This is true as much in terms of their objectives as the achievements of their missions. One man might best be thought of as the complement to the other. In sailing to India five years after Columbus sailed to America, da Gama found what Columbus had sought in vain - a new route to an old world. It is a somewhat unfair assessment, for in a number of senses da Gama brought about what Columbus left undone. Outside his native Portugal, where past glories live long in the memory, Vasco da Gama has generally been remembered as a less eminent contemporary of Christopher Columbus.
