The People of That Land
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A gente que esta terra possuía, Posto que todos Etíopes eram, Mais humana no trato parecia Que os outros, que tão mal nos receberam. Com bailos e com festas de alegria Pela praia arenosa a nós vieram, As mulheres consigo e o manso gado Que apascentavam, gordo e bem criado.
The people who held this land, although they were all Ethiopians, seemed more humane in their dealings than those others who had received us so badly. With dances and with joyful festivities they came to us across the sandy beach, their women with them and the gentle cattle they pastured, fat and well raised.
Gama's fleet has put in on the East African coast after the ordeal of the Cape. Here the narrator sizes up the inhabitants they meet on the shore.
This is a first impression, and Camoes lets the reader watch it being formed. The Portuguese have just been driven off by hostile people further down the coast, so this landfall is measured against that one: not friendly in the abstract, only more humane than the last lot. Everything the narrator sees is a sign he thinks he can read — dancing, women brought along, fat cattle. Women and herds on the beach mean no ambush is planned; well-fed animals mean the land is good.
What a first reader misses is that this is reconnaissance dressed as welcome. Gama's men are reading a shore the way sailors read water, and "gordo e bem criado" is not a compliment to the cattle but an assessment of what can be bought here. The stanza also lets the word Etiopes do quiet work: for Camoes it covers almost anyone dark-skinned south of Egypt, a European label stretched over people he has not yet distinguished from one another. The judgment is honest about its own narrowness — the fleet grants humanity by comparison, and only for now.
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