And when the Portuguese discovered the Cape of Good Hope for the Europeans, their larger and more ocean-worthy ships ended up dominating the Indian ocean itself.
Chastened, they sailed on, but en route word reached them that Sumatra had fallen to the French and so they observed the transit inconclusively from the Cape of Good Hope.
The Cape of Good Hope was inhabited by a race of people almost as barbarous, and quite as incapable of defending themselves, as the natives of America.