GAILA, VASCO DE, the first European navigator who found his way to India by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, was born at the small sca-port town of Sines in Portugal. The date of his birth, and the circumstances of his early life, are not mentioned. It appears that be was In the household of Emanuel king of Portugal, and having devoted himself to navigation and discovery, was appointed to the command of an expedition which was to seek its way to the Indian Ocean by sailing round the southern extremity of Africa. The notion of this passage was by no moans a new one, and when it was taken up by the Portuguese sovereign its practicability had been pretty well established. In 1487 Pedro de Covilham set out for India by way of the Mediterranean, the Isthmus of Suez, and the Red Sea, and be was accompanied as far as Egypt by Alfonso do i'ayva, who then left him to go in search of 'limiter John,' a great Christian king, who, after being sought for in various countries, was now reported to be living in a high state of civilisation in the eastern parts of Africa. Before their departure from Portugal, Calsadilla, bishop of Viseu, gave these travellers a map of Africa, in which that continent was correctly des cribed as being bounded on the south by a navigable sea. This map, or the materials for it, had probably been procured from the trading Moors of North Africa, to whom the Portuguese had long before been indebted for much information concerning that continent.
Payee added little to geographical knowledge; but Covilham crossed the Indian Ocean, visited Goa, Calicut, and other places on the coast of Hindustan, acquired an exalted notion of the trade and wealth of those parts, and on his return towards the Red Sea he obtained from Arabian mariners some information concerning the eastern coast of Afeiea as far as Sofala ou the Mozambique Chaotic]. Soon after his return he visited Abyssinia, where he was detained by the govern ment for some thirty years. Shortly after arriving in that country he found means of forwarding letters to the king of Portugal, in which he stated that no doubt existed as to the possibility of sailiug from Europe to India by doubling the southern point of Africa, and he added that that southern cape was well known to Arabian and Indian navigators. The reports of Covilham, and the well-known importance
of the trade with India, greatly excited the Portuguese, who moreover had long been pursuing discovery on the western coast of Africa. At the end of December 1487, Bartholomew Diaz had returned to Lisbon after discovering 300 leagues of coast, and correctly laying down the Great Cape, which he doubled iu a storm without knowing it, but which ho had properly recognised on his return.
Vasco do Game sailed front Lisbon ou the 8th of July 1497, five years after the discovery of the New World by Columbus. The royal squadron which he commanded consisted only of three small vestals, with sixty men in alL The Cape of Good Hope seemed to merit the name which had been given to it by Diaz—Cabo Tormentoso. Dread ful tempests were encountered before reaching it, the winds were con trary, and their fears and their sufferings caused a mutiny among the sailors, who tried to induce Gams to put back. But the firmness of the commander quieted the apprehensions of his men, and on the 19th of November, with a stormy sea, he doubled the Cape end turned along the eastern shore. Ou reaching the African town of 3Ieliuda, which belonged to a commercial and civilised people, a branch of the great race of Moore, or Arabian Mohammedans, he fonnd several Christian merchants from India, and he also procured the valuable services of Malcmo Cana, a pilot from Guzerat. This man WAS a skil ful navigator: he was not surprised at the sight of the astrolabe, or at their method of taking the meridian altitude of the sun. He told them that both the lastrunieut and its uses were familiar to the mariners of the Eastern seas. Under the guidance of this pilot Gam made the coast of Malabar in tweuty-threc days, and anchored before Calicut on the 20th of May 1498, then a place of considerable inauu factures and foreign trade, which was chiefly in the hands of Moors or Arabs. Gama opened communications with the zarnarin or sovereign prince of Calicut, who, after some negotiation, agreed to receive him with the honours usually paid to an ambassador.