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Sailing from Lisbon in 1487, he reached Algoa Bay, and without doubt passed the fortieth parallel on his southward voyage. Vasco da Gama's voyage of 1497 is too well known to need description. After him came men like Cabral and Vespucci, who increased our knowledge, and de Gonneville, who added to the romance of exploration.
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.
Quintand's account of this expedition is the best we have in Spanish literature. Vasco Nunez de Balboa was born at Xerxes, in Spain, in 1475, and died in Panama about 1517. His first visit to America was made in 1500. Ten years later he went to Darien, where he became alcalde of a new settlement. In 1512 he was made governor of San Domingo.
But theory is a charge which has ever been urged against revolutionists. Revolution is the child of speculation. The men of the seventeenth century are discoverers in politics. Their mark is a wider empire than that of Vasco da Gama and his king, a realm more wondrous than that of Aeëtes.
Vasco Nuñez habitually encouraged his labourers at their work by frequently visiting them, and the cacique's men had never ventured to execute his orders, because Vasco never went among them except on horseback, and armed.
After travelling about twenty miles, the scene gradually opens, and one begins to dream about Vasco Nunez and the enthusiastic first explorers of the Isthmus; but my first view of the Pacific was through a drenching shower of rain, that wet me to the skin, and rather kept my imagination under, for this said imagination of mine is like a barn door chuckey brisk and crouse enough when the sun shines, and the sky is blue, and plenty of grub at hand, but I can't write poetry when I am could, and hungry, and drooked.
Narrative of the first Voyage of Vasco de Gama to India and back, in the years 1497, 1498, and 1499. On the death of King John, he was succeeded by Don Manuel, a prince of a great mind, bent upon high enterprise, and prone to undertake and execute things beyond the ordinary reach of human knowledge, even more than was Alexander the Great.
It remained, however, for Vasco da Gama, then a young man of about twenty years of age, to prove that India could be reached in this way. In 1497 Da Gama sailed from Lisbon to the Cape of Good Hope, doubled the cape, and proceeded across the Indian Ocean to Hindustan.
He therefore presented four thousand drachmas of wrought gold and seventy slaves to Vasco Nuñez and Colmenares, as they were the leaders. These natives sell and exchange whatever articles they need amongst themselves, and have no money. The Spaniards were engaged in the vestibule of Comogre, weighing his gold and another almost equal quantity they had obtained elsewhere.
In fact it was only in 1497, maybe five years after the discovery of America, that the southern point of Africa was passed by Vasco da Gama, and it may be affirmed that if this latter had preceded Columbus, the discovery of the new continent might have been delayed for several centuries.
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