Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/67

Rh increasing. In 1877 the number of British vessels that entered the port was 153, with a tonnage of 30,034; of foreign vessels 33, with a tonnage of 16, l66. The number of British vessels that cleared was 136, with a tonnage of 29,827; of foreign vessels 27, with a tonnage of 13,225. The chief articles exported are agricultural produce, wool, and marble. There are a brewery, a distillery, a paper mill, a t'annery, and several ﬂour mills ; and a company has recently been formed for the purpose of extracting iodine and marine salts from seaweed. The salmon ﬁshery is of considerable value. Galway is divided into the old and new towns, and the maritime suburb of Claddagh, inhabited almost entirely by ﬁshermen and their families, who have acquired or re- tained certain peculiar usages and habits of their own. Little is known of the history of Galway until after the arrival of the English, at which time it was under the protection of O’Flaherty, who possessed the adjoining district to the, west. On the extinction of the native dynasty of the O’Connors, the town fell into the hands of the De Burgos, the head of a branch of which, under the name of M‘William Eighter, long governed it by magistrates of his own appointment. After it had been secured by walls, which began to be built in, it became the residence of a number of enterprising settlers, through whom it attained a position of much commercial celebrity. Of these settlers the principal families, fourteen in number, were known as the tribes of Galway. They were of Norman, Saxon, or \Velsh descent, and became so exclusive in their relationships that dispensations were frequently requisite for the canonical legality of marriages among them. The town rapidly increased from this period in wealth and commercial rank, far surpassing in this respect the rival city of Limerick. Richard II. granted it a charter of incorporation with liberal privileges, which was confirmed by his successor. It had the right of coinage by Act of Parliament, but there is no evidence to show that it exercised the privilege. Another charter, granted in , extended the jurisdiction of the port to the islands of Arao, permitted the exportation of all kinds of goods except linens and woollens, and conﬁrmed all the former privileges. Large numbers of Cromwell’s soldiers are said to have settled in the town ; and there are many traces of Spanish blood among the population. Its municipal privileges were extended by a charter from James I., whereby the town, and a district of two miles round in every (llrection, were formed into a distinct county, with exclusive jurisdiction and a right of choosing its own magistrates. During the civil wars of 1641 the town took part with the Irish, and was surrendered to the Parliamentary forces under Sir Charles Coote; after which the ancient inhabitants were mostly driven out, and their property was given to adventurers and soldiers, chieﬂy from England. On the accession of James I i. the old inhabitants entertained sanguine hopes of re- covering their former rights. But the successes of King \Villiam soon put an end to their expectations; and the town, after undergoing another siege, again capitulated to the force brought against it by General Ginkell. In the beginning of the present century the walls Were thrown down, and buildings erected on their site. Galway is governed by a high sheriff, a recorder, local magistrates, and a board of :24 commissioners elected triennially. The area of the municipal borough is 955 acres. The population in 1861 was 16,967, and in 1871 15,597, of whom 14,424 were Roman Catholics. The parliamentary borough has an area of 22,493 acres, and a population of 19,843.  GAMA, (–), the celebrated Portuguese navigator and discoverer, was born at Sines, a small sea-town in the province of Alemtejo. No one will deny that his name deservedly stands high in the roll of naval heroes ; yet it cannot be doubted that he owes the brilliancy of his reputation to his country’s illustrious poet, Luiz de Camoens, by whom his discoveries in India and their results have been assigned the foremost place in the great national epic Os Lusiadas. Of Vasco’s early history little is known. His descent, according to the Nobiliario of Antonio de Lima, is derived from a noble family which is mentioned in ; but the line cannot be traced without interruption farther back than, to one Alvaro da Gama, from whom was descended Estevao da Gama, Alcaide MOr of Sines, whose third son, the subject of this notice, was born probably about. About this period died Prince Henry the Navigator, son of Joao I., who had spent his life in fostering the study of navigation, and to whose intelligence and foresight must be traced back all the fame that Portugal gained on the seas in the and. Explorers sent out at his instigation discovered the Western Isles, and unknown regions on the African coast, whence continually came reports (which by and by affected Da Gama’s history) of a great monarch, “who lived east of Benin, 350 leagues in the interior, and who held both temporal and spiritual dominion over all the neighbouring kings,” a story which tallied so remarkably with the accounts of “ Prester John” which had been brought to the Peninsula by Abyssinian priests, that Joao II. steadfastly resolved that both by sea and by land the attempt should be made to reach the country of this potentate. In the hope of making this discovery, Pedro Covilham and Atfonso (le Payva were despatched eastward by land; while Bartho- lomeu Dias, in command of two vessels, was-sent westward by sea. Neither of the landward travellers ever returned to his country; but Covilham, who, in his fruitless search for a mythical sovereign, reached the Malabar coast and the eastern shores of Africa, sent back to Lisbon, along with the tales of the rich lands he had visited, this intelligence, “that the ships which sailed down the coast of Guinea ought to be sure of reaching the termination of the continent by persevering in a course to the south." King Joao was now seized with an ardent desire of reaching these eastern countries by the route indicated by Covilham. That there was in truth such an ocean highway was conﬁrmed by Dias, who shortly after returned (in ) with the report that when sailing southward he was carried far to the east by a succession of ﬁerce storms, past—as he dis- covered only on his return voyage—what he perceived to be the southern extremity of the African continent, and to which, on account of the fearful weather he had encountered, he gave the name of the Cape of Storms, an appellation which to the king, who was then elated with high hopes of enriching his kingdom by the addition of eastern posses- sions, appeared so inauspicious that he changed it to that of Cape of Good Hope. The state of Joao’s health, how- ever, and concerns of state, prevented the ﬁtting out of the intended expedition; and it was not till ten years later, when Manoel had succeeded to the throne, that the pre- parations for the great voyage were completed,—hastened, doubtless, by Columbus’s discovery of America in the mean- while. For the supreme command of this expedition the king selected Vasco da Gama, who had in his youth fought in the wars against Castile, and in his riper years gained (lis- tinction as an intrepid mariner. The ﬂeet, consisting of four vessels specially built for this mission, sailed down the Tagus on the 8th July, after prayers and confession made by the oﬂicers and crews in the presence of the king and court, in a small chapel on the site where now stands the church of S. Maria de Belem, afterwards built to com- memorate the event. Four months later it cast anchor in St Helena Bay, South Africa, rounded the Cape in safety, and in the beginning of the next year reached Melinda. Thence, steering eastward, under the direction of: a pilot