Introduction 5 



practice and tradition? Thanks for safety thus far; thanks for a special 

 occasion. 



Stop a moment and follow Prince Henry the Navigator's Portuguese sea- 

 men as they worked their way down the west coast of Africa. Do we find any 

 special ceremony as they found the sun shift from south to north? We hear 

 that Bartolomeu Diaz rounded the Cape, Vasco da Gama reached India, 

 but the records are suent on the point now of interest to us. 



Well into the sixteenth century do we hear Camoëns sing the praises of his 

 native Portugal and his hero as he pictures Vasco da Gama telling the tale 

 of his voyage to the King of Melinde: 



And from the Pole familiar of the Bear 

 At length in those vast oceans I withdrew. 

 For I had overpassed the burning bound, 

 Where the limit which divides the earth is foimd. 



Our course across those regions we had ta'en. 

 Through the which, passing twice, Apollo makes 

 A pair of winters and likewise sxmimers twain. 

 What time from Pole to Pole his way he takes.* 



Admitting freely and promptly that poetry may often be more efiFective 

 than bald prose, I submit that here we fail to learn how or whether any cere- 

 mony marked the overpassing of "the burning bound, where the hmit which 

 divides the earth is foimd." 



Let us turn to some other of the brave souls that dared to trust their lives 

 to the mercies of Father Neptvme, and see what they tell about our story. In 

 1519 Pigafetta sailed with Magellan on the first circumnavigation. He tells 

 that they passed Sierra Leone "with contrary winds, cahns, and rains without 

 wind, until we reached the equinoctial line, having sixty days of continual 

 rain. Contrary to the opinion of the ancients, before we reached the line many 

 furious squalls of vdnd, and cm-rents of water struck us head on in 14 degrees. 

 As we could not advance, and in order that the ships might not be wrecked, 

 all the sails were struck; and in this manner did we wander hither and yon 

 on the sea, waiting for the tempest to cease, for it was very furious. When it 

 rained there was no wind. When the sim shone, it was calm." f 



* Lusiads, Leonard Bacon's translation, 1950, Book V, 13 and 15. Quoted with permission of 



the Hispanic Society of America, publisher. 



t Robertson's translation of the Ambrosian manuscript. Cleveland, 1906. v. 1, p. 35. Ramusio's 



text, Venice, 1550, p. 380, runs about the same. Not one word do we get about any special 



ceremony. 



