A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama 1497-1499

The king then asked what it was he had come to discover: stones or men? If he came to discover men, as he said, why had he brought nothing? Moreover, he had been told that he ca...

At ten o’clock seven boats with many people in them approached us. Three of them carried on their benches the striped cloth which we had left on land, and we were given to under...

On Sunday [November 12] about forty or fifty natives made their appearance, and having dined, we landed, and in exchange for the çeitils[50] with which we came provided, we obta...

One day the captain-major invited him to a repast, when there was an abundance of figs and comfits, and begged him for two pilots to go with us. He at once granted this request,...

[c] The name of Ponta de gran (“scarlet cloth cape”) may have been given to the Needle Cape before the supposed fact that the needle in its vicinity pointed due north had been o...

On the day on which the captain-major went up to the town in the boats, these Christian Indians fired off many bombards from their vessels, and when they saw him pass they raise...

We, Dom Manuel, by the Grace of God King of Portugal and of the Algarves on this side of and beyond the sea, in Africa, Lord of Guinea and of the Conquest the Navigation and Com...

The MS. is in folio, and is rudely bound up in a sheet of parchment, torn out of some book of ecclesiastical offices. The ink is a little faded, but the writing is still perfect...

On February 24, 1500, the King granted him a pension of 70,000 reis. He also received a coat-of-arms, viz.: a field _gules_, charged with a lion rampant between two pillars (_pa...

[94] A Mozambique matikal (miskal) weighs 4.41346 grammes (Antonio Nunes, _O livro dos Pesos_, 1554, p. 50, published at Lisbon, 1868), and its value in standard gold would cons...

The Admiral, being about to proceed to India for a third time, the King, D. João III, is pleased to order that in case of his death his son and heir shall forthwith assume the t...

All or most of these people are clothed in cotton-cloths from the waist down to the knee, but from the waist upwards they go naked. Courtiers and men of condition dress in the s...

[197] Ceylon cinnamon still enjoys this pre-eminence, its cultivation in other parts of the world not having hitherto been attended with success. The “cinnamon”, or cassia, foun...

He left this anchorage on November 16th. Two days afterwards he sighted the Cape, but the wind being from the S.S.W. he was obliged to stand off and on until the 22nd, when he s...

They set sail from the bar of Lisbon on July 8th, 1497, arrived at Moçambique on March 1st, 1498, made Mombasa on Palm Sunday, the 7th of April,[390] and Melinde on the 15th of...

[333] “Balasci” are the pink rubies named after the country of their origin, Badakhshi, which was usually known, according to Ibn Batuta, as Al-balaksh (Yule’s _Marco Polo_, I,...

[457] Charts on a larger scale, but of a later date, are available, and enable us to trace the physical features of the coast, but their nomenclature is not always that of the o...

SIR CLEMENTS MARKHAM, K.C.B., F.R.S., _Pres. R.G.S._, PRESIDENT. THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY, VICE-PRESIDENT. REAR-ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM WHARTON, K.C.B., VICE-PRES...

[Here the Journal ends abruptly. The succeeding events may be shortly stated. Vasco da Gama and Coelho were separated in a storm, according to Resende. Coelho continued his voya...

The coastline of the Indian Ocean is Ptolemaic; there is no hint at the peninsular shape of India, the map being in that respect inferior to that of the Catalan, more than a hun...

+League.+ The Portuguese (Castilian) legoa of 7,500 varas was equal to 6,269 meters, or 20,568 feet, and 17.72 of these legoas were consequently equal to one mean degree of a me...

+--------------------------------+--------------- +In Portuguese.+ | +Names on the Maps.+ |+Modern Names.+ ----------------------------------------------------------------------...