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Updated: June 29, 2025
On the 2nd of February, 1499, the Portuguese found themselves at last abreast of a great town on the coast of Ajan, called Magadoxo, distant 300 miles from Melinda. Gama, dreading another reception like the one given to him at Mozambique, would not stop here, but while passing within sight of the town, ordered a general discharge of the guns.
But it appears from an entry in his Privy Purse Expenses, under September 8, 1498, that Henry the Seventh thought a porpoise a valuable commodity and a fit dish for an ambassador, for on that date twenty-one shillings were paid to Cardinal Morton's servant, who had procured one for some envoy then in London, perhaps the French representative, who is the recipient of a complimentary gratuity of £49 10s. on April 12, 1499, at his departure from England.
It coasted even the Island of Kiltan, a land originally coraline, discovered by Vasco da Gama in 1499, and one of the nineteen principal islands of the Laccadive Archipelago, situated between 10° and 14° 30' N. lat., and 69° 50' 72" E. long. Its course was N.N.E., in the direction of the Sea of Oman, between Arabia and the Indian Peninsula, which serves as an outlet to the Persian Gulf.
The original, or rather the old translation, is most miserably defective and confused in its dates about this period, bandying 1499 and 1500 backwards and forwards most ridiculously. This error it has been anxiously endeavoured to correct in the present version.
This important and critical measure it appears had been decided upon, and the papers and powers actually drawn out, in the spring of 1499. It was not carried into effect, however, until the following year. Various reasons have been assigned for this delay. The important services rendered by Columbus in the discovery of Paria and the Pearl Islands may have had some effect on the royal mind.
In Oporto there exists at least one good picture, 'The Fountain of Mercy, now in the board-room of the Misericordia, but painted to be the reredos of the chapel of São Thiago in the Sé where the brotherhood was founded by Dom Manoel in 1499. In the centre above, between St. John and the Virgin, stands a crucifix from which blood flows down to fill a white marble well.
The latter, too, fell before the unassisted arms of the New England Provinces in 1745, at a time when Great Britain was too deeply engaged in the contest of a civil war to give aid either in money or in men to her transatlantic possessions. Columbus discovered South America 1st August, 1498, while the voyage of Vespucci, whose name has been given to the continent, was not performed until 1499.
The world of affairs had not extinguished his love of learning. He was an intimate friend of Bohuslaus of Hassenstein, scholar and traveller, and corresponded with him in elegant Latin. Attracted by the reputation for eloquence won by the notorious Hieronymus Balbus, he had persuaded him c. 1499 to come and teach in Prague a step which in view of Balbus' bad life he afterwards deeply regretted.
The years from 1498 to 1503 had not been without importance in Franco- Spanish relations, more particularly with reference to the position of the two Powers in Italy. Lewis had made himself master of Milan in 1499; but the kingdom of Naples presented a more difficult problem; since, after disposing of the reigning family, the French King would still find a rival claimant in Ferdinand of Spain.
In 1499 the King crossed the Alps into the Milanese, and carried all before him for a while. The duchy at first accepted him with enthusiasm; but in 1500 it had had enough of the French and recalled Lodovico, who returned in triumph to Milan. The Swiss mercenaries, however, betrayed him at Novara into the hands of Louis XII., who carried him off to France.
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