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Vasco da Gama took great care of this, personally, and by means of his servants and relations in whom he trusted; and this they attended to with much greater solicitude after they heard the sailors say that they were many, and the captains only a few single men, and in fact they had in their minds such an intention of rising up against the captains, and by force putting back to Portugal, and they thought that, if it became necessary to arrest them for this and bring them before the King, he would have mercy upon them, and, should they not find mercy, they preferred rather to die there where their wives and children and fathers were, and in their native country, and not in the sea to be eat by the fishes.
The choice could scarcely be doubtful, and Vasco da Gama was unanimously chosen to take the command of the powerful armament which was in preparation. Vasco had ten ships under his own immediate command, while his second brother Stephen da Gama, and his cousin Vincent Sodrez, had each five ships under his orders, but they were both to recognise Vasco da Gama as their chief.
While thus employed, a floating object, which looked like a large raft, was seen approaching from the main coast, covered over with branches. Vasco da Gama's suspicions being aroused, he inquired of the fishermen what it was.
Further, he had heard of fresh attractions on the coast, in the shape of ruins, both Portuguese and Persian; those places from which, in former ages, the Portuguese who had been led there by the adventurous Vasco de Gama, and were the first European occupants of these dark lands were driven southwards by the Arabs.
Five years later a Portuguese sea-adventurer, Vasco da Gama, turned the prow of his caravel south from the mouth of the Tagus, skirted the coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean, and dropped his anchor in the harbor of Calicut the first European to reach the beckoning East by sea.
He would have been proud to receive such guests, but since he has not yet had this good fortune and you have passed him by, he sends you as a pledge of affection these small pieces of gold." With courteous smiles they presented to Vasco thirty patenas of pure gold, saying they would give him still more if he would come to visit them.
Bartlett's suggestive article in your issue of August 30. But a sufficient number of well-established facts are known to account for all the peculiarities and vagaries of cholera. Cholera has existed in Hindostan for centuries. It was found there by Vasco da Gama in 1496, and there is a perfectly authentic history of it from that time down to the present.
But, before Vasco de Gama had availed himself of this discovery to spread his sails in the Indian seas, Spain entered on her glorious career, and sent Columbus across the western waters. The object of the great navigator was still the discovery of a route to India, but by the west instead of the east.
Without a chart, without a compass, guided only in their daring voyages by their knowledge of the stars, these bold mariners penetrated to the shores of Scythia in one direction; to Britain, if not even to the Baltic, in another; in a third to the Fortunate Islands; while, in a fourth, they traversed the entire length of the Red Sea, and entering upon the Southern Ocean, succeeded in doubling the Cape of Storms two thousand years before Vasco di Gama, and in effecting the circumnavigation of Africa.
Vasco took possession of the house of Chiapes, and seized most of those who had been captured while attempting to escape. He sent several of them to invite their cacique to return; they were told to promise him peace, friendship, and kind treatment, but if he did not come, it would mean his ruin and the destruction of his people and country.
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