Storia do Mogor 3.4

3.4

Catrou was not content to draw his matter from Manucci alone; he tells us in the Journal de Trevoux for 1705, p. 128, and in his first preface (p. 6), that he also had recourse to Maffei, Tossi, Texeira, Pietro della Valle, Thomas Roe, Jean de Laet, Bernier, Tavernier, and D'Herbelot. In the course of another notice on pp. 574-580 of the same volume of the Journal de Trevoux he boasts that Manucci is only the fondement of his work. He also in his preface acknowledges aid received from another M. Deslandes, connected with Tavernier's works, and still alive in 1705. This is evidently A. Daulier Deslandes, author of 'Les Beautes de la Perse' (1673), who, so far as I can find out, was never in India at all. Owing to Catrou's giving no indication of which of these sources he is at the moment using, and Manucci himself having hitherto been inaccessible, it has been impossible to know in reading 'L'Histoire' what statements are to be attributed to Manucci and what to other writers.