Canaries. However this may be, he went with four ships to the Cape de
Verd islands, whence he ran along a parallel, finding great rains and
calms, and the first land he came to in the Antilles was an island in
nine degrees of north latitude, called Trinidada,[9] which lies close to
the main land. Here he entered the Gulf of Paria, and came out by the
Bocca de Dragone, or Dragons-mouth. Holding his course westwards along
the coast of Paria, he came to the islands called Los Testigos, or the
Witnesses, beyond which is the island of Cubagua, where there is a great
fishing for pearl-muscles, and where also there is a well of rock oil.
Beyond that he came to the Frailes islands, named Roques, Aruba, and
Curaçoa, and other small islands, along the coast of the main land, and
to the point of land named Cabo de Vela, having discovered 200 leagues of
coast. He thence crossed over the Caribbean Sea, directly north for
Hispaniola, passing by the island Beata.

In this same year[10] 1497, on the 20th day of June[11], King Emanuel
sent a squadron of three ships for India, commanded by one Vasques de
Gama, having under his command his brother Paulus de Gama and Nicolas
Coello, as captains of the other two ships, the whole having a complement
of 120 men. They were accompanied by a fourth ship laden with provisions.
In fourteen days they reached the island of St Jago, one of the Cape
Verds, whence they went along the coast beyond the Cape of Good Hope,
erecting pillars of stone in proper places, as marks of discovery and
possession, and came to Mosambique in lat. 15° S. After staying only a
short time there, de Gama went to Mombaza and Melinda, the king of which
last place gave him pilots, who conducted him to India, in which passage
he discovered Los Baxos do Padua, or the Flats of Padua. In the month of
May 1498, de Gama came to anchor before the city of Calicut, _and
Panama_[12], where they remained till the first day of September, when
they sailed towards the north, discovering all the coast till they came to