His death, 24th Dec., 1524. well known that his brief rule was embittered by his hostile relations with his predecessors, whom he accused of various mal-practices, and ordered to be sent back to Lisbon. In the midst of these difficulties he was seized with a fatal illness; and having, as Correa states, "set his affairs in order, like a good Christian, with all the sacraments of the church, and ordered that his bones should be conveyed to the kingdom of Portugal, he died on Christmas Eve, 24th December, 1524.
His character, as compared with that of Columbus. Although the first voyage of Dom Gama may be read with satisfaction, no language can be found sufficiently strong to denounce his subsequent career, and especially his diabolical conduct towards the Moors and natives on his second expedition to India.[1] And to that conduct, too faithfully adopted by his successors, may in a great measure be attributed the loss, as well as the gain, of the Portuguese empire in the East. But though Dom Gama was a man of no mean abilities, and of indomitable courage, who evidently thoroughly understood his profession as a seaman, he cannot for an instant be compared, either as an individual or as a navigator, with his great contemporary Columbus. Dom Gama, in his voyage to India, had with him pilots who had frequently sailed along the western shores of Africa, and one, at least, who had doubled the Cape of Good Hope
- ↑ The Popish nations of the south of Europe have, throughout all history, been remarkable for atrocities of cruelty found among no other races. But neither the cruel persecution of the Jews by the soi-disant deliverers of the Holy City, nor the greatly exaggerated crimes of the Hindus and Muhammedans, who may at least have believed they were ridding their native land of robbers and oppressors by the Indian mutiny of 1856-7, can compare with the cruelties of Vasco de Gama, or with the atrocities of the mob at Palermo during the insurrection of 1849.
