Who First Doubled the Cape of Good Hope?
“Why, Vasco de Gama, to be sure”—perhaps, the reader will reply. In Portugal, however, a much more ancient navigator has been mentioned. Vieyra, an old preacher of great renown at Lisbon, said in one of his sermons:—“One man only passed the Cape of Good Hope before the Portuguese. And who was he? and how? It was Jonah, in the whale’s belly. The whale (or rather great fish) went out of the Mediterranean because he had no other course; he kept the coast of Africa on the left, scoured along Ethiopia, passed by Arabia, took post in the Euphrates, on the shores of Nineveh, and, making his tongue serve as a plank, landed the prophet there.”