THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE 611 to be the first to establish trade with India and the Spice Islands. In July, 1497, Vasco da Gama left Lis- Circum _ bon with four ships, a well-paid and well-trained navigation crew, provisions for three years, and the best ° nca scientific instruments then obtainable. At the Cape Verde Islands he left the coast to avoid calms and adverse winds and currents and sailed for three full months out of sight of land. This was not, however, so bold a feat as the first voyage of Columbus, since Vasco knew just where he should strike land again. He rounded the Cape in November and by March, 1498, reached Mozambique, where Arabic was spoken, and then Mombasa, where he secured a pilot who conducted him across the Indian Ocean to Calicut, which he reached in May. In August he started back and arrived at Lisbon in September, 1499, with only half of his ships and one third of his men, but with a precious cargo of gems and spices. This meant that the commercial greatness of Portugal was assured for the next century and that the day of Venice as the first sea power of Europe was over. The Portuguese proved more than a match for the rival Moham- medan traders in the Indian Ocean, and they kept secret their routes to the East and received from the pope the ex- clusive right to make conquests and to convert the heathen there. Portugal could, of course, greatly undersell Venice, which obtained its Oriental wares through the Moham- medans. The Spanish discovery of a new world and the Portu- guese renewal of contact in a closer way with the old world of the Orient both broadened human knowledge stimulus to and quickened the imagination. Geography and clvlhzatlon astronomy acquired vast stores of new data and were able to correct previous misinformation. Science learned of new plants and new animals, which were sometimes introduced into Europe, affecting the daily life of the average man. New races and unsuspected stages of human civilization were en- countered, although not at first scientifically scrutinized and appreciated. New fields were opened to economic, maritime and colonial enterprise. Literature profited by new subject-
