380 NATURAL SCIENCE [June 



homewards before he had procured information concerning the route 

 to India, to obtain which he had been sent out by the king. 



On Christmas day a coast was seen, and for that reason the 

 land was called Natal, the name which it still bears. 



On January 6th, the expedition landed at the mouth of a river 

 which was called Rio do Cobre. Here Coelho's ship was discarded 

 and burned, while the others were repaired, for they had suffered 

 much from the long voyage and heavy gales. Here, too, the 

 mutineers obtained their liberty on the condition that they resumed 

 their chains when presented to the king on their return home, not 

 with any intention of harming them, but to the greater honour and 

 glory of Vasco da Gama. This country was inhabited by Kafhrs, a 

 race previously unknown to the Portuguese, whom they received 

 so favourably that the country was called Teria da Boa Gente. 



On January 22nd another large river was reached, on the banks 

 of which was a richer and more cultured people than had hitherto 

 been met with on the coast of Africa. Among them were some 

 supposed to be a cross between Negroes and Moors ; some of them 

 even understood Arabic, and were richly dressed. The country was 

 Mozambique, and Gama named the river Rio dos Boos Signaes. 

 Notwithstanding this augury, a bad epidemic of scurvy broke out 

 among the crew, this being one of the first occurrences of that 

 disease of which we have any record. 



Mozambique was reached on March 1st, Mombasa on the 7th 

 of April, Melinda on the 15th. Thence Gama started on the 

 24th of April straight for India, under the guidance of an Indian 

 pilot, whose name was Malemo Canaca, and whom Gama had 

 procured from the ruler of Melinda through fraud and violence. 

 It was on the 20th of May 1498, that Vasco da Gama anchored 

 in Calicut, then an important city on the west coast of the 

 Indian Peninsula, situated in 11° 15' N. and 75° 45' E. He 

 stayed in India till the 5 th of October, when he sailed westwards 

 from Anchediva. The crossing to Africa, in consequence of contrary 

 winds and calm, took three months, during which a fresh attack of 

 scurvy carried off thirty men. It was not till the 20th of March 

 that the Cape of Good Hope was rounded again, and not till the end 

 of August or beginning of September 1499, that what remained of 

 the expedition again anchored in the harbour of Lisbon. 



It is impossible to forget that the career of Vasco da Gama was 

 tarnished by a series of outrages which from the very first com- 

 pletely undermined the dominion which the Portuguese founded in 

 India. Nevertheless, in its relations to the world at large, the 

 achievement was one scarcely inferior to the slightly prior discovery 

 of the New World. It forms an absolute turning-point in the com- 

 mercial, economic, and political history of Africa and Asia. It is 



