Cape of Good Hope

Cape of Good Hope, popularly regarded as the most southerly promontory of Africa, though it is half a degree to the north of Cape Agulhas, which forms the turning-point from south to east on the voyage from Europe to India. This celebrated promontory is in $34^\{\backslash circ\}\; 22\text{'}\; S.\; lat.$, and $18^\{\backslash circ\}\; 29\text{'}\; E.\; long.$, being the termination of Table Mountain, which, as it recedes towards the bay of its own name, rises from the height of 1000 feet above the sea to that of 3582. On the north it forms Table Bay; on the west it shuts in False Bay and Simon's Bay. The Cape (as it is called par excellence) was discovered and doubled by Diaz (q.v.), a Portuguese navigator, as early as 1486—six years before Columbus, in aiming at the same goal by a different route, led the way to America. Owing to the dangers he had passed through, he named it Cabo de todos los tormentos ('Cape of all the Storms'), but John II. of Portugal renamed it Cabo de Buena Esperanza ('Cape of Good Hope'). But it was only in 1497 that Vasco da Gama realised the value of Diaz's discovery, by rounding it on his adventurous voyage from Lisbon to Calicut. The result was not merely to open a new channel for the traffic of the East, but also to transfer trading superiority from the republics of Italy to the states of Western Europe.