[Sidenote: 1486 or 1488] This path to India was not broken until eleven years later, when Vasco da Gama, after a voyage of great daring [Sidenote: 1497-8]--he was ninety-three days at sea on a course of 4500 miles from the Cape Verde Islands to South Africa--reached Calicut on May 20, 1498.

This city, now sunken in the sea, was {442} then the most flourishing port on the Malabar Coast, exploited entirely by Mohammedan traders.

Spices had long been the staple of Venetian trade with the Orient, and when he returned with rich cargo of them the immediate effect upon Europe was greater than that of the voyage of Columbus.

Trade seeks to follow the line of least resistance, and the establishment of a water way between Europe and the East was like connecting two electrically charged bodies in a Leyden jar by a copper wire.

The current was no longer forced through a poor medium, but ran easily through the better conductor.