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To the two brothers was paid a gratification of two thousand crusadoes to each of them, and a thousand to Nicolas Coelho. When he took leave of them, his boat lay on its oars until they disappeared, as is shown in the painting of his city of Lisbon. Vasco da Gama went in the ship São Rafael, and Paulo da Gama in the São Gabriel, and Nicolas Coelho in the other ship, São Miguel.
To pursue our story. At Turin I lodged in a private house with the Abbe Gama, who had been expecting me. In spite of the good abbe's sermon on economy, I took the whole of the first floor, and a fine suite it was. We discussed diplomatic topics, and he assured me that I should be accredited in May, and that he would give me instructions as to the part I was to play.
During the first half of the fifteenth century the Portuguese were most enterprising in the work of discovery, and before 1500 they had searched the western coast of Africa, passed the equator, and seen the Cape of Good Hope, which Vasco da Gama doubled in 1497, on his way to India.
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.
Having thus procured a pilot, and provided all things necessary for the voyage, De Gama departed from Melinda for Calicut, on Friday the 26th of April 1498 , and immediately made sail directly across the gulf which separates Africa from India, which is 750 leagues . This golf runs a long way up into the land northwards; but our course for Calicut lay to the east . In following this voyage, our men saw the north star next Sunday, which they had not seen of a long while; and they saw the stars about the south pole at the same time.
The infidels had laughed at this prediction for a long time, not believing that it would ever be accomplished, and indeed looking on it as a kind of impossibility that it should; yet it was accomplished, and that so justly, that when Don Vasco de Gama set foot on the Indies, the sea, which sometimes usurps upon the continent, and gains by little and little on the dry land, was by that time risen to the pillar, so as to bathe its lower parts.
It was on Saturday, the 8th of July, 1497, the anchors being weighed and the sails loosed, that Vasco da Gama proceeded down the Tagus on his memorable voyage. He first steered so as to reach the Cape de Verde Islands, where he had ordered the ships to rendezvous in case of separation.
The idea that they were in the midst of a Christian population was so rooted in the minds of all the members of the expedition, that Gama, on passing by a pagoda on the way, entered it to perform his devotions.
In the year 1497, the king appointed Vasco de la Gama, as chief captain for the voyage, an experienced navigator, who had done great service, and a man of great valour, well fitted for executing the great enterprize intended by the king. Paulo de la Gama, brother to the captain-general, and Nicholas Coello, both men of valour and enterprise, were appointed the other captains of the squadron.
Within four years of the discovery of the West India Islands by Columbus, Cabot had sailed past Newfoundland, and Vasco da Gama had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and laid the foundation of the Portuguese empire in the East Indies. In 1499 Ojeda, one of the companions of Columbus, and Amerigo Vespucci discovered Brazil. In 1500 Cortereal, a Portuguese, explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
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