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All cried out to God for mercy upon their souls, for now they no longer took heed of their lives. It now seemed to Vasco da Gama that the time was come for making another tack, and he comforted himself very angrily, swearing that if they did not double the cape he would stand out to sea again as many times until the cape was doubled, or there should happen whatever should please God.
Unable to procure any more pepper in Cochin, Alonso de Albuquerque went to Coulan in search of that commodity, accompanied by Pedro de Tayde and Antonio del Campo, knowing that the government of that state was desirous of having one of our factories established in their city, and had solicited both Pedro Alvares Cabral and the lord admiral De Gama to that effect; and Alonso was determined to go to war with the people of Coulan unless they gave him loading for his ships.
I continued thus till the middle of May, when I left Turin, after receiving letters from the Abbe Gama to Lord Stormont, who was to represent England at the approaching Congress. It was with this nobleman that I was to work in concert at the Congress.
On setting sail from this place, De Gama left two of these exiles on shore, to inform themselves of the character and manners of the natives .
Now, none of these provinces, only Arabia, Susiana, Persis, Carmania and Gedrosia, bordered upon what the Romans called "The Red Sea," and we "The Indian Ocean"; for the ancients believed that from about twelve degrees south of the sources of the Nile, from a country named by them Agyzimba, there was a continuation of land stretching from Africa to Asia, an opinion entertained by all the old geographers, from Hipparchus to Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy, and never abandoned, until long after the death of Bracciolini, when the Portuguese under Vasco de Gama, doubling the Cape of Good Hope, and hugging the shores of eastern Africa and of Asia, reached India by the sea towards the close of the fifteenth century.
The Vedic Aryans, Persians, Greeks and hordes innumerable from Central Asia poured in century after century through the passes of the north-western mountains and after the arrival of Vasco da Gama other hordes came from Europe by sea. But the armies and fleets of India can tell no similar story of foreign victories.
One evening she desired the Abbe Gama to call me to her; she was standing near the cardinal, my patron, and the moment I approached her she caused me a strange feeling of surprise by asking me in Italian a question which I was far from anticipating: "How did you like Frascati?" "Very much, madam; I have never seen such a beautiful place."
Statutes of family descent, aided by fraud, force, and chicane, had annexed the various European sovereignties to the crown of Spain; the genius of a Genoese sailor had given to it the New World, and more recently the conquest of Portugal, torn from hands not strong enough to defend the national independence, had vested in the same sovereignty those Oriental possessions which were due to the enterprise of Vasco de Gama, his comrades and successors.
To save the officers and trained seamen as much as possible from risking their lives, da Gama begged the King to order six men who had been condemned to death to be put on board each ship, that they might be sent ashore in dangerous regions, or left in certain places, to acquire a knowledge of the language and habits of the people.
Next day one Gaspar was sent on shore to the zamorin, desiring to have a safe-conduct for a deputation from the general to wait on his highness; and along with Gaspar the four Malabars who had been carried away from Calicut by Don Vasco de la Gama were sent on shore.
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