Hens, Sheep, and No Answers
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" Estes, como na vista prazenteiros Fossem, humanamente nos trataram, Trazendo-nos galinhas e carneiros, A troco doutras peças, que levaram. Mas como nunca enfim meus companheiros Palavra sua alguma lhe alcançaram Que desse algum sinal do que buscamos, As velas dando, as âncoras levamos.
These people, being pleasant enough in appearance, treated us kindly, bringing us hens and sheep in exchange for other goods, which they carried away. But since in the end my companions never got a single word out of them that might give any sign of what we were looking for, we set the sails and weighed the anchors.
Gama, still narrating to the King of Melinde, describes a landfall on the African coast where the local people trade willingly but tell the Portuguese nothing about the route to India.
The stanza is a small ledger of a landfall. The people are friendly, the barter works, hens and sheep come aboard for trinkets, and then the fleet leaves. Camoes puts the whole visit into two movements: they gave us food, they gave us no information.
What a first reader misses is that the food is not the point. Gama is not provisioning; he is hunting for a pilot and a route east, and every stop in Canto 5 is graded on that one question. Friendliness that yields no answer counts as a failure here, which is why the stanza ends with the flat mechanics of departure rather than any thanks or farewell. The anchors come up because there is nothing to stay for.
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