[53] Or Bethlehem, so named from the chapel.
[54] Now called St. Helen's.
[55] The voyage of Gama has been called merely a coasting one, and therefore regarded as much less dangerous and heroical than that of Columbus, or of Magalhaens. But this is one of the opinions hastily taken up, and founded on ignorance. Columbus and Magalhaens undertook to navigate unknown oceans, and so did Gama; with this difference, that the ocean around the Cape of Good Hope, which Gama was to encounter, was believed to be, and had been avoided by Diaz, as impassable. Prince Henry suggested that the current of Cape Bojador might be avoided by standing out to sea, and thus that Cape was first passed. Gama for this reason did not coast, but stood out to sea for upwards of three months of tempestuous weather. The tempests which afflicted Columbus and Magalhaens are by their different historians described with circumstances of less horror and danger than those which attacked Gama. All the three commanders were endangered by mutiny; but none of their crews, save Gama's, could urge the opinion of ages, and the example of a living captain, that the dreadful ocean which they attempted was impassable. Columbus and Magalhaens always found means, after detecting a conspiracy, to keep the rest in hope; but Gama's men, when he put the pilots in irons, continued in the utmost despair. Columbus was indeed ill obeyed; Magalhaens sometimes little better; but nothing, save the wonderful authority of Gama's command, could have led his crew through the tempest which he surmounted ere he doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Columbus, with his crew, must have returned. The expedients which he used to soothe them, would, under his authority, have had no avail in the tempest which Gama rode through. From every circumstance it is evident that Gama had determined not to return, unless he found India. Nothing less than such resolution to perish or attain his point could have led him on.
[56] It afterwards appeared that the Moorish King of Mombas had been informed of what happened at Mozambique, and intended to revenge it by the total destruction of the fleet.
[57] Amerigo Vespucci, describing his voyage to America, says, "Having passed the line, e come desideroso d'essere autore che segnassi la stella—desirous to be the namer and discoverer of the Pole-star of the other hemisphere, I lost my sleep many nights in contemplating the stars of the other pole." He then laments, that as his instruments could not discover any star of less motion then ten degrees, he had not the satisfaction of giving a name to any one. But as he observed four stars, in form of an almond, which had but little motion, he hoped in his next voyage he should be able to mark them out.—All this is curious, and affords a good comment on the temper of the man who had the art to defraud Columbus, by giving his own name to America; of which he challenged the discovery. Near fifty years before the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci, the Portuguese had crossed the line; and Diaz fourteen, and Gama nearly three years before, had doubled the Cape of Good Hope; had discovered seven stars in the constellation of the south pole, and from the appearance of the four most luminous, had given it the name of "The Cross," a figure which it better resembles than that of an almond.
[58] Properly "Samudra-Rajah," King of the Sea, corrupted into Zamorim.—Ed.
[59] "Kotwâl" signifies Superintendent of the Police.—Ed.
[60] Faria y Sousa.
[61] It was the custom of the first discoverers to erect crosses at various places remarkable in their voyage. Gama erected six: one, dedicated to St. Raphael, at the river of Good Signs; one to St. George, at Mozambique; one to St. Stephen, at Melinda; one to St. Gabriel, at Calicut; and one to St. Mary, at the island thence named, near Anchediva.
[62] The Lusiad; in the original, Os Lusiadas, The Lusiads, from the Latin name (Lusitania) of Portugal, derived from Lusus or Lysas, the companion of Bacchus in his travels, who settled a colony in Lusitania, See Plin. 1, iii. c. i.