This does not tally well with the character of the disciplinarian, despotic Gama, as it is usually represented. But these qualities developed later. The Portuguese were as ignorant about the King of the country as about its gods. For the Samuri of Calicut was no simple King of Melinde, but a great potentate accustomed to traders and to foreign civilisations. It was not without difficulty that Gama obtained an interview, and when he succeeded, the King, all aglow with jewellery, seated chewing betel, a page on either side, and his chief Brahman behind his chair, was fully a match for the haughty Gama. From one of his bracelets gleamed a priceless stone of a thumb’s thickness, his necklace was of pearls almost of the size of small acorns, and from a gold chain hung a heart-shaped jewel surrounded by pearls and covered with rubies, and in the centre a great green stone, an emerald, of the size of a large bean, belonging to the ancient treasure of the Kings of Calicut. His golden trumpets were longer by a third than those of the King of Portugal. It appears that the Portuguese had brought no present worthy of so great a monarch. The same historian, Correa, who thus vividly describes the King’s appearance, also gives a detailed account of the present. It consisted, he says, of “a very delicate piece of scarlet, and a piece of crimson velvet, and a piece of yellow satin and a chair richly upholstered with brocade, with silver-gilt nails, and a cushion of crimson satin with tassels of gold thread, and another cushion of red satin for the feet, and a very richly wrought gilt ewer and basin, and a large and very beautiful gilt mirror and fifty red caps with buttons and veils of crimson silk and gold thread upon them, and fifty gilt sheaths of Flemish knives, which had been inlaid in Lisbon with ivory.” The King should have been satisfied, but probably this present, if it ever existed, had dwindled in gifts to natives of Africa on the way. The question in the King’s mind was that asked once of Telemachus: Had they come as peaceful traders, or were they pirates? Vasco da Gama, faced by a reception so courteous yet so insulting, maintained a proud, serene attitude, as he had when on his way to the palace--he is represented advancing slowly, waiting for the crowds to be cleared out of his way--and as he did later when placed under arrest by the Catual, or Governor of the city. By his resolution during the dangers and obstacles of the voyage and by his calm behaviour in Calicut he justified the King’s choice and his subsequent fame.