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Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese navigator, was the first to reach the East Indies, in 1498; but his countrymen never did much trading here, being more intent upon securing the rich treasures of the Indies. As early as 1600 the English turned their attention in this direction.
The husband came in at supper-time, and as she had often talked to him about me he rushed to embrace me as soon as he heard my name. He was an intelligent man, like most of the pagletti of Naples. We supped together like old friends, and the Abbe Gama going soon after supper I stayed with them till midnight, promising to join them at dinner the next day.
"That's the enterprise that will go through. Now that Portugal and Vasco da Gama are actually in at the door, it behooves us more and more it behooves us," said Bartolomeo Colombo, "to find India of All the Wealth! Spain no less than Portugal wants the gold and diamonds, the drugs and spices, the fine, thin, painted cloths, the carved ivory and silver and amber.
According to De Faria, the hostages demanded on this occasion were six principal men of the Bramin cast, whose names were brought from Portugal by Cabral, by the advice of Bontaybo or Moncayde, the Moor who went off with De Gama. Astl. I. 43. b. Named by De Faria, Coje Cimireci. Astl. I. 44, a.
This was to a certain extent neutralized by the interference of the United States warships in the harbour of Rio on behalf of some merchant vessels of their nationality threatened by the revolutionary squadron. By this means the rebels lost prestige, and the situation of Admiral da Gama, who had been left in command of the rebel fleet, became serious.
Gama recalled the men, and sailed forward to meet the Hindoos, who made the greatest haste to flee from him, but not without leaving a boat laden with cocoa, and provisions, in the hands of the Portuguese. On arriving at the Laccadive Archipelago, Gama had the Berrio recalked, and his own ship drawn up on shore for repairs.
In the paucity of authentic information respecting these discoveries, it seems proper to insert the following abstract of the journal of a Portuguese pilot to the island of St Thomas, as inserted by Ramusio, previous to the voyage of Vasco de Gama, but of uncertain date; although, in the opinion of the ingenious author of the Progress of Maritime Discover, this voyage seems to have been performed between the years 1520 and 1540.
And the very successes of the Portuguese under Vasco da Gama, bringing from their eastern course the expectancy of Asia's wealth, intensely excited the Spaniards to renew their western search. The Portuguese, led around the Cape of Good Hope, had brought home vast treasures from the East, while the Spanish discoverers, as yet, had not reached the countries either of Montezuma or of the Inca.
His voice, manner, and all about him told me that I had known him, and in fact I soon recognized him as the Abbe Gama, whom I had left at Rome seventeen years before with Cardinal Acquaviva; but I pretended not to recognize him, and indeed he had aged greatly.
Polo had roamed far into the East; but as yet Diaz and da Gama had not crowned the hopes which so often drew Henry the Navigator to his Portuguese headland. In the world of thought the conception of uniformity in Nature, though formed and to some extent accepted among the advanced, was still quite outside the ordinary mind.
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