[28] In the suburb of Restello, four miles below the Arsenal of Lisbon, stood a chapel or ermida, which had been built by Henry the Navigator for the use of mariners. In this chapel Vasco da Gama and his companions spent the night previous to their departure in prayer. After his victorious return, D. Manuel founded on its site the magnificent monastery of Our Lady of Bethlehem or Belem.
[29] The forbidding line of low cliffs, extending for 35 miles from Leven Head to Elbow Point, in lat. 24° N., was known to the Portuguese of the time as terra alta (see D. Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, p. 40). The Rio do Ouro or River of Gold is a basin, extending about 20 miles inland and four miles wide at its mouth. No river flows into it. The real “River of Gold” is the Senegal or the Upper Niger.
[30] Castanheda attributes the separation of the vessels to the fog and a storm.
[31] At the southern extremity of Ilha do Sal, in lat. 16° 31´ N., is the Porto de Santa Maria.
[32] S. Jorge da Mina, the famous fort built on the Gold Coast in 1482, by Diogo d’Azambuja, one of whose captains had been the very Bartholomew Dias who five years afterwards doubled the Cape, and who now returned to the Mine, having been made its captain, in recognition of his great services. (See L. Cordeira, Diogo d’Azambuja, Lisbon, 1890, and Barros, edition of 1778, to. I, part 1, p. 271.)
[33] Bombardas, originally catapults, subsequently any piece of ordnance from which stone balls were thrown. In the north of Europe the term was restricted to mortars. Gama, however, carried breech-loading guns, with movable cameras or chambers. (See Stanley’s Vasco da Gama, p. 226, note and Introduction.)
[34] São Thiago, the largest of the Cape Verde Islands. The Porto da Praia, within which lies the Island of Santa Maria (14° 50´ N.), is no doubt the bay referred to in the text.
[35] This date, August 18th, is obviously wrong. Deducting the delay of two days, Vasco da Gama spent 95 days on his passage from São Thiago to the Bay of St. Helena, the distance being about 1,170 leagues (4,290 miles), his daily progress amounted to 12 leagues or 45 miles. If the dates in the text were correct, he would have made 12½ leagues daily up to August 18th, and between that date and the 22nd (allowing for the delay) at least 300 leagues (1,010 miles), which is quite impossible. It is evident that the second date is wrong, and instead of “the same month”, we ought perhaps to read “October”. In that case the daily progress, up to October 22nd, would have averaged 10 leagues (34 miles). Thence, to St. Helena Bay, a distance of 370 leagues accomplished in 16 days, the daily progress would have averaged nearly 23 leagues (78 miles). Of course these are merely rough approximations, as the course taken by Vasco da Gama and the incidents of this memorable passage are not known to us. We may mention that modern sailing vessels going from S. Thiago by way of Sierra Leone and Ascension to the Cape, a distance of 5,410 miles, occupy on an average 49½ days on the passage, making thus 110 miles daily (58 in crossing from Sierra Leone to Ascension). A ship going direct (3,770 miles) has performed the passage in 41 days, thus averaging 92 daily. (See Admiral Fitzroy’s “Passage Tables” in the Meteorological Papers published by the Admiralty in 1858.)
[36] The MS. has Garçõees, a word not to be found in the dictionary, but evidently an augmentative of garça, a heron. Pimental, in his Arte de Navegar, mentions large birds with dark wings and white bodies as being met with a hundred leagues to the west of the Cape of Good Hope, which are known as Gaivotões.—Kopke.
The Gaivota, or gull, however, in no respect resembles a heron.