vereigns, until at last they decided to send out a judge to the
island, armed with plenary authority to make investigations and settle
disputes. The glory which Columbus had won by the first news of the
discovery of the Indies had now to some extent faded away. The
enterprise yielded as yet no revenue and entailed great expense; and
whenever some reprobate found his way back to Spain, the malicious
Fonseca prompted him to go to the treasury with a claim for pay alleged
to have been wrongfully withheld by the Admiral. Ferdinand Columbus
tells how some fifty such scamps were gathered one day in the courtyard
of the Alhambra, cursing his father and catching hold of the king's
robe, crying, "Pay us! pay us!" and as he and his brother Diego, who
were pages in the queen's service, happened to pass by, they were
greeted with hoots:--"There go the sons of the Admiral of Mosquito-land,
the man who has discovered a land of vanity and deceit, the grave of
Spanish gentlemen!"[598]

[Footnote 598: "Ecco i figliuoli dell' Ammiraglio de'
Mosciolini, di colui che ha trovate terre di vanita e d'
inganno, per sepoltura e miseria de' gentiluomini castigliani."
_Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxiv.]

[Sidenote: Gama's voyage to Hindustan, 1497.]

An added sting was given to such taunts by a great event that happened
about this time. In the summer of 1497, Vasco da Gama started from
Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope, and in the summer of 1499 he returned,
after having doubled the cape and crossed the Indian ocean to Calicut on
the Malabar coast of Hindustan. His voyage was the next Portuguese step
sequent upon that of Bartholomew Dias. There was nothing questionable or
dubious about Gama's triumph. He had seen splendid cities, talked with a
powerful Rajah, and met with Arab vessels, their crews madly jealous at
the unprecedented sight of Christian ships in those waters; and he
brought back with him to Lisbon nutmegs and cloves, pepper and ginger,
rubies and emeralds, damask robes with satin linings, bronze chairs with
cushions, trumpets of carved ivory, a sunshade of crimson satin, a sword
in a silver scabbard, and no end of such gear.[599] An old civilization
had been found and a route of commerce discovered, and a factory was to
be set up at once on that Indian coast. What a contrast to the miserable
performance of Columbus, who had started with the flower of Spain's
chivalry for rich Cipango, and had