certain latitude.

They sailed from Lisbon on the 18th of July, 1497: in the bay of St.
Helena, which they reached on the 4th of November, they found natives, who
were not understood by any of the negro interpreters they had on board.
From the description of the peculiarity in their mode of utterance, which
the journal of the voyage calls sighing, and from the circumstance that the
same people were found in the bay of St. Blas, 60 leagues beyond the Cape,
there can be no doubt that they were Hottentots. In consequence of the
ignorance or the obstinacy of the pilot, and of tempestuous weather, the
voyage to the Cape was long and dangerous: this promontory, however, was
doubled on the 20th of November. After this the wind and weather proving
favourable, the voyage was more prosperous and rapid. On the 11th of
January, 1498, they reached that part of the coast where the natives were
no longer Hottentots, but Caffres, who at that period displayed the same
marks of superior civilization by which they are distinguished from the
Hottentots at present.

From the bay of St. Helena till they passed Cape Corrientes, there had been
no trace of navigation,--no symptom that the natives used the sea at all.
But after they passed this cape, they were visited by the natives in boats,
the sails of which seem to have been made of the fibres of the cocoa-palm.
A much more encouraging circumstance, however, occurred: some of the
natives that came off in these boats were clothed in cotton, silk, and
sattin,--evident proofs that intercourse, either direct or indirect, was
practicable, and had in fact been held between this country and India. The
language of these people was not understood; but from their signs it was
inferred that they had seen ships as large as the Portuguese, and that they
had come from the north.

This part of Africa lies between latitudes 19 deg. and 18 deg. south; and as Gama
had the corrected chart of Covilham on board, in which Sofala was marked as
the limit of his progress, and Sofala was two degrees to the south of where
he then was, he must have known that he had now passed the barrier, and
that the discovery was ascertained, his circumnavigation being now
connected with the route of Covilham. This point of Gama's progress is also
interesting and important in another respect, for we are here approaching a
junction with the discoveries of the Arabians, the Egyptians, the Greeks,
and the Romans.

At this place Gama