1502-1629 THOUGH It Did Not Take Place Until Fifteen Years Later, the Discovery of St
CHAPTER I 1502-1629 THOUGH it did not take place until fifteen years later, the discovery of St. Helena became inevitable AL when the Portuguese navigator, Bartholomew de Diaz, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487. For many years the Portuguese, the greatest race of sailors who ever ventured into uncharted seas, excluded from the Mediterranean, had gradually explored farther and farther along the mysterious unmapped western coast of Africa. Ten years after the epoch-making discovery of Diaz and after Columbus and Cabot had opened up the Atlantic to the races of the West and North of Europe, the King of Portugal, Emmanuel the Fortunate, sent out a fleet under the command of Vasco da Gama with orders to sail beyond the Cape of Good Hope in search of a direct sea route to India and thus tap the wealth of the East. Hitherto for centuries all trade between Europe and the East had been carried overland across Arabia, and by ship along the Mediterranean, and had been in the hands of the Italian cities of Venice and Genoa. Da Gama achieved his ambition, and arrived at Calicut, on the west coast of the Indian Peninsula, and from that day the Mediterranean, which for centuries had been the centre of civilization, began to decline. The Portuguese lost no time in building forts and setting up trading posts along the west coast of India, but their principal one was at Calicut. I 5 021 ST. HELENA ST. HELENA [1502 It is not to be wondered at that the "Moors" or Arabs who by some strange fluke of fortune, is still existing and to be for centuries had held the monopoly of the trade between found in considerable numbers.
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