d Hope but did not
at once go much further. [Sidenote: 1486 or 1488] This path to India
was not broken until eleven years later, when Vasco da Gama, after a
voyage of great daring [Sidenote: 1497-8]--he was ninety-three days at
sea on a course of 4500 miles from the Cape Verde Islands to South
Africa--reached Calicut on May 20, 1498. This city, now sunken in the
sea, was {442} then the most flourishing port on the Malabar Coast,
exploited entirely by Mohammedan traders. Spices had long been the
staple of Venetian trade with the Orient, and when he returned with
rich cargo of them the immediate effect upon Europe was greater than
that of the voyage of Columbus. Trade seeks to follow the line of
least resistance, and the establishment of a water way between Europe
and the East was like connecting two electrically charged bodies in a
Leyden jar by a copper wire. The current was no longer forced through
a poor medium, but ran easily through the better conductor. With more
rapidity than one would think possible in that age, the commercial
consequences of the discovery were appreciated. The trade of the
Levant died away, and the center of gravity was transferred from the
Mediterranean to the Atlantic. While Venice decayed Lisbon rose with
mushroom speed to the position of the great emporium of European
ocean-borne trade, until she in her turn was supplanted by Antwerp.

Da Gama was soon imitated by others. [Sidenote: 1500] Cabral made
commercial settlements at Calicut and the neighboring town of Cochin,
and came home with unheard-of riches in spice, pearls and gems.
[Sidenote: 1503] Da Gama returned and bombarded Calicut, and Francis
d'Almeida was made Governor of India [Sidenote: 1505] and tried to
consolidate the Portuguese power there on the correct principle that
who was lord of the sea was lord of the peninsula. The rough methods
of the Portuguese and their competition with the Arab traders made war
inevitable between the two rivals. To the other causes of enmity that
of religion was added, for, like the Spaniards, the Portuguese tried to
combine the characters of merchants and missionaries, of pirates and
crusaders. When the first of Da Gama's sailors to land at Calicut was
asked what he sought, his laconic answer, "Christians {443} and
spices," had in it as much of truth as of epigrammatic neatness.

[Sidenote: Portuguese cruelty to Indians]

Had the Portuguese but treated the Hindoos humanely they wou