““Pepper it was that brought Vasco da Gama's tall ships across the ocean, from Lisbon's Tower of Belem to the Malabar Coast: first to Calicut and later, for its lagoony harbour, to Cochin. English and French sailed in the wake of that first-arrived Portugee, so that in the period called Discovery-of-India — but how could we be discovered when we were not covered before? — we were 'not so much sub-continent as sub-condiment', as my distinguished mother had it.””
![“Every schoolchild knows that Columbus set out across the sea to prove that the world was round. But the belief in a spherical earth had a long and illustrious pedigree, as Columbus himself was well aware. . . . "The second reason that inspired the Admiral [Columbus] to launch his enterprise and…” quote by Ferdinand Columbus](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/515/ferdinand-columbus-136077_admiral_every-schoolchild-knows-that-columbus-se_1782891.jpg)
