Note 26 — Chapter I · OUTWARD BOUND.—LIVERPOOL TO LISBON.
Reading edition
As when to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Mozambic, off at sea, north-east winds blow Sabean odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the blest.—Paradise Lost, Book iv.
The voyage from Portugal to India was, in those days, more perilous than will easily be believed in these. The seas swarmed with pirates, shipwrecks were dreadfully frequent, and even when these dangers were escaped, the common mortality was so great, that Vieyra says—‘If the dead, who had been thrown overboard between the coast of Guinea and the Cape of Good Hope, and between that cape and Mozambique, could have monuments placed for them each on the spot where he sunk, the whole way would appear like one continued cemetery.’ Hyperbolical as this is, it shows how enormous the expenditure of life must have been, which could thus be spoken of in the pulpit! The ship in which Camoens sailed was the only one of the fleet which reached its destination.