We have laid down Vasco da Gama’s hypothetical track with a considerable amount of diffidence. The passage might, of course, have been effected in various other ways.[435] When Cabral started for India in 1500 he was instructed by Vasco da Gama himself to sail southward from the Cape Verde Islands, until he should have reached the latitude of the Cape, and then to head to the east. Cabral, however, was carried by winds and currents towards Brazil, which he made in lat. 17° 20´ S., and thence followed a track which took him past Trinidad and Fernão Vaz,[436] and does not differ much from that now recommended to sailing vessels.
João da Nova, who left for India in March 1501, did not follow the route of his predecessor, perhaps on account of the terrible disaster which overtook Cabral when in the vicinity of Tristão da Cunha. Nova seems to have attempted a direct passage; for following perhaps the eastern route recommended to a later generation by Laurie’s Sailing Directory for the Ethiopic Ocean (4th edition, by A. G. Finlay, p. 74), he discovered the island of Ascension on the outward voyage, and is generally credited with having reached the Cape without coming within sight of the coast of Brazil.[437]
Vasco da Gama, during his second voyage in 1502, seems to have seen no land from the time he left Cape Verde until he arrived at Sofala, that is, during ninety-nine days, viz., from March 7th to June 14th: a remarkably quick passage. He seems on that occasion to have given the Cape of Good Hope a wide berth.
His nephew, Estevão da Gama, who left Lisbon on April 1st, took the western route. He passed the Cape Verde Islands on April 15th, Trinidad,[438] in the Southern Atlantic, on May 18th, doubled the Cape about the beginning of June, and first made land, on July 11th, at the Cabo Primeiro, on the coast of Natal, one hundred and two days after his departure from Lisbon.
When Affonso de Albuquerque reached Cape Verde on his voyage to India, in 1503, he took counsel with his pilots whether to follow the “usual route” along the coast of Africa, or to make boldly for mid-ocean. The latter course was decided upon. After a voyage of twenty-eight days, the Island of Ascension[439] was reached, at an estimated distance of 750 to 800 leagues from the Cape. Subsequently de Albuquerque touched the coast of Brazil, and then stood across the Atlantic for the Cape of Good Hope, which he made on July 6th, having thus accomplished the passage from Lisbon in the course of ninety-one days.
Duarte Pacheco, who wrote his Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis in 1505, recommends vessels to go south from Cape Verde for 600 leagues, to lat. 19° S., and thence to make for a point 40 leagues to the S.W. of the Cape of Good Hope, in lat. 37° S. Such a course would take a vessel to the windward of Trinidad.
These notes prove that the Portuguese, in the course of a few years, must have acquired a remarkably correct knowledge of the winds and currents of the Southern Atlantic; for the tracks laid down and followed by their pilots in the beginning of the sixteenth century differ but little, if at all, from those recommended in our modern sailing directories.
Doubling the Cape.
Three days after his landfall we find Vasco da Gama in the Bay of St. Helena, where he careened his ships, took in a fresh supply of water, and observed the latitude.[440]