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Portuguese mariners to double the Cape of Good Hope, the feat having already been performed by John Infante and Bartholomew Dias, and that da Gama had with him pilots who had sailed with these captains. It is true also that da Gama, unlike Magellan and Columbus, was not the originator of the design which it fell to his lot to carry into effect, and that he owes his fame, less to his own adventuresome spirit and to his individual enterprise and initiative, than to the happy accident of his selection by the King of Portugal for the post of captain-major of the pioneering fleet. All this must be admitted, but nothing can weaken the impression which we receive from Correa's narrative of the dogged strength, the grim resolution, the unshakable courage, moral and physical of the man. The ships held upon that cruel two-months' tack, through angry seas, through cold and tempest, with seams gaping under the long strain, with crews half-famished by the bitter weather, mad afraid, and worn to death with weary toiling at the sails and pumps, and never once did they swerve from the appointed course, because "the captain-major did not choose!" When every soul in all that fleet was calling upon God in his extremity, and was beseiging the captain with entreaties to abandon the desperate enterprise, he alone was determined, fearless, and answered their prayers with fierce threats of yet other tacks which he would take if this one failed to accomplish the purpose upon which his will was set. Here in a few words we have the man revealed to us, and if even in this the hour of his greatest achievement we see traces of the ruthlessness, the absence of all