(1460-1525)
[Illustration: Vasco Da Gama.]
Vasco da Gama was the pet of fortune. Never did a man win immortality
more easily. As a discoverer and a navigator he should rank not only
below Columbus, but also below Bartolemeo Diaz and Cabral among his own
countrymen, as well as Vespucius and Magellan, who carried the Spanish
flag, and the Cabots, who established England's claim to the most
important portions of the New World. As a commander, an administrator,
and ruler of newly discovered regions, however, he ranks easily above
them all. He not only led the way to India, but laid securely the
foundations of Portuguese empire in the East.
Even in the hour of his birth he was fortunate. Prince Henry, surnamed
"the Navigator," to whose indefatigable exertions for more than forty
years was due that impulse to maritime achievement of which the
discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were the result,
had just died, and his influence hung like an inspiration over the
little kingdom for which he had wrought with such self-denying
patience. This grandson of John of Gaunt has received scant credit for
that wonderful series of discoveries by which the accessible earth was
more than quadrupled in extent. Yet without him, there is no reason to
believe that either the coast of Africa would have been explored, the
Cape of Good Hope passed, or the American continents discovered for a
century, at least, perhaps for two or three centuries afterward. He was
the father of discovery, and it was his hand more than any or all others
that rolled up the curtain of darkness which hid the major part of the
habitable globe. All the navigators and discoverers of that marvellous
age were but the agents of his genius and the creatures of his
indefatigable exertion.
The son of the most noted sovereign of Portugal, and grandson of that
rugged Englishman from whose loins have sprung so many royal lines, he
was fitted by descent and training for the heroic part which he
performed. Distinguished for military achievement before he had come to
man's estate, urged by four of the leading sovereigns of Europe to take
command of their armies, and made Grand Master of the Order of Christ
before he was twenty-five, there is hardly any limit to the military
distinction he might have won or the power he might have secured, had he
sought his own advancement.
But he gave himself to Portugal, and determined to raise the little
kingdom his father had so gallantly held against jealous and powerful
neighbors, to the rank of a first-class power. To seek to enlarge a
realm shut in by mountains on one side and the sea upon the other, by
constant strife with embittered enemies, he saw at once was to invite
annihilation. The sea afforded the only avenue of hope, the continent of
Africa, where his father had already gained something from the Moor, in
battling with whom he had himself won renown, the only visible
opportunity. So he determined to explore, and finally, to circumnavigate
Africa, and give to Portugal whatever of power or wealth the ocean or
the dark continent might hide. He believed that India might be reached
by sailing round its southern extremity, and he determined to pour the
wealth of the Orient into the treasury of the kingdom his father had
established.
In 1418, therefore, he turned his back on personal ambition, laid aside
the glory of military renown, and sat himself down to a hermit's life
and a scholar's labors on the promontory of Sagres, in the province of
Algarve, that point on the coast of Portugal which stretches farthest
out into the Atlantic in the direction of his hope. Here he built an
observatory whose light was the last his captains saw as they went
forth, and the first to greet them on their return. Here he opened a
school of navigation, and here were trained the discoverers who opened
the way for all who came afterward. Here was not only nourished the
impulse which fired the hearts of Columbus and his contemporaries, but
here was taught the science and here were gathered the facts which
enabled them to achieve success.
Up to that time, Cape Nun had been the boundary of the modern world to
the southward. With infinite patience, Prince Henry labored to convince
his captains that the terrors which they thought lay at the southward of
this point were wholly imaginary. Little by little his caravels crept
down the coast of Africa. Every year he sent out two or three.
Navigators and geographers flocked to his service. In two years he
re-discovered Madeira and Porto Santo, of which latter he afterward made
Perestrello, the father of Columbus's wife, the governor. By 1433 his
ships had reached Cape Bojador; eight years afterward they passed Cape
Blanco; in 1445 they were at the mouth of the Senegal. Still he urged
them on toward that "_thesaurus Arabum et divitia Indiæ_," to which he
set himself the task of opening up the way. The crown of Portugal
assumed all the cost of these expeditions. Gold, ivory, cinnabar,
dye-woods, spices, and slaves, added to the wealth of the kingdom only
to furnish forth new ventures.
He died before the end came, but not until many of the most important
problems of cosmographic condition had been solved. It was known by
actual experience that the "steaming sea" was a myth. Ships had crossed
the equator, and their crews came back to tell of southward-stretching
shadows. Ships were able, it was seen, to sail up the southern slope of
the world as well as down it. Why they did not fall off into space, none
knew, but that they did not was proved. Gravitation was a force whose
laws and character were yet unformulated. The diurnal motion of the
earth was hardly suspected until a hundred years later. But the facts on
which these two fundamental truths are based were being gathered for
Newton and Copernicus. When he died, those whom he had inspired and
instructed continued the work to which he had devoted himself, under the
patronage of his brother Alfonso and his nephew João II.; until, in
1486, Bartholomeo Diaz had sailed two hundred miles to the eastward of
the Cape of Good Hope and returned to assure his sovereign that the way
to India had at length been found.
It was not, however, until Dom Manoel had succeeded to the throne, in
1495, that any successful effort was made to follow up the success which
Diaz had achieved. The way to India was indeed open, but no one seems to
have had sufficient fortitude to undertake so long a voyage in order to
reach it by that route. Dom Manoel had, however, but one idea. He was
not a geographer like his predecessor, João, "the perfect," but he was a
man of action, and determined that the route Prince Henry's navigators
had opened to India should not remain unused. Vasco da Gama was then in
his thirty-fifth year, the handsomest man of his age, of ancient family,
and it is claimed was not without royal blood in his veins. As a soldier
he was trained in the war with Castile; as a navigator he had served
under Prince Henry's best captains. Camoens, the historical poet of
Portugal, declares that he was familiar not only with the recorded
achievements of his predecessors, but with all the regions they had
discovered. Dom João, on the return of Diaz, selected him to command the
fleet he meant to send to follow up this discovery. In the ten years
that elapsed before he actually sailed, it is probable that he had grown
to be not only a better geographer, but also a stronger, more
cool-headed, and reliable man. That he was able to command, those
mutineers who cavilled at his severity during the stormy passage of four
months from Lisbon to Table Bay, found out when they demanded that he
give up trying to reach India and return to Portugal as other captains
had done, at the behest of their crews. He made short work of them, and
in his whole career, so salutary was the lesson, no one under his
command ever again refused to obey his orders.
It was July 8, 1497, when he sailed from Lisbon, and it was not until
December 1st that he left Delagoa Bay, the farthest eastward point which
Diaz had reached, to pass over the actually unknown water that lay
between him and India. Even this could hardly be called "unknown water,"
for Corvilhan, who a dozen years before had made his way overland to
Aden, had sent back to Dom João II. this message:
"Anyone who will persist, is sure to sail around the southernmost point
of Africa, and can then easily make his way up the eastern shore and
across the gulf to India."
Literally were his words fulfilled. With favoring breezes, Gama reached
Malinda early in January, 1498, and securing the services of an Indian
pilot, who had not only sailed hither from Calicut, but seemed as
familiar as Gama himself with compass and astrolabe, he set out boldly
across the Indian Ocean, and in May arrived at Calicut. When we consider
that this latter part of the voyage was with a pilot accustomed to make
the trip in the far more fragile crafts of the Arabs, the boldness of
the undertaking does not seem so apparent to one of our day. Compared
with the voyages of Columbus, Magellan, Vespucius, or Cabral over
absolutely unknown seas, without pilots or charts of any kind, the
passage from Aden to India hardly seems remarkable. Yet upon this the
fame of Gama as an explorer rests, and as has been remarked, "few men
have won fame so easily." His real merit lay in the fact that he did
what so few of his predecessors were able to accomplish, controlled the
mutinous crews, who had after all been the most serious obstacle in the
path of Portugal to the coveted Indian possessions. It is probable that
if Prince Henry had encouraged his captains to exercise greater
severity, the darling object of his life might have been attained before
his death and the birth of the fortunate explorer, whose cheaply-won
fame has obscured his own, even with the king-loving Portuguese.
It would seem as if the capacity to control men, which was so prominent
a characteristic of the "Discoverer of India," was not of a conciliatory
character, for the Zamorin of Calicut received him but coldly, and
before his ships were loaded the difference had ripened into a quarrel,
and he was obliged to cut his way out of the harbor to begin his
homeward voyage. This lack of complaisance on the part of the Zamorin he
attributed, not without reason, to the jealousy of the Arab merchants,
whose swift-sailing dhows crowded the port. Why should they not be
jealous of him who came to take away their immemorial privilege?
Theretofore the treasures of the Orient had reached the western world
only through the hands of the Arab merchants. The dhow and the camel had
been its carriers. Gama had brought the more capacious caravel to bear
them over a new highway to the western consumers. His success meant the
loss of a great part of the business on which the sailors, merchants,
and camel-drivers of Arabia depended for a livelihood. Why should they
not conspire to kill him and destroy his fleet?
His homeward passage was as fortunate as the outward one had been. That
he did not experience the disasters which befell others, was no doubt
largely due to the fact that he foresaw and avoided peril whenever
possible. He was one of those men who, while shrinking from no
unavoidable danger, take no unnecessary risks. He was received with
unprecedented honors when, after two years and two months' absence, his
ships were again anchored in the Tagus. Their rich cargo attested the
rare value of the trade he had opened up. Despite the gold which the
miners of Española were beginning to send to Spain, and the pearls which
had come from Cubagua, the apparent value of the discoveries of Columbus
were as nothing to the boundless wealth which Gama's voyage assured to
Portugal. By the bull of Pope Alexander VI., all lands discovered east
of the meridian of the Azores belonged to the King of Portugal. It was
not only half the world, but that half which was of most inexhaustible
richness, Asia and Africa. Titles and honors and wealth were conferred
upon the fortunate explorer. In consideration perhaps of his royal
extraction, he was permitted to affix the kingly title, "Dom," to his
name. No wonder he was thus honored, when the cargo of one small caravel
loaded with spices, yielded a greater sum than the whole outfit of the
fleet Columbus commanded on his first voyage!
In an incredibly short time, thirteen ships were fitted out, and under
that prince of navigators, Cabral, set sail to secure the results of
Gama's discovery. On him, too, fortune smiled as it rarely has on them
that "go down to the sea in ships." Blown out of his course by
head-winds, his very mishaps ripened into the rarest fortune, for he
discovered Brazil, and thus added to his master's realm what was
destined to be one of the richest kingdoms of the world. With the
instinct of genius, and a courage as rare as it was heroic, he did not
return to notify his king of the new continent which had risen out of
the deep before him, but sending back a single caravel with the
marvellous news, he turned his battered prows to that point of the
compass where he judged the Cape of Good Hope to be, and after passing
three thousand miles of water that had never known a keel before, he
rounded the southern point of Africa and proceeded to carry out his
orders. He lacked, however, the soldierly qualities and administrative
power of the "Discoverer of India," who the year after his return was
sent out to complete his work. This time he had a fleet of twenty sail,
and from the outset was bent not only on taking permanent possession of
the countries whose trade it was desirable to secure, but on avenging
the affront that had before been offered him by the Zamorin of Calicut
and the Arab traders who had inspired the action.
On his way he founded the colonies of Mozambique and Sofala, and sailed
to Travancore. During the passage he fell in with a ship which was
carrying many Indian Mussulmans to Mecca, laden with rich presents for
the shrine of the Prophet. This he pillaged and burned, with all of her
300 passengers except twenty women and children, whom he saved more for
his own pleasure, no doubt, than from any pity for them. He excused this
act of savagery, so far as any excuse was necessary, on the ground that
they were paynim Moors, and some among them had incited the attack upon
him at Calicut on his former voyage. The truth is they were rich; he
wanted the plunder; and there was less likelihood of trouble if he
killed them than if they were left alive to publish and avenge their
losses. It was merely an application of the freebooter's maxim, that
"dead men tell no tales."
Arriving at Calicut, he found that forty Portuguese who had been left to
establish a permanent post, had been killed. With unusual deliberation,
he investigated the matter and demanded reparation, submission, and a
treaty acknowledging the sovereignty of Portugal over India. This being
refused, he bombarded the city, burned the ships in the harbor, and
compelled the Zamorin himself and all the native princes of the region
to submit and acknowledge themselves feudatories of Portugal. So rapid
were his movements, and so accurate his calculations, that before the
close of 1503 he had reached Lisbon again with thirteen vessels laden to
the gunwale with the plunder of the Orient--by all odds the richest
argosy that had come to any European port since the days of the Romans.
Da Gama was now forty-three years old, and must have been in the very
prime of manhood. Why so skilled a navigator, so intrepid a commander,
so shrewd a negotiator, and so successful an administrator, who had
established the power of Portugal from Delagoa Bay to Calcutta, should,
at that period of his life, have been laid upon the shelf for twenty
years, is a conundrum hard to answer. Knowing the character of Dom
Manoel, it is not difficult to guess that his sordidness lay somewhere
at the bottom of the trouble; but it is said to Gama's credit, that he
neither whined nor remonstrated.
It must be admitted, however, that he was succeeded by one who was
greatly his superior both as a general, a statesman, and an
administrator. If Vasco da Gama laid the foundations of Portuguese
empire in the East, Alfonso d'Albuquerque, "the Great," broadened and
built upon them as he could never have done. From Aden to Cochin blood
flowed beneath his blows, but peace followed; and though he was termed
"the Portuguese Mars," his justice became traditional, and his sagacity
was shown in the permanence of the settlements he made, even under the
incompetent viceroys who followed him.
It was twenty years since Vasco da Gama had commanded a ship.
Albuquerque was dead, and his successors had brought shame and defeat
upon the Portuguese power in the East. Dom Manoel was dead also, and
whatever grievance he had against "the Discoverer of India," seems to
have died with him. His successor, Dom João III., casting about for
someone to bring order out of confusion, success out of failure, and
honor out of shame, called again into his service the courtly and
sagacious mariner, now over sixty years of age; and conferring upon him
the title of viceroy, sent him to retrieve the prestige his successors
had lost. His high spirit was yet undaunted, and when he neared the
coast of India and found the waters in a strange ferment for which no
one could account, as there was neither wind nor tide, he said loftily:
"The sea beholds its conqueror and trembles before him!" It sounds
bombastic, but in the mouth of one who had first guided a civilized keel
over its surface, such arrogance is at least pardonable.
In the few months that intervened before his death he made the power of
Portugal once more respected in the East. When he died in Cochin, in
1525, he was mourned by the natives as a just ruler, and by his
countrymen as one who had saved to Portugal the richest part of the
national domain. It is not strange, therefore, that when his ashes were
conveyed to Lisbon, they were received with a pomp almost equal to that
which greeted him when he came as the discoverer of the Orient and its
priceless treasures. It is rare in history that one receives two
triumphs, the one while living and the other when dead, especially in
connection with the same achievement; but it is rarer still that one who
has won immortality should leave a record so singularly free from
bickering and strife as that of the dignified and self-contained
Portuguese rival of Columbus, Dom Vasco da Gama, the "Discoverer and
Sixth Viceroy of India, Count of Vidigueira," where he lies entombed.
Little is known of his private life; but there seems no doubt that it
was free from the stains that obscure his great rival's fame, from whom
he also differed in the fact that he neither begged nor boasted, and in
old age was honored even more than in his prime.
[Signature: Albion W. Tourgée.]