Pinto

Pinto, FERNAM MENDEZ, Portuguese adventurer, born at Montemor-o-Velho, near Coimbra, about 1510. When twenty-seven years of age he made his way out to India, and remained twenty-one years in the south and south-east of Asia, leading the life of an adventurous seaman, fighting pirates at one time, trading at another, and again being employed on special missions to Japan or elsewhere, his fortune often fluctuating between great wealth and poverty. He returned home to Portugal in 1558, spent much time in writing an account of his adventures, adding to them many exaggerations and gross fictions, and died at Almada near Lisbon, probably in 1583. His travels—Peregrinagem—were not published until 1614, but have since then been translated into several European languages—into English by F. Cogan in 1663. See a new abridged edition of those travels, with an introduction by A. Vamberg (1891).