by Cliff, Nigel
By now the explorers had learned that they were in a country called Mozambique. The well-dressed men were wealthy merchants who traded with Arabs—or white Moors, as the Portuguese insisted on calling them—from the north. Four Arab ships were in port, and they turned out to be heavily laden with “gold, silver, cloves, pepper, ginger, and silver rings, as also with quantities of pearls, jewels, and rubies, all of which articles are used by the people of this country.” All apart from the gold, explained the Europeans’ new friends, came from rich cities where precious stones, pearls, and spices were so common “that there was no need to purchase them as they could be collected in baskets.”
The visitors’ pulses quickened. Here was the first evidence of the fabled riches of the East they had come so far to seek. It was disturbing, of course, to discover that Muslims controlled the entire coast—the Swahili Coast, from the Arabic for coast dwellers, as they would learn to call it—but there was good news there, too. Nearby, the merchants told them, was a hugely wealthy island whose half-Christian, half-Muslim population was constantly at war. Half encouraged, the Portuguese inquired after the whereabouts of Prester John. He also lived nearby, they learned, and ruled over numerous coastal cities, whose inhabitants were “great merchants and owned big ships.” The Prester’s court, it transpired, was far in the interior and could only be reached by camel, but that deep disappointment was tempered by the revelation that the Arabs had two Christians from India itself on board their ships. Another dose of reality was delivered by the news that the Christians were the Arabs’ captives, but the two were soon brought out to the São Gabriel. The instant they saw the saint’s figurehead on the prow, they fell to their knees in prayer. Prisoners or not, this was surely the long-awaited proof that there were, after all, Christians throughout the East.
“This information,” rejoiced the Chronicler, “and many other things which we heard, rendered us so happy that we cried with joy, and prayed God to grant us health, so that we might behold what we so much desired.” The hopes and dreams of centuries were almost within their grasp: a Christian king of the East and his fabulously wealthy subjects, and cities overflowing with jewels and spices that could simply be scooped up.
Just as the travelers were becoming flushed with excitement, things started to go badly wrong.
On one of his visits the sultan asked the foreigners where they came from. Were they Turks, he wanted to know, or another distant Muslim people with whom he was unfamiliar? The Turks, he was aware, were a fair people like them. If they were Turks, he added, he would be very interested to see the famous bows of their country and to take a look at their copies of the Quran.
They were not from Turkey, Gama replied, wearing his best poker face, but from a kingdom in that neighborhood. He would willingly show him their weapons, but they did not have the religious books at sea. The soldiers brought out their crossbows, drew them, and shot them off, and the sultan seemed astonished and delighted. Over a spread of figs and sugared fruits and spices, Gama ventured to explain that he had been sent by a great and mighty king to discover a way to the Indies. He asked if he could hire two pilots who knew the Indian Ocean, and the sultan readily agreed. Two men duly reported for duty, and Gama gave them each a purse of gold and a tunic. His sole condition, he told them through Fernão Martins, was that from now on, one of them must stay on board at all times.
It was not long before the presence of the pilots caused trouble. The behavior of the pale visitors with their strange language and stranger ships had already raised suspicion. They seemed to know nothing about the coast or its produce; they asked too many questions and refused to give clear answers. It finally dawned on the two men that they had been recruited not by some exotic race of Muslims but by Christians, and one of the pair made his excuses and left. When he failed to reappear, the Portuguese set off for one of the small outlying islands, a league across the bay, where they had found out he lived. The ships anchored close by, and Gama and Coelho headed for the shore in two armed boats, taking the other pilot with them. Immediately half a dozen small dhows started out from the island to intercept them. They were packed with Muslim fighters armed with bows, long arrows, and round shields who gesticulated to the Portuguese to return to the town.
Gama had the pilot secured, and he ordered his gunners to fire their bombards at the boats.
Cannonballs roared out of the barrels and rumbled through the air.
The moment that Christians and Muslims had knowingly come face-to-face in the Indian Ocean, relations had skidded from jovial to hostile. The old bitter rivalry had been exported into new waters. The first shots had been fired, and the report would echo across centuries.
Paulo da Gama had stayed with the fleet in case he needed to send help, and at the sound of gunfire he sprang to action. As the Berrio bore down on the Arabs’ boats they fled to the main island, where they disappeared into the town before Paulo could catch up with them.
The Portuguese returned to their anchorage. Relations with the sultan were clearly beyond repair. When he had taken them for Turks, the Chronicler noted, he had been markedly friendly. “But when they learned that we were Christians, they arranged to seize and kill us by treachery. The pilot, whom we took with us, subsequently revealed to us all they intended to do, if they were able.” Making the best of it, the Portuguese decided the pilot had been moved by the Almighty to reveal the plot.
The next day was a Sunday, and the crews set out to the small island to celebrate mass. They found an isolated spot, and under the shade of a tall tree they set up an altar and took communion. Immediately afterward they set sail in search of more hospitable waters.
The elements had other plans. Two days later, as the ships sailed past a cape backed by high mountains, the wind dropped away and they ground to a halt. The following evening a breeze carried them out to sea, but the men woke up the next morning to discover that a powerful offshore current had dragged them all the way back past Mozambique Island. By evening they had made it to the island where they had celebrated mass, but by then the wind was against them again. They anchored, and waited. It was the last place they wanted to be.
When reports reached the sultan that the Christians had returned, he sent one of his men to the fleet with a message of friendship. The envoy was an Arab from the north who swore he was a sharif, a descendant of the Prophet. He was also blind drunk. His master, he told the Portuguese, wanted to make peace after their unfortunate misunderstanding. So did he, replied Gama, but first he required the return of the pilot whom he had hired. The sharif left and never came back.
Soon another Arab arrived with his little son and asked permission to come on board. He was the pilot of a ship from a port near Mecca, he explained, and he was looking for a passage back north. This seemed odd when there were so many Arab ships plying the coast, but Gama agreed to take him as a passenger, not so much out of hospitality as to ply him for information. The newcomer gave one piece of advice unprompted: the sultan, he declared, hated Christians, and they had better keep their wits about them.
After holding off for nearly a week, Gama ordered the fleet back into the harbor. He had little choice: the weather showed no sign of improving, and the drinking water was running dangerously low.
There was no freshwater source on the island: digging down brought up brackish, salty puddles that gave anyone who drank from them a bad dose of dysentery. All the water came from the mainland, and there, the explorers were told, warring tribes of naked tattooed men with sharpened teeth dined off the flesh of the elephants they hunted and the humans they took prisoner.
Despite that alarming news, at nightfall the sailors quietly lowered the boats and loaded them with empty casks. Around midnight, Vasco da Gama and Nicolau Coelho took some men and rowed softly to the mainland. The pilot whom Gama had hired from the sultan had offered to show them to the watering place, and he came with them. Soon they were hopelessly lost amid mangrove swamps, and they began to suspect that the pilot was me
rely looking for a chance to escape. After rowing about all night they returned tired and angry to the ships.
The next evening, without waiting for nightfall, they tried again. This time the pilot quickly pointed out the place, but when the boats drew near, the Portuguese saw twenty men on the beach, brandishing spears at them and gesturing them to go away.
Gama was reaching the end of his tether, and he ordered his men to open fire. As the shot exploded out of the barrels, the Africans fled into the bush. The sailors landed and took all the water they wanted, though their satisfaction was spoiled when they realized that an African slave who belonged to João de Coimbra, the pilot of the São Rafael, had slipped away unnoticed. The Portuguese soon heard to their indignation that he had gone over to Islam, even though he had been baptized a Christian.
The next morning another Arab approached the fleet and delivered a threatening message. If the strangers wanted water, he said with a sneer, they could go and search for it, but they might meet something that would make them turn back.
The captain-major finally snapped. His gifts had been laughed off, one of his pilots had escaped, and now one visitor after another was toying with him. He was being made to look a fool, and he was determined to teach the Muslims a lesson before he lost any more face. He sent a message to the sultan demanding the return of the slave and the pilot, and the answer soon came back. The sultan was outraged. The men at the watering hole were only being high-spirited, and the Christians had killed them. As for the pilots, they were foreigners and he knew nothing of them. The visitors had appeared to be trustworthy people; now it seemed they were nothing more than low vagabonds who went around plundering ports.
Gama held a quick conference with his captains. All the boats were armed with bombards, and they bore down on the town.
The islanders were prepared for a fight. Hundreds of men were drawn up on the beach, armed with spears, daggers, bows, and slings with which they hurled stones at the approaching boats. The cannon fired back, and the islanders retreated behind a palisade they had built by lashing together rows of wooden planks. They were hidden but they could no longer easily attack, and for three hours the Portuguese bombarded the shore.
“When we were weary with this work,” recorded the Chronicler with the feigned insouciance of the provoked, “we retired to our ships to dine.”
The islanders began to flee, taking their belongings with them and paddling in dugouts to the mainland.
After dinner the Portuguese set out to finish off their work. The captain-major’s plan was to take prisoners to swap for the slave and the two “Indian Christians” held by the Arabs. His brother overtook a canoe paddled by four Africans and hauled them off to the ships. Another group of sailors pursued a boat that belonged to the self-declared sharif. It was crammed with his personal property, but the rowers abandoned it as soon as they reached the mainland. The Portuguese found another abandoned canoe and carted away “fine cotton-stuffs, baskets made of palm-fronds, a glazed jar containing some butter, glass phials with scented water, books of the Law, a box containing skeins of cotton, a cotton net, and many small baskets filled with millet”—the household possessions of a well-to-do merchant. Gama handed out everything to the sailors, except for the Quran, which he put away to show to his king.
The next day, a Sunday, the coast was deserted. The Portuguese topped up their water casks, this time unopposed. On Monday they rearmed the boats and set out again for the town. The remaining islanders stayed in their houses. A few shouted oaths at the brutal strangers. Gama did not want to risk a landing, and since there seemed no hope of recovering the missing men, he satisfied honor by ordering the gunners to discharge their bombards.
Having made their point, the Portuguese left the roadstead and returned to the small island. They had to wait another three days before the wind finally picked up.
ALARMING LEGENDS CIRCULATED about the coast the explorers were about to follow. In one place, a traveler reported, “the Blacks Fish for Pisce Mulier, which is to say Women Fish”:
This Fish resembles a Woman, having the Privy Parts after the same manner, and carrieth her young under her Fins, which are on each side, serving for Arms, and goes often on Land, and is there disburthened of her young: The Blacks who Fish, are to swear not to have to do with these She-Fishes: Their teeth are of great Virtue, (as I have experienced) against Hemorhoids, Bloody Flux, and hot Fevers, in rubbing them against a Marble, and agitating it with Water, and so to be Drunk.
Forbidden or not, he added, the Africans “are extream fond of these Fishes, and refresh themselves by having Communication with them,” though far from being ravishing mermaids, the fish-women had “a hideous Face, like the Snout of a Hog.” The purely human inhabitants of the coast were even more awful. Farther inland, it was reported, there ruled a great king whose subjects, “when they kill any of their Enemies, cut off their Privy-Members, and having dried them, give them their Wives to wear about their Neck, of which they are not a little Proud: For they who have the most are the most esteemed, in regard that Evidences the Husband to be the more hardy and valiant.” Possession of a “Chaine of mens members,” another traveler helpfully explained, was equivalent to being knighted in Europe; for the warriors of East Africa it was as great an honor “as it is with us to weare the golden Fleece, or the Garter of England.”
The Portuguese stoutly persevered, and on March 29 a light wind finally blew them north. Slowly they made headway against the current, the heavy work of continually casting and weighing anchor leaving a catalog of blisters on the seamen’s hands.
On April 1 they sailed up to a large archipelago of tropical islands edged with mangrove forests and ringed by vibrant coral reefs. Boats plied between the islands and the mainland, and there were sizable trading posts near the shore. The night before, while the Portuguese were still too far away to make out the terrain, the Arab pilot had insisted that the islands were part of the mainland. By now Gama was convinced that everyone was conspiring against him, and he had the pilot soundly flogged. To commemorate the event, the Portuguese named the first of the islands the “Island of the Flogged One.”
Gama decided to carry on, and three days later they came across another archipelago. This time both of the Muslim pilots recognized it. Three leagues back, they declared, the fleet had sailed straight past an island inhabited by Christians.
The captain-major was convinced the pilots had made him overshoot a friendly port on purpose. All day the ships maneuvered to reach it, but a strong wind was against them. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, or, as it was later interpreted, a miracle sent by God, because the island of Kilwa was home to the most powerful ruler on the coast, and he was no Christian. Far from trying to lead the Portuguese away, the disappointed pilots had been trying to draw them into a trap.
When it became clear that there was no going back, the pilots tried a new tack. A big city called Mombasa lay four days’ sailing ahead, they said, and powerful Christians also lived there. It was already late, but the wind was high and the fleet bore away to the north. As night fell the lookouts made out a large island ahead—another place, claimed the Mozambique pilot, with both Christian and Muslim towns. Gama pressed on regardless, and with the favorable wind the ships made good progress until the São Rafael suddenly hit a shoal and ran aground.
It was two hours before daybreak, and the fleet was several miles from land. The crew shouted at the top of their voices to the other ships, which were following behind and could easily have rammed them in the dark. The São Gabriel and the Berrio came to a stop just in time and lowered their boats.
By dawn the tide had fallen and the São Rafael was revealed sitting high and dry on its shoal. In the background, on the coast, was a magnificent range of lofty mountains with a settlement at its feet. Seeing a business opportunity, the locals paddled out to the stricken ship and did a brisk trade in oranges, which the sailors thought were much better than the fruit back home. Gama rewarded them w
ith the usual trinkets, and two stayed on board.
By now the São Rafael had lowered all its anchors. The men in the boats laboriously heaved each anchor forward of the bow and away from the shoal before shouting out to their comrades on board to pay out the cable. When the tide rose later in the day, the ropes tensed and the ship floated off amid much relief and cheering.
Finally the fleet arrived off Mombasa.
It was April 7, a Saturday. Ahead was a lushly wooded island clasped by the protective arms of the mainland. A large walled city rose on a rocky height facing the ocean. A beacon marked the shoals in front, and a fort almost level with the water guarded the bar. The harbor was just in sight around the north side of the island, and the Portuguese could see a large number of ships moored there, dressed in flags as if for a celebration. They were clearly in a wealthy and important port, and not wanting to be outdone, they ran up their own flags. They put on a good show, but in reality the fleet was in poor shape. With many sailors dead from scurvy and many still painfully ill, the ships had been undermanned for weeks. The one thing that cheered up the survivors was the prospect of landing the next day to hear Sunday mass. The pilots had told them that the Christians had their own quarter of the city, ruled by its own judges and lords; they would receive the newcomers with great honor, they assured them, and would invite them to their fine houses.
The night watch took over and the rest of the men bedded down in their usual nooks, eager for morning to come.
About midnight the watch cried out. A dhow was approaching from the city carrying perhaps a hundred men, all armed with cutlasses and bucklers. It bore down on the flagship, and the armed men tried to clamber on board. Gama barked out orders and his soldiers lined up around the decks, blocking the way. He eventually allowed four of the leaders aboard, but only after they had laid down their weapons.
