– Joaquim Magalhães de Castro
The epic journey of Fathers Grueber and D’Orville had begun long before, in Lisbon, April 1657, in the company of seventeen other Jesuits (including the Flemish Ferdinand Verbiest) who would arrive in Macau on July 17, 1658, after a long and arduous journey during which several lost their lives.
As was common practice among newcomers to the East, D’Orville spent some time in Macau working on learning the Chinese language. He would later be sent as a missionary to Shanxi province, and from there he was called to Beijing, as he was chosen to accompany Johann Grueber on his return trip to Europe.
But it was not just any trip. In Rome, Grueber had the task of defending the good name of the Jesuit astronomer Adam Schall, against whom was pending the serious charge of “promoting superstitious practices” (motivated by his work on the elaboration of the Chinese calendar), the famous Question of Rites that would provoke so many conflicts.
Traveling on the seas was, at that time, an increasingly difficult and insecure task. Having lost the commercial monopoly, the Portuguese were quickly being replaced by the Dutch. So the priests decided to try an exploratory trip by land. If successful, missionaries would now have a safe alternative to reach China.
The first leg of the journey would take them to Goa. Grueber and D’Orville left Beijing on April 13, 1661 and arrived in the capital of Tibet three months later, spending the cold months of October and November there. Throughout the busy journey, D’Orville made several geographical notes, accurately determining the longitude and latitude of the places where they passed.
From Tibet, the travelers crossed the Himalayan chain and entered the kingdom of Nepal, having stayed in Kathmandu for a month (January 1662).
From there, they went down to the Ganges River basin, entered India on 8 February – visits to Patna and Benares – before arriving in Agra (31 March), the former capital of the Mongol empire. D’Orville, however, exhausted from the journey and seriously ill, would eventually die a week later.
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