A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels - Volume 18 / Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and / Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth / Century, By William Stevenson

by Robert Kerr; William Stevenson

From the bay of St. Helena till they passed Cape Corrientes, there had been no trace of navigation,--no symptom that the natives used the sea at all. But after they passed this cape, they were visited by the natives in boats, the sails of which seem to have been made of the fibres of the cocoa-palm. A much more encouraging circumstance, however, occurred: some of the natives that came off in these boats were clothed in cotton, silk, and sattin,--evident proofs that intercourse, either direct or indirect, was practicable, and had in fact been held between this country and India. The language of these people was not understood; but from their signs it was inferred that they had seen ships as large as the Portuguese, and that they had come from the north.

This part of Africa lies between latitudes 19° and 18° south; and as Gama had the corrected chart of Covilham on board, in which Sofala was marked as the limit of his progress, and Sofala was two degrees to the south of where he then was, he must have known that he had now passed the barrier, and that the discovery was ascertained, his circumnavigation being now connected with the route of Covilham. This point of Gama's progress is also interesting and important in another respect, for we are here approaching a junction with the discoveries of the Arabians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans.

At this place Gama remained till the 24th of February, repairing his ships and recruiting his men. On the 1st of March, he arrived off Mozambique; here evidences of a circumnavigation with India were strong and numerous. The sovereign of Mozambique ruled over all the country from Sofala to Melinda. The vessels, which were fitted out entirely for coasting voyages, were large, undecked, the seams fastened with cords made of the cocoa fibres, and the timbers in the same manner. Gama, in going on board some of the largest of those, found that they were equipped with charts and compasses, and what are called æst harlab, probably the sea astrolabe, already discovered. At the town of Mozambique, the Moorish merchants from the Red Sea and India, met and exchanged the gold of Sofala for their commodities, and in its warehouses, which, though meanly built, were numerous, pepper, ginger, cottons, silver, pearls, rubies, velvet, and other Indian articles were exposed to sale. At Mombaça, the next place to which Gama sailed, all the commodities of India were found, and likewise the citron, lemon, and orange; the houses were built of stone, and the inhabitants, chiefly Mahomedans, seemed to have acquired wealth by commerce, as they lived in great splendour and luxury.

On the 17th of March, 1498, Gama reached Melinda, and was consequently completely within the boundary of the Greek and Roman discovery and commerce in this part of the world. This city is represented as well built, and displaying in almost every respect, proofs of the extensive trade the inhabitants carried on with India, and of the wealth they derived from it. Here Gama saw, for the first time, Banians, or Indian merchants: from them he received much important information respecting the commercial cities of the west coast of India: and at Melinda he took on board pilots, who conducted his fleet across the Indian Ocean to Calicut on the coast of Malabar, where he landed on the 22d of May, 1498, ten months and two days after his departure from Lisbon. He returned to Lisbon in 1499, and again received the command of a squadron in 1502; he died at Cochin in 1525, after having lived to witness his country sovereign of the Indian seas from Malacca to the Cape of Good Hope. "The consequence of his discovery was the subversion of the Turkish power, which at that time kept all Europe in alarm. The East no longer paid tribute for her precious commodities, which passed through the Turkish provinces; the revenues of that empire were diminished; the Othmans ceased to be a terror to the western world, and Europe has risen to a power, which the three other continents may in vain endeavour to oppose."

The successful enterprize of Gama, and the return of his ships laden not only with the commodities peculiar to the coast of Malabar, but with many of the richer and rarer productions of the eastern parts of India, stimulated the Portuguese to enter on this new career with avidity and ardour, both military and commercial. It fortunately happened that Emanuel, who was king of Portugal at this period, was a man of great intelligence and grasp of mind, capable of forming plans with prudence and judgment, and of executing them with method and perseverance; and it was equally fortunate that such a monarch was enabled to select men to command in India, who from their enterprize, military skill, sagacity, integrity, and patriotism, were peculiarly qualified to carry into full and successful execution all his views and plans.

The consequences were such as must always result from the steady operation of such causes: twenty-four years after the voyage of Gama, and before the termination of Emanuel's reign, the Portuguese had reached, and made themselves masters of Malacca. This place was the great staple of the commerce carried on between the east of Asia, including China, and the islands and the western parts of India. To it the merchants of China, Japan, the Moluccas, &c. came from the east, and those of Malabar, Ceylon, Coromandel and Bengal, from the west; and its situation, nearly at an equal distance from the eastern and western parts of India, rendered it peculiarly favorable for this trade, while by possessing the command of the straits through which all ships must pass from the one extremity of Asia to the other, it had the monopoly of the most extensive and lucrative commerce completely within its power.

From Malacca the Portuguese sailed for the conquest of the Moluccas; and by achieving this, secured the monopoly of spices. Their attempt to open a communication and trade with China, which was made about the same time, was not then successful: but by perseverance they succeeded in their object, and before the middle of the sixteenth century, exchanged, at the island of Sancian, the spices of the Moluccas, and the precious stones and ivory of Ceylon, for the silks, porcelain, drugs, and tea of China. Soon afterwards the emperor of China allowed them to occupy the island of Macao. In 1542 they succeeded in forming a commercial intercourse with Japan, trading with it for gold, silver and copper; this trade, however, was never extensive, and it ceased altogether in 1638, when they were driven from the Japanese territories.

As the commodities of India could not be purchased except with large quantities of gold, the Portuguese, in order to obtain it, as well as for other commercial advantages, prosecuted their discoveries on the east of Africa, at the same time that they were extending their power and commerce in India. On the east of Africa, between Sofala and the Red Sea, Arabian colonies had been settled for many centuries: these the Portuguese navigators visited, and gradually reduced to tribute; and the remains of the empire they established at this period, may still be traced in the few and feeble settlements they possess between Sofala and Melinda. In 1506 they visited and explored the island of Madagascar; in 1513, by the expulsion of the Arabs from Aden, the Red Sea was opened to their ships; and they quickly examined its shores and harbours, and made themselves acquainted with its tedious and dangerous navigation. In 1520 they visited the ports of Abyssinia, but their ambition and the security of their commerce were not yet completely attained; the Persian Gulf, as well as the Red Sea, was explored; stations were formed on the coasts of both: and thus they were enabled to obstruct the ancient commercial intercourse between Egypt and India, and to command the entrance of those rivers, by which Indian goods were conveyed not only through the interior of Asia, but also to Constantinople. By the conquest of Ormus, the Portuguese monopolised that extensive trade to the East, which had been in the hands of the Persians for several centuries. "In the hands of the Portuguese this island soon became the great mart from which the Persian empire, and all the provinces of Asia to the west of it, were supplied with the productions of India: and a city which they built on that barren island, destitute of water, was rendered one of the chief seats of opulence, splendour, and luxury in the eastern world."

The Venetians, who foresaw the ruin of their oriental commerce in the success of the Portuguese, in vain endeavoured to stop the progress of their rivals in the middle of the sixteenth century: the latter, masters of the east coast of Africa, of the coasts of Arabia and Persia, of the two peninsulas of India, of the Molucca islands, and of the trade to China and Japan, supplied every part of Europe with the productions of the east, by the Cape of Good Hope; nor was their power and commerce subverted, till Portugal became a province of Spain.

We have purposely omitted, in this rapid sketch of the establishment and progress of the Portuguese commerce in the East, any notice of the smaller discoveries which they made at the same time. These, however, it will be proper to advert to before we proceed to another subject.