wasted in two disastrous wars with Spain.

Columbus, on the other hand, made the discarded scheme his own; he, too, applied to Toscanelli for counsel,5 and found confirmation of that physician’s erroneous hypothesis as to the small breadth of the Atlantic by studying the Imago Mundi of Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, and other writings. Nor did he rest until he found in Queen Isabella the Catholic a patron who enabled him to put his theories to the test of practical experience. It was his good fortune that Providence had placed the new world as a barrier between him and Marco Polo’s Cipangu (Japan), which was his goal, or he might never have returned to claim the reward of his success.

On the accession of D. João II, in 1481, the discovery of Africa was resumed with renewed vigour, and the councillors of that King acted wisely when they advised him to decline the offers of Columbus,6 for the resources of Portugal were quite unequal to pursuing at one and the same time a search for a western route and continuing the efforts for opening a practical route around the southern extremity of Africa. And thus it happened that Columbus “discovered a new world for Castile and Leon”, and not for Portugal.

When, however, we come to consider the physical difficulties which had to be overcome by these great navigators in the accomplishment of their purpose, the greater credit must undoubtedly be awarded to Vasco da Gama. Columbus, trusting as implicitly to the chart and sailing directions of Toscanelli as did Vasco da Gama to those of Dias, and, perhaps, of Pero de Covilhão, shaped a course westward of Gomera; and, having sailed in that direction for thirty-six days, and for a distance of 2,600 miles, made his first landfall at Guanahani, being favoured all the while by the prevailing easterly winds. The task which Vasco da Gama undertook was far more difficult of accomplishment. Instead of creeping along the coast, as had been done by his predecessors, he conceived the bold idea of shaping a course which would take him direct through the mid-Atlantic from the Cape Verde Islands to the Cape of Good Hope. The direct distance to be covered was 3,770 miles, but the physical obstacles presented by winds and currents could only be overcome by taking a circuitous course, and thus it happened that he spent ninety-three days at sea before he made his first landfall to the north of the bay of St. Helena. This first passage across the southern Atlantic is one of the great achievements recorded in the annals of maritime exploration.

Once beyond the Cape, Vasco had to struggle against the Agulhas current, which had baffled Bartholomeu Dias, and against the current of Mozambique; and it was only after he had secured a trustworthy pilot at Melinde that the difficulties of the outward voyage can be said to have been overcome.

In one other respect Vasco da Gama, or, perhaps, we ought to say his pilots, proved themselves the superiors of Columbus, namely, in the accuracy of the charts of their discoveries which they brought home to Portugal. Accepting the Cantino Chart7 as a fair embodiment of the work done by this expedition, we find that the greatest error in latitude amounts to 1° 40´. The errors of Columbus were far more considerable. In three places of his Journal the latitude of the north coast of Cuba is stated to be 42° by actual observation; and that this is no clerical error, thrice repeated in three different places, seems to be proved by the evidence of the charts. On that of Juan de la Cosa, for instance, Cuba is made to extend to lat. 35° N. (instead of 23° 10´), and even on the rough sketch drawn by Bartolomeo Columbus after the return from the Fourth Voyage, Jamaica and Puerto Rico (Spagnola) are placed 6° too far to the north.8

Verily, the Portuguese of those days were superior as navigators to their Spanish rivals and the Italians.

Posterity is fortunate in possessing a very full abstract of the Journal which Columbus kept during his first voyage to the West Indies.9 No such trustworthy record is available in the case of Vasco da Gama, whose original reports have disappeared. They were consulted, no doubt, by João de Barros and Damião de Goes; but these writers, much to our loss, dealt very briefly with all that refers to navigation. The only available account written by a member of the expedition is the Roteiro or Journal, a translation of which fills the bulk of this volume, and of which, later on, we shall speak at greater length. The only other contemporary accounts, which we also reproduce, are at second-hand, and are contained in the letters written by King Manuel and Girolamo Sernigi immediately after the return of Vasco da Gama’s vessels from India.

Apart from these, our chief authorities regarding this voyage are still the Decades of João de Barros and the Chronicle of King Manuel, by Damião de Goes. Both these authors held official positions which gave them access to the records preserved in the India House. Castanheda relied almost wholly upon the Roteiro, but a few additional statements of interest may be found in his pages.

As to the Lendas of Gaspar Correa, we are unable to look upon his account of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage as anything but a jumble of truth and fiction,10 notwithstanding that he claims to have made use of the diary of a priest, Figueiro, who is stated to have sailed in Vasco’s fleet. Correa’s long residence in India—from 1514 to the time of his death—must have proved an advantage when relating events which came under his personal observation, but it also precluded him from consulting the documents placed on record in the Archives of Lisbon. This much is certain: that whoever accepts Correa as his guide must reject the almost unanimous evidence of other writers of authority who have dealt with this important voyage.11

A few additional facts may be gleaned from Faria y Sousa’s Asia Portuguesa, from Duarte Pacheco Pereira and Antonio Galvão; but in the main we are dependent upon the Roteiro, for recent searches12 in the Torre do Tombo have yielded absolutely nothing, so far as we are aware, which throws additional light upon Da Gama’s First Voyage, with which alone we are concerned.