bring something of value on the next visit. âAnd what I want from your land is gold and silver and coral and scarlet [cloth],â he wrote to the Portuguese king.
Da Gamaâs journey was the first time that pepper had been imported directly from India to Europe via an all-ocean route, a great achievement that received widespread acclaim. Da Gama didnât return to Lisbon with the remnants of his fleet on that first journey because he had to bury his brother Paulo in the Azores. Paulo died on the long voyage and his ship was burned in Mombasa, since there werenât enough men to sail her. Scurvyâwhich turns the skin into a patchwork of ugly purple dots, painfully distends hands and feet, and makes the gums bloat so massively that eating becomes impossibleâhad killed nearly two-thirds of da Gamaâs crew. (Scurvy remained a major cause of death among sailors until well into the mid-nineteenth century. It wasnât until the early twentieth century that Axel Holst and Theodor Frölich proved definitively the cause of scurvy was a lack of ascorbic acidâvitamin C.)
Those who survived da Gamaâs voyage were well compensated. They received their pay in âdrugs,â read spices. Nicolau Coelho, the captain of the first ship of the expedition to reach Lisbon, received a quintal, or some 125 pounds, of all the drugs brought back, and each pilot and sailor was given a half quintal.
The Portuguese monarch, Don Manuel, richly rewarded da Gama and his descendants with a yearly allowance of one-thousand cruzados, a sum of money roughly equal to the annual revenues of a large property. Don Manuel wasted no time in broadening his own domain. After da Gamaâs first voyage, he was not only âKing of Portugal and the Algraves on this side and beyond the sea in Africa, and Lord of Guinea,â but he also became âLord of the Conquest, Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India.â Even today, da Gama is considered a national hero in Portugal, and his legend lives on as the navigator who âdiscoveredâ the sea route to India from Europe.
----
Vasco da Gama and Prester John
By the time da Gama left Lisbon, the Prester John fable had been around for more than 300 years. Marco Polo and other travelers in the thirteenth century set out to find the Christian king, but no one could locate him. Then, someone came along who claimed to be Sir John Mandeville, an English knight who spent more than thirty years wandering in Arab lands and in the East during the fourteenth century. This clever, anonymous author recharged the spirit of Prester John by reporting that the king was alive and well and living lavishly as emperor of India. At his court, he entertained and fed more than thirty thousand people each day at tables made of emeralds. The main gates of his palace were made of precious stones, and the halls and the chambers of his palace were made of crystal. His throne was encrusted with onyx, crystal, and jasper. Two great gold balls topped the towers of his palace, and they shone brightly in the night. When he went into battle, three large gold crosses preceded him. The crosses were guarded by tens of thousands of men at arms and a hundred thousand foot soldiers, who were not counted as part of the emperorâs main army.
Travels of Sir John Mandeville was published in Europe around 1372 and was enormously popular. By 1500, more than twenty-five editions had been published in Spanish, English, German, Czech, Dutch, and Danish translations. Columbus read Mandevilleâs travels and noted the abundance of spices in the margins of his copy of the book. Mandevilleâs literary hoax was widely held to be true well into the seventeenth century. The identity of the author is unknown, although over the years some scholars have argued that he was Jean de Bourgogne, a physician who died in Liège in 1372.
By the time da Gama went to India, the story of
Da Gamaâs journey was the first time that pepper had been imported directly from India to Europe via an all-ocean route, a great achievement that received widespread acclaim. Da Gama didnât return to Lisbon with the remnants of his fleet on that first journey because he had to bury his brother Paulo in the Azores. Paulo died on the long voyage and his ship was burned in Mombasa, since there werenât enough men to sail her. Scurvyâwhich turns the skin into a patchwork of ugly purple dots, painfully distends hands and feet, and makes the gums bloat so massively that eating becomes impossibleâhad killed nearly two-thirds of da Gamaâs crew. (Scurvy remained a major cause of death among sailors until well into the mid-nineteenth century. It wasnât until the early twentieth century that Axel Holst and Theodor Frölich proved definitively the cause of scurvy was a lack of ascorbic acidâvitamin C.)
Those who survived da Gamaâs voyage were well compensated. They received their pay in âdrugs,â read spices. Nicolau Coelho, the captain of the first ship of the expedition to reach Lisbon, received a quintal, or some 125 pounds, of all the drugs brought back, and each pilot and sailor was given a half quintal.
The Portuguese monarch, Don Manuel, richly rewarded da Gama and his descendants with a yearly allowance of one-thousand cruzados, a sum of money roughly equal to the annual revenues of a large property. Don Manuel wasted no time in broadening his own domain. After da Gamaâs first voyage, he was not only âKing of Portugal and the Algraves on this side and beyond the sea in Africa, and Lord of Guinea,â but he also became âLord of the Conquest, Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India.â Even today, da Gama is considered a national hero in Portugal, and his legend lives on as the navigator who âdiscoveredâ the sea route to India from Europe.
----
Vasco da Gama and Prester John
By the time da Gama left Lisbon, the Prester John fable had been around for more than 300 years. Marco Polo and other travelers in the thirteenth century set out to find the Christian king, but no one could locate him. Then, someone came along who claimed to be Sir John Mandeville, an English knight who spent more than thirty years wandering in Arab lands and in the East during the fourteenth century. This clever, anonymous author recharged the spirit of Prester John by reporting that the king was alive and well and living lavishly as emperor of India. At his court, he entertained and fed more than thirty thousand people each day at tables made of emeralds. The main gates of his palace were made of precious stones, and the halls and the chambers of his palace were made of crystal. His throne was encrusted with onyx, crystal, and jasper. Two great gold balls topped the towers of his palace, and they shone brightly in the night. When he went into battle, three large gold crosses preceded him. The crosses were guarded by tens of thousands of men at arms and a hundred thousand foot soldiers, who were not counted as part of the emperorâs main army.
Travels of Sir John Mandeville was published in Europe around 1372 and was enormously popular. By 1500, more than twenty-five editions had been published in Spanish, English, German, Czech, Dutch, and Danish translations. Columbus read Mandevilleâs travels and noted the abundance of spices in the margins of his copy of the book. Mandevilleâs literary hoax was widely held to be true well into the seventeenth century. The identity of the author is unknown, although over the years some scholars have argued that he was Jean de Bourgogne, a physician who died in Liège in 1372.
By the time da Gama went to India, the story of
Similar Books
