While the Spanish and the English expeditions had failed to find the attractive shores of Cathay by sailing westwardly across the Atlantic, the Portuguese were more fortunate in their long-continued attempts to reach the dominions of the Grand Khan by sailing eastwardly. Restricted by the papal decree to the prosecution of her voyages of discovery on the east side of the line of demarkation, Portugal zealously persisted in seeking along the coast of Africa a way to the Orient. Vasco da Gama, an intrepid navigator, was placed in command of an expedition, and sailed from Lisbon, in March, 1497, in the path marked out by Bartolomeu Dias, in 1487. When Da Gama came to the Cape of Good Hope, or the Stormy Cape (Cabo Tormentoso), he realized that the windy headland was rightly named. The hazardous attempts which he repeatedly made to pass the stormy promontory so impressed his sailors with his extreme venturesomeness that they endeavored to persuade him to turn back. It is said that this made Da Gama comport “himself very angrily, swearing that if they did not double the cape, he would stand out to sea again as many times until the cape was doubled, or there should happen whatever should please God.” Having achieved his bold purpose, on the twenty-second of November, 1497, Da Gama made himself famous in reaching the remote coast of India, on the seventeenth of May, 1498, and entered the harbor of Calicut,[270] three days afterward. Returning on the homeward voyage, he arrived at Lisbon, about the beginning of September, 1499.