Borges (Gaspar)

‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) devotes eight long pages to one Gaspar Borges who, after the sack by the French pirates, unspiked the artillery pieces. These had been judged completely useless, and to everyone’s great amazement he managed to restore them to their original use. Judging by the detail into which Frutuoso goes and the praise with which he extols Gaspar Borges’s work, he must indeed have been a most skilful mechanic of uncommon competence, whatever hyperbole there may be in the chronicler’s account. To us it seems very strange that Gaspar Frutuoso should have taken the detailing of the affair so far and become so enthusiastic a eulogist of the unspiking of those guns! (Anyone wishing to learn in detail of the strange skill of the notorious Borges should read ‘Longing for the Homeland’ from page 283 onwards. Marceliano Ribeiro de Mendonça published an interesting historical novel entitled Gaspar Borges, whose main protagonist is the skilful craftsman to whom ‘Longing for the Homeland’ refers at such length.