Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/195

Rh ‘ Gama. FI FTEENTII CENTUI1 Y._-I island of Dominica, and during the voyage his discoveries included the Windward Islands and Jamaica. He returned to Cadiz on June 11, 1496; and it was not until May 30, 1498, that he set sail on his third voyage. The ﬁrst land he came to formed a new discovery, which he named the island of Trinidad, and it was in this voyage that he reached the mainland of South America, and discovered the islands of Cubagua and Margarita. A colony had been formed on Hispaniola, and soon afterwards a judge named Francisco de Bobadilla arrived from Spain, having been sent, at the instigation of the great discoverer’s enemies, to inquire into his conduct. Bobadilla seized upon the government, and sent Columbus home in chains. Ferdinand and Isabella were overwhelmed with shame, and the people with astonish- ment, on his arrival. He was at once released, and false promises of restitution and reward were profusely made. ’;ut Bobadilla was superseded, not by Columbus, but by Nicolas de Ovando. On the 9th of May 1502, however, Columbus was allowed to sail on a fourth and last voyage of discovery. He reached the island of Martinique on the 13th of June, and touched at Dominica and Hispaniola. Thence he sailed westward, discovering the coast of Veragua and the harbour of Porto Bello. After a stay in Jamaica, he set sail for Spain on the 12th of September 1504, and arrived at San Lucar on the 7th of November. He lived for two years longer, experiencing the blackest ingratitude from the Spanish court. At length, in debt and poverty, and bowed down by disappointment, this great man died .[ay 20, 1506. His body was buried at Valladolid, and removed in 1513 to Cartuja de las Cuevas near Seville. A monument was erected over his grave, with the inscription— A Castilla y Leon, Nuevo Mundo did Colon. In 1536 the bodies of Columbus and his son Diego were transported to St Domingo; and thence they were removed to Havana in 1795. The ashes of the immortal discoverer now repose in the cathedral of Havana. While Columbus was discovering a new world, the Por- tuguese continued their persevering efforts to reach India by sea. Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon on the 8tl1 of July 1497 with four vessels built expressly for the voyage, the largest not exceeding 120 tons, and called the “ Sam Gabriel.” His brother Paolo commanded the “ Sam Raphael,” and the “Berrio" was under Nicolas Coelho. On November 22, with a fair wind, Da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and anchored in the bay named San Bras by Bartholomeu Dias, on the 25th. On Christmas Day he sighted land, which, on that account, he named Natal. He reached Mombas on the 7th of April, and on the 20tl1 of May 1498 he anchored before Calicut. Da Gama returned to Lisbon in August 1499 ; and at his re- commendation another ﬂeet was ﬁtted out, consisting of thirteen well-armed ships, under Pedro Alvarez Cabral, with Eartholomeu Dias and Nicolas Coelho under his orders. The expedition sailed on the 9th of March 1500 ; and on the 22d of April Cabral discovered the coast of Brazil, and took formal possession for the king of Portugal. Ilesuming his voyage to the East, he reached Calicut in September, and obtained permission to build a factory, establishing friendly relations also at Cananor and Cochin. He returned to Lisbon in July 1501. Vasco da Gama set sail, with a much larger ﬂeet, on his second voyage in 1502. He visited several ports on the west coast of India, engaged in war as well as 111 commerce, and returned in September 1503. In 1503 Antonio da Saldanha and Alfonso de Albuquerque sailed for India, and made terms of friendship with the chief of Quilon. Dom Francisco de Almeida, the first GEOGRAPHY 181 Albuquerque under his orders, was sent to occupy Socotra, and in 1506 Albuquerque came to India as second viceroy, He explored the coasts of Arabia and Persia, made the king of Ormus tributary to Portugal, and sent embassies to Abyssinia. In 1509 a factory was established at Malacca; and on November 25, 1510, the great Albuquerque con- quered Goa, a11d established the seat of his government there. In 1512 the Moluccas were discovered ; and in 1517 Fernam Peres de Andrade reached China, and entered into commercial relations with the governor of Canton. In 1524 Vasco da Gama arrived in India for a third time, as viceroy, and landed at Goa on the 11th of September. He died at Cochin on the 24th of December 1524, and in 1538 his body was transported to Portugal, and buried in his tomb at Vidigueira, of which tow11 he was count. The voyages of Vasco da Gama revolutionized the co1n- Eastern Until then the Venetians held the t1‘4*'1°- merce of the East. carrying trade of India, which was brought by the Persian Gulf and Red Sea into Syria and Egypt, the Venetians re- ceiving the rich products of the East at Alexandria and Beyrout, and distributing them over Europe. This com- merce was a great source of wealth to Venice ; but after the discovery of the new passage round the Cape, and the con- quests of the Portuguese, the trade of the East passed into other hands. The achievements of Columbus and Da Gama are im- The measurably enhanced when we consider the inadequate “~9t’°1ab°' means at their disposal, their small and ill-formed ships, a11d their defective knowledge of navigation. The mariner’s compass had been in use for nearly two centuries, and it was Columbus himself who ﬁrst observed the phenomena of variation. But the compass and rough sea—card were the only appliances, until the learned Nuremberger, Martin Behaim, invented the application of the astrolabe to pur- poses of navigation, which enabled mariners to ascertain their latitude. This was in the year 1480. The astrolabe was used by Vasco da Gama on his ﬁrst voyage round the Cape of Good Hope ; but the movement of a ship rendered accuracy impossible, a11d the liability to error was increased by the necessity for three observers. One held the astrolabe by a ring passed over the thumb, the second measured the altitude, and the third read off. The astro- labe was a metal circle graduate-.1 round the edge, with a limb called the al/u'¢la.r_lct fixed to a pin in the centre, and working round the graduated circle. The instrument had two sights fitted upon it, one at each end, and was suspended by a ring so as to hang vertically on one hand, while the (ll/aiclacla was worked up and down until the sun could be seen through both the sights. It then gave the zenith distance. The Orclenanzas of the Spanish council of the Indies record the course of instruction prescribed for pilots, which included the De S1)/t(€ra Jllundi of Sacrobosco, the spherical triangles of Regiomontanus, the .llma_r/est of Ptolemy, the use of the astrolabe and its mechanism, the adjustments of instruments, cartography, and the methods of observing the movements of heavenly bodies. The only observations employed by the ancients for finding the longi- tude were those of the eclipses of the moon, and it was not u11til 1610 that Galileo discovered another method by observation of J upiter’s satellites. The discoveries of Columbus awakened a spirit of enter- Spamsh prise in Spain which continued in full force for a century ; 9 adventurers ﬂocked eagerly across the Atlantic, and dis- covery followed discovery i11 rapid succession. Many of the companions of Columbus continued his work. Pinzon in 1499 reached the mouth of the Amazon; and in the same year Alonzo de Ojeda, accompanied by a Florentine 11amed viceroy of the Indies, _was sent out in 1505. He founded the ports of the Angediva and Cananor, and his son Laurengo discovered Ceylon. Tristam da Cunha, with Affonso de Amerigo Yespncci, touched the coast of South America Amerigo somewhere near Surinam, following the shore as far as the 1 CSPHCCL Gulf of Maracaibo. Yespucci afterwards made three voyages