Past the Congo, Losing the North
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" Ali o mui grande reino está de Congo, Por nós já convertido à fé de Cristo, Por onde o Zaire passa, claro e longo, Rio pelos antigos nunca visto. Por este largo mar enfim me alongo Do conhecido pólo de Calisto, Tendo o término ardente já passado, Onde o meio do mundo é limitado.
There lies the very great kingdom of Congo, already converted by us to the faith of Christ, where the Zaire flows through, bright and long, a river the ancients never saw. Across this wide sea I finally draw away from the familiar pole of Callisto, having already passed the burning boundary where the middle of the world is fixed.
Gama, telling the King of Melinde the story of the voyage, sails down the African coast past the kingdom of Congo and the mouth of the Zaire. Here he crosses the equator and the northern pole star drops below the horizon behind him.
Gama is still narrating to the King of Melinde, and the stanza does two things at once: it names a stretch of coast and it crosses a line. Congo gets a claim of conversion, the Zaire gets its width and length, and then the fleet keeps going south until the equator is behind it and the northern pole star sinks out of sight.
The part a first reader slides past is what "me alongo do conhecido pólo de Calisto" costs. Callisto is the nymph Ovid has turned into a bear and set in the northern sky, the Ursa the whole Mediterranean world steered by. To lose that pole is to lose the fixed point every previous mariner navigated from. Camões pairs it with a river the ancients never saw, and the two lines make one argument: the books stop here, and the ship does not.
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