His death, 24th Dec., 1524.

Such stringent laws may have been necessary from the state of things which then existed in India. That he was strict in his administration, even to tyranny, over his own people, cannot be doubted; and it is well known that his brief rule was embittered by his hostile relations with his predecessors, whom he accused of various mal-practices, and ordered to be sent back to Lisbon. In the midst of these difficulties he was seized with a fatal illness; and having, as Correa states, “set his affairs in order, like a good Christian, with all the sacraments of the church, and ordered that his bones should be conveyed to the kingdom of Portugal, he died on Christmas Eve, 24th December, 1524.”

His character, as compared with that of Columbus.

Although the first voyage of Dom Gama may be read with satisfaction, no language can be found sufficiently strong to denounce his subsequent career, and especially his diabolical conduct towards the Moors and natives on his second expedition to India.[47] And to that conduct, too faithfully adopted by his successors, may in a great measure be attributed the loss, as well as the gain, of the Portuguese empire in the East. But though Dom Gama was a man of no mean abilities, and of indomitable courage, who evidently thoroughly understood his profession as a seaman, he cannot for an instant be compared, either as an individual or as a navigator, with his great contemporary Columbus. Dom Gama, in his voyage to India, had with him pilots who had frequently sailed along the western shores of Africa, and one, at least, who had doubled the Cape of Good Hope under Bartholomew Dias, while the crews of his ships consisted of his own countrymen, and partly, too, of his own dependants. But Columbus was a stranger among strangers; and the seamen who manned his vessels were altogether devoid of confidence in a commander into whose service they had been forced by the imperative order of their sovereigns. His voyages of discovery lay across unknown seas, amid a wilderness of waters, which both ancient and modern mariners had alike portrayed in the most gloomy colours; and so far from having the benefit of the services of any pilot who had ever attempted to navigate that then mysterious ocean, most persons in his service considered the voyages on which he was about to embark as alike visionary and dangerous.

Discovery of the Pacific, by Vasco Nuñez de Bilboa.

While the Portuguese were prosecuting their valuable discoveries in the East, the Spaniards were following up their less lucrative but more important researches to the West. In their voyages to the Caribbean Sea, and along the shores of the Mexican Gulf, they had heard rumours of great seas still further to the West; but it was not until 1513, a few years after a small colony had been established at Darien, that one of their countrymen, Vasco Nuñez de Bilboa, discovered the Pacific Ocean. The discovery was hailed with great joy by the Spaniards, who, having been restricted by the Pope to confine their researches to the West, now hoped to find within the prescribed limits another road to that far-famed Cathay, which had proved such a vast source of wealth to their rivals the Portuguese.

Voyage of Magellan.

It was not, however, until Magellan [Fernando de Magalhaens], a Portuguese by birth but in the service of the King of Spain, discovered the straits which bear his name that the Spaniards were enabled to derive any advantages from this great addition to their knowledge. Furnished by the King of Spain with five small vessels, the largest of which was only one hundred and thirty tons, their crews in all amounting to only two hundred and thirty-four men, this daring adventurer and most intrepid mariner set sail in September 1519 from S. Lucar for the Brazils, anchored at Rio, and thence pursued his way over these unknown seas to the south, until he reached the straits, where he encountered very severe weather. After many difficulties and great hardships he reached that beautiful and fertile group of islands in the Pacific which he named the Ladrones. Thence proceeding to the Philippines, Magellan, a navigator second only to Columbus, and superior in many respects to Vasco de Gama, unfortunately lost his life in an engagement with the natives. But in November, 1521, the expedition reached the Moluccas, the object of their search. Thence, but greatly reduced in strength and number, they steered for the Cape of Good Hope, which they doubled on the 6th of May, 1522, and anchored at St. Lucar on the 6th of September of that year, having been the first to accomplish a voyage round the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] As is well known, there is considerable variation in the dates assigned to different portions of Vasco de Gama’s voyages by different writers. It has been thought, on the whole, best on this occasion to follow those given by Gaspar Correa, whose narrative has been translated from the Portuguese and edited for the Hakluyt Society by the Hon. H. E. J. Stanley (now Lord Stanley of Alderley): Lond. 1869. Correa states that he went to India sixteen years after it was discovered, which would be therefore in 1514, and that he had access to the Journals of Joam Figueira, a priest who accompanied De Gama in his first voyage. Correa, when in India, was secretary to the governor, Alfonzo d’Albuquerque; and died at Goa, some time before 1583.