70 THE QUEST FOE INDIA BY SEA Indian Sea, but he shaped his course direct through mid-ocean from the Cape Verde Islands to the Cape of Good Hope, and thus made the first passage across the South Atlantic. The expedition, like those of Prince Henry and his royal successors in exploration, was the work of the Portuguese dynasty rather than of the Portuguese people. King Emmanuel gave from his own hand to Vasco da Gama the banner of the squadron, embroid- ered with the cross of the military Order of Christ. The Council of State was almost unanimous against the enterprise, and the popular clamour burst forth as the ships sailed from the shore. This clamour, which had from time to time been raised against the royal policy of Indian exploration during the previous eighty years, finds a mouthpiece in the imprecations which close the fourth book of the Lusiad. Camoens wrote in the generation immediately suc- ceeding the events which he described, and was inti- mately acquainted with the contemporary feeling in regard to them. He makes a venerable figure arise, with arm waved to heaven as the ships set sail, and denounce the madness of a monarch who, with an enemy at his gates, seeks the meteor fame of conquest in an unknown world. This dynastic as opposed to a popular impulse forms the key to the Portuguese history in India. One attempt after another by the crown to hand over the Indian trade to public enterprise failed. It may be doubted, indeed, whether any European people in the fifteenth century had the cohesion or steadfast-
