Where Land Ends
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Que mande da fazenda, enfim, lhe manda, Que nos Reinos Gangéticos faleça; Se alguma traz idónea lá da banda Donde a terra se acaba e o mar começa. Já da real presença veneranda Se parte o Capitão, para onde peça Ao Catual, que dele tinha cargo, Embarcação, que a sua está de largo.
In short, the King orders him to send ashore some of his merchandise — such goods as are wanting in the realms of the Ganges — if he has brought any suitable ones from that far region where the land ends and the sea begins. Now the Captain takes his leave of the venerable royal presence, to go and ask the Catual, who had charge of him, for a boat, since his own ships lie anchored far offshore.
At Calicut, the Samorim tells Gama to land samples of Portuguese merchandise — goods not found in India — and the Captain leaves the royal audience to ask the Catual, who has charge of him, for a boat, since his own ships lie anchored far offshore.
The stanza turns the audience into business. The Samorim tells Gama to bring ashore samples of whatever he carries that India lacks, and Gama, dismissed, leaves the royal presence to arrange a boat through the Catual, the official assigned to him. Nothing here is grand: it is the practical machinery of a first meeting between two worlds, ships kept at a distance while a single launch shuttles men and goods to land.
The line a first reader slides over is "Donde a terra se acaba e o mar começa." That is Portugal, described not by name but by position — the last edge of the earth as seen from Calicut, the place where land runs out and ocean takes over. Camões lets the Indian court define Europe as the ultimate west, the far shore of the same sea Gama has just crossed. The detail that his own ships stay "de largo," held offshore rather than admitted to the harbor, is quieter still, and it carries the first faint chill of the mistrust that will thicken through the rest of the canto.
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