇范特同时是它的受害者也是陈述者。他近距离接触了偏远部落和奴役制度暴行，经历可谓惊悚，却令人着迷。他在他的回忆录中记录了所有点滴（有些奇特的修饰描写）。



Brazil at the end of the 16th century was an inhospitable place. Its original inhabitants, who had first encountered the Portuguese in 1500 when a group of sailors landed and claimed the territory for their king, were coming to the conclusion that their new neighbours made unreliable allies in intertribal wars. Even more offputtingly, the European newcomers spread smallpox, which proved fatal to people who had not had their immune systems tested by centuries of living with children and other animals under the same roofs.

在16世纪末，巴西还是一个荒凉之地。它的原始居民在1500年遭遇第一次批登陆的葡萄牙水手，这些葡萄牙人声称这里是他们的国王的领土，后来他们下结论说这些新邻居部族间充满战争，是不可靠的盟友。更加不堪的情况是，欧洲来人带来了天花，这后来证明对当地人群是致命的，因为当地人在此以前没有与其他人种、动物数百年一起生活的经历，免疫力低下。

For their part, the Portuguese colonists—disappointed that the instant riches promised by the new world had proved elusive—were knuckling down to the hard work of oppressing the natives, forcing them to work in sugar mills. A majority of their settlements had failed, and in some cases Portuguese leaders had been cornered and ritually executed (the first bishop of Brazil must have tasted particularly sweet to the Caeté tribesmen who ate him in 1556). The memory of the very first encounter between Europeans and Indians, at which the two groups exchanged hats and waved their arms around to communicate, had faded.

从另一方面来说，葡萄牙殖民者颇为失望，幻想的新世界一夕暴富，被证明是白日梦，他们狠下心来压榨当地人辛苦劳动，逼迫他们在制糖厂工作。他们的大多数都以失败告终，在某些情况下一些葡萄牙领队被围追堵截，甚至按照当地仪式被处死（在1556卡埃特部族吃掉了巴西的第一任主教，想必他的肉是甜的罢）。最初的画面渐渐淡去：当时欧洲人和印第安人首度见面，互相交换帽子、舞动双臂表示友好。

To add to the problems of the Portuguese living in Brazil, the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns under Philip II made them a legitimate target for English privateers such as Sir Thomas Cavendish, the commander of the small flotilla of five ships that transported our hero to Brazil. Cavendish had already sailed around the world, crossing the Atlantic, passing through the Strait of Magellan at the tip of South America and then working his way through the Pacific, round the Cape of Good Hope and back to Plymouth. This success, which brought him fame and a knighthood, must have raised the expectations of Knivet and the other sailors on his expedition. Cavendish’s last crew had set off from England wearing wool and leather and returned dressed in Asian silks.

西班牙和葡萄牙皇族联盟的菲利普二世要求他们成为征服巴西的英雄，要把一些英国舰队比下去，譬如当托马斯•卡文迪什爵士带领的五支舰队，这给刚登陆巴西的葡萄牙人带来了更多的麻烦。此时卡文迪什已经在世界各地航行，横渡大西洋，通过南美洲南端的麦哲伦海峡，转经太平洋途，绕过好望角回到普利茅斯。这一成功这给他带来了名声和爵位，由此奇范特和其他远征水手的期望值也水涨船高。卡文迪什的最后一批船员从英格兰出发，身穿皮毛，待回归英国，身着亚洲丝绸。

The voyage of 1591 started well enough. The boats sailed down to Portugal and on to the Canary Islands, then considered the easiest point of departure for a transatlantic crossing. Heading farther south they stalled in the doldrums—a zone close to the equator that can becalm ships and rattle aircraft—for nearly a month, before a sturdy wind carried them to Brazil in 20 days.

1591年那次航行起初非常顺利。船航行到葡萄牙加那利群岛，当时此岛被认为是横渡大西洋口岸的最佳起航点。他们往南，在无风带止步不前——这是赤道附近的一个区域，往往风平浪静、万里无云，航行了近一个月之后突然遭遇到一个飓风，在20天内将他们带到了巴西。

On making landfall the sailors began to fight each other over food. Knivet reports that when one man got hold of a good chunk of meat he would drag it off to a hole or to “the Wildernesse under some Trees”, and stay there until there was nothing left but bones. The long crossing, the distance from home, and the scarcity of comforts for men who must have spent the previous weeks dreaming of plenty, had eroded the conventions of polite society in just under two months.

登陆的水手们开始互相抢夺食物。奇范特记录道，当一个人得到一大块肉，他会带着它躲到一个洞里，或是一些野生树丛里，并待在那里直到吃得只剩下骨头。长途旅行、家路遥远、环境恶劣，与他们此前所幻想的物资充沛反差强烈，才二个月时间就使他们把之前文明社会的礼教丢得一干二净。

Captivity and compassion

囚禁和怜悯

Their stomachs filled, the English plotted their first raid on a Portuguese settlement. The port of Santos—now Brazil’s biggest and home to a celebrated football team, whose black and white shirt was made famous by Pelé—was then a village with a collection of sugar mills attached. Knivet and his comrades waited for the church bell to ring for mass, then rushed ashore. They rounded up some 300 men, women and children in church and took temporary control of the place. Their stocks replenished and some sugar mills destroyed, they moved on to the town of São Vicente, burning mills as they went.

当肚子填饱了，英国人策划了第一次对葡萄牙人的突袭。桑托斯港——现在巴西最大的一个著名足球队主场，他们黑白相间的球衣因贝利而出名，当时当地只是个小村庄附带一个制糖厂。奇范特和他的战友们等待着教堂的钟声敲响集合群众，他们冲到岸上，把大约300人围捕在教堂，其中包括妇女和儿童，并暂时取得了此地的控制权。他们用袜子装满抢来的东西，并毁掉了制糖厂，后来他们搬到圣维森特镇，他们走了一路烧了一路。

At this point a problem familiar to invaders of many lands, past and present, reared its head. The party was big enough to terrorize and capture some Portuguese settlements, but too small to hold on to them. The English returned to their ships at Santos and set off towards the Plata river, on whose banks Buenos Aires now sits. The Plata is navigable for hundreds of miles and would therefore allow Cavendish and his ships to explore inland, and perhaps find some of the gold and silver that always seemed to lie beyond the next set of hills.

此时麻烦来了，对侵略者来说，不管是过去还是现在，他们都得面对相同的问题。侵略者恐吓和围捕葡萄牙居民是绰绰有余了，但要管制好他们还是显得力不从心。英国人返回停在桑托斯的船只，起程发向拉普拉塔河，如今这条河岸上座落着著名的布宜诺斯艾利斯。马德普拉塔沿河航行数百英里，卡文迪什和他的船队循着这个航线去探索内陆，在沿岸许多丘陵后貌似可以找到更多的黄金白银。

A storm blew up and two of the ships collided. The weather was freezing; Knivet reports getting frostbite and twice almost being flung overboard by powerful waves. Their rigs shredded, the remaining boats limped back to Santos. This time the Portuguese were not in church. The Englishmen who went ashore in search of food were killed. Knivet, who stayed on board, escaped only to be shipwrecked again, and to begin his diet of crab and whale meat in solitary confinement on the beach.

一场暴风雨不期而至，他们两艘船撞在一起。天气使人冻僵。奇范特记录了冻伤，有二次几乎被大浪撞击掉下船去。。船帆被撕成丝缕，船体很艰难地返回到桑托斯。这一次葡萄牙人没有在教堂里。上岸去寻找食物的英国人被葡萄牙人杀死。 奇范特当时留在船上，逃过一劫，随后却遭遇了船只失事，并在沙滩上单独开始他的节食之旅：仅以螃蟹、鲸鱼肉为食。

With no prospect of returning home he could either surrender to the Portuguese—who might or might not execute him—or try his luck with the Indians. Sleeping by a fire one night, before he had made his choice, Knivet woke to find a tribesman by his side. This Indian led him along the beach to a headland, which the two of them rounded with Knivet, who could not swim, clinging to the man’s back like a child in a swimming pool. Once back on land, the Indian whistled to his companions, who appeared on the cliff top. There was a Portuguese too, the master of the man Knivet thought was rescuing him. He spared Knivet’s life, but sent him to work as a slave at a sugar mill in Rio de Janeiro.

回家的机会渺茫，他要么向葡萄牙人投降，不知道他们会不会处死他，要么试试与与印第安人生活，这要看他的运气了。在他做出选择的前一晚在火堆边入睡，醒来发现他身边有一个部落男子。这个印第安男子带领他沿着海滩到达一个海岬角，他们抱成一团过河，奇范特不会游泳，抱住男人的肩背就像一个孩子在游泳池。一回到陆地上，印第安人便吹哨子召唤，他的同伴出现在悬崖上。他们部落也有一个葡萄牙人，奇范特开始以为是他是主派来拯救他的。他的确救了奇范特的命，但把他作为一个奴隶带到里约热内卢一个糖厂工作。

Sugar was to Portuguese Brazil as gold and silver were to the Spanish in Mexico and the Andes, or as tobacco would later be to the English in Virginia. An earlier generation of Portuguese colonists had refined a system of forced labour to grow cash crops on the islands of São Tomé and Madeira. This model was replicated in Brazil, initially with Indians providing the labour in place of the Africans who had performed the role in the earlier experiments. Later it would spread to the Caribbean, and from there to the American South.

糖对于居住在巴西的葡萄牙人来说如同黄金，就象白银对于居住在墨西哥和安第斯山脉中的西班牙人而言，或是后来烟草对于弗吉尼亚州的英国人。早期的葡萄牙殖民者逐渐在圣多美和马德拉群岛形成了一套强迫人们耕作经济植物的制度。这种模式被复制在巴西，最初是使用印第安人来替代早期实验中的非洲人进行劳动。后来，这个制度推广到加勒比地区，从那里传到到美国南方地区。

Turning a field of sugar cane into the granules that sweeten hot drinks is hard work. The cane, which must be cut back-strainingly close to the ground, contains sharp fibres that lacerate ungloved hands. Once the field is cleared the stubs of cane are burned, giving off a thick black smoke that hangs over the land. The cane must be crushed and its juices boiled until all that is left is a dense syrup, which can then be refined into sugar. Most of the slaves who did this work have left no written trace of their activities, so Knivet’s descriptions of the life of a mill worker are interesting. “I had neither meat nor clothes,” he reports, “but blows as many as Galley slaves.”

将田里的甘蔗变为甜香热饮中的糖粒是项艰苦的工作。收割甘蔗时必须把它弯压到接近地面，未带任何手套防护的手被锐利的纤维划破。当收割完成后，地里甘蔗的存根被烧毁，在地里冒起滚滚黑烟。甘蔗要经过粉碎，置入煮沸、蒸干成浓缩的糖浆，然后才可以提炼成糖。以前从事这项劳作的奴隶，大部分都没有留下文字描写他们的活动，所以奇范特对于制糖工人的生活描述还是很有意思的。他写道，“我既没有肉吃，也没有衣服穿，但象囚犯一样工作。”

Passed from one master to a second, Knivet was eventually trusted to trade with the local Tupi-speaking Indian tribes. The story of first contacts between such tribes and the Portuguese was one of desire for metal tools trumping well-founded suspicion of white men. These exchanges were invariably the prelude to full-scale conquest, as co-operation between Indians and colonists broke down and conflict, slavery and land clearances ensued. In the first century of Portuguese colonisation, perhaps 90% of Brazil’s original population of some 5m Indians (according to the best guess) was wiped out through disease and warfare. Knivet would have taken some tools with him, along with other trinkets, and was expected to come back with slaves.

从第一个主人转手到第二个主人，奇范特后来得到信任，被委托与讲图皮语的当地印第安部落进行贸易。这些部落和葡萄牙之间的第一次接触缘自于冷兵器企图战胜装备精良的犹疑的白人男子。这些易货贸易往往是大规模征服的前奏，印地安人和殖民者之间的合作停滞不前，矛盾越来越多，奴隶制冲突和土地争端接踵而来。在葡萄牙殖民统治的第一个百年，巴西的原始人口的90％，约五百万印第安人（据乐观估计）因疾病和战争而灭亡。连同其他杂物，奇范特本指望换回一些工具，却没想到与奴隶一起回来了。
His first expedition took him to a village where he was ushered into a great hall and told to sit in a hammock. (In the 20th century, before such contact was frowned upon, anthropologists went into remote Indian villages and filmed similar halls: the roofs were made from finely woven palm fronds held up by poles, the floors covered in smooth red earth.) After some time waiting in his “net”, 20 women appeared, wailing. An elderly chief, his body painted red and black, followed. His cheeks and lower lip were pierced and ornamented with a “faire green stone”. He beat his thigh and chest and cried out. Then food was produced.

他的第一次征途来到了一个村庄，他被带到一个高大的殿堂，他被告知要坐到一个吊床里面。（在20世纪之前，这样的接触是令人难以想象的，后为人类学家走进偏远的印第安村落，拍摄到类似的殿堂：其屋顶是精心编织的棕榈叶片，由树杆支起，地面覆盖着平滑的红土。）他在他的“窝”里等了一些时候，来了20名妇女出现了，口中念念有词。随后一位老酋长登场，他的身体涂成红黑二色。他的脸颊和下唇刺孔装饰着“手工绿宝石”。他拍着大腿和胸膛，开始哭泣。而后食物被端了上来。



It is hard to know what to make of this ceremony, though it is possible that it marked the adoption of Knivet into the tribe, rather like the ritual performed by the Powhatans and misunderstood by Captain John Smith in Virginia a few decades later.If so, his affiliation proved temporary; he returned to Rio with around 70 slaves in tow.

很难知道个仪式是什么用意，它可能意味着奇范特被接纳进入部落，而不是几十年后在弗吉尼亚州被约翰•史密斯上尉误解波瓦坦仪式。如果是这样，他的归属关系被证明只是暂时的；他回到里约热内卢，带领着约70个奴隶。

The life of a slave trader was less grim than a mill worker’s, but Knivet was still a thousand leagues from Plymouth and as far as ever from making his fortune. When he heard that Richard Hawkins, son of Sir John Hawkins, an early slave trader and architect of the Elizabethan navy, was nearby, he tried to escape and join the ship. But Knivet’s small boat was dashed on the rocks and he was soon recaptured.

奴隶贩子的生活要比工厂工人要好一些，但奇范特仍只是从普利茅斯来的千名劳工之一，远未到给自己赚钱。当他听说，早期的奴隶贩子和伊丽莎白女王舰队的建筑师理查德•霍金斯（约翰•霍金斯爵士的儿子）就在附近，他试图逃跑并企图加入那只舰队。但奇范特的小船被水流卷到岩石撞毁，他很快就被抓回。

This time his punishment was harsher. Initially condemned to death “as a Runaway and a Lutheran”, his life was spared thanks to the intercession of Jesuit priests.

这一次对他的处罚是极为严厉的。最初他被判处死刑“作为一个逃犯和一个路德”，他的免于处死多亏了耶稣会教士的代为祷告。

Neither meat nor clothes, but blows as many as Galley slaves The Jesuits, who were also early colonists in Brazil, had a tense relationship with the Portuguese planters, who disapproved of the monks’ habit of herding potential Indian slaves into mission towns for the salvation of their souls. Spared death, Knivet was whipped in public, imprisoned and then sent back to a sugar mill with iron hoops tied around his legs lest he try to escape again.

没有肉食，也没有衣服，象囚犯一样苦干。耶稣会士也是早期巴西殖民者之一，与葡萄牙种植园主有一些早期的紧密关系，种植园主并不赞同教会的一些做法，比如让一些印第安人到他们的避难所，说是救赎他们的灵魂。幸免一死后，奇范特被处以公众鞭苔，并被监禁，然后送回一个制糖厂，他的腿上被套上脚镣以免他再次企图逃跑。



Close encounters

The manager of this mill beat Knivet repeatedly. “I grew desperate and careless what I did to end my life,” he writes. One cold night he fell asleep for half an hour by the furnace used to boil the juice from the sugar cane. The manager beat him so hard that Knivet thought his ribs were broken. He leapt up, grasped his master close, and with a knife that he had been carrying for the purpose “hurt him in the side, the back, and the arm”. Convinced that he had killed the man (he hadn’t), and by now freed from the leg irons, he ran off into the forest.

糖厂老板反复鞭打奇范特，他写道 “我越来越绝望，并不介意以何种方式来结束我的生命。”一个寒冷的夜晚，他在从甘蔗汁提炼糖浆的炉子边睡着了半小时。工头狠狠地鞭打他，奇范特感觉自己的肋骨被打断了。他斜斜地站起来，一把抓住工头，用一把刻意藏身的刀子“剌在他侧身、背部、和手臂”。他感觉自己已经杀了该名男子（事实上他并没有死），他打开脚镣，逃跑进森林。

Pursued by his captors, Knivet recounts that he hid in a tree for two days. Wandering alone along a beach once more, he met another man who had run away from his master, an Indian called Quarisisacupa. “Never man found truer friendship of any then I did of him,” he writes. Together they wandered inland, a journey through a wilderness supposedly populated by leopards (this is plausible, as jaguars do live in Brazil), lions (which do not), crocodiles (just about possible), sirurucus (a large, venomous cobra that now faces extinction) and other serpents.

被捕捉者追踪，奇范特回忆说，他有两天藏在一棵树里。又一次沿海滩独自游荡，他遇到了另一个从主人那里逃走的奴隶，一个叫Quarisisacupa的印第安男子。“我以前不大相信真正的友谊，直到我遇到了他。”他写道。他们一起跋涉回到内陆，他们穿过一大片荒原，平时被认为有豹出没（这是可能的，因为巴西有美洲虎生存），狮子（不可能），鳄鱼（大约可能），sirurucus（一种大型、带毒的眼镜蛇，现在濒临灭绝）和其他毒蛇。

The lion, like the dragon in the shallows off Ilhabella, might have been an irresistible invention by a writer whose audience would have expected travellers to the new world to come back with tales of exotic beasts. Or perhaps it was a hallucination—or merely a case of misidentification by someone who had never seen one before. In any case, the beast is a rare impostor in a story that otherwise fits with other contemporary accounts, even if no other witnesses to Knivet’s own wanderings have left anything by way of corroboration. Some other early writers about Brazil were far more imaginative: despite never actually existing, a fierce tribe of female warriors were reported so often that they have a giant river named after them (the Amazon).

狮子、如同伊岛的食人龙，大概是作家虚构出来的，因为读者往往期待读到新世界旅游和异国情调的野兽故事。也许这是他的一种幻想，或者只是一个人误认了一种从没碰到过的生物。在不少情况下，野生物很难捏造的，必须与同时代的描写相一致，即使没有其他证人来佐证奇范特的行迹。一些有关巴西的其他早期作家或许更富有想象力的：不管它有没有真实发生过，他们描写过一个有不少女斗士的勇猛部落，并以他们的名字命名了一条大河（即亚马逊河）。

Knivet and Quarisisacupa made their way back to the Indian village where he had been welcomed before and found the same chief in charge. They stayed for nine months, one of the longest sojourns by an outsider with a Brazilian tribe until the invention of anthropologists. Knivet gives frustratingly few details of what life was like, though it is clear he enjoyed himself enough to want to stay. At one point he made a speech to the tribesmen, denouncing the Portuguese for their cruelty and duplicity, and imploring them, like a tropical Henry V, to join him in battle against them.

奇范特和Quarisisacupa找到了回来的路，回到之前受到过欢迎的印第安村落，发现那个酋长仍在。他们在那呆了九个月，他是巴西人类学家的发现的在印第安部落逗留时间最长的外来人之一。尽管奇范特对一些生活细节描写比较令人沮丧，但显然他愿意在这里呆更长时间。关于此点他部落里做了一次讲话，谴责葡萄牙殖民者的残酷和口是心非，并象热情的亨利五世一样恳求他们加入他在对葡萄牙人的战斗。

When the Portuguese did come, to trade rather than fight, their knives and axes again proved too shiny to resist. This time Knivet was one of the goods traded in return for tools, despite entreating the Portuguese commander “to give me leave to end my life amongst the Cannibals”.

当葡萄牙人真的到来，来贸易，而不是来战斗，他们的刀和斧头再次证明只是个闪亮的摆设。这次奇范特被作为一个货物，与真正的货物进行交换，尽管他向葡萄牙指挥官恳求道“将我留下，让我在食人族里结束我的生命。”

Bloudie crueltie and Heathen mercy

铁腕手段和异教徒怜悯

Knivet was pressed into service once more as a slave-gatherer. It might seem odd that someone who compared “the bloudie crueltie of Christian Portugals” unfavorably with “the Heathen mercy of savage Man-eaters” should use his understanding of tribal customs and languages to boost Brazil’s sugar production so barbarically. But slavery was part of the furniture of European minds until well into the 18th century; and besides, he must have had little choice in the matter.

奇范特又一次被一个奴隶主奴役强迫劳动。尽管他把“野蛮食人族的异教徒怜悯”不恰当地和“葡萄牙基督教铁腕手段”作比较显得很不伦不类，或者他应该运用他对部落习俗和语言的理解，来粗暴地提高巴西的糖产量。但直到进入18世纪，奴隶就象是欧洲人心目中的一件家具；除此，他在这个问题上没有选择余地。

This work took him farther afield, where he encountered stranger tribes: “when I saw them first,” he writes of one group, “I thought they had been borne with feathers on their heads and bodies, like fowles of the aire”. Knivet drew on these adventures to write one of the earliest contributions to the ethnography of the continent, which forms an annex to his brief memoir.

这项劳作把他带到更远的地方，在那里他遇到陌生的部落：“当我第一次见到他们”他描写其中一个部落道 “我以为他们头上身上的羽毛都是与生俱来的，如同亚耳河边的家禽一般。”奇范特是早期去美洲探险并关注到人种学的，这也是他的回忆录的贡献之一。



He did eventually make it back to England, though not before another failed escape had taken him across the Atlantic, to Portuguese Angola, and back again. What became of him after his homecoming is unclear. But the story he wrote was published by Richard Hakluyt, a director of the Virginia Company and enthusiastic lobbyist for empire, in 1625. It has been oddly neglected by English-speaking historians: at the time of writing Knivet has no Wikipedia entry in English, a sure sign of obscurity.

他最终千里迢迢回到英国，虽然在此之前不久他进行了一次失败的逃亡，未成功横跨大西洋抵达葡萄牙安哥拉，只得返回。他归家后的际遇没有说明。他写的故事发表在1625年，由弗吉尼亚公司董事理查德•Hakluyt出版，他也是英帝国的热情游说政客。奇怪的是这个故事一直被以英语为母语的历史学家所忽视：奇范特在写作时并没有英文维基百科条目，或许这也是一个原因。

His voyages belong to the first age of globalisation, before the success of colonial ventures seemed guaranteed, and before the borders drawn by European expansion hardened into the familiar form they have today. Knivet moved easily between the worlds of the Portuguese and the Indians: he greatly preferred the latter. His compassion for them and horror at their treatment forms part of a thin but tough thread of sympathy running through the colonization of the Americas—from the sermon given on Hispaniola by Antonio de Montesinos in 1511, to Montaigne’s essay “On The Cannibals” in 1580, through to the movements to abolish slavery and, some would add, to modern conceptions of human rights.

他的航行是全球化时代的开篇，之后前殖民地企业冒险的成功似乎得到了保证，欧洲扩张殖民地并划分出地域界限这是我们现代所熟知的。当时奇范特轻松游走于葡萄牙人和印第安人的世界之间：他非常倾向于后者。他对印第安人持有同情，并对美洲殖民化进程中的缺乏同情心的粗暴做法表示厌恶。1511年伊斯帕尼奥拉岛的安东尼奥•德•蒙特西诺斯发表了说道，1580年蒙田的短文《在食人族》，之后通过运动达成废除奴隶制，或许还要加上：以现代人权观念。

Knivet’s tale offers a glimpse of how a different history—collaborative rather than repressive—might have unfolded. The timing of its publication makes it probable that some of the Puritans who took part in the Great Migration of the 1630s would have read it before they set out. If so, they might well have expected to make a better job of relations with the natives than had the horrid Portuguese Catholics. They didn’t.

奇范特的故事提供了一个不同于历史的视角，是如何协作、而不是如何压迫，亦可能是惊鸿一瞥。它的出版时间，可能发生于17世纪30年代，或者当时大迁徙清教徒才会阅读到它。若是这样，他们可能已经与当地人做好融和，远比可怕的葡萄牙天主教统治做得更好。事实上，他们并没有做到。

from the print edition | Christmas Specials


译完这个，我就晕了，好长，而且也不熟，译得乱糟糟的。这一周好累，不是说这个翻译累，主要是工作上的事情。偶要变成鼠标手了……