When Affonso de Albuquerque reached Cape Verde on his voyage to India, in 1503, he took counsel with his pilots whether to follow the “usual route” along the coast of Africa, or to make boldly for mid-ocean. The latter course was decided upon. After a voyage of twenty-eight days, the Island of Ascension[439] was reached, at an estimated distance of 750 to 800 leagues from the Cape. Subsequently de Albuquerque touched the coast of Brazil, and then stood across the Atlantic for the Cape of Good Hope, which he made on July 6th, having thus accomplished the passage from Lisbon in the course of ninety-one days. Duarte Pacheco, who wrote his _Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis_ in 1505, recommends vessels to go south from Cape Verde for 600 leagues, to lat. 19° S., and thence to make for a point 40 leagues to the S.W. of the Cape of Good Hope, in lat. 37° S. Such a course would take a vessel to the windward of Trinidad. These notes prove that the Portuguese, in the course of a few years, must have acquired a remarkably correct knowledge of the winds and currents of the Southern Atlantic; for the tracks laid down and followed by their pilots in the beginning of the sixteenth century differ but little, if at all, from those recommended in our modern sailing directories. _Doubling the Cape_. Three days after his landfall we find Vasco da Gama in the Bay of St. Helena, where he careened his ships, took in a fresh supply of water, and observed the latitude.[440] He left this anchorage on November 16th. Two days afterwards he sighted the Cape, but the wind being from the S.S.W. he was obliged to stand off and on until the 22nd, when he succeeded in getting beyond it “without encountering the storms and perils expected by the mariners”; and following the coast he cast anchor in the Bay of S. Braz on the 25th, and there set up his first padrão. In that run he must have been favoured by the wind, which along the coast and in November blows generally from the S.E., although westerly winds and even gales are not infrequent.