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WORKS ISSUED BY
The Hakluyt Society.
THE CHRONICLE
OF
THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST
OF GUINEA.
VOL. II.
FIRST SERIES. NO. C-MDCCCXCIX
[Illustration: STATUE OF
PRINCE HENRY IN ARMOUR
AT BELEM.]
THE CHRONICLE
OF THE
DISCOVERY
AND
CONQUEST OF GUINEA.
WRITTEN BY
GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA;
NOW FIRST DONE INTO ENGLISH
BY
CHARLES RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A., F.R.G.S.,
FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD; CORRESPONDING MEMBER
OF THE LISBON GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY;
AND
EDGAR PRESTAGE, B.A.OXON.,
KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE PORTUGUESE ORDER OF S. THIAGO; CORRESPONDING
MEMBER OF THE LISBON ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES,
THE LISBON GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, ETC.
VOL. II.
(CHAPTERS XLI-XCVII).
With an Introduction on the
Early History of African Exploration, Cartography, etc.
BURT FRANKLIN, PUBLISHER
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Published by
BURT FRANKLIN
514 West 113th Street
New York 25, N. Y.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
COUNCIL
OF
THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY.
SIR CLEMENTS MARKHAM, K.C.B., F.R.S., _Pres. R.G.S._, PRESIDENT.
THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY, VICE-PRESIDENT.
REAR-ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM WHARTON, K.C.B., VICE-PRESIDENT.
C. RAYMOND BEAZLEY, ESQ., M.A.
COLONEL G. EARL CHURCH.
SIR MARTIN CONWAY.
ALBERT GRAY, ESQ.
F. H. H. GUILLEMARD, ESQ., M.A., M.D.
THE RIGHT HON. LORD HAWKESBURY.
EDWARD HEAWOOD, ESQ., M.A.
DUDLEY F. A. HERVEY, ESQ., C.M.G.
ADMIRAL SIR ANTHONY H. HOSKINS, G.C.B.
J. SCOTT KELTIE, ESQ., LL.D.
F. W. LUCAS, ESQ.
VICE-ADMIRAL ALBERT H. MARKHAM.
E. J. PAYNE, ESQ.
SIR CUTHBERT E. PEEK, BART.
E. G. RAVENSTEIN, ESQ.
HOWARD SAUNDERS, ESQ.
CHARLES WELCH, ESQ., F.S.A.
WILLIAM FOSTER, ESQ., B.A., _Honorary Secretary_.
PREFATORY NOTE.
This Volume continues and ends the present Edition of the _Chronicle of
Guinea_, the first part of which was published in 1896 (vol. XCV of the
Hakluyt Society's publications). Here we have again to acknowledge the
kind advice and help of various friends, particularly of Senhor Batalhaȧ
Reis and Mr. William Foster. As to the Maps which accompany this volume:
the sections of Andrea Bianco, 1448, and of Fra Mauro, 1457-9, here
given, offer some of the best examples of the cartography of Prince
Henry's later years in relation to West Africa. These ancient examples
are supplemented by a new sketch-map of the discoveries made by the
Portuguese seamen during the Infant's lifetime along the coast of the
Dark Continent. The excellent photograph of Prince Henry's statue from
the great gateway at Belem is the work of Senhor Camacho. As to the
Introduction and Notes, it is hoped that attention has been given to
everything really important for the understanding of Azurara's text; but
the Editors have avoided such treatment as belongs properly to a
detailed history of geographical advance during this period.
C. R. B.
E. P.
_April 1899._
INTRODUCTION.
In this it may be well to summarise briefly, for the better illustration
of the _Chronicle_ here translated, not only the life of Prince Henry of
Portugal, surnamed the Navigator, but also various questions suggested
by Prince Henry's work, _e.g._--The history of the Voyages along the
West African coast and among the Atlantic islands, encouraged by him and
recorded by Azurara; The History of the other voyages of Prince Henry's
captains, not recorded by Azurara; The attempts of navigators before
Prince Henry, especially in the fourteenth century, to find a way along
West Africa to the Indies; The parallel enterprises by land from the
Barbary States to the Sudan, across the Sahara; The comparative strength
of Islam and Christianity in the Africa of Prince Henry's time; The
State of Cartographical Knowledge in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and its relation to the new Portuguese discoveries; The
question of the "School of Sagres," said to have been instituted by the
Navigator for the better training of mariners and map-makers.
I.--THE LIFE OF PRINCE HENRY.
Henry, Duke of Viseu, third[1] son of King John I of Portugal, surnamed
the Great, founder of the House of Aviz, and of Philippa of Lancaster,
daughter of John of Gaunt and niece of King Edward III of England, was
born on March 4th, 1394.
[Footnote 1: Fifth, counting two children who died in infancy.]
We are told by Diego Gomez,[2] who in 1458 sailed to the West Coast of
Africa in the service of Prince Henry, and made a discovery of the Cape
Verde islands, that in 1415 John de Trasto was sent by the Prince on a
voyage of exploration, and reached "Telli," the "fruitful" district of
Grand Canary. Gomez here gives us the earliest date assigned by any
authority of the fifteenth century for an expedition of the Infant's;
but in later times other statements were put forward, assigning 1412 or
even 1410 as the commencement of his exploring activity. This would take
us back to a time when the Prince was but sixteen or eighteen years old;
and though it is probable enough that Portuguese vessels may have sailed
out at this time (as in 1341) to the Canaries or along the West African
coast, it is not probable that Henry took any great share in such
enterprise before the Ceuta expedition of 1415. In any case, it is
practically certain that before 1434, no Portuguese ship had passed
beyond Cape Bojador. Gil Eannes' achievement of that year is marked by
Azurara and all our best authorities as a decided advance on any
previous voyage, at least of Portuguese mariners. We shall consider
presently how far this advance was anticipated by other nations, and
more particularly by the French. Cape Non, now claimed by some as the
southernmost point of Marocco, had been certainly passed by Catalan and
other ships[3] before Prince Henry's day; but it had not been forgotten
how rhyme and legend had long consecrated this point as a fated end of
the world. Probably it was still (c. 1415) believed by many in
Portugal--
"Quem passar o Cabo de Não
Ou tornará, ou não."
and the Venetian explorer, Cadamosto, preserves a mention of its popular
derivation in Southern Europe from the Latin "Non," "as beyond it was
believed there was no return possible." The real form was probably the
Arabic Nun or "Fish."[4]
[Footnote 2: As repeated by Martin Behaim (see Major, _Henry
Navigator_, pp. 64, 65). Gomez was Almoxarife, or
superintendent, of the Palace of Cintra.]
[Footnote 3: Some of which had reached at least as far as Cape
Bojador, as depicted on the Catalan Map of 1375.]
[Footnote 4: So Zul-nun, Lord of the Fish, is a term for the
prophet Jonah (see Burton, _Camoëns_, iii, p. 246).]
Prince Henry's active share in the work of exploration is usually dated
only from the Conquest of Ceuta. Here we are told in one of our earliest
authorities (Diego Gomez) he gained information, from Moorish prisoners,
merchants, and other acquaintance "of the passage of traders from the
coasts of Tunis to Timbuktu and to Cantor on the Gambia, which led him
to seek those lands by the way of the sea;" and, to come to details, he
was among other things, "told of certain tall palms growing at the mouth
of the Senegal [or Western Nile], by which he was able to guide the
caravels he sent out to find that river." It will be important hereafter
to examine the evidence which had been accumulated for such belief up to
the fifteenth century: now it will be enough to say: 1. That Prince
Henry was probably of the same opinion as the ordinary cartographer of
his time about the peninsular shape of Africa. 2. That the "shape" in
question was usually satisfied with what we should now call the Northern
half of the Continent, making the Southern coast of "Guinea" continue
directly to the Eastern, Abyssinian, or Indian Ocean. 3. That trade had
now (c. 1415) been long maintained between this "Guinea coast" and the
Mediterranean seaboard--chiefly by Moorish caravans across the Sahara.
4. That something, though little, was known in Western Christendom about
the Christian faith and king of Abyssinia; for "Prester John's" story in
the fifteenth century had really become a blend of rumours from Central
(Nestorian) Asia and Eastern (Abyssinian) Africa.
In Prince Henry's work we may distinguish three main
objects--scientific, patriotic, and religious. First of all he was a
discoverer, for the sake of the new knowledge then beginning. He was
interested in the exploration of the world in general, and of the
sea-route round Africa to India in particular. Dinis Diaz, returning
from his discovery of Cape Verde (Az., ch. xxxi.), brought home a "booty
not so great as had arrived in the past," but "the Infant thought it
very great indeed, since it came from that land", and he proportioned
his rewards to exploration rather than to trade profits. Nuno Tristam in
1441 (Az., ch. xiii.) reminds Antam Gonçalvez that "for 15 years" the
Infant has "striven ... to arrive at ... certainty as to the people of
this land, under what law or lordship they do live."
Azurara, though always more prone to emphasize the emotional than the
scientific, himself assigns as the first reason for the Infant's
discoveries, his "wish to know the land that lay beyond the isles of
Canary and that cape called Bojador, for that up to his time, neither by
writings nor by the memory of man, was known with any certainty the
nature of the land" (Az., ch. vii.).
Again, Henry was founding upon his work of exploration an over-sea
dominion, a "commercial and colonial" empire for his country. He desired
to see her rich and prosperous, and there cannot be any reasonable doubt
that his ideas agreed with those of Italian land and sea travellers in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He and they were agreed in
thinking it possible and very important to secure a large share of
Asiatic, especially of Indian, trade for their respective countries. By
exploring and making practicable the maritime route around Africa to the
Indies, he would probably raise Portugal into the wealthiest of European
nations. Azurara's "second reason" for the "search after Guinea" is that
"many kinds of merchandise might be brought to this realm ... and also
the products of this realm might be taken there, which traffic would
bring great profit to our countrymen."
Thirdly, Prince Henry had the temperament of a Crusader and a
missionary. Of him, fully as much as of Columbus, it may be said that if
he aimed at empire, it was for the extension of Christendom. Azurara's
three final reasons for Henry's explorations all turn upon this. The
Prince desired to find out the full strength of the Moors in Africa,
"said to be very much greater than commonly supposed," "because every
wise man" desires "a knowledge of the power of his enemy." He also
"sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian princes" who
would aid him against the enemies of the faith. And, lastly, he desired
to "make increase in the faith of Jesus Christ, and to bring to Him all
the souls that should be saved."
It has often been pointed out how the Infant was aided in his work by
the tendencies of his time and country; how in him the spirit of
mediæval faith and the spirit of material, even of commercial, ambition,
were united; how he was the central representative of a general
expansive and exploring movement; and how he took up and carried on the
labours of various predecessors. At the same time it must be recognised
that his work forms an epoch in the history of geographical, commercial,
and colonial advance; that he gave a permanence and a vitality to the
cause of maritime discovery which it had never possessed before; that
even his rediscoveries of islands and mainland frequently had all the
meaning and importance of fresh achievements; that he made his nation
the pioneer of Europe in its conquest of the outer world; and that
without him the results of the great forty years (1480-1520) of Diaz,
Columbus, Da Gama, and Magellan must have been long, might have been
indefinitely, postponed.
Barros (_Decade I_, i, 2) tells us a story, probable enough, about the
inception of the Infant's plans of discovery. He relates how one night,
after much meditation, he lay sleepless upon his bed, thinking over his
schemes, till at last, as if seized with a sudden access of fury, he
leapt up, called his servants, and ordered some of his _barcas_ to be
immediately made ready for a voyage to the south along the coast of
Marocco. His court was astonished, and attributed this outburst to a
divine revelation. It was natural enough--the resolution of a man, weary
with profound and anxious thought, to take some sort of decisive action,
to embark without further delay on the realisation of long-cherished
schemes.
To summarise the course of the Prince's life, from 1415, before entering
on any discussion of special points: After the Conquest of Ceuta he
returned to Portugal; was created Duke of Viseu and Lord of Covilham
(1415), having already received his knighthood at "Septa"; and began to
send out regular exploring ventures down the West Coast of Africa--"two
or three ships" every year beyond Cape Non, Nun, or Nam. In 1418 he
successfully went to the help of the Governor of Ceuta against the Moors
of Marocco and Granada.[5] On this second return from Africa, when in
1419 he was created Governor of the Algarve or southmost province of
Portugal, he is supposed by some to have taken up his residence at
Sagres,[6] near Cape St. Vincent, and to have begun the establishment of
a school of cartography and navigation there. All this, however, is
disputed by others, as is the tradition of his having established Chairs
of Mathematics and Theology at Lisbon.[7]
[Footnote 5: On this occasion he planned, but did not attempt,
the seizure of Gibraltar.]
[Footnote 6: Sagres, from "Sacrum Promontorium," the ordinary
name of Cape St. Vincent in the later classical Geography; "à
91 Kilom. Ouest de Faro,... sur un cap, à 4,500 metres E.S.E.
du Cap St. Vincent" (Viv. St. Martin). The harbour is sandy,
protected from the N.W. winds. A Druid temple stood there, and
the Iberians of the Roman time assembled there at night. It
was a barren cape, its only natural vegetation a few junipers.
O. Martins (_Filhos de D. João I_, p. 77), suggests that the
name of _Sagres_ did not come into ordinary use till after the
Prince's death, 1460.]
[Footnote 7: In 1431 he is said to have purchased house-room
for the University of Lisbon; on March 25th, 1448, to have
established there a professorship of theology; and on
September 22, 1460, to have confirmed this by a charter dated
from his Town at Sagres. The Professor was to have twelve
marks in silver every Christmas from the tithes of the Island
of Madeira (see Azurara, _Guinea_, c. v). As to the Chair of
Mathematics, we only know that it existed in 1435; that the
Infant was interested in this study; and that tradition
connected him with a somewhat similar foundation at Sagres.
The houses purchased in Lisbon for the University were bought
of João Annes, the King's Armourer, for 400 crowns. Hence,
according to some, came the Prince's title of "Protector of
Portuguese Studies."]
In 1418-20, however, his captains, João Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz
Teixeira, certainly re-discovered Porto Santo and Madeira.[8] In 1427,
King John and Prince Henry seem to have sent the royal pilot, Diego de
Sevill, to make new discoveries in the Azores; and, in 1431-2, Gonçalo
Velho Cabral made further explorations among the same; but the completer
opening up and settlement of the Archipelago was the work of later
years, especially of 1439-66. We shall return to this matter in a
special discussion of Prince Henry's work among the Atlantic islands. To
the same we must refer the traditional purchase of the Canaries in
1424-5 and the settlement of Madeira in the same year,[9] confirmed by
charters of 1430 and 1433. King John, on his death-bed, is said to have
exhorted Henry to persevere in his schemes, which he was at this very
time pursuing by means of a fresh expedition to round Cape Bojador,
under Gil Eannes (1433). Azurara from this point becomes our chief
authority down to the year 1448, and this and the subsequent voyages are
fully described in his pages. Gil Eannes, unsuccessful in 1433,[10]
under the stimulus of the Infant's reproaches and appeals passed Cape
Bojador in 1434;[11] and next summer (1435) the Portuguese reached the
Angra dos Ruyvos (Gurnet Bay), 150 miles beyond Bojador, and the Rio do
Ouro, 240 miles to the south. Early in 1436 the "Port of Gallee," a
little North of C. Branco (Blanco), was discovered by Baldaya, but as
yet no natives were found; no captives, gold dust, or other products
brought home. Exploration along the African mainland languished from
this year till 1441;[12] but in 1437 the Prince took part in the fatal
attack on Tangier, and in 1438 the death of King Edward caused a dispute
over the question of the Regency during the minority of his young son
Affonso. Throughout these internal troubles Henry played an important
part, successfully supporting the claims of his brother Pedro against
the Queen-mother, Leonor of Aragon. All this caused a break of three or
four years in the progress of his discoveries; but the colonisation of
the Azores went forward, as is shown by the license of July 2, 1439,
from Affonso V, to people "the seven islands" of the group, then known.
[Footnote 8: O. Martins thinks these island discoveries were a
surprise to Henry, who at first only contemplated discovery
along the mainland coast South and East towards India. We do
not believe in this limitation of view (see Barros, _Dec. I_,
Lib. I, c. 2, 3).
The previous voyage of the Englishman Macham to the "Isle of
Wood" ("Legname" on the fourteenth-century Portolani) is
another controversial matter which must be taken separately.]
[Footnote 9: Zarco and Vaz became Captains Donatory or Feudal
Under-lords of Madeira, as Bartholemew Perestrello (whose
daughter Columbus married) of Porto Santo.]
[Footnote 10: It has been shewn, _e.g._, by the British
Admiralty Surveys, that the old stories of dangerous reefs and
currents at Bojador, "such as might well have frightened the
boldest mariner of that time," are unfounded, like the old
belief in strong Satanic influence at this point.]
[Footnote 11: 1432, according to Galvano (see Barros, _I_, i,
4).]
[Footnote 12: Till 1440, according to the opposition
chronology of O. Martins.]
In 1441[13] exploration began again in earnest with the voyage of Antam
Gonçalvez, who brought to Portugal the first native
"specimens"--captives and gold dust--from the coasts beyond Bojador;
while Nuno Tristam in the same year pushed on to Cape Blanco. These
decisive successes greatly strengthened the cause of discovery in
Portugal, especially by offering fresh hopes of mercantile profit. In
1442 Nuno Tristam reached the Bight or Bay of Arguim,[14] where the
Infant erected a fort in 1448, and where for some years the Portuguese
made their most vigorous and successful slave-raids. Private venturers
now began to come forward, supplementing Prince Henry's efforts by
volunteer aid, for which his permission[15] was readily granted.
Especially the merchants and seamen of Lisbon and of Lagos, close to
Sagres, showed interest in this direction. Whatever doubts exist as to
the earlier alleged settlement of the Infant at Cape St. Vincent, it is
certain that after his return from Tangier (1437) he erected various
buildings[16] at Sagres, and resided there during a considerable part of
his later life. This fact is to be connected with the new African
developments at Lagos.[17]
[Footnote 13: O. Martins dates _Porto do Cavalleiro_, 1440;
_C. Branco_, 1442.]
[Footnote 14: _Aliter_, 1443 (Barros, _I_, i, 7) or 1444
(Galvano, who apparently dates the discovery of the Rio do
Ouro 1443). See, in this connection, Affonso V's Charters of
October 22, 1433, and February 3, 1446, granted to Prince
Henry. In 1442 the Infant was created a Knight of the Garter
of England. He was the 153rd Knight of the Order; and his
collar descended, through many holders, to the late Earl of
Clarendon.]
[Footnote 15: Necessary by decree of the Regent Pedro, for any
"Guinea" or African voyage (Azurara, _Guinea_, ch. xv).]
[Footnote 16: Especially a palace, a church or chapel, and an
observatory.]
[Footnote 17: Which seems to have shown the way, in this
respect, to its greater sister, Lisbon.]
In 1444 and 1445 a number of ships sailed with Henry's license to
"Guinea," and several of their commanders achieved notable successes.
Thus Dinis Diaz, Nuno Tristam, and others reached the Senegal. Diaz
rounded Cape Verde in 1445,[18] and in 1446 Alvaro Fernandez sailed on
as far as the River Gambia (?) and the Cape of Masts (Cabo dos Mastos).
In 1445, also, João Fernandez spent seven months among the natives of
the Arguim coast, and brought back the first trustworthy account of a
part of the interior. Gonçalo de Sintra and Gonçalo Pacheco, in 1445,
and Nuno Tristam in 1446,[19] fell victims to the hostility of the Moors
and Negroes, who, perhaps, felt some natural resentment against their
new visitors. For, in Azurara's estimate, the Portuguese up to the year
1446 had carried off 927 captives from these parts; and the disposition
and conversion of these prisoners occupied a good portion of the
Infant's time. He probably relied on finding efficient material among
these slaves for the further exploration and Christianization of the
Coast, and even of the Upland. We know that he used some of them as
guides and interpreters.[20]
[Footnote 18: 1454 in O. Martins.]
[Footnote 19: 1447, according to Barros (_I_, i, 14) and
Galvano.]
[Footnote 20: Cf. Azurara, _Guinea_, chs. xiii, xvi.]
One of the latest voyages recorded by Azurara is that of "Vallarte the
Dane" (1448), which ended in utter destruction near the Gambia, after
passing Cape Verde. The chronicler, though writing in 1453, does not
continue his record beyond this year, 1448; his promise to give us the
remainder of the Infant's achievements in a second chronicle seems never
to have been fulfilled; and his descriptions of Madeira and the
Canaries, in the latter part of the _Chronicle of Guinea_, are
unfortunately of only slight value for the history of discovery. Yet,
before the Prince's death in 1460[21] and in the last six years of his
life, several voyages of some importance prove that Azurara's silence is
merely accidental. Cadamosto's two journeys of 1455-6, and Diego Gomez'
ventures of 1458-60, advanced West African discovery almost to Sierra
Leone. The former, a Venetian seaman in the service of Prince Henry,
also explored part of the courses of the Senegal and the Gambia and
gained much information about the native tribes. One of his chief
exploits, an alleged discovery of the Cape Verde islands, has been
disputed in the name of Diego Gomez, who in 1458-60 twice sailed to
Guinea, and on the second voyage "sighted islands in the Ocean, to which
no man had come before." We postpone this point for further examination,
only adding that we believe Cadamosto's prior claim to be sound,
although the islands in question do not appear in any document before
1460.
[Footnote 21: _Aliter_ 1462 or 1463 (Galvano and Barros, who
also date the discovery of C. Verde and the Senegal by "Dinis
Fernandez," 1446: Barros, _I_ i, 9, 13); but this date is
certainly incorrect.]
Meanwhile the Prince, when his explorations (from 1441) first began to
promise important results, obtained from Pope Eugenius IV a plenary
indulgence to those who shared in the war against the Moors consequent
on the new discoveries,[22] and from the Regent D. Pedro he also gained
a donation of the Royal Fifth on the profits accruing from the new
lands, as well as the sole right of permitting voyages to these parts.
The Infant's work, was moreover, recognised in bulls of Nicholas V
(1455) and of Calixtus III (March 13th, 1456). In earlier
life--apparently soon after the capture of Ceuta and the embassy of
Manuel Palæologus asking for help against the Turks--he had been
invited, Azurara tells us, by a predecessor[23] of the Pontiffs
above-named to take command of the "Apostolic armies," and similar
invitations reached him from the Emperor of Germany,[24] the King of
England (Henry V or VI)[25] and the King of Castille.[26] We may also
briefly notice in this place, referring to a later page for a more
detailed treatment of the subject, that the Infant, in 1445 and 1446,
repeated his earlier attempts (in 1424 and 1425) to secure the Canaries
for Portugal, both by means of purchase and of armed force; and that,
from 1444-5 especially, he colonised, as well as discovered, and traded
with increased energy in the Madeira Group, the Azores, and (if his
experiment at Arguim in 1448 may stand as an example) even on the
mainland coast of Africa.
[Footnote 22: Barros and Galvano make Prince Henry obtain
Indulgences from Pope Martin [V, who reigned 1417-31] in
1441-2, by the embassy of Fernam Lopez d'Azevedo (see p. xv).]
[Footnote 23: Martin V?]
[Footnote 24: Sigismund?]
[Footnote 25: Henry VI made the Infant a Knight of the Garter,
and is more likely than the conquering Henry V to have asked a
foreign Prince to aid him against the French.]
[Footnote 26: John II.]
The Infant's share in home politics was considerable, but this is not
the place to discuss it at any length. It is probably a correct surmise
that his ultimate ambition on this side was to detach Portugal as far as
possible from Spain and Peninsular interests, and by making her a
world-power at and over sea, to give her that importance she could never
of herself acquire in strictly European politics. We have already
noticed that after the victory of Ceuta he seems to have been made
Governor for life of the Algarve province[27] of Portugal, by his father
King John (1419); that he was a leading promoter of the scheme for the
Tangier campaign of 1437;[28] and that after the death of his brother
King Edward (Duarte), the successor of King John (September, 1438), he
supported the claims of his eldest surviving brother, Pedro, as regent
and guardian of the young Affonso V, and by his wise counsels effected a
reconciliation with Affonso's mother Leonor, acting for a time as
partner in a Council of Regency with Pedro and the Queen. Further, it
must be said that, in 1447, when a long succession of differences
between D. Pedro and his royal ward ended in an armed rising of the
former against "evil Counsellors," Henry stood by the Sovereign, and
took, if not an active, at least a passive part in overthrowing the
insurrection, which was ended by the battle of Alfarrobeira (May 21st,
1449). Finally, it is recorded that "the Navigator" somewhat recovered
the military honour he had compromised at Tangier, by his successes in
the African expeditions of Affonso V, especially at the capture of
Alcacer the Little in 1458; in this last year he received his Sovereign
in due form at or near Sagres, before sailing for "Barbary." His
traditional but on the whole credible work as Protector of the Studies
of Portugal has been alluded to already, in connection with his alleged
foundation of professorships of mathematics and theology in the
University of Lisbon, and of a school of nautical instruction and of
cosmography at Sagres. This point, however, will be reconsidered in a
following section.[29]
[Footnote 27: Technically "kingdom."]
[Footnote 28: The "Marocco Campaigns" of 1418, 1437, 1458,
etc., were apparently considered by Prince Henry as only
another side of his coasting explorations and projected
conquests. Having then no idea of the enormous southerly
projection of Africa, he probably aspired to a Portuguese
North African dominion, which should control the Continent.
For Guinea, in the ideas of the time, was commonly supposed to
be quite close to Marocco on the south-west and west.
Apparently, soon after 1437, Henry was just starting on
another Moorish expedition, when the King and Council
"hindered the voyage" (see Az., ch. v, p. 20 of our version).]
[Footnote 29: "School of Sagres," etc.]
It is perhaps in his connection with the fall of D. Pedro that the
severest criticism has been passed upon Henry the Navigator. "Genius is
pitiless" it has been said; and the action of the younger brother has
been blamed as a piece of ruthlessness and ingratitude, though extolled
by Azurara as a proof of loyalty under temptation. It may have seemed to
him impossible to support any rebellion, however justified, against
royal authority, or even to take the position of a neutral, when the
central government of his country was on its trial. Our sympathies are
usually with Pedro, as the most wise, liberal, and learned of his
people--with one exception--and as the victim of the intrigues of
courtiers, especially of King John's bastard son, the Count of Barcellos
and Duke of Braganza; but the Governor of Algarve parted for ever from
his favourite brother when he took up arms to right himself; and perhaps
he was not more wrong than the people of England in refusing to allow
the nobles of the Tudor time to dictate to even the most despotic of our
more modern English sovereigns.[30]
[Footnote 30: It has been suggested, _e.g._, by Sir C.
Markham, that the portrait of the Infant in mourning dress
prefixed to the Paris MS. of Azurara represents him
immediately after the death of D. Pedro. It is perhaps more
likely a mark of sorrow for D. Fernand, the Constant Prince,
who died in his Moorish captivity, June 5th, 1443, and whose
heart was conveyed to Portugal, June 1st, 1451, and buried at
Batalha, Prince Henry joining the funeral procession at
Thomar.]
The Infant was, among his other dignities, Master of the Order of
Christ, which, as the direct successor of the Templars in Portugal, held
a very high rank, and was, by its "artificial ancestry," as Hobbes would
have said, one of the most ancient Orders in Christendom. Henry's
father, King John, had been also at one time Head of an Order of
Chivalry, the Knights of Aviz; but on coming to the throne he had
obtained a dispensation from his vow of celibacy as Master, a
dispensation which his son never required. The banner of this Order
seems to have floated over most if not all of Prince Henry's African
expeditions; in its name he required the aid of Pope Eugenius IV; its
special duty--military order as it was in origin--should have been to
spread the Christian faith in Moslem and heathen Africa: perhaps its
work was considered to extend only to the slaying of Moslems, or
Moormen, and the bringing back to Europe of heathen Africans who could
be reared as Christians in Portugal. No mission to preach the faith
seems to have been undertaken by the Fraternity. Upon this Order the
Prince bestowed the tithes of the Island of St. Michael in the Azores,
and one half of its sugar revenues; also the tithe (afterwards reduced
to the twentieth) of all merchandise from Guinea, as well as the
ecclesiastical dues of Porto Santo, Madeira, and the Desertas. The
Prince's nephew, D. Fernando, succeeded him (in 1460) in the Mastership
of the Order of Christ.[31]
[Footnote 31: Already, in 1451, Henry had designated him as
his heir.]
It has sometimes been said that the Infant Henry was also titular King
of Cyprus. This assertion is derived from Fr. Luiz de Souza (_Historia
de S. Domingos_, Bk. VI., fol. 331) and José Suares de Silva (_Memoirs
of King João I._), who tell us that the Prince was elected King of
Cyprus. But this "Kingdom" remained in the posterity of Guy de Lusignan
till 1487; and the mistake has probably arisen from a confusion of
Henry, Prince of Galilee, son of James I., King of Cyprus, with Prince
Henry of Portugal.[32]
[Footnote 32: Santarem corrects this; see note in Major's
_Henry Navigator_, p. 306. So Azurara's allusion, "No other
_uncrowned_ prince in Europe had so noble a
household,"--_Guinea_, ch. iv.]
In prosecuting his explorations, Prince Henry incurred heavy expenses.
His own revenues were not sufficient, and he was obliged to borrow
largely. Thus, in 1448, he owed his bastard half-brother, the Duke of
Braganza, 19394½ crowns of gold, to pay which he had pledged his lands
and goods; and this debt was afterwards increased by 16084 crowns, as
stated in the declaration of the Duke of Braganza, November 8, 1449, and
in the will of the same nobleman. These debts were partly paid by his
nephew and adopted son, D. Fernando, and partly by Fernando's son, D.
Manuel.
VOYAGES OF PRINCE HENRY'S SEAMEN ALONG THE WEST AFRICAN COAST.
(_Not recorded by Azurara._)
Prince Henry's work was, above all, justified by its permanence. Unlike
earlier ancient and mediæval attempts at West African exploration, his
movement issued in complete success. Azurara gives us, no doubt, a
fairly complete account of the earlier stages of that movement, but it
is probable that even his record omits some of the ventures undertaken
from Portugal along the West African mainland; while it is certain that
we must look elsewhere for a completer picture of the Infant's activity
among the Atlantic Islands and in the Great Ocean. These additional
sources of information must be examined in turn. First of all, it will
be advisable to finish the chronicle of West African coasting down to
the Navigator's death. After that, the triumphant prosecution of this
line of advance to the Cape of Good Hope will call for a brief notice.
And, thirdly, something must be said about the progress of discovery and
colonisation in the archipelagos of Madeira, the Canaries, the Azores,
and the Cape Verdes, especially considered in relation to that Westward
route to India which Columbus advocated and commenced.
It has already been stated that although Azurara's Chronicle officially
ends in 1453, and appears to record nothing later than the events of
1448, yet very important expeditions were sent forth in the last years
of the Prince's life, especially those of Cadamosto[33] and Diego Gomez.
An attempt has been made to prove that the second voyage of Cadamosto,
on which he claimed to have discovered the Cape Verde Islands, is
untruly reported and may be dismissed as fabulous. But there seems no
sufficient ground for this. "In an account of travels, printed long
after its author's death, some contradictory statements, possibly
arising through copyists' errors, do not justify such a conclusion." And
the mistakes contained in the assailed narrative are not serious or
unexplainable enough for rejecting it as a whole.[34] Luigi, Alvise, or
Aloysius, da Ca da Mosto[35] was a young Venetian (a noble, according to
some) who had embarked on August 8, 1454, with Marco Zeno on a
commercial venture,[36] and was delayed by storm near Cape St. Vincent
while on his voyage from Venice to Flanders. He now heard of the
"glorious and boundless conquests" of Prince Henry, "whence accrued such
gain that from no traffic in the world could the like be had. The
which," continues the candid trader, "did exceedingly stir my soul,
eager as it was for profit above all other things, and so I made suit to
be brought before the Infant"--who was then at the village of Reposeira,
near Sagres. Cadamosto was easily persuaded to sail in the service of
Portugal,[37] and set out, with Vicente Diaz, on March 22, 1455. He
visited Porto Santo and Madeira, and at Cape Branco began a "peaceful
exploration" of the interior, for the study of its natural conditions,
inhabitants, trade, and so forth. Proceeding to the Senegal, he
continued his investigations; which were extended to the Canaries as
well as to Madeira. He notices the fort built by the Prince's orders in
the Bight of Arguim (1448), and the new start lately made by Portuguese
trade with the natives. This trade at Arguim had included nearly a
thousand slaves a year, so that the Europeans, who used to plunder all
this coast as far as the Senegal, now found it more profitable to trade.
Slave-raiding among the Azanegue tribes north of the Senegal had ceased,
"for the Prince will not allow any wrong-doing, being only eager that
they should submit themselves to the law of Christ."[38] Before passing
Cape Verde, Cadamosto met with two ships, one commanded by a Genoese,
Antonio, or Antoniotto, surnamed Ususmaris or Uso di Mare,[39] the other
by an unnamed Portuguese in Henry's service. The expeditions united and
sailed on together to the Gambia, where they were unable to open
intercourse with the natives, and so returned to Portugal. Cadamosto
gives very full descriptions of the life, habits, government, trade,
etc., of both the "Moors" (Azanegues) and Negroes (Jaloffs) of Guinea,
which have been often noticed,[40] and sometimes paraphrased; and which
show a great development of commercial interest and statesmanlike
inquiry on anything recorded in Azurara. At his furthest point the
explorer noticed that the North Star was so low that it appeared almost
to touch the sea, and here he seems to have seen the Southern Cross.
[Footnote 33: 1507 (Vicenza) Edition, is the earliest text of
Cadomosto's Voyages, printed in "Paesi novamente retrovati et
novo mondo da Alberico Vesputio Florentino intitulato." This
was republished at Milan in 1508; and in this year two
versions appeared: 1. In Latin, by Madrignano, "Itinerarium
Portugallensium ...," Milan. 2. In German, by Jobst Ruchamer,
"Neue unbekanthe landte," Nürnberg. In 1516 appeared in Paris
a French version by Mathurin du Redouer: "Sensuyt le nouveau
monde ..." A good many discrepancies occur in these various
editions and translations.]
[Footnote 34: See pp. xcii-xcvi of this Introduction.]
[Footnote 35: House or Family (Casa) of Mosto.]
[Footnote 36: In 1454 the Venetian Senate ordered three
galleys to be equipped for the voyage to Flanders and England;
and ordered Marco Zeno, as commander, to enquire about the
goods of Venetian subjects landed in England.]
[Footnote 37: The Prince was said especially to wish for
Venetians to enter his service, as they knew more about the
spice trade than anyone; and he was convinced that his
expeditions would ultimately find spices (_i.e._, in India).
As to Vicente Diaz, cf. Azurara's _Guinea_, chs. lx, lviii,
etc.]
[Footnote 38: Cf. Azurara, _Guinea_, end of ch. xcvi.]
[Footnote 39: This seems one of the earliest notices of
non-Portuguese craft in these waters. But Uso di Mare was
almost certainly in the Prince's service, like "Vallarte the
Dane," and "Balthasar the German," noticed in Azurara,
_Guinea_, chs. xvi. and xciv. Uso di Mare's letter to his
creditors of December 12, 1455, seems to show that the
expedition had returned before Christmas.]
[Footnote 40: As in the collections of Ramusio, Temporal,
Astley, and Stanier Clarke; in Major, _Henry Navigator_, chs.
xv.-xvi.; and in "Heroes of Nations" life of Prince Henry, ch.
xvi.]
In the next year, 1456, Cadamosto sailed out again with Antoniotto Uso
di Mare, made straight for Cape Branco, and found, three days' sail from
this point, "certain islands" off Cape Verde "where no one had been
before."[41] The explorer then, in his own as well as in the official,
"Ramusian," or Venetian, account, proceeded to the Gambia, opened trade
successfully with the natives, and explored the coast "about 25 leagues"
beyond this river as far as the Bissagos Islands, or some point of the
mainland not far distant.
[Footnote 41: Of these two were "very large," and on these
they landed, finding no inhabitants but plenty of animal life.
Five more isles were sighted in the distance, but not visited.
They called the first discovered "Boa Vista," and the largest
of the group "St. James," from the day of the discovery. This
is, of course, the Santiago which forms the centre of the Cape
Verde archipelago.]
Cadamosto's account of his two voyages is rightly praised[42] as
"detailed and vivid." He certainly compiled a map of his journeys, for
in noticing the river Barbasini beyond Cape Verde, he says: "I have
named it so on the Chart which I have made." The interesting suggestion,
that some of Benincasa's portolanos (especially that of 1471) were based
on Cadamosto's descriptions and plans of the West African shore-land, is
hardly susceptible of proof, but it is not without some corroborative
evidence, as may be seen elsewhere.[43] Also, "the journeys of this
Marco Polo of West Africa were undertaken in a more scientific spirit,
and were more free from chivalrous outrages," than most of those who
preceded him along this coast.[44] This is not merely due to himself. It
appears from his express statements that the Infant now discouraged
slave-raiding, and urged his captains to something of higher value than
seal and sea-calf hunting. The value of Cadamosto's work was mainly in
his observations and descriptions. He advanced only a little way beyond
some of the Prince's earlier explorers (_e.g._, Alvaro Fernandez),
except for his discovery of the Cape Verde islands, but he seems to have
named[45] and mapped out more carefully than before a good many points
of the littoral beyond Cape Verde, and his writings surpass in
geographical value anything to be found in Azurara. His notes are also
of high value for ethnology and anthropology, and give a better account
of the trade-routes, etc. of North-west Africa than any Christian
writing of the time. Finally, he is more reliable than many subsequent
and more pretentious travellers, and his narrative is as picturesque and
effective as it is reliable. For "one inquisitive person shall bring
home a better account of countries than twenty who come after him."
[Footnote 42: See Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 120, and Map
section of this Introduction; also pp. xcii-xcvi of the same.]
[Footnote 43: See p. cxxxii of this Introduction.]
[Footnote 44: The same change is observable in the narrative
of Diego Gomez. Cf. his treatment of the Chief Bezeghichi,
whom he freely releases when in his power, in order to make
him less "bitter against the Christians."]
[Footnote 45: _E.g._, the rivers Barbasini, Casamansa, Santa
Anna, St. Domingo, and Cape Roxo.]
A little subsequent to what we may suppose was the second return of the
Venetian adventurer from Africa, in 1456, the Infant sent out Diego
Gomez with orders to "go as far as he could." The explorer passed a
"great river beyond the Rio Grande," when strong currents in the sea
alarmed him and caused him to put back. Like Cadamosto, however, he
trafficked and conversed with the natives, especially of the Gambia, and
gained some useful information about their trade, politics, and
geography. Some of the facts he related about wars among the negro
states of the interior were confirmed by a "merchant in Oran," who
corresponded with the Prince.[46] As a result of Gomez' first voyage,
the Infant seems to have sent out, in 1458, a mission to convert the
negroes of the Gambia "with a priest, the Abbot of Soto de Cassa, and a
young man of his household named John Delgado." Two years after this
(_i.e._, in 1460) Gomez went out again. Near the Gambia he fell in with
two ships--one under Gonçalo Ferreira, of Oporto, who was trading in
horses with the negroes for native produce; the other was under Antonio
Noli, of Genoa. Soon after, Gomez and Ferreira seized an interloper, one
De Prado, who had come to Cape Verde without permission to dispose of a
rich cargo, as Gomez was informed by a "caravel from Gambia." It is
noticeable how the West African trade had now increased, and how many
expeditions are incidentally mentioned in this one record of Gomez.
[Footnote 46: An allusion of high importance. See the section
of this Introduction, "Preliminary African Exploration,"
especially pp. xlv, etc.]
He concludes by stating that he and Noli left the mainland coast, and
after sailing two days and one night towards Portugal, "sighted islands
in the Ocean," which are described in terms very similar to Cadamosto's.
These were certainly the Cape Verde Islands of modern geography, which
are first mentioned in documentary history in a Portuguese Decree of
December 3rd, 1460. Gomez makes no reference to any previous visit or
claim of a prior discovery of these islands, but that is natural enough.
Was such a previous visit made? Around this point, and the consequent
prior claim of the Venetian, a long controversy has been waged, which is
briefly discussed in the section of this Introduction on the "Atlantic
Islands" (especially pp. xcii-xcvi).
The second voyage of Diego Gomez was probably among the last ventures of
which the Prince received any account. He must have died soon after the
second return of the explorer, who seems to have attended him in his
last illness (13th November, 1460). But it is probable that before his
end he had prepared for the expedition which Pedro de Sintra carried out
in 1461, and which is described by Cadamosto, apparently before the
close of 1463.
VOYAGES OF THE PORTUGUESE COMPLETING PRINCE HENRY'S WORK.
A word must be added on the completion of Prince Henry's work after his
death, and by agents whom in many cases he had trained. King Affonso V,
though rather more of a tournament king than a true successor of the
great Infant, such as John II, had yet caught enough of his uncle's
spirit to push on steadily, though slowly, the advance round Africa. In
1461 he repaired the fort in the Bight of Arguim and sent out Pedro de
Sintra[47] to survey the coast beyond Cadamosto's furthest point. De
Sintra proceeded 600 miles along the "southern coast of Guinea," passed
a mountain which was called Sierra Leone (according to one account) from
the lion-like growl of the thunder on its summits, and turned back at
the point afterwards known as St. George La Mina.[48] Soon after
(probably in 1462), Sueiro da Costa followed De Sintra,[49] but without
any new results, and it was not till 1470 that a fresh advance was
made.[50] In 1469 King Affonso leased the West African trade to Fernam
Gomez, a citizen of Lisbon, for five years, Gomez paying 1,000 ducats a
year. To this lease was annexed the condition that Gomez should make
annual explorations along the unknown West coast of Africa for 300
_miglia_, counted from Sierra Leone, "where Pedro de Sintra and Sueiro
da Costa turned back."[51]
[Footnote 47: This voyage is described by Cadamosto as an
appendix to his own voyages. A young Portuguese who
accompanied De Sintra described to Cadamosto the stretch of
coast now discovered beyond the Rio Grande, the anchorages of
the fleet, and the names given to points on the shore. "This
account, without any rhetorical embellishment, is of special
interest as a specimen of a Portuguese sailing-direction from
a sailor of Henry the Navigator's School" (Nordenskjöld,
_Periplus_, 121). De Sintra reached 5° further South than any
before him. His nomenclature still survives at many points:
_e.g._, Cape Verga, Sierra Leone, Cape Santa Anna, Cape del
Monte, Cape Mesurado. Cape Sagres, "the highest promontory
they had ever seen," between Cape Verga and Cape Ledo, has
been re-named. De Sintra also noticed especially a "great
green forest"--"Bosque de St. Maria," in 5° 30' N. lat.
(?)--and near his furthest point (at Rio dos Fumos) an immense
quantity of smoke from native fires. Cf. Hanno's language in
his _Periplus_, on the fiery rivers running down into the sea;
and see J. N. Bellin's _Petit Atlas Maritime_, Paris, 1764;
Part iii, Map 105.]
[Footnote 48: Elmina.]
[Footnote 49: According to some, he accompanied De Sintra in
the voyage of 1461.]
[Footnote 50: Cadamosto explicitly says that when he left
Portugal on February 1, 1463, no voyages had been made in
continuation of De Sintra's venture, recorded by him.]
[Footnote 51: According to Cadamosto's account, De Sintra had
gone a good deal further.]
Accordingly, in 1470, Gomez sent out João de Santarem and Pedro de
Escobar, accompanied by the two leading Portuguese pilots, Martin
Fernandez and Alvaro Esteves, as "directors of the navigation." On the
29th December, they discovered St. Thomas island, and on 17th January,
1471, the Isle of St. Anne, afterwards Ilha do Principe, both close to
the Equator on the open side of the Bight of Biafra.
Another voyage seems to have been made, under Gomez' auspices, in 1471.
Fernando Po now reached the island in the angle of the Central African
coast which is still called after him; and men began to find that the
Eastern bend of the continent, which had been followed since 1445-6 with
some hope of a direct approach to Asia, now took a sharp turn to the
South.
In spite of this disappointment, Fernandez and Esteves in 1472-3 passed
beyond the furthest of earlier travellers, and crossed the Equator[52]
into that Southern Hemisphere on the edge of which the caravels had long
been hovering, as mariners like Cadamosto saw ever more clearly stars
unknown in the Northern Hemisphere, and ever more nearly lost sight of
the Arctic pole. In 1474-5 Cape Catherine, two degrees South of the
Line, was reached, and here the advance of exploration stopped for a
time till the accession of John II in 1481.
[Footnote 52: It is not very clearly recorded who first
crossed the line among the Portuguese sailors of this time.
Some conclude as stated in text, but Nordenskjöld believes it
was "perhaps Lopo Gonçalvez, after whom a promontory directly
south of the Equator is named"; he also thinks this great
event was accomplished on Gomez' first expedition, under
Santarem, Escobar, Fernandez and Esteves, in 1470-1. As to
progress eastwards, towards India, it was much exaggerated by
many. While his caravels were still off the Guinea coast, King
Affonso V believed the meridian of "Tunis, and even of
Alexandria," had been already passed.]
Now, in six years, the slow advance of the past sixty was exceeded.[53]
Less than four months after his father's death, John, who as heir
apparent had drawn part of his income from the African trade and its
fisheries, sent out Diego de Azambuga, who in 1482 built under the
King's orders the celebrated fort at St. George La Mina. He trafficked
with success, but made no great advance along unknown Africa, even if he
commenced a new era in the permanent colonisation of the Continent. King
John was not disposed to be satisfied with this. In 1484, Diego Cão was
ordered to go as far to the South as he could, and not to "wait anywhere
for other matters." He penetrated to the mouth of the Zaire or Congo,
where he erected (at Cape Padron?) a stone pillar in sign of
possession,[54] and brought back four natives to Portugal. These he took
out with him in his second voyage (1485); on this expedition Martin
Behaim was (wrongly) said to have accompanied him. Cão claimed in this
year to have reached 22° S. lat., half way between the Congo and the
Cape of Good Hope; but this is probably an exaggeration;--18° S.
lat.[55] perhaps marks his furthest point, rather than Walvisch Bay, as
in the old tradition.
[Footnote 53: It is probably right to ascribe great importance
to the work of Fernam Gomez, during his five years' lease. His
wealth gave a new character to the equipment of the African
Expeditions of Portugal. Formerly there had been too much
waste of energy through indefiniteness of object; too much
discretion had been left to mariners themselves; now the
definite contract for geographical discovery with the Crown
caused a more rapid and continuous advance, and long stretches
of coast were explored and mapped.]
[Footnote 54: According to King John's orders. Wooden crosses
(often of Madeira wood?) had hitherto been erected by
Portuguese discoverers in new lands. Now stone pillars 6 ft.
high were to be used, and on them was to be inscribed, in
Portuguese and Latin, the date, with the name of the reigning
monarch, and those of the discoverers.]
[Footnote 55: Near C. Frio. So it is placed (at _Arenarum
Aestuarium_ or _Manga das Arenas_) on Pl. X in Livio Sanuto's
_Geographia_ of 1588. We have mentioned that Martin Behaim, of
Nüremberg, claimed to have accompanied Cão to West Africa; but
his globe, so famous afterwards, executed in 1492 at the order
of the Nüremberg Town Council, shows very little evidence of
this. Behaim's West Africa is often obstinately Ptolemaic, at
the end of the century which had revolutionised the knowledge
of this part of the world. He inserts all the legendary
Atlantic islands, and puts the Cape Verdes far out of their
proper place.]
After Cão's return, King John renewed his efforts with fresh energy.
Already, in 1484, a negro embassy to Portugal had brought such an
account of an inland prince, one "Ogane, a Christian at heart," that all
the Court of Lisbon thought he must be the long lost Prester John, and
men were sent out to seek this "great Catholic Lord" by sea and land.
Bartholemew Diaz sailed in August 1486, with two ships, to try his
fortune by the sea-route, and even if he could not reach the Prester's
country, to discover as far as possible on the "way round Africa." Two
other envoys, Covilham and Payva, were sent out by way of "Jerusalem,
Arabia, and Egypt," to find the Priest-King and the Indies; yet another
expedition was to ascend the Negro Nile, or Senegal, to its supposed
junction with the Nile of Egypt; a fourth party started to explore a
road to Cathay by the North-East Passage.
Bartholemew Diaz, accompanied by João Iffante, rounded the southernmost
point of Africa, and passed some way beyond the site of the modern Port
Elizabeth. The picturesque story of his voyage is well known. He sailed
with two vessels of 50 tons apiece, in the belief that "ships which
sailed down the coast of Guinea might be sure to reach the end of the
land by persisting to the South." His first pillar was set up at Angra
dos Ilheos,[56] at the south side of Angra Pequena. He made another stay
at Angra das Voltas, in 29° S. lat., immediately after passing the
Orange River. Then, putting well out to sea, Diaz ran thirteen days due
south before the wind, hoping by this wide sweep to round the furthest
point of the Continent, which many traditions agreed in fixing not very
far from his last halting-place. Finding the sea and air at last
becoming cold, he changed his course to east, and as no land appeared
after five days, to north. In this last course the Portuguese reached a
bay where cattle were feeding, named by the Portuguese Angra dos
Vaqueiros, now Flesh Bay.[57] After putting ashore two natives (probably
some of those lately carried from Congo to Portugal, and sent out again
to act as scouts for the European explorers), Diaz continued east to a
small island still called "Santa Cruz," W. of our Port Elizabeth, and
even further to a river called, after his partner, Rio do Iffante, now
the Great Fish River, in 32° 23' S. lat., and midway between the present
Port Elizabeth and East London, where the coast begins gradually but
steadily to trend north-east. Here the expedition put back, sighting on
its homeward way the Land's End, or "Cape of Storms," re-named by John
II "Cape of Good Hope" on their return. Almost at the same time as Diaz'
reappearance in Lisbon (Dec. 1487), Covilham, who had reached Malabar by
way of Egypt, wrote home from Cairo more than confirming the hopes
already drawn from the success of the last maritime ventures. "If you
keep southward, the continent must come to an end. And when ships reach
the Eastern Ocean, let your men ask for Sofala and the Island of the
Moon (Madagascar), and they will find pilots to take them to India."
[Footnote 56: ? Diaz Point, at the _Serra Parda_ or "Dark
Hills" of Barros.]
[Footnote 57: Some way beyond Cape Agulhas, and immediately to
the east of the River Gauritz.]
Yet another chapter of discoveries was opened by King John's expeditions
for the ascent of the Western Nile, and for the exploration of the
North-East Passage to Cathay. Neither of these achieved complete
success, but some more light was gained upon the interior of Africa
(where the Portuguese made such notable advances in the sixteenth
century); it has even been claimed, but apparently without foundation,
for the explorers of John II, that a Portuguese discovery of Novaia
Zemlya rewarded their enterprise.
The great voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497-9) connected and completed the
various aims of Portuguese enterprise, to which Prince Henry had given a
permanent and organised form.
Though he was not able to see in his own lifetime the fulfilment of his
plans, both the method of a South-East Passage, and the men who finally
discovered it, were, in a true sense, his--were inseparably associated
with his work. The lines of Portuguese advance, a generation after his
death, continued to follow his initiative so closely, that, when a
different route to the Indies was suggested by Columbus, the government
of John II refused to treat it seriously. And yet it was to the Infant's
movement--in part, at least--that Columbus owed his conception. "It was
in Portugal," says Ferdinand Columbus, "that the Admiral began to
surmise that if men could sail so far south, one might also sail west
and find lands in that direction." In another place[58] it will be
questioned how far a Portuguese movement America-wards can be credited
to the mariners of Prince Henry's own time. It is plain that, whether he
or his captains ever thought favourably of the chances of the Western
route, he and they alike devoted their main energies to its rival, the
Eastern or African coasting way. It is equally plain, on the other hand,
that the Infant's work produced a new interest in the world-science of
geography throughout Christendom, and so was indirectly responsible for
quite as much as it directly aimed at accomplishing.
[Footnote 58: See the section of this Introduction on the
"Atlantic Islands," especially pp. ciii-cvi.]
AFRICAN EXPLORATION PRELIMINARY TO PRINCE HENRY'S WORK.
The first recorded African expedition along the Atlantic coast of Africa
was, if we accept the account of Herodotus, that of the Phœnicians sent
out by Pharaoh Necho (_c._ 600 B.C.), who started from the Red Sea and
returned by the Pillars of Hercules and the Mediterranean.[59] Almost at
the same time (_c._ 570 B.C., according to Vivien de St. Martin's
estimate) the great Phœnician settlement of Carthage attempted in
reverse order a voyage of colonisation and discovery along the West of
the Continent outside the Straits. Eratosthenes refers to Phœnician (or
Carthaginian) settlements already existing on what is now the coast of
Marocco, both inside and outside the "Pillars;" this new expedition
under Hanno was intended to strengthen the old, as well as to found new
plantations. It is often compared with a similar venture, "to explore
the outer coasts of Europe," undertaken by Himilco, probably about the
same time.[60]
[Footnote 59: Herod. ii, 158-9; iv, 42. These mariners took
three years on their voyage: landed, sowed crops, and lived on
the harvest during seasons unfavourable to navigation
(especially autumn); during part of their journey they were
astonished to find the sun on their right hand.]
[Footnote 60: This is first noticed by Aristotle, "On
Marvellous Narratives," § 37; by Mela, _De Situ Orbis_, iii,
9; and by Pliny, _Natural History_, ii, 67, § 167-170, and
elsewhere. The _Periplus_ of Himilco seems to have been worked
up by Avienus (_c._ 400 A.D.) in the first 400 lines of his
poem, "_De Ora Maritima_."]
Hanno[61] sailed from Carthage, according to our authority, with sixty
penteconters, carrying 30,000(?) people, colonists and others, first to
Cerne,[62] which was as far distant from the Pillars of Hercules as the
Pillars were from Carthage. Then he ascended the river Chretes[63] to a
lake. Twelve days' voyage south of Cerne he passed a promontory with
lofty wooded hills,[64] and a little beyond this, a great estuary.[65]
Five days more to the south brought him to the Western Horn,[66] and on
the other side of this he coasted along a "fragrant shore," with
"streams of fire running down into the sea," and "fiery mountains, the
loftiest of which seemed to touch the clouds," and which he named[67]
"Chariot of the Gods."[68] Three days' sail beyond this was his furthest
point, the Southern Horn,[69] whence he returned directly to Carthage.
[Footnote 61: One account of Hanno's voyage was preserved on a
Punic inscription in the temple of "Kronos," "Saturn," or
Moloch, at Carthage; the inscription was translated into Greek
by an unknown hand, probably about 300 B.C.; and this version
of the _Periplus_ still remains to us. See Pliny, _Hist.
Nat._, ii, 67; v, 1, 36; vi, 31; _Solinus_, 56; _Pomponius
Mela_, iii, 9. The first edition of the Greek text is by
Gelenius, Basel 1534; the best by C. Müller, in _Geographi
Graeci Minores_. Cf. also an edition by Falconer, London,
1797; an edition by Kluge, Leipsig, 1829; Rennell, _Geography
of Herodotus_, 719-745, 4to ed.; Bunbury, _Ancient Geography_,
i, 318-335; Walckenaer, _Recherches sur le Géographie de
l'Afrique_, p. 362, etc.; Vivien de St. Martin, _Le Nord de
l'Afrique dans l Antiquité_, pp. 330-400; Major, _Henry
Navigator_, 90, etc., 1868; Charton, _Voyageurs Anciens_, i,
1-5, Ed. of 1882; Gossellin, _Recherches sur la Géographie des
Anciens_, i, pp. 70-106; A. Mer, _Mémoire sur le Pêriple
d'Hannon_, 1885; Campomanés, _El Periplo de Hannone
illustrado_, appended to his _Antiquedad maritima de Cartago_
(1756); Bougainville, _Acad. des Inscr. et Belles Lettres_,
xxvi, xxvii, and especially xxviii, p. 287.]
[Footnote 62: Near Cape Non.]
[Footnote 63: This can hardly be the Senegal and Lake Nguier,
as suggested by V. de St. Martin.]
[Footnote 64: Cape Verde?]
[Footnote 65: The Gambia?]
[Footnote 66: Cabo dos Mastos?]
[Footnote 67: Burton, with characteristic recklessness,
insists on the Camaroons Mt. as the Chariot of the Gods
("Abeokuta and Camaroons Mt."); Fernando Po being another of
the "lofty fiery mountains" seen by Hanno at this point.]
[Footnote 68: In the Sierra Leone range?]
[Footnote 69: Near Sherboro' island?]
It is very difficult to identify Hanno's positions, and this is not the
place to attempt a fresh investigation.[70] But the tradition of this
_Periplus_ having reached far beyond the Straits of Gibraltar--farther
than any venture of the earlier Middle Ages, or of the classical
period--may be regarded as reliable, and some position on the Sierra
Leone coast may provisionally be taken as its ultimate point of advance.
[Footnote 70: Some (_e.g._, Gossellin) would refer the whole
group of localities here named to the extreme N.W. or Maroccan
coast of Africa. But the "lofty green headland," the Western
and Southern Horns, the Chariot of the Gods, the gorillas
captured by the seamen, hardly seem to allow of this
restriction. Ancient enterprise was far more satisfactory than
ancient observation, and the inaccuracies of the latter should
not make us deny the former. Here the initial measurement, of
the distance from Cerne to the Pillars as being equal to the
distance from the Pillars to Carthage, because the time
occupied in sailing was equal, seems not only too vague a
reckoning, but inaccurate as ignoring one great difference.
Inside the straits, Hanno's duty was simply to sail forward;
outside, he had to plant colonists at suitable spots,--along a
coast, moreover, not so well known as that of North Africa to
the Carthaginians.]
The African voyages of Sataspes under Xerxes, and of Eudoxus of Cyzicus
under Ptolemy Euergetes II, cannot be regarded as of much importance.
Neither probably reached Cape Verde (even if we are to attach any belief
to their narratives). Sataspes[71] declared that his ship was stopped by
obstructions in the sea at a point where lived on the ocean shore a
people of small stature, clad in garments made of the palm-tree.[72]
This was "many months'" sail south of Cape Soloeis or Cantin, and may
stand for the neighbourhood of the Senegal, if it be not a mere
traveller's tale invented by Sataspes, as Herodotus seems to have
thought, to excuse his failure to the Great King. Eudoxus[73] claimed to
have sailed so far, first along the eastern and then, along the western,
coasts of Africa, that he practically circumnavigated the Continent; but
all the details with which we are favoured go to disprove his claim. For
instance, he implies that the Ethiopians reached by him on his farthest
point S.W. "adjoined Mauretania." On the eastern coast he picked up a
ship's prow from a vessel which he was told had been wrecked coming from
the westward, and which mariners of Alexandria identified as a ship of
Gades--a very unlikely story in the face of the currents on the East
African coast.
[Footnote 71: _Herodotus_, iv, 43. Similar excuses were given,
_e.g._ (1) by Pytheas in the North Sea; (2) by Arab and
Christian mediæval voyagers off Cape Non and Cape Bojador; (3)
by Arabs off Cape Corrientes (on the E. Coast of Africa).]
[Footnote 72: They lived in towns, he adds, possessed cattle,
were of harmless and timid disposition, and fled to mountains
on the approach of the strangers.]
[Footnote 73: _Posidonius_, in _Strabo_, ii, 3, § 4. Eudoxus
made three voyages (see also Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, ii, 67, who
bases his statement, like Mela, iii, 9, on Cornelius Nepos);
in the first two he sailed to India and was driven to points
on the East African coast; on the third he attempted to sail
round Africa to India by the West, but evidently did not reach
any distance beyond S.W. Mauretania (near C. Non). His first
voyage must have been before B.C. 117 (_d._ of Ptolemy
Euergetes II, Physcon), his other two subsequent to that year.
The narrative of Eudoxus was exaggerated by Pliny and
Pomponius Mela into the story that the navigator had actually
accomplished, in his own person, the voyage round Africa from
the Red Sea to Gades; but his achievements may be limited
thus: Two voyages from Egypt to India; a short distance of
African coasting beyond Guardafui, probably not as far as
Zanzibar; a short distance on the west coast beyond the S.W.
coast of our Marocco, probably not beyond Cape Non, or at
furthest Cape Bojador.]
According to Pliny,[74] Polybius the historian also made a
reconnaissance down the West coast of Africa, in the lifetime and under
the order of Scipio Æmilianus. He seems to have passed the termination
of the Atlas chain, but Pliny's language does not warrant us in going
any further.[75] He interweaves the great measurement of the Roman world
under Augustus by Agrippa, which is perhaps in part commemorated by the
Peutinger Table, and which evidently took into its view the Hesperian
Promontory,[76] and the Chariot of the Gods. Some have claimed for
Polybius a voyage as far as the latter point, but this, if understood in
the sense of Sierra Leone, is highly improbable.
[Footnote 74: _Hist. Nat._, v, i.]
[Footnote 75: The text here is very confused and difficult,
but the best editors give the following text for Pliny's
words: "He (Polybius) relates that beyond Atlas proceeding
west there are forests.... Agrippa says that Lixus is distant
from Gades 112 miles. From the Chariot of the Gods to the
Western Horn is 10 days' voyage, and midway in this space _he_
(_i.e._, Agr., not Pol.) has placed Mt. Atlas."]
[Footnote 76: Or Western Horn.]
We must not here delay over classical attempts at African continental
exploration; but it will be right to notice briefly: That in the age of
Pliny, as shown by the _Periplus of the Erythraean Sea_ (_c._ 70 A.D.),
and in the age of Ptolemy, as shown in his _Geography_ (_c._ 139-162
A.D.), the knowledge of the Græco-Roman world was extended down the East
coast of Africa at least as far as Zanzibar and its neighbourhood, and
down the Western coast to Cape Soloeis, or Cape Cantin: That beyond
these points only vague ideas obtained, though occasional travellers had
ventured further: That in the interior of Africa only the North coast
region, viz., Egypt and the "Barbary States," were thoroughly well
known, though expeditions had at times crossed the Sahara, reached the
Sudan, and ascended the Nile to the marshes situate in 9° N. lat.: That,
even if never seen or visited, at least something had been heard of the
African Alps in the neighbourhood of the Great Lakes, as well as of
those lakes themselves: That Ptolemy's work marks the highest point of
ancient knowledge in Africa, which began to decline from the age of the
Antonines: That it is not probable even Ptolemy had any definite notions
about the Niger, though his text names such a stream in West Africa, and
his Map lays it down in a position not very distant from our Joliba:
That it is clear he was conscious of the vast size of the Continent in a
way that none of his predecessors had grasped, while utterly ignorant of
its shape towards the South, so that he even denied the primary fact of
its practically insular form.
Leaving to another section any notice of ancient exploration among the
African islands, it would also appear that Statius Sebosus, Juba, and
Marinus of Tyre all made contributions to the knowledge of West Africa.
These contributions are now only preserved in the allusions or
paraphrases of other authors; but it is clear that Sebosus, perhaps
identical with a Sebosus who was a friend of Catulus and a contemporary
of Sallust and Cæsar, had made independent inquiries concerning the West
or Ocean coast of the Continent;[77] that Juba,[78] who made the Nile
rise in Western Mauretania, did similar work in the time of Augustus;
and that Marinus preserved some original records of Roman expeditions
which crossed the Great Desert,[79] apparently from Tripoli and Fezzan
to the neighbourhood of the Central Sudan States.
[Footnote 77: He was also the alleged author of a _Periplus_,
and a treatise on the _Wonders of India_, but he is only known
by Pliny's quotations.]
[Footnote 78: The younger, "King of Numidia."]
[Footnote 79: Such as those of Julius Maternus and Septimius
Flaccus, which perhaps reached Lake Chad, probably in the time
of Trajan (98-117 A.D.), and of Cornelius Balbus under
Augustus (19 B.C.), which conquered the Garamantes of Fezzan.]
As the Roman Empire broke up, geographical knowledge naturally suffered,
and Africa shared in this loss. But a considerable recovery was effected
through the work of the Arabs, to whom the Infant Henry owed much.
Confining our attention to Continental exploration, we may remark among
other particulars: (1) That the Arab migration[80] to the East coast
beyond Guardafui in the eighth century began the extension of Moslem
trade-colonies, which at last reached Sofala. (2) That the coast near
Madagascar, as well as that island itself, seems to have been known to
the great Arab traveller and geographer Masudi ("Massoudy") in the tenth
century. (3) That the same writer considered the Atlantic or Western
Ocean unnavigable, but that even he preserves a record of one Arab
voyage thereon.[81] (4) That Edrisi, in the twelfth century, records
another voyage which touched the African mainland a good distance beyond
the Straits of Gibraltar.[82] (5) That Ibn Said, in the thirteenth
century, relates a discovery of Cape Blanco.[83] (6) That overland
communication between the Barbary States and the negroes of the Sudan
was originated by the Arabs, as a regular line of commerce, probably
from the eleventh century at least.
[Footnote 80: This migration led to the foundation of
Magadoxo, 909-951, and of Kilwa, 960-1000; later on of
Malindi, Mombasa, and Sofala. See Krapf, _Travels and
Missionary Labours_, etc., p. 522; G. P. Badger, _Imams ... of
Oman_, p. xiii; El-Belâdzory, _Futûh-el-Buldân_ (Ed.
Kosegarten), pp. 132-135. The immigrants came from the Red Sea
and Syria, according to Dr. Krapf, from Oman and the Persian
Gulf according to Badger (though Krapf admits a later Persian
element as well). This was the migration of the "Emosaids"
('Ammu-Sa'îd, or People of Sa'îd?). They, in one tradition,
claimed to be the clan of Said, grandson of Ali; "a mythical
personage," according to Badger, who substitutes "Sa'îd,
grandson of Julánda" the Azdite; the latter, in this 'Omâni
migration, was accompanied by his brother Suleimân. The
traditional date is A.D. 740, and onwards.]
[Footnote 81: Masudi, ch. 12 of the _Meadows of Gold_. The
adventurer was Khosh-Khash, the "young man of Cordova," who
returned with great riches, from Guinea (?).]
[Footnote 82: See the section of this Introduction upon the
Atlantic Islands, pp. lxxv-lxxvii. Edrisi's Maghrurin or
Wanderers probably sailed from and returned to Lisbon before
1147, the date of the final Christian capture of that city,
and touched the African mainland at a point over against
Madeira.]
[Footnote 83: By one Ibn Fatimah, who was wrecked at Wad-Nun,
a little North of Cape Non, put off in a sloop with some
sailors, and at last came to a glittering white headland, from
which they were warned off by some Berbers. They learned
afterwards that it was one mass of deadly serpents. Thence
turning North they landed and went inland to the salt market
of Tagazza, and finally returned home.]
This last point is one which requires special consideration. By sea the
Arabs did scarcely anything to prepare the way for the Christian
discoveries of the fifteenth century in Africa (except along the Eastern
coast), but by land they were the most important helpers and informants
of Prince Henry.[84] Islam effected the conquest of the Barbary States,
politically in the seventh century, dogmatically in the course of about
200 years after the days of Tarik and Musa. By the end of the eleventh
century the faith of Mohammed had begun to spread and take deep root in
the Sudan,[85] having already made its way into many parts of the
Sahara. With the Moslem faith came the Moslem civilisation. The caravan
trade across the desert now commenced between Negroland and the
Mediterranean; "Timbuktu" was founded by Moslems, probably drawn in
large measure from the Tuareg, in about 1077-1100; and the Central Sudan
States, from Sokoto to Darfur and Kordofan, passed under Mohammedan
influence between A.D. 1000 and 1250. With the fresh migration of Nomad
Arabs which seems to have taken place about A.D. 1050, from Upper Egypt
to West Africa, a distinct advance of Islam in Central Africa is to be
noticed by way of Kanem, Bornu, Sokoto, and the Niger Valley; this new
wave reached Jenné, Ghiné, or "Guinea", on the Upper Valley of the
Niger.
[Footnote 84: Cf. what is said about Prince Henry's
correspondent, the merchant at Oran, p. xxvi of this
Introduction.]
[Footnote 85: Various early Arab MSS., lately found by the
French in Tombuttu ("Timbuktu"), especially the
_Tarik-es-Sudan_ of "Abderrahman ben Amr-Sadi-Tombukkti,"
according to Félix Dubois (_Tombouctou la Mystérieuse_),
supply important rectifications of the standard accounts here;
_e.g._ (1) Islam is found in the Western Sudan from the close
of the ninth century. (2) The Songhay were converted in 1010;
were for a time subject to the Kings of Melli; but gained
freedom in 1355. (3) The Songhay took Timbuktu in 1469; and
from this date, for more than a century, dominated all the
West and Central Sudan from their capital at Gao. (4) Jenné,
on the Upper Niger, was the furthest point westward of the
original Songhay migration from Nubia. It was founded in 765;
was converted to Islam in 1050, but "Pagan idols" were not
completely rooted out till 1475. (5) Jenné was, in the Middle
Ages, the greatest emporium of the Western Sudan, far
outshining Timbuktu, which owed its foundation in part to
Jenné. (6) Jenné was also a chief centre of Sudanese Islam.
Its great Mosque, built in the eleventh century, partially
destroyed in 1830, was the finest in all Negroland. (7) Its
control of the salt and gold trade, as well as of most other
branches of Sudanese merchandise, was such that it gave the
name of Guinea to a vast region of West Africa, especially
along the coast. (8) But Timbuktu, geographically, stood
between Jenné and Barbary, and so between Jenné and Europe,
and prevented Jenné from becoming famous in Christendom. (9)
Jenné was connected primarily with a migration from East to
West; Timbuktu, with a migration from North to South. (10)
Timbuktu was founded [α] by the Tuareg, who owed their new
energy in part to Moslem migrations from Spain, _c._ 1100
(1077 according to some authorities); [β], by merchants from
Jenné, who made it an emporium in the twelfth century. (11) In
the twelfth century, Walata, or Gana, in the great bend of the
Niger [? dominated by Jenné] was the most prosperous
commercial district of West Soudan; but in the thirteenth
century the conquests of the Kings of Melli [placed by these
authorities west-south-west of Timbuktu, to the north of the
Upper Niger] disturbed the old trade-routes, and diverted
commerce to Timbuktu; which, however, was never itself very
populous, and served chiefly as a place of passage and
commercial rendezvous. (12) From 1330 to 1434 the Kings of
Melli were usually masters of Timbuktu, where they built a
pyramid minaret for the chief mosque; but at least during some
years of the fourteenth century, Timbuktu was conquered by an
invasion from Mossi. (13) From 1434 to 1469, the Tuareg
regained possession of Timbuktu, and drove out the Melinki;
but in 1469 the Songhay took the town, and held it for more
than 100 years. (14) In the fourteenth century the Kings of
Melli built a great palace in Timbuktu, which did not
disappear till the sixteenth century. (15) From the fourteenth
century Timbuktu was the intellectual capital of the Sudan.
This was due to the Spanish-Moorish influence. (16) The patron
saint and doctor of Timbuktu, Sidi Yahia, was practically
contemporary (1373-1462) with Prince Henry the Navigator. (17)
The town of Kuku, Kuka or Kokia, in the W. Sudan, mentioned by
mediæval Moslem travellers, was probably either a city on or
near the Niger, immediately south of Gao, the Songhay capital;
or else Gao itself, which is sometimes called Kuku or Gogo.
Even this place was conquered by Melli, in the fourteenth
century, which thus dominated part of the Central Sudan. The
ruins of the great mosque at Gao still commemorate Kunkur
Musa, King of Melli, who built this house of prayer on his
return from the Mecca pilgrimage, about 1325. See
_Tarik-es-Sudan_, composed about 1656, and giving a history of
the Sudan down to that year: the fragments remaining of the
_Fatassi_ of Mahmadu-Koti (1460-1554); _Nil-el-Ibtihaj
bitatriz el-dibaj_, or Supplement to the Biographical
Dictionary of Ibn-Ferhun by Ahmed Baba, 1556-1627.]
Even earlier than this a movement seems to have been in progress from
the opposite direction--first south along the west coast, and then east
up the valley of the Senegal and similar inlets. The tradition preserved
by John Pory[86] is approved by the most recent research--at least in
its general conclusions. The Moslems "pierced into" the Sahara in, or a
little after, 710, and "overthrew the Azanegue, and the people of
Walata;" in "the year 973 (others say about 950) they infected the
negroes and first those of Melli." During the ninth century, Islam made
progress among the Sahara tribes, and the influence of this faith
promoted intercourse between the desert tribes and the great commercial
centres of the North African coast--a movement which was furthered by
the Almoravide revival of the eleventh, and the Almohade of the twelfth,
century. The former started from a reformed Moslem "community," settled
on an island at the mouth of the Senegal--in other words, it shows Islam
already finding centres for recovery and expansion in Negroland,
exploring the Sudan from the north and west, creeping along the Atlantic
Ocean, and spreading from the neighbourhood of Cape Verde into the
interior of the populous land to the south of the Great Desert.
[Footnote 86: In his "Summary Discourse of the Manifold
Religions in Africa," printed at the end of the Hakluyt
Society's Edition of Pory's (1600) Translation of _Leo
Africanus_, vol. iii, especially pp. 1018-1021.]
Here we may notice that Edrisi takes a point called Ulil as his
starting-place in reckoning measurements, and especially longitudes, in
the Sudan. This Ulil is fixed by all our authorities as close to the
sea, in the centre of a salt-producing district; and it may be supposed
to have been in the neighbourhood of the Senegal estuary.[87] To the
east, Ulil bordered on Gana, Ghanah, Guinoa, Geneoa, or "Guinea," which,
at least in name, was the first objective of Prince Henry's expeditions,
and was famous for its slave export, and its money of "uncoined
gold."[88] The name of the country was probably derived from its chief
city of Jenné, variously described by Leo Africanus, in the sixteenth
century, as a large village; by the earlier geographers--especially
Edrisi in the twelfth century, and Ibn-Batuta in the fourteenth--as a
spacious and well-built city on an island in the Niger, lying west from
Timbuktu.
[Footnote 87: See Edrisi, Climate I, § i; Wappaüs, _Heinrich
der Seefahrer_, pp. 65, etc.]
[Footnote 88: Similar language is used by Abulfeda, who calls
it the seat of the King of Gana (whither come the western
merchants of Segelmesa), situate on a Nile, twin-brother of
the Egyptian, which flows into the Ocean; also by
Ibn-al-Wardi, who calls Ghanah city one of the greatest in the
land of the Blacks, placed on both sides of the Negro Nile,
and resorted to for gold by merchants, twelve days' journey
from Segelmesa. Edrisi (Climate I, section ii; ed. Jaubert, i,
16-18; also see i, 11, 13, 15, 19-20, 23, 106, 109, 173-4,
206, 272) is the most specific of all. "Ghanah the Great, made
up of two towns on the banks of a sweet-water river ... the
most populous and commercial city in Negroland. Merchants come
there from all surrounding countries, and from the extremities
of the West ... it was built in A.H. 510" (= A.D. 1116) (see
also Leo Africanus, Hakluyt Soc. ed., pp. 124, 128, 822,
840).]
Between Ghanah or Jenné, and Ulil, according to some writers, lay the
kingdom of Tokrur, while Andagost was on the northern boundary of Ghanah
close to the Sahara. All these were Moslem states like Melli or Malli
(W.S.W. from Timbuktu), and carried on trade with Barbary across the
desert long before the days of Prince Henry. One of the earliest
important converts to Islam in the Sudan was Sa-Ka-ssi, of the dynasty
of Sa in the Songhay country on the Middle Niger (_c._ A.D. 1009-1010).
From this time the states on the Middle Niger became a centre of
Mohammedan influence, especially after the foundation of Timbuktu about
1077. When Ibn-Batuta visited these parts in 1330, he found the negroes
of the Niger full of Moslem devotion, enjoying a commerce with
Mediterranean Africa, and mostly acknowledging the lead of Melli, which
kingdom, according to him, had been founded in the early thirteenth
century by the Mandingo.[89]
[Footnote 89: See Ibn-Batuta (Defrémery and Sanguinetti), iv,
395, 421-2; also Oppel, _Die religiöse Verhältnisse von
Afrika_, Zeitschrift of Berlin Geog. Soc., xxii, 1887.]
Among the Lake Chad States progress was also made in the eleventh
century. The first Moslem Sultan of Bornu (Hami ibnu-l-Jalil) is
recorded about 1050;[90] and a similar conversion happened in Kanem
about the same time. This latter kingdom was then more important than
now, and dominated much even of the Egyptian Sudan. Hence in the
fourteenth century Islam obtained a strong footing in Darfur, as it had
already in Baghirmi and Wadai.[91] Already in the twelfth century,
Kordofan and the extreme east of the Sudan had been partially Moslemised
by Arabs from Egypt, who had come south after the fall of the Fatimite
Caliphs.
[Footnote 90: See Otto Blau, _Chronik von Bornu_, p. 322, Z.
D. M. G., vi, 1852.]
[Footnote 91: The more complete Islamising of Wadai, Darfur,
and Baghirmi did not take place till the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. See Slatin Pasha, _Fire and Sword in
Soudan_, pp. 38-42; T. W. Arnold, _Preaching of Islam_, chs.
iv, xi.]
Along the eastern coast, in spite of the early spread of Moslem
settlements from Magadoxo southward, Islam was very slow in penetrating
the interior. Here the Arabs chiefly devoted themselves to maritime
commerce, and for a long time their intercourse with the inland tribes
was not of a kind to open up the country. Caravans with slaves and
natural products came down to the coast towns, but the merchants of the
latter seem to have been content with waiting and receiving. But on this
side of Africa was a Christian kingdom, which was now--in Prince Henry's
days--becoming more familiar to Europe: Abyssinia, the kingdom of
Prester John, as the Portuguese of later time identified it. The
original seat of the Priest-King, as described (chiefly from Nestorian
information) by Carpini, Rubruquis, Marco Polo, and other Asiatic
travellers of the thirteenth century, was in Central Asia, but the
Abyssinian state offered so close a parallel, that it was naturally
recognised by many as the true realm of Prester John, when the first
clear accounts of it came into Mediæval Europe. The Asiatic prototype,
moreover, was only temporary; it had apparently ceased to exist in the
time of Polo himself, who spread its fame so widely; whereas its
Abyssinian rival was both permanent and ancient enough to be noticed in
pre-Crusading and even in pre-Mediæval literature. As the Renaissance
movement progressed in Europe, learned men of the West gained from their
reading an ever clearer realisation of this isolated Christianity of the
East; and, as the trade of the later Middle Ages spread itself more
widely, the Venetians seem to have made their way to the Court of the
Negus, even before John II of Portugal sent Covilham and Payva (1486) to
find the Prester. Probably the beginnings of this Italian intercourse
with Abyssinia may be placed as far back as the lifetime of Prince Henry
(_c._ 1450).
The Christianity of Nubia, which dated from the fourth century like that
of Abyssinia itself, was still vigorous in the twelfth,[92] but from
that time it began to fail before the incessant and determined pressure
of Islam. Ibn-Batuta,[93] about 1330-40, found that the King of Dongola
had just become a Moslem. Father Alvarez, in 1520-7, considered that the
Nubian Christianity which had once extended up the Nile from the first
Cataract to Sennaar had become extinct; though he would not allow that
the mass of the Nubians had adopted any other religion in its place;[94]
and himself, he tells us, had met a Christian who, in travelling through
Nubia, had seen 150 churches.[95] But, in the course of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, all Nubia embraced Islam; and even in 1534,
Ahmad Gragne, King of Adel, in one of his attacks upon Abyssinia, is
said to have had 15,000 Nubian allies, apparently all Mohammedans.[96]
[Footnote 92: Edrisi, Climate I, section iv; vol. i, p. 35
(Jaubert). See Duchesne, _Eglises Séparées_.]
[Footnote 93: _Ibn-Batuta_, iv, 396. (Defrémery and
Sanguinetti).]
[Footnote 94: See _Alvarez_, Hakl. Soc. Edition, p. 352.]
[Footnote 95: Ruins?]
[Footnote 96: See Nerazzini, _Musulman Conquest of Ethiopia_,
Rome 1891. (Ital. Transl. from Arab MS.).]
In Prince Henry's day, then, we may fairly assume that the old
Christianity of East Africa was practically limited to Abyssinia; but
when Azurara tells us of the Infant's desire "to know if there were in
those parts[97] any Christian Princes,"[98] and again more explicitly,
"to have knowledge of the land of Prester John,"[99] it is possible that
some dim acquaintance with the old tradition of an isolated African (as
well as of an isolated Asiatic) Church, was at the root of his
endeavour.
[Footnote 97: Africa.]
[Footnote 98: _Azurara_, c. vii.]
[Footnote 99: _Ibid._, c. xvii.]
At the end of the twelfth century, Islam had already begun to encroach
upon the coast of what is now Italian "Erythraea;" and about 1300 A.D. a
Musulman army attacked the ruler of Amhara. At this time the realm of
the Negus seems to have been completely cut off from the Red Sea;[100]
but it was not till the early sixteenth century that Abyssinia was in
serious danger of becoming a province of Islam, from the attacks of
Ahmad Gragne (1528-1543), which, however, ended in complete failure.
[Footnote 100: See Maqrīzī, _Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks de
l'Egypte_, Quatremère, 1837-45, t. ii, Pt. 11, p. 183.]
To return to the North coast of Africa. Here, by the capture of Ceuta,
Prince Henry gained a starting-point for his work; here he is said
(probably with truth) to have gained his earliest knowledge of the
interior of Africa; here especially he was brought in contact with those
Sudan and Saharan caravans which, coming down to the Mediterranean
coast, brought news, to those who sought it, of the Senegal and Niger,
of the Negro kingdoms beyond the desert, and particularly of the Gold
land of "Guinea." Here also, from a knowledge thus acquired, he was able
to form a more correct judgment of the course needed for the rounding or
circumnavigation of Africa, of the time, expense, and toil necessary for
that task, and of the probable support or hindrance his mariners were to
look for on their route.
We must, however, qualify in passing the statements of Azurara, in ch.
vii, which would imply that Christianity had for ages been utterly
extinct in North Africa. "As it was said that the power of the Moors in
... Africa was ... greater than commonly supposed, and that there were
no Christians among them." "During the one-and-thirty years that he had
warred against the Moors, he had never found a Christian King nor a lord
outside this land,[101] who for the love of ... Christ would aid
him."[102] The old North African Church, though constantly declining,
survived the Musulman Conquest of the seventh and eighth centuries for
nearly 800 years. True, its episcopate, which could still muster 30
members in the tenth century, was practically extinct by the time of
Hildebrand[103] (Pope Gregory VII), and in 1246 the Franciscan
missionary bishop of Fez and Morocco was the only Christian prelate in
"Barbary"; but a number of native Christians still lingered on, though
without Apostolic succession. In 1159, the Almohade conqueror, Abdu-'l
Mu'min ben Ali, on subduing Tunis, compelled many of these to change
their faith; but all through the next centuries, down to 1535, a certain
number of Tunisians preserved their ancient religion so far that, when
Charles V gained possession of the city in the above-named year (1535),
he congratulated these perseverants on their steadfastness. The same
fact is evidenced by the tolerant behaviour, as a rule, of the Mediæval
Barbary States towards Christians, both native and European.
[Footnote 101: Portugal.]
[Footnote 102: To find such a "Christian Lord" in the person
of Prester John was said to have been one of the chief objects
of D. Pedro's travels. This object Pedro avowed in Cairo; and
with this, among other aims, he visited not only Egypt but
Sinai and the Red Sea (see Martins, _Os Filhos_, pp. 83, 97,
121-2, etc., and pp. xvii-xviii of this volume).]
[Footnote 103: In 1076, the Church of Barbary could not
provide three bishops to consecrate a new member of the
Episcopate, and Gregory VII named two bishops to co-operate
with the Archbishop of Carthage (See Migne, _Pat. Lat._,
cxlviii, p. 449; Mas Latrie, _Rélations de l'Afrique
septentrionale avec les Nations chrétiennes au Moyen Age_, p.
226). In 1053, Leo IX declared that only five bishops could be
found in North Africa (Migne, _P. L._, cxliii, p. 728). On the
thirty bishops of the tenth century, see Mas Latrie, _Ibid._
pp. 27-8. It is curious to find Gregory II, in _c._ 730,
forbidding St. Boniface of Mainz to admit emigrants from North
Africa to Holy Orders without inquiry (Migne, _P. L._, lxxxix,
p. 502)--a remarkable proof of mediæval emigration.]
Thus they employ Christian soldiers, among others; grant freedom of
worship to Christian merchants and settlers; and exchange letters with
various Popes, especially Gregory VII, Gregory IX, Innocent III, and
Innocent IV, on the subject of the due protection of native
Christians.[104] Traces of Christianity were to be found among the
Kabyles of Algeria down to the time of the capture of Granada (1492),
when a fresh influx of Andalusian Moors from Spain completed the
conversion of these tribes,[105]--a conversion which, as Leo Africanus
notices, was not inconsistent with some survivals of Christian custom.
Similar survivals have been alleged among the Tuâreg of the Sahara, the
"Christians of the Desert" at the present day.
[Footnote 104: See Mas Latrie, _Afrique Septentrionale_,
_passim_, and especially pp. 61-2, 192, 266-7, 273.]
[Footnote 105: See C. Trumelet, _Les Saints de l'Islam_
(1881), pp. xxviii-xxxvi. In this connection we may notice one
or two other traces of intercourse between the Moslems of
Granada and those of Africa, _e.g._ (1) Ibn-Batuta's mention
of the tomb of the poet Abu Ishak es Sahili, born in Granada,
died and buried in Timbuktu, 1346. (2) Leo Africanus' notice
of the stone mosque and palace in Timbuktu, the work of an
architect from Granada in the fifteenth century. On Timbuktu,
see Ibn Batuta (Def. and San.), iv, 395, 426, 430-2; Leo Afr.
(Hakluyt Soc.), 4, 124, 128, 133-4, 146, 173, 255, 306, 798,
820, 822-4, 842.]
Two practical questions arise for our special purpose from this summary
of the mediæval progress and fifteenth-century status of Islam in
Africa. These questions have been partly answered already, but we may
here re-state them to generalise our conclusions. 1. What information
was the Infant able to gain from the "Moors" for his own plans? and 2.
Was this "Moorish" information so valuable as to account, in any great
degree, for the Prince's perseverance and success in his task?
To the former query it may be replied: 1. That the "Arabs and Moors" of
the early fifteenth century could give the Infant detailed and correct
information, not only about the Barbary states and the trade-routes of
the Sahara, but also about many of the Western and Central Sudan
countries, and about the general course and direction of the "Guinea
coast" both to the west and south of the great African hump. Especially
could they describe the kingdom of Guinea, centreing round the town of
Jenné on the Upper Niger, which was the chief market of their Negro
trade in slaves, gold, and ivory. This kingdom, then, reached almost to
the Atlantic on the lower valley of the Senegal, where in earlier times
a place called Ulil had been marked by Edrisi and other Arab
geographers, as independent of Ghanah but important for traffic. Also,
the Moors were acquainted with the country of Tokrur,[106] which may be
supposed to occupy the upper valley of the Senegal, becoming perhaps, in
Prince Henry's time, merely a province of Guinea. Further, they could
give much information about the States of Timbuktu and Melli, to the
east of Guinea, on the Middle Niger, about the gold land of Wangara, in
the great bend to the south of that river, and about the Songhay,
afterwards so powerful, whose capital was at Gao, at the extreme N.E.
angle of the Negro Nile, or Joliba. The Arab travellers and writers seem
generally to have made but one river out of the Senegal, the Niger,
Joliba, or Quorra, and the Benué or "river of Haussa."
[Footnote 106: But in one view Tokrur is merely a generic name
for the Sudan and Sudanese, and is only by mistake converted
into a definite kingdom by Arab writers of second-rate
authority.]
De Barros explicitly states that the Moors told Prince Henry how on the
other side of the Great Desert lived the Azanegues, who bordered on the
Jaloff negroes, where began the kingdom of Guinea, or Guinanha. From
other sources we know, as already stated, that the Infant obtained from
the same informants[107] definite descriptions of the Senegal estuary,
its "tall palms," and other landmarks. For here, rather than at any
point more to the south, was the Guinea coast proper of the fifteenth
century; though in the Bull of Pope Nicholas V, granting to Portugal
(1454) all the lands that should be discovered "from the Cape of Bojador
and of Nun throughout the whole of Guinea, as far as its _Southern
shore_, or even to the Antarctic Pole and the Indies," our modern
extension of the term is virtually admitted.
[Footnote 107: From the same he may have heard the tradition
of Bakui's voyage in 1403, from the Maroccan coast to about
the latitude of the Bight of Arguim, a parallel adventure to
Ibn Fatimah's. See above, p. xliv.]
2. And, in the second place, granting what has just been said, it is
obvious that the Moorish information was important enough to have very
considerable influence on the Infant's plans, and especially to furnish
him with hopes of success, and reasons for perseverance in the face of
opposition and repeated failure.
Our materials for the Prince's life are so inadequate that we can hardly
decide, from the silence of our authorities, that he was entirely
ignorant, even at second hand, of all that the Arab geographers or
travellers had written about Africa. Especially is this the case with
Edrisi (1099-1154), whose work was composed in the Christian kingdom of
Sicily, and owed much to Christian writers. And perhaps the same hope
applies to Ibn-Batuta (_fl._ 1330), who, living at a time so near to the
epoch of the Prince's voyages, had revealed the Western Sudan to the
Moslem world--and so to any Christians conversant with Moslem trade and
enterprise--far more thoroughly than ever before. These are only two
examples among those Moslem geographers, whose work may have been
brought to the Infant's notice during his visits to Ceuta.
* * * * *
We have now to see what progress had been made by Christian nations in
the exploration of Africa immediately before Prince Henry's time. The
Crusades were not merely expeditions to recover the Holy Sepulchre: they
were the outward sign of the great mediæval awakening of Europe and
Christendom, which, beginning in the eleventh century, has never
slumbered since, and which, in the Infant's days, was passing through
that great transition we call the Renaissance. On the geographical side
this movement took first of all the direction of land travel, and
achieved such great discoveries in Asia that a new desire for wealth and
commercial expansion was kindled in Europe, with the special object of
controlling the Asiatic treasures which Marco Polo and others had
described. Islam, however, interposed a troublesome barrier between
Central Asia, India and China on the one side, and European trade or
dominion on the other. Hence, from the thirteenth century, we find a new
series of attempts to reach the Far East by sea from the Atlantic and
Mediterranean coasts. It was not till the last years of Prince Henry's
life that any serious attempts were made to explore the interior of
Africa, but expeditions along its shores were sent out long before his
time to reconnoitre for a sea-route to India.[108] We have already
remarked that the Infant represents in his own life-work the leading
transition in this movement, from a tentative, impermanent, and
unorganised series of efforts, to a continuous, properly directed, and
successful plan; but some notice must be taken of those ventures which
immediately prepared his way. Leaving out of sight, for another section
as far as possible, the voyages which are concerned only with the
Atlantic islands, or aim in a rudimentary way at finding a Western route
to Asia, it is possible to mention several genuine attempts to
anticipate the Portuguese along the Eastern or African mainland course.
[Footnote 108: Raymond Lulli ["of Lull"] is thought by some to
have made the first definite suggestion of this route in the
central mediæval period. This "doctor illuminatus" was born at
Palma in Majorca, 1235, became a Franciscan Tertiary in 1266,
and died 1315. We may perhaps connect him with the very early
school of portolano-draughtsmanship in the Balearics. See Map
section of this Introduction.]
The first of these, as far as known, is the voyage of Lancelot
Malocello, of Genoa, in 1270. There is no proof that he started, like
the adventurers of 1291, to find the ports of India: it is probable his
ambitions were more modest; but we do not know how far he reached along
the African mainland--only that he touched the Canaries, and staying
there some time built a castle in Lancarote[109] island.
[Footnote 109: = Lancelote? See pp. lxxviii-lxxix.]
The next venture in this direction is also Genoese. In May, 1291,[110]
Tedisio Doria and Ugolino de Vivaldo, with the latter's brother and
certain other citizens of Genoa, equipped two galleys "that they might
go by sea to[wards] the ports of India and bring back useful things for
trade." But "after they had passed a place called Gozora,[111] nothing
more certain has been heard of them." This is confirmed by Pietro
d'Abano, writing in 1312; but in the fifteenth century one of Prince
Henry's captains, the Genoese colleague of Cadamosto, Antoniotto
Ususmaris or Uso di Mare, professed to give some more details. On
December 12th, 1455, he wrote his creditors a letter, in which he
stated[112] that the two galleys of "Vadinus and Guido Vivaldi," leaving
Genoa in 1281 "for the Indies," reached the "Sea of Ghinoia," where one
ship was stranded, but the other sailed on to a city of Ethiopia called
Menam, where lived Christian subjects of Prester John, who held them
captive. None ever returned, but Uso di Mare himself spoke with the last
surviving descendant of those Genoese.[113] Menam, he concludes, was on
the sea coast, near the river Gihon.[114]
[Footnote 110: According to some authorities, 1281. See
Giustiniani, _Castigatissimi Annali di Genova_, 1537, fol.
cxi, verso. Giustiniani refers to Francesco Stabili, otherwise
Cecco d'Ascoli, in his Commentary on the _De Sphaera Mundi_ of
Sacrobosco (John of Holywood, in Yorks, _c._ A.D. 1225). The
year 1291 corresponds with the fall of Acre, and the
consequent embarrassment of the Syrian overland routes to
Inner Asia.]
[Footnote 111: At or near Cape Non, which, on the Pizzigani
Map of 1367, is marked "Caput Finis Gozole."]
[Footnote 112: This statement, it has been conjectured, was
intended for use in a "forthcoming globe or map." Uso di
Mare's statement was first noticed by Gräberg af Hemsö. See
Peschel, _Erdkunde_, p. 179 (Ed. of 1865); Major, _Henry
Navigator_, 99-106 (Ed. of 1868), P. Amat di S. Filippo,
_Studi biografici_, etc. (Ed. of 1882), i, p. 77, for recent
studies on the general question of the Genoese Voyage of 1291,
and Uso di Mare's letter. The earliest modern notice of the
account of this voyage in the Public Annals of Genoa was by G.
H. Pertz, in his memoir, "Der älteste Versuch zur Entdeckung
des Seewegs nach Ostindien", offered to the Royal Academy of
Sciences at Munich, March 28th, 1859 (_Festschrift_, Berlin,
1859). The Genoese Annals referred to are a continuation of
the Chronicles of Caffaro. Muratori has printed an abstract of
the narrative. See also Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_ (1897), pp.
114, 116; _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (d'Avezac), vol.
cviii, p. 47.]
[Footnote 113: In 1455?]
[Footnote 114: Nile.]
It is difficult to attach great weight to Uso di Mare's letter, which
looks like an attempt to amuse his creditors with interesting
adventures; but the voyage of 1291, with or without the survival of
1455, is sufficiently remarkable. It is the first direct attempt of
Europeans in the Middle Ages to find a sea-route to India around Africa;
its far-reaching design contrasts forcibly with the more modest projects
of nearly all similar attempts before Prince Henry's time, and it is not
improbable that some of its work survived, though officially
unrecognised.[115]
[Footnote 115: Thus it has been pointed out that two of
Tedisio Doria's galleys were registered in a legal document of
1291, under the names of St. Antonio and Allegrancia, and that
the name Allegranza, applied for some time to one of the
Canaries, was perhaps derived from this ship. Either from this
or from Malocello's venture of 1270, the islands of Lançarote
and Maloxelo in the same group probably took their names.
Lançarote was marked with the red cross of Genoa on most
Portolani down to a late period of the sixteenth century.]
The Hispano-Italian voyage of 1341 appears to have been solely occupied
with the exploration of the Canaries, which were now becoming pretty
well known, and we leave over any further notice of this for the
present; but the Catalan expedition of 1346 was to some extent similar,
both in object and method, to the Genoese expedition of 1291. "The ship
of Jayme Ferrer," according to the Catalan Mappemonde of 1375, "started
for the River of Gold[116] on St. Lawrence's Day, 1346."[117] To the
same effect the Genoese archives[118] assert "On the Feast of St.
Lawrence there went forth from the city of the Majorcans one galley of
John Ferne the Catalan, with intent to go to Rujaura.[119] Of the same
nothing has since been heard."[120] And on the Map of 1375 already
noticed, upon the third sheet, is depicted off Cape Bojador the
picture[121] of the ship in question adjoining the legend above-quoted.
We may notice, however, that Guinea, the gold land of Africa, and not
India, was the objective of this voyage--although Guinea was the first
step on the African route to India--and that the venture, as Major says,
was apparently designed only for the discovery of the supposed Negro
river in which gold was collected: a guess of Mediterranean
merchants[122] from the information of Moorish middlemen.
[Footnote 116: _I.e._, Guinea.]
[Footnote 117: 10th August.]
[Footnote 118: See Papers presented to Archives of Genoa by
Federico Federici, 1660. Reference discovered by Gräberg af
Hemsö.]
[Footnote 119: The River of Gold.]
[Footnote 120: Yet, proceeds this record, the "river [of gold]
is a league wide and deep enough for the largest ship. This is
the Cape of the end ... of W. Africa."]
[Footnote 121: Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, p. 114 (1897), gives
a confirmation from experience. "There is hardly any doubt
that the ship-drawing on the Atlas Catalan is in the main
correct.... Even in my time, Norwegians went out fishing on
Spitzbergen in large undecked boats, somewhat like that of
Ferrer."]
[Footnote 122: Such as dealt in Guinea products, especially
malaguette pepper, at Nismes, Marseilles, and Montpellier.]
Beginning with the year 1364, the French also claimed to have made
important advances along the African coast route. The men of Dieppe, it
is said, repeatedly sailed beyond Cape Verde, and even Sierra Leone, and
founded settlements on what was afterwards called the La Mina
coast.[123] These stations, called Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, etc.,
lasted till 1410, when home troubles caused their abandonment,[124] like
the temporary evacuation of the French Ivory Coast Settlements after
1870; but during the forty or fifty years of their existence, they
carried on a regular trade with the Norman ports.
[Footnote 123: "The Mine" of Hakluyt and early English
geographers.]
[Footnote 124: See the MS. edited by Margry, and given in
Major's Introduction to his _Life of Henry the Navigator_; the
_Short History of the Navigation of Jean Prunaut of Rouen_;
also _La Relation des Costes d'Afrique appelées Guinées_, by
Sieur Villaut de Bellefond, Paris, 1669; L. Estancelin,
_Recherches sur les voyages des navigateurs normands_, 1832;
Père Labat, _Nouvelle rélation de l'Afrique Occidentale_,
1728; Pierre Margry, _Les Navigations Françaises du XIVme.
au XVIme. siècle_, 1867. The French claim is fully admitted
by Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 115-6 (1847), but of course
vigorously denied by the Portuguese, whom Major
supports.--_Henry Navigator_, Introduction, pp. xxiv-li, and
text, pp. 117-133.]
This tradition admits that it has lost its proofs in the destruction of
the Admiralty Registers at Dieppe in 1694, but it is possible that some
articles[125] may be discovered dating from this early commerce, which
can supply fresh evidence. In itself, the Dieppese story is not
impossible, and we shall see in another section, from the witness of the
Map of 1351 and other portolanos, how plausible it appears, together
with still greater ventures. But as things at present stand, it must be
considered as a "thing not proven."[126]
[Footnote 125: Especially some of the ivory carvings said to
have been made from spoils of this fourteenth-century trade.]
[Footnote 126: The "short history" of Prunaut's navigation
assigns September, 1364, for the start of the first voyage;
makes the sailors reach "Ovideg" at Christmas ("Ovidech" in
Barros, _Decade I_, occurs as a native name for the Senegal);
and tells us the anchorage was at C. "Bugiador," in "Guinoye."
The blacks, called Jaloffs or Giloffs, had never seen white
men before. Small presents were exchanged for "morphi" or
ivory, skins, etc. Next year (?) Prunaut (called "Messire Jean
of Rouen" throughout), returned with four ships and acquired
land from the natives. Here he built houses for wares and
habitation, and proposed to his men to settle there
permanently. They agreed, but quarrels prevented the
foundation of the colony. In September, 1379, Prunaut sailed
again to Guinea with a very fine ship, _Notre Dame de bon
Voyage_, but lost many men from sickness; he himself returned
after Easter, 1380, with much gold. After this Prunaut was
made a captain in the French navy. Next year (1381) the _Notre
Dame_ again went out with the _St. Nicholas_ and
_L'Espérance_, of Dieppe and Rouen. The first-named cast
anchor at La Mine, where Prunaut built a chapel, a castle, a
fortalice, and a square house, on a hill called the "Land of
the Prunauts." Near this were Petit Dieppe, Petit Rouen, Petit
Paris, Petit Germentrouville; French forts were also built at
Cormentin and Acra. But from 1410 all this prosperity decayed;
in eleven years only two ships went to the gold coast, and one
to the Grande Siest; and soon after the wars in France
destroyed this commerce altogether.
Villaut de Bellesfond, Estancelin, and Labat, narrate the same
incidents as follows: Charles V encouraged commerce, so in
November, 1364, the Dieppese fitted out two ships, of 100 tons
each, for the Canaries. About Christmas they reached C. Verde,
and anchored before Rio Fresco, which in 1669 was still called
"Baie de France." Afterwards they went on to a place they
called "Petit Dieppe," and the Portuguese "Rio Sestos," beyond
Sierra Leone; for objects of small value they gained gold,
ivory, and pepper; returning in 1365 they realised great
wealth; and in September of the same year the merchants of
Rouen joined with those of Dieppe to fit out four ships, two
for trade between Cape Verde and Petit Dieppe, the other two
for exploration of the coast beyond. One of these last stopped
at Grand Sestere, on the Malaguette coast, and loaded pepper;
the other ship traded on the Ivory Coast, and went on as far
as the Gold Coast, and depôts were fixed at Petit Dieppe and
Grand Sestere, which was re-named Petit Paris. Factories or
"Loges" were established to prepare cargoes for the ships. The
native languages long retained French words, as was found in
1660. In 1380 the Company sent out _Notre Dame de bon Voyage_,
of 150 tons, from Rouen to the Gold Coast (September). At end
of December they reached the same landing where the French had
traded fifteen years before. In the summer of 1381 the _Notre
Dame_ returned to Dieppe richly laden; in 1382 three ships set
sail together, September 28th, viz, _La Vierge_, _Le Saint
Nicholas_, _L'Espérance_. _La Vierge_ stopped at La Mine, the
first place discovered on the Gold Coast. The _St. Nicholas_
traded at Cape Corse and at Mouré below La Mine, and
_L'Espérance_ went as far as Akara, trading at Fanting, Sabon
and Cormentin. Ten months after, the expedition returned with
rich cargoes. Three more ships were sent out in 1383, one to
go to Akara, the others to build an outpost at La Mine; there
they left ten or twelve men, and returned after ten months. A
church was afterwards built for the new colony, and in 1660
this still preserved the arms of France. After the accession
of Charles VI, the African trade was soon ruined. Before 1410
La Mine was abandoned, and until after 1450 the Normans, it is
believed, abandoned maritime explorations.]
Reliable evidence of French voyages to the Gold Coast of Guinea can only
be quoted for the sixteenth century. Thus Braun in 1617, and Dapper some
time shortly before 1668, inspected buildings and collected traditions
from the natives on that shore which alone would prove these later
expeditions, if they were not confirmed by several documents in Ramusio,
Temporal, and Hakluyt.[127] Equally reliable is the tradition of
Béthencourt's _Conquest of the Canaries_ in 1402, etc.; yet the authors
of this history, Béthencourt's chaplains, give no hint of any knowledge
possessed by their countrymen about the mainland coast beyond Cape
Bojador, but rather imply the reverse. Finally, though so many of the
best sixteenth-century maps are Dieppese, none of these show the
fourteenth-century settlements, which are also wanting in all charts of
the earlier time. The controverted names are first found on a map of
1631, by Jean Guérand; and this is probably not unconnected with the
fact that in 1626 Rouen and Dieppe united for trade with the Guinea
coast.
[Footnote 127: See De Bry's _Collection des petits Voyages_,
Frankfort, 1625; Oliver Dapper's _Description of Africa_ (in
Dutch), Amsterdam, 1668; Ramusio's _Collection_, Ed. of 1565,
iii. p. 417 _verso_, in the _Discorso sopra la Nuova Francia_;
Dr. David Lewis' _Letter to Burleigh_, March 9, 1577.
Santarem's _Priority of Portuguese Discoveries, etc._ (1842),
is mainly directed against the French claims.]
It is of course possible, as M. d'Avezac long ago argued from the
evidence of the great Portolani of the fourteenth century, especially
the Laurentian or Medicean[128] of 1351, the Pizzigani[129] of 1367, and
the Catalan of 1375, that some unrecorded advance was accomplished along
the African mainland coast during the middle years of this century; the
imperfection of our records must never be forgotten; and we shall return
to this question in another section. But nothing definite and certain
can be gathered about the coast beyond Cape Bojador, except in a few
small points.[130] With the Atlantic islands the case was very
different.
[Footnote 128: Genoese.]
[Footnote 129: Venetian.]
[Footnote 130: Unless the contour of the Laurentian Map of
1351 is held to prove a circumnavigation of Africa shortly
before 1351. The comparative accuracy of this outline, so
incredibly good as mere guesswork, must remain one of the
chief _cruces_ of Mediæval geography.]
The expedition[131] (1402-12) of the Sieur de Béthencourt, Lord of
Granville la Teinturière, of the Pays de Caux in Normandy, was chiefly
concerned with the Canaries[132]--like the voyages of the Spaniards
Francisco Lopez (1382), and Alvaro Becarra (? 1390, etc.) But, after
achieving fair success in the islands, De Béthencourt attempted
(apparently in 1404) an exploration of the mainland coast "from Cape
Cantin, half way between the Canaries and Spain," to Cape "Bugeder" or
Bojador,[133] the famous promontory to the right or east of the
Canaries. But this was left unfinished; and De Béthencourt's chaplains,
in describing their Seigneur's intentions beyond the "Bulging Cape," can
only fall back on a certain Book of a Spanish Friar,[134] which
professed to give a description of Guinea, and the River of Gold. This
last was said by the Friar to be 150 leagues from "the Cape Bugeder,"
and the French priests declare that "if things were such as described,"
their lord hoped sometime to reach the said river, "whereby access would
be gained to the land of Prester John, whence come so many riches."
[Footnote 131: See the _Book of the Conquest and Conversion of
the Canarians by Jean de Béthencourt_, written by Pierre
Bontier, monk, and Jean le Verrier, priest. Edited for the
Hakluyt Society by R. H. Major, 1872.]
[Footnote 132: See section of this Introduction on the African
Islands, pp. lxxxii-lxxxiv.]
[Footnote 133: Buyetder on the Catalan Atlas of 1375.]
[Footnote 134: This is identified by Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_
79, following Espada, with the recently rediscovered _Libro
del Conosçimiento de todos los reynos & tierras & señorios que
son por el mundo & de las señales & armas que han cada tierra
& señorio por sy & de los reyes & Señores que los proueen_.
This was lost sight of till 1870, when it was found by Marcos
Jimenez de la Espada, who published it in the _Boletin de la
Sociedad Geographica de Madrid_ 1877. "It is certainly not a
record of actual travel, but probably the description of an
imaginary journey, compiled with the help of a richly
illustrated typical portolano, reports by far-famed and
travelled men, and such geographical works as were accessible
to the author. Many names here occurring are, however, not to
be found on the portolanos of the fourteenth century.... Every
city or country spoken of in the book has a chapter to itself,
followed by a representation of the flag or arms of the State.
These also seem ... taken from some portolano." See the
_Conquest of the Canaries_ (Hakluyt Soc. ed., ch. 55). The
_Conosçimiento_ cannot well be of later date than 1330-1340.
In many places it copies Edrisi.]
Thus the French colonists in the early fifteenth century, in Prince
Henry's boyhood, know nothing first-hand, nothing save half-legendary
rumours, about the African coast beyond Cape Bojador. They are anxious
to reach the River of Gold, and traffic there, but they do not know the
way. Of Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, La Mine, and other Norman settlements
or factories beyond Cape Verde, they give no sign.
The late and doubtful[135] tradition of Macham's discovery of Madeira
(_c._ 1350-1370) does not concern the exploration of the African
mainland, except that after the death of the "discoverer" in his island,
some of his sailors were said to have escaped in the ship's boat
(according to the story) to the Continent, to have been made prisoners
by the Berbers, and to have been held in slavery till some of the
survivors were ransomed in 1416. But all this, if true, belongs to the
well-known coast within Cape Non, and in no manner furthered
exploration, except as regarded the island group of Madeira and Porto
Santo.[136]
[Footnote 135: Admitted by Nordenskjöld with singular
facility: _Periplus_, pp. 115-6. As to the Portuguese sailor
named Machico, and the possibility that the Machico district
of Madeira was named after him or one of his descendants, see
below, pp. lxxxiv-lxxxv.]
[Footnote 136: See Atlantic Islands.]
Fra Mauro preserves a tradition[137] of two voyages from India or the
East coast of Africa round the Southern Cape--one in 1420, the other at
an unfixed date. These, he says, had been accomplished by a person with
whom he actually spoke, who claimed to have passed from Sofala to
"Garbin," in the middle of the West coast, as it is marked on Fra
Mauro's planisphere. If genuine, they would be the last anticipations of
Prince Henry's enterprises left to chronicle; but few have placed much
confidence in these statements, which seem indeed incredible in the form
they are related by the Venetian draughtsman.
[Footnote 137: See Map section.]
THE ATLANTIC ISLANDS.
I. BEFORE PRINCE HENRY.
The history of the exploration of the Azores, the Canaries, and the
Madeira group, before Prince Henry's time, seems to deserve a special
notice in this place.
It is pretty certain that the Fortunate Islands of ancient geography
were our Canaries. Eudoxus of Cyzicus was said to have discovered off
the West African coast an uninhabited island, so well provided with wood
and water, that he intended to return there and settle for the winter.
According to Plutarch, Sertorius (B.C. 80-72) is said to have
been told by some sailors whom he met at the mouth of the Baetis[138] of
two islands[139] in the ocean, from which they had just arrived. These
they called the "Atlantic Islands," and described as distant from the
shore of Africa 10,000 stadia (1,000 miles), and enjoying a perpetual
summer. Sertorius wished to fly from his war with the Romans in Spain,
and take refuge in these islands, but his followers would not agree to
this.[140]
[Footnote 138: Guadalquivir.]
[Footnote 139: Madeira and Porto Santo(?)]
[Footnote 140: Plutarch, _Sertorius_, c. 8.]
Leaving out of serious consideration the Atlantis story in Plato's
_Timaeus_ (which may possibly owe something to early Phœnician and
Carthaginian discoveries among the Atlantic islands), it is noticeable
that no such Western Ocean lands occur in Strabo (B.C. 30). On the other
hand the Canaries are described by Statius Sebosus, as reported in
Pliny[141] (B.C. 30-A.D. 70), and by King Juba the younger of Mauretania
(_fl._ B.C. 1); are laid down under the name of Fortunate Islands by
Ptolemy; and are adopted in his reckonings as the Western limit of the
world. Sebosus mentions Junonia, 750 miles from Gades; near this,
Pluvialia and Capraria; and 1,000 miles from Gades, off the South-west
coast of Mauretania or Marocco, the Fortunatae, Convallis or Invallis,
and Planaria.
[Footnote 141: Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vi, 32.]
Juba[142] again makes five Fortunate Isles: Ombrios, Nivaria, Capraria,
Junonia, and Canaria, all fertile but uninhabited. Large dogs were
found, however, in the last-named, and two of these had been brought to
Juba himself, who called the island after them. Date-palms also
abounded. Juba also, according to Pliny, discovered the Purple islands
(Purpurariae) off the coast of Mauretania, which have been carelessly
identified by some with the Madeira group, though wanting the two
essential conditions of Juba's description: (1) producing Orchil; (2)
lying very close to the shore of Mauretania. Lançarote and Fuerteventura
agree with Juba's conditions on these points,[143] but then why are they
made a separate group from Nivaria, etc., which are undoubtedly the main
body of the Canaries? Juba's account is the most clear and valuable we
have from ancient geography, dealing with the Canaries, and is far
better than that[144] of the Alexandrian geographer. Ptolemy lays down
the Fortunate Islands--assuming the Canaries to be meant--incorrectly
both in latitude and longitude, in a position really corresponding
better to that of the Cape Verdes. Hence it has been supposed that he
confounded the two groups in one; whereas the Cape Verdes, lying out to
sea 300 miles from the Continent, are not likely to have been known,
even in his day. An error in position is so common with Ptolemy that it
is quite unnecessary to be disturbed by it. But he clearly had some
definite knowledge that islands existed in the ocean to the west of
Africa, and in his map he probably reproduces the statements of others,
without first-hand information of his own, assigning such a position as
suited best with his theories. For he not merely brings the southernmost
of the Fortunate Isles down to 11° N. lat., but scatters the group
through 5° of latitude, placing the northernmost in latitude, 16° N. His
names vary much from Juba's, for he gives us six: Canaria, the Isle of
Juno, Pluïtala,[145] Aprositus (the Inaccessible), Caspiria, and
Pinturia or Centuria; at the western extremity of these, after the
example of Marinus, he drew the first meridian of longitude.[146]
[Footnote 142: Copied by Solinus and many mediæval writers
(see Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vi, 31). Juba's work was dedicated
to Caius Cæsar, B.C. 1, when just about to start on an
expedition to the East. Ombrios, from its mountain lake, has
been identified with Palma; Nivaria more easily with Teneriffe
and Canaria with Grand Canary; Junonia is difficult to fix, as
we have the statement that a second and smaller island of the
same name is in its neighbourhood; Capraria is supposed to be
Ferro. The remaining two of our modern archipelago, Lancarote
and Fuerteventura, are supposed by some to be the
"Purpurariae" of Juba.]
[Footnote 143: And are therefore accepted as the Purpurariae
by D'Anville Gossellin, Major, and, with some hesitation, by
Bunbury.]
[Footnote 144: "A mere confused jumble of different reports."
Bunbury, _Anc. Geog._ ii, 202.]
[Footnote 145: Perhaps a corruption of Sebosus' Pluvialia.
"The Inaccessible" is possibly Teneriffe. Canaria and the Isle
of Juno are of course identical with Juba's nomenclature.]
[Footnote 146: Cerne, so important a mark in Hanno's
_Periplus_, he places in the Ocean 3° from the mainland, in
clear opposition to the Carthaginian authorities whom some
have thought he possessed and used. Cerne is in latitude 25°
40', and east longitude 5° on Ptolemy's map.]
The Arabs seem to have lost all definite knowledge of the Atlantic
islands, an impossible possession to a race with such a deep horror of
the Green Sea of Darkness. Masudi, indeed, tells us a story, already
noticed, of one Khoshkhash, the young man of Cordova, who some years
before the writer's time[147] had sailed off upon the Ocean, and after a
long interval returned with a rich cargo; but nothing more definite is
said about this venture.
[Footnote 147: _C._ A.D. 950.]
Some tradition of the Canaries or the Madeira group seems to have been
preserved among Moslem geographers, under the name of Isles of Khaledat,
or Khaledad, but we have only one narrative from the collections of
these authors which suggests a Musulman visit to the same. This is found
in Edrisi, in its earlier form, and must refer to some time before 1147,
when Lisbon finally became a Christian city. It probably belongs to a
year of the eleventh century, and has perhaps left its impression in the
Brandan legend as put forth in the oldest MS., of about 1070.
The Lisbon Wanderers, or Maghrurin, from Moslem Spain, commemorated by
Edrisi and by Ibn-al-Wardi, did not apparently venture to the South of
Cape Non, but they seem to have reached the Madeira group as well as the
Canaries. The adventurers were eight in number, all related to one
another. After eleven days' sail, apparently from Lisbon, they found
themselves in a sea due[148] West of Spain, where the waters were thick,
of bad smell, and moved by strong currents.[149] Here the weather became
as black as pitch. Fearing for their lives they now turned South, and
after twelve days sighted an island which they called El Ghanam, the
Isle of Cattle,[150] from the sheep they saw there without any shepherd.
The flesh of these cattle was too bitter for eating, but they found a
stream of running water and some wild figs. Twelve more days to the
South brought them to an island[151] with houses and cultivated fields.
Here they were seized, and carried prisoners to a city on the sea-shore.
After three days the King's interpreter, who spoke Arabic, came to them,
and asked them who they were and what they wanted. They replied, they
were seeking the wonders of the Ocean and its limits. At this the King
laughed, and said: "My father once ordered some of his slaves to venture
upon that sea, and after sailing it for a month, they found themselves
deprived of sun-light and returned without any result." The Wanderers
were kept in prison till a west wind arose, when they were blindfolded
and turned off in a boat. After three days they reached Africa. They
were put ashore, their hands tied, and left. They were released by the
Berbers,[152] and returned to Spain, when a "street at the foot of the
hot bath in Lisbon took the name of 'Street of the Wanderers.'"
[Footnote 148: They started with a full east wind.]
[Footnote 149: Sargasso Sea?]
[Footnote 150: Madeira?]
[Footnote 151: One of the Canaries?]
[Footnote 152: At a point named Asafi or Safi (at the extreme
south-west of our Marocco), said to have been named after the
Wanderers' exclamation of dismay: Wa Asafi--"Alas! my sorrow."
Cf. Edrisi, Climate III, section i (ed. Jaubert, i, 201);
Climate IV, section i (J., ii, 26-9). Safi is in 32° 20' N.
Lat.]
El Ghanam has been identified by Avezac and others with Legname, the old
Italian name for Madeira, and their description of the "bitter mutton"
of that island has suggested to some the "coquerel" plant of the
Canaries, which in more recent times gave a similar flavour to the meat
of the animals who browsed upon it.[153]
[Footnote 153: See Berthelot, _Histoire Naturelle des Iles
Canariens_.]
Some have conjectured that the "White Man's Land" and "Great Ireland,"
which the Norsemen of Iceland professed to have seen in 983-4, 999, and
1029, was a name for the Canaries, rather than for any point of America,
but this appears entirely conjectural--though it is probable enough that
some of the Vikings in their wanderings may have visited these islands.
In 1108-9, King Sigurd of Norway meets a Viking fleet in the Straits of
Gibraltar ("Norva Sound");[154] and in the course of their many attacks
on the "Bluemen" or Moors of "Serkland" (Saracen-land) the Northern
rovers who reached the New World, Greenland, and the White Sea, may well
have sighted and ravaged the Fortunate Islands of the Atlantic, beyond
Cape Non.
[Footnote 154: "Saga of King Sigurd" (in _Heimskringla_), ch.
vi.]
No further reference, even conjectural, to the Atlantic Islands is known
until the later thirteenth century, when the Mediæval revival in
Christian lands, finding its expression in the Crusades and in the
Asiatic land-travels of John de Plano Carpini, Simon de St. Quentin,
Rubruquis, and the Polos, among others, led to attempts in search of a
maritime route to India from the Mediterranean ports. The earliest of
these followed immediately on the return of the elder Polos from Central
Asia (1269).
In 1270 the voyage of the Genoese, Lancelot Malocello, already referred
to as a possible reconnaissance on the African coast route to the Far
East, resulted in a re-discovery of some of the Canaries. At any rate,
he stayed[155] long enough to build himself a "castle" there; and the
recognition of this island, as well as of the adjoining "Maloxelo," as
Genoese on maps of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries,[156] was probably due to this. During Béthencourt's
"Conquest," some of the followers of his colleague, Gadifer de la Salle,
stored barley, we are told, in an old castle which had been built by
Lancelot Maloisel. It has been supposed that Petrarch, writing _c._ 1335
A.D., and referring to the armed Genoese fleet which had penetrated to
the Canaries a generation before (_a Patrum memoria_), was thinking of
Malocello's venture, but the expression is better suited to the
Expedition of 1291, led by Tedisio Doria and the Vivaldi.
[Footnote 155: In Lançarote island?]
[Footnote 156: Cf. especially the _Conosçimiento_ of early
fourteenth century; the Laurentian Portolano of 1351; the
Soleri Portolani of 1380 and 1385; the Combitis Portolan of
early fifteenth century; the so-called Bianco of 1436. On a
Genoese map of 1455, executed by Bartholomew Pareto, is a more
explicit legend over against Lançarote Island: "Lansaroto
Maroxello Januensis." See also the _Conquest of ... Canaries_,
by De Béthencourt's chaplains, ch. xxxii; and Major's note,
pp. 55-6 of the Hakluyt Society's edition of this Chronicle.]
It is possible that the Portuguese followed up Malocello's visit by
voyages of their own (besides the well-known venture of 1341) before the
year 1344,[157] when Don Luis of Spain obtained a grant of the Canaries
from the Pope[158] at Avignon (November 15, 1344). This grant conferred
on Luis de la Cerda, Count of Talmond, the title of Prince of Fortune,
with the lordship of the Fortunate Islands, in fief to the Apostolic
See, and under a tribute of 400 gold florins, to be paid yearly to the
Chair of St. Peter. The Pontiff also wrote to various sovereigns, among
others to the King of Portugal, Affonso IV, recommending the plans of
Don Luis to their support. To this Affonso replied (February 12, 1345),
reminding the Pope that he had already sent expeditions to the Canaries,
and would even now be despatching a greater Armada if it were not for
his wars with Castille and with the Saracens.
[Footnote 157: Ships from Portugal (according to Sántarem,
_Cosmographie_, i, 275, copied by Oliveira Martins, _Filhos de
D. João_, i, 68), visited the Canaries under Affonso IV,
between _1331_ and 1344. Perhaps this is only a loose
reference to the expedition of 1341.]
[Footnote 158: Clement VI. Major, _Prince Henry_, 140, and
_Conquest of Canaries_ (Hakluyt Soc.), xi, has apparently
confused matters, giving the date of 1334 (in the Pontificate
of Benedict XII), and implying a grant by Clement VI.]
As early as 1317, King Denis of Portugal secured the Genoese, Emmanuele
Pezagno (Pessanha), as hereditary admiral of his fleet. Pezagno and his
successors were to keep the Portuguese navy supplied with twenty Genoese
captains experienced in navigation and the earliest Portuguese ventures
were almost certainly connected with this arrangement.
This was shown in the expedition of 1341, which left Portugal for the
Canaries under Genoese pilotage, and quite independently of Don Luis, as
far as we know. It was composed of two vessels furnished by the King of
Portugal, and a smaller ship, all well-armed, and manned by Florentines,
Genoese, Castilians, Portuguese, and "other Spaniards."[159] They set
out from Lisbon on July 1, 1341; on the fifth(?) day they discovered
land; and in November they returned. They brought home with them four
natives, many goat and seal skins, dye-wood, bark for staining, red
earth, etc. Nicoloso de Recco, a Genoese, pilot of the expedition,
considered these islands nearly 900 miles distant from Seville. The
first[160] discovered was supposed to be about 150 miles round; it was
barren and stony, inhabited by goats and other animals, as well as by
naked people, absolutely savage. The next[161] visited was larger than
the former, and contained many natives, most of them nearly naked, but
some covered with goats' skins. The people had a chief, built houses,
planted palms and fig trees, and cultivated little gardens with
vegetables. Four men swam out to the ships, and were carried off. The
Europeans found on the island a sort of temple, with a stone idol, which
was brought back to Lisbon.
[Footnote 159: The account that has come down to us is by
Boccaccio(?) (discovered in 1827 by Sebastiano Ciampi, who
identified the handwriting), and was professedly compiled from
letters written to Florence by certain Florentine merchants
residing in Seville. Among these, "Angelino del Tegghia dei
Corbizzi, a cousin of the sons of Gherardino Gianni," is
especially mentioned.]
[Footnote 160: Major conjectures Fuerteventura.]
[Footnote 161: Grand Canary?]
From this island several others were visible--one remarkable for its
lofty trees,[162] another containing excellent wood and water, wild
pigeons, falcons, and birds of prey.[163] In the fifth visited were
immense rocky mountains reaching into the clouds.[164] Eight other
islands were sighted. In all, five of the new-found lands were peopled,
the rest not. None of the natives had any boats, and there was no good
store of harbours. On one island was a mountain, which they reckoned as
30,000 feet high, and on its summit a fortress-like rock, with a mast
atop of it rigged with a yard and lateen sail--a manifest proof of
enchantment. No wealth was found in any of the islands, and hence
perhaps the venture of 1341 was not followed up by Portugal for many
years; but it is probable that the results of this year are commemorated
in the delineation of the Fortunate Isles upon the Laurentian Portolano
of 1351.[165]
[Footnote 162: Major here suggests the pines of Ferro.]
[Footnote 163: Gomera?]
[Footnote 164: Probably Teneriffe. Palma has also been
suggested, with less likelihood.]
[Footnote 165: See the section of this Introduction on "Maps
and Scientific Geography;" also Wappäus, _Heinrich der
Seefahrer_, pp. 174-5.]
Nothing, so far as we know, was done for the further exploration of the
Canaries (after 1341) till 1382, when one Captain Francisco Lopez, while
on his way from Seville to Galicia, was driven south by storms, and took
refuge (June 5th) at the mouth of the Guiniguada, in Grand Canary. Here
he landed with twelve of his comrades; the strangers were kindly
treated, and passed seven years among the natives, instructing many in
the doctrines of Christianity. Suddenly Lopez and his men were accused
of sending into Christian countries a "bad account" of the islands, and
were all massacred. Before dying, they seem to have given one of their
converts a written "testament," and this was found by the men of Jean de
Béthencourt in 1402.
Apparently, very shortly before the invasion of the latter (? in
1390-5), another Spaniard, Alvaro Becarra, visited the islands,[166] and
it was (according to one authority) from information directly supplied
by him and two French adventurers who accompanied him, that De
Béthencourt was induced to undertake his expedition.
[Footnote 166: Ayala, _Chronicle of Henry III of Castille_,
asserts that in 1393, mariners of Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and
Seville, visited the Canaries, and brought back spoils.
Teneriffe they called the Isle of Hell (Inferno), from its
volcano. They also landed on other islands of the group which
they called Lencastre, Graciosa, Forteventura, Palma, and
Ferro. See also Martins, _Os Filhos de D. João I_, p. 68.]
The Lord of Grainville set out with a body of followers, among whom the
knight Gadifer de la Salle was chief, from Rochelle, on May 1st, 1402.
Eight days' sail from Cadiz, he reached Graciosa. Thence he went to
Lançarote, where he built a fort called Rubicon. Going on to
Fuerteventura, he was hampered by a mutiny among his men, and by lack of
supplies. He returned to Spain, procured from Henry III of Castille what
he needed, and reappeared at Lançarote. During his absence, Gadifer,
left in command, accomplished a partial exploration of Fuerteventura,
Grand Canary, Ferro, Gomera and Palma. The "King" of Lançarote was
baptised on February 20th, 1404; but after this, Gadifer quarrelled with
his leader and returned to France. All attempts to conquer the Pagans of
Grand Canary were fruitless, and De Béthencourt finally quitted the
islands, appointing his nephew Maciot[167] to be governor in his place
of the four Christian colonies in Palma and Ferro, Lançarote and
Fuerteventura.
[Footnote 167: See Azurara, _Guinea_, c. xcv, lxxix, etc.]
The Madeira group are laid down[168] in the _Conosçimiento de todos los
Reynos_ of the early fourteenth century, as well as in the Laurentian
Portolano of 1351; in the Soleri Portolani of 1380 and 1385; and in the
Combitis Portolan of about 1410. But in 1555,[169] A. Galvano, in his
_Discoveries of the World_, claimed that an Englishman in the reign of
Edward III(?) was the discoverer. He was copied by Hakluyt in 1589, and
English patriotism has been loath to surrender the tradition.
[Footnote 168: Under the names of Lecmane, Lolegname, Legnami
[Madeira, the "Isle of Wood"]; Puerto or Porto Santo; and I.
desierta, deserte, or deserta. The last alone is wanting in
the Combitis Portolan.]
[Footnote 169: Still earlier in 1508, Valentin Fernandez, a
printer of Munich, issued the story in a MS., re-discovered in
this century. Later, in 1660, Francisco Manoel de Mello
published it in his _Epanaphoras de Varia Historia Portuguesa_
(_III_), Lisbon, 1660. Mello's account was professedly derived
from an original narrative by Francisco Alcaforado, a squire
of Prince Henry, now lost. Fernandez, Galvano, (copied by
Hakluyt) and Mello, all tell practically the same story, but
with varying details.]
"About this time," says Galvano [viz., between 1344 and 1395, the two
dates named immediately before and after this entry], the "island of
Madeira was discovered by ... [Robert] Macham,[170] who sailing from
England, having run away with a woman,[171] was driven by a tempest ...
to that island, and cast ashore in that haven, which is now called
Machico, after ... Macham." Here the ship was driven from its moorings;
and, according to one account[172] both lovers died; according to the
older version, Macham escaped to the African mainland, and was finally
saved and brought to the King of Castille. His old pilot, Morales, was
supposed to have guided J. G. Zarco in Prince Henry's rediscovery of
Madeira (1420). Azurara, however, says nothing about Macham; and it has
been conjectured, from a document rediscovered in 1894, that the Machico
district of Madeira--whose title, given by the Portuguese in 1420, has
often been quoted as an acknowledgement of Macham's claim--derived its
name from a Portuguese seaman of that name, who was living in 1379, or
from one of his relations.[173]
[Footnote 170: Or Machin, or O'Machin, or as Nordenskjöld,
_Periplus_, 115, also reads: Mac Kean. N. accepts the whole of
the Macham story with extraordinary readiness.]
[Footnote 171: Anne d'Arfet, or Dorset.]
[Footnote 172: Mello's.]
[Footnote 173: See J. I. de Brito Rebello, in Supplement to
_Diario de Noticias_ of Lisbon, published in connection with
the fifth centenary of Prince Henry's birth, 1894. The
document referring to Machico is dated April 12th, 1379, and
by this, King Ferdinand, "the handsome," of Portugal, gives to
one Machico, "mestre de sua barcha," a house in the Rua Nova
of Lisbon. This was discovered by Rebello in the Torre do
Tombo, acting on a hint given by Ernesto do Canton. Before
this, the Macham story was attacked by Rodriguez d'Azevedo, in
1873. See the _Saudades da terra_ of Dr. G. Fructuoso, pp.
348-429.]
The Azores, or Western Islands, are also (in part) laid down in the
_Conosçimiento_ above quoted (of about A.D. 1330), and in the Medicean
Portolano of 1351;[174] and when the Infant sent out Gonçalo Cabral[175]
in this direction he was aided, it is said, by an Italian portolano, on
which the aforesaid islands were depicted.[176] But no record of any
voyage thereto earlier than that of Diego de Sevill[177] (1427) has been
preserved; nor did any one before the Prince's time attempt, as far as
is known, the colonisation or complete exploration of the Azores. To
these, however, like the other Atlantic islands, Nordenskjöld's emphatic
words[178] apply, as the cartographical evidence requires. To some
extent at least all these groups "were known ... to skippers long before
organised ... expeditions were sent to them by great feudal lords."
Absolute novelty in geographical discovery is one of the most difficult
things to prove, and in no field of historical inquiry does the saying
more often occur to the inquirer: "Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona,
multi."
[Footnote 174: It is not at all certain, as Major assumes
(_Prince Henry_, 1868, p. 235), that this group was first
discovered by "_Portuguese_ vessels under Genoese pilotage."]
[Footnote 175: In 1431, etc.]
[Footnote 176: See Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 118 A; also P.
Amat di S. Filippo, _I veri Scopritori delle isole Azore_,
Ital. Geog. Soc. Bolletino, 1892.]
[Footnote 177: We learn about the voyage of Sevill from the
Catalan Map of Gabriel Valsecca, executed between 1434 and
1439, which (1) gives a very fair representation of several of
the Azores, under the names: Ylla de Oesels (St. Mary), Ylla
de Fruydols (St. Michael), Ylla de Inferno (Terceira), Ylla de
Guatrilla (St. George), Ylla de Sperto (Pico), and another of
which the name has been effaced: (2) Bears the inscription:
These islands were found by Diego de Sevill, pilot of the King
of Portugal, in 1427. [Some have tried to read the MS. date as
1432 (xxxii for xxvii) but the text is against them]. In the
Mediceum, or Laurentian Portolano, of 1351, St. Mary and St.
Michael are laid down as Insule de Cabrera; St. George, Fayal,
and Pico, as Insule de Ventura sive de Columbis; Terceira (?)
as Insula de Brazi[l]. On the Catalan Map of 1375, we have San
Zorzo ( = St. George, "Jorge"); I. de la Ventura ( = Fayal);
Li Columbi ( = Pico); I. di Corvi Marini ( = Corvo); Li Conigi
( = Flores). On the so-called Andrea Bianco of 1436 (probably
a re-edition of a much earlier map), St. Michael appears as
Cabrera. Corvo and Flores first appear on the Catalan Atlas of
1375, as far as present knowledge goes.]
[Footnote 178: _Periplus_, 116 A.]
The Cape Verdes is the only group of Atlantic Islands as to which we may
be reasonably sure that the mediæval discovery at least was not made
before Prince Henry's lifetime. Here the Infant's claim of priority is
probably most in danger from Phœnician and Carthaginian sailors;[179]
but even here the challenge is not very serious, unless we insist on
considering as proven a number of pretensions which are almost
impossible to substantiate.
[Footnote 179: It is probable that the "Gorgades" of the
Greeks were derived from Phœnician accounts; but it is very
doubtful whether these represent the Cape Verdes. Ptolemy, as
we have seen, places the southern extremity of his Fortunate
Isles much in the true position of Santiago, though extending
them north through 5 degrees of latitude.]
2.--THE ATLANTIC ISLANDS
IN PRINCE HENRY'S LIFETIME.
Azurara also requires some words of supplement as to the progress of
discovery and colonisation among the Atlantic Islands in Prince Henry's
lifetime.[180] And, first, in the Azores. After the first voyages of
Diego de Sevill and Gonçalo Cabral, the latter (according to Cordeiro)
sought unsuccessfully for an island which had been sighted by a runaway
slave from the highest mountain in St. Mary; at last, corrected by the
Prince's map-studies, he found the object of his search on the 8th May,
1444, and named it St. Michael, being the festival of the Apparition of
the Archangel.[181] The colonisation of this (even more than of other
islands in the group) was impeded by earthquakes, but was nevertheless
commenced on September 29, 1445. From the number of hawks or kites[182]
found in St. Michael and St. Mary, the present name now began to
supersede all others[183] for the Archipelago. The island now called
Terceira,[184] but originally "The Isle of Jesus Christ," was apparently
discovered before A.D. 1450, either by Prince Henry's sailors, or by an
expedition of Flemish mariners or colonists under one Josua van der
Berge, a citizen of Bruges, who claimed the exclusive, honour of this
achievement under date of 1445. Hence, in some Netherland maps and
atlases, of later date, the Azores are called The Flemish Islands.[185]
On the other hand, Cordeiro has printed the Infant's charter of March 2,
1450, to Jacques de Bruges,[186] his servant, giving him the Captaincy
of the Isle of Jesu Christ, because the said Jacques had asked
permission of the Prince to colonise this uninhabited spot. Jacques de
Bruges bore all the expenses of this colonisation, and may have been
specially recommended to Henry by his sister, the Duchess of Burgundy.
He had married into a noble Portuguese family, and had previously
rendered some services to the Infant.
[Footnote 180: See Major, _Prince Henry_, pp. 238-245 (Ed. of
1868), mainly based upon Father Cordeiro's _Historia
Insulana_, 1717.]
[Footnote 181: Azurara (_Chronicle of Guinea_, c. lxxxiii.)
says that the Regent, D. Pedro, having a special devotion to
this saint, and being much interested in the re-discovery of
the Azores, caused this name to be given. Prince Henry
afterwards granted the Order of Christ the tithes of St.
Michael, and one-half of the sugar revenues.]
[Footnote 182: "Azores" in Portuguese.]
[Footnote 183: "Western Islands," etc.]
[Footnote 184: "The Third," apparently in order after--1. St.
Mary (reckoned with the Formigas); 2. St. Michael. Its arms
were the Saviour on the Cross, and it was probably sighted by
the Portuguese on some festival of the Redeemer.]
[Footnote 185: "De Vlaemsche Eylanden." So on Amsterdam maps
of 1612 (Waghenaer); 1627 (Blaeuw's _Zeespiegel_) and others,
such as the Atlas Major Blaviana, ix, Amsterdam, 1662, p.
104.]
[Footnote 186: _I.e._, Josua van der Berge. In 1449, according
to Galvano and Barros (1, ii, 1), King Affonso V formally
sanctioned the colonisation of the Azores.]
Graciosa was colonised by Vasco Gil Sodré, a Portuguese, who had been
under Prince Henry's orders to Africa, and at first intended to join in
the settlement of Terceira, but afterwards passed over to Graciosa. The
captaincy of this island he divided for some time with his
brother-in-law, Duarte Barreto.
San Jorge received its first inhabitants through a venture of Willem van
der Haagen,[187] one of Jacques de Bruges' companions: Van der Haagen
brought two shiploads of people and plant from Flanders, but afterwards
abandoned the city he had founded there, and transferred himself to the
more fertile island of Fayal. The last name brings us to one of the
controversial points in the early history of the Azores.
[Footnote 187: "Da Silveira" in Portuguese.]
According to the received account, Fayal was first settled by a Fleming
noble, Jobst Van Heurter,[188] Lord of Moerkerke, father-in-law of
Martin Behaim, who commemorated this event in a legend on his globe of
1492. The famous Nuremberger declares that the Azores were colonised in
1466, after they had been _granted by the King of Portugal to his
sister, Isabel, Duchess of Burgundy_; that in 1490 Job de Huerter came
out to settle with "some thousands of souls," the Duchess "_having
granted these islands to him and his descendants_;" that in 1431, _when
Prince Pedro was Regent_, Prince Henry sent out two vessels for two
years' sail beyond Finisterre, and sailing west 500 leagues, they found
these _ten_ uninhabited islands; that they called them Azores from the
tame birds they found there; and that the King began to settle the
islands with "domestic animals" in 1432. This account is full of
inaccuracies, and from the documents,[189] noticed by Father Cordeiro,
by Barros, and by the _Archivo dos Açores_, it appears probable that the
grant of Fayal to Jobst van Heurter as first Captain Donatory was made
after Prince Henry's death, perhaps in 1466, by Henry's successor, D.
Ferdinand, at the request of the Duchess of Burgundy, and that this
grant was confirmed by the Crown of Portugal; which, however, retained
its sovereign rights over all the Azores, and did not part with them to
the Duchess or anyone else.
[Footnote 188: "Joz de Utra" in Portuguese.]
[Footnote 189: Several documents exist relating to the
Government, etc., of the Azores during Prince Henry's life;
for instance:--(1) A royal charter of July 2, 1439, dealing
with colonisation. (2) A similar charter of April 5, 1443,
exempting the colonists from tithe and customs. (3) A similar
charter of April 20, 1447, establishing the same exemption for
the island of St. Michael, granted to the Infant D. Pedro. (4)
A similar charter of March, 1449, to the Infant D. Henry,
licensing him to people the Seven Islands of the Azores. (5) A
similar charter of January 20, 1453, granting the Island of
Corvo to the Duke of Braganza. (6) A donation of September 2,
1460, from the Infant D. Henry to his adopted son, the Infant
Dom Fernando, of the Isles of Jesus Christ and Graciosa. [To
which may be added: A royal charter of December 3, 1460,
transferring to the Infant D. Fernando, Duke of Viseu, the
grant of the Archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, vacant by
the death of D. Henry.] See _Archivo dos Açores_, i, 3, 5, 6,
7, 9, 11; Martins, _Os Filhos do D. João_, pp. 261-2 (where
the date of Gonçalo Velho Cabral's discovery of the Formigas
is given as 1435); _Documents_ in Torre do Tombo, Gaveta 15,
Maço 16, No. 5, of September 16, 1571.]
Jobst van Heurter, some time after he had obtained the grant or
sub-lease of Fayal, appears also to have become Captain Donatory of
Pico, with a commission to colonise this island.
Flores and Corvo were first granted, as far as our records go, to a lady
of Lisbon, Maria de Vilhena, likewise after the death of Prince Henry.
It is said that Van der Haagen,[190] when he moved from S. Jorge to
Fayal, did so at the invitation of Jobst van Heurter, who had been there
four years, and now promised him a part of the island. The two
quarrelled, however, and "Silveira" left Fayal and went to Terceira.
Some time after this he visited Flanders, and returning to the Azores by
way of Lisbon, became the guest of D. Vilhena, who had received a grant
of Flores and Corvo. She now proposed to Van der Haagen that he should
colonise and govern these islands for her, which he did for seven years.
[Footnote 190: "Da Silveira." See above, p. lxxxix.]
* * * * *
Next, as to the Cape Verde islands. There is no positive ground for
supposing that any Europeans discovered or colonised these before Prince
Henry. The ancient Gorgades, Hesperides, and so forth have been
identified with them by some, but all this remains in the state of
guess-work--guess-work which has no great probability behind it.
But as to the discovery of the Cape Verdes in the Infant's lifetime, a
controversy exists between the claims of Cadamosto and Diego Gomez,
which must be shortly noticed. It is happily beyond controversy that
five at least of the Archipelago were discovered within the Prince's own
"period," as their names occur in a document of December 3, 1460,
hereafter noticed.
Cadamosto's claim to the discovery of the Cape Verde islands has been
denied[191] on the following grounds:
[Footnote 191: _E.g._ By Major, _Prince Henry_, 1868, p.
286-8, based on Lopes de Lima's _Ensaios sobre a Statistica
das Possessoẽs portuguezas_, Lisbon, 1844; see Zurla's
_Dissertazione_ of 1815.]
1. A mariner sailing from Lagos in early May could not anchor at
Santiago on SS. Philip and James' day (May 1st), as stated by Cadamosto.
2. Cadamosto drove three days before the wind from Cape Blanco W.N.W. to
Bonavista. But this lies 100 miles S.W. of Cape Blanco.
3. Cadamosto claims to have seen Santiago from Bonavista, which is
impossible.
4. Cadamosto is wrong in speaking of any river in Santiago as a
"bow-shot wide," or of salt and turtles as found in the island.
To this it has been replied:
1. The first point is probably founded on a misprint. As a correction,
d'Avezac[192] has suggested that Santiago was so called because the
expedition _set out_ on May 1st. It has also been noticed that the
German and French versions of Cadamosto's Italian text (which contains
this mistake) give March and not May as the month of sailing, while the
translation in Temporal's _Histoire de l'Afrique_ has July. Once more
the festival of St. James (July 25th) has been suggested,[193] in
exchange for that of SS. Philip and James. In support of this, the most
likely alternative to a simple blunder, caused by haste, carelessness,
and lapse of time, it is pointed out that Cadamosto seems to have
arrived at the islands during the rainy season; that this season
prevails from mid-June to November; and that the festival of St. James
would agree with the time required for a voyage from Lagos, even if
commencing not in March or May, but as late as the beginning of July.
[Footnote 192: "Iles d'Afrique"....]
[Footnote 193: On the strength of Temporal's text in the
_Histoire de l'Afrique_,... Lyons, 1556, by H. Y. Oldham,
_Discovery of Cape Verde Islands_ (paper of 15 pages; see
especially 9-12).]
This date is apparently confirmed by the earliest known official
document which relates to the Cape Verde Islands, viz., a decree, dated
December 3rd, 1460, issued just after the death of Prince Henry.[194] In
this is given a list of seventeen islands discovered by the Infant's
explorers, beginning with the Madeiras and Azores, and ending with five
of the Cape Verdes, S. Jacobe (Santiago), S. Filippe (Fogo), De las
Mayaes (Maio), Ilha Lana (Sal?), and S. Christovão (probably Bonavista).
The only festival of St. Christopher in the Calendar falls on the day of
St. James, or July 25th. We may notice that in the earliest map
containing these islands,[195] Cadamosto's name of Bonavista prevails,
as now, over "St. Christopher."
[Footnote 194: See _Indice cronologico das Navigacoẽs ... dos
Portuguezes_, Lisbon, 1841; Oldham, _op. cit._, pp. 12-13.]
[Footnote 195: The Benincasa of 1463.]
2. This charge seems founded on a mistranslation. In the original text
of 1507, after a description of the process of putting out to sea from
Cape Blanco, we have these words:[196] "and the following night there
arose a strong wind from the south-west, and in order not to turn back
we steered west and north-west ... so as to weather and hug the wind for
two days and three nights." That is, the contrary wind met with after
leaving Cape Blanco did not turn the ships back, as they managed to sail
close to it.[197]
[Footnote 196: "E la nocte sequente ne a fazo un temporal de
garbin cum vento fortevole, diche per non tornar in driedo
tegnessemo la volta di ponente e maistro salvo el vero per
riparar e costizar el tempo doe nocte e III zorni." Oldham,
_loc. cit._ 11.]
[Footnote 197: Oldham adds: "If _nocte sequente_ means, as it
would seem, the night of the day following that on which Cape
Blanco was passed, the ships would have had time to reach a
point from which a West or West-south-west course would lead
to Bonavista. Moreover, the Latin text gives the wind as
South."]
It is probable, however, that the text is corrupt, and it is only too
common in records of this time to have mistakes as to points of the
compass creeping into the record of voyages performed some time before.
In any case, it is surely not enough to upset the whole of Cadamosto's
narrative.
3. Here Cadamosto seems to have made no mistake, in his first printed
text of 1507. The islands have never been properly surveyed, but Prof.
C. Doelter, in his work _Ueber die Kapverden nach dem Rio Grande_
(1884), speaks of seeing Bonavista from the Pico d'Antonio on Santiago,
together with all the rest of the group, even the more distant Sal and
St. Vincent. It is therefore quite probable that Cadamosto's sailors did
see Santiago from Bonavista, and this feat was certainly possible.
4. In this once more Cadamosto is clearly right, and the attempt to
discredit him ridiculous. Salt is so abundant in the Cape Verdes,
especially in the western group, that these were at one time called the
"Salt islands." Turtles are also common enough in the rainy season, and
are mentioned by plenty of visitors and residents.[198] Lastly, the
river in Santiago, "a bow-shot across," does not correspond to any
fresh-water stream found there, but by this expression may be intended
an inlet of the sea, like the Rio d'Ouro of Prince Henry's sailors,
north of Arguim. Curiously enough, this very expression--"a bow-shot
wide"--is employed by Dapper of the Estuary at Ribeira Grande in
Santiago; while Blaeuw's _Atlas_ (Amsterdam, 1663) speaks of the same
point in exactly similar terms: "à son embouchure large d'environ un
trait d'arc."
[Footnote 198: See Astley's _Voyages and Travels_, vol. i,
Book iv, ch. 6.]
* * * * *
Thirdly, the attempts of Prince Henry to acquire possession of the
Canaries for Portugal may be noticed. In 1414, Maciot de Béthencourt,
nephew and heir of the famous John, "Jean le Conquérant," having, under
threat of war from Castille, ceded the islands to Pedro Barba de Campos,
Lord of Castro Forte, sailed away to Madeira; and in 1418, according to
some authorities, he made a sale of the "Fortunatae" to Henry of
Portugal. This was not enough for him, as afterwards he made a third
bargain with the Count of Niebla; while meantime Jean de Béthencourt
himself left his conquests by will to his brother Reynaud. Pedro Barba
de Campos soon parted with his new rights, which passed successively to
Fernando Perez of Seville, and the Count of Niebla. But the latter,
though now uniting in himself all Spanish claims to the islands, did not
cling to them, but made over everything to Guillem de las Casas, who
passed on his rights to Fernam Peraza, his son-in-law. While this
transference was going on in Castille and in France, Henry, in the name
of Portugal, attempted in 1424 to settle the question by sending out a
fleet under Fernando de Castro, with 2,500 foot and 120 horse. With this
force he would probably have conquered the Archipelago, in spite of the
costliness and trouble of the undertaking, if the protests of Castille
had not led King John I to discourage the scheme and persuade his son to
defer its execution.
In 1445,[199] seven of the Prince's caravels visited the islands,
received the submission of the chiefs Bruco and Piste in Gomera (who had
already experienced the Infant's hospitality and become his "grateful
servitors"), and made slave-raids upon the islanders of Palma. Alvaro
Gonçalvez de Atayde, João de Castilha, Alvaro Dornellas, Affonso Marta,
and the page Diego Gonçalvez, with many others, took part in this
descent, which did not altogether spare the friendly Gomerans, and
brought on the perpetrators the severe rebuke of Prince Henry.
[Footnote 199: _Al._ 1443. See Azurara, _Guinea_, chs.
lxviii-lxix.]
In 1446, however, he followed up the reconnaissance of 1445 by another
attempt at complete conquest, which also seems to have ended in failure,
though the account that remains is very inadequate; perhaps in the
future it may be supplemented from the disinterred treasures of Spanish
documentary collections. We only know that Henry obtained, in 1446, from
the Regent D. Pedro a charter, giving him the exclusive right to
sanction or forbid all Portuguese voyages to the Canaries; that in 1447
he conferred the captaincy of Lançarote on Antam Gonçalvez,[200] and
that Gonçalvez sailed to establish himself there. So far, according to
Azurara; Barros and the Spanish historians would ante-date all these
measures of 1446-7 by several years. In 1455 Cadamosto, sailing in the
Portuguese service, visited and described the islands, and in 1466
Henry's heir, D. Fernando, made one more attempt to reclaim the Canaries
for Portugal. It failed, and in 1479 the islands were finally adjudged
to Spain, or the now united monarchy of Castille and Aragon.
[Footnote 200: Presumably the same man who "brought home the
first captives from Guinea" in 1441. Cf. Azurara, _Guinea_,
ch. xcv.]
* * * * *
Fourthly, in the Madeira group, colonisation made progress during the
Infant's lifetime. After the discoveries of 1418-20,[201] Madeira itself
was divided up under the feudal lordship of John Gonçalvez Zarco and
Tristam Vaz Teixeira; the former receiving the captaincy of the northern
half with Machico for his chief settlement; the latter obtaining the
southern portion, with Funchal as capital, and the Desertas as an
annexe. From the language of the Infant's Charter[202] of September
18th, 1460, this settlement appears to have taken place in 1425, when
the Prince was 35 years old.
[Footnote 201: Cadamosto's statement that Porto Santo had been
found 27 years before his first voyage, has caused some to
date this journey 1445, instead of 1455, reckoning from
Zarco's discovery of 1418, and has led others to post-date
Zarco's discovery by ten years; but the number XXV is no doubt
a slip for XXXV. This is a very common form of error at this
period. Thus, in the "Cabot" Map of 1544, the year of the
original Cabotian discovery of North America is given as
MCCCCXCIIII, instead of MCCCCXCVII, by a (probable)
malformation of the V, or simple inattention of the
draughtsman. Also, in Grynaeus we have MCCCCCIV for MCCCCLIV.]
[Footnote 202: Endowing the Order of Christ with the
Spiritualities of these islands.]
According to Gaspar Fructuoso, Zarco, in clearing a path through the
forests of Madeira, set the woodland on fire, and seven years elapsed
before the last traces of the conflagration were extinguished. The seven
years is, no doubt, an extra touch; but a fire of tremendous severity
must have taken place, from Cadamosto's account.[203] The whole island,
he declares, had once been in flames; the colonists only saved their
lives by plunging into the torrents; and Zarco himself had to stand in a
river-bed for two whole days and nights, with all his family. Yet,
according to Azurara, so much wood was soon exported from the island to
Portugal, that a change was produced in the housebuilding of Spain:
loftier dwellings were built; and the Roman or Arab style was superseded
by one originating in the new discoveries among the Atlantic Islands.
Almost all Portugal, Cadamosto tells us in 1455, was now adorned with
tables[204] and other furniture made from the wood of Madeira.
[Footnote 203: On his visit in 1455.]
[Footnote 204: It has been also suggested, that the wooden
crosses set up by Henry's orders in new-discovered lands were
from the material thus provided.]
In the settlement of Porto Santo, Bartholemew Perestrello, a gentleman
of the household of Prince Henry's brother, the Infant John, took
part[205] with Zarco and Vaz. Perestrello imported rabbits, which
destroyed all the colonists' experiments in crops and vegetable
planting; but receiving the captaincy of the island, he made some profit
from breeding goats and exporting dragon's blood. His grant of Porto
Santo, originally for his lifetime only, was extended by decree of
November 1st, 1446, to a donation in perpetuity for himself and his
descendants. On the death of Bartholemew, Prince Henry bestowed the
captaincy on his son-in-law, Pedro Correa da Cunha, in trust for the
first Governor's son Bartholemew, who was still a minor. Da Cunha later
contracted with young Bartholemew's mother and uncle--the widow and
brother of the first grantee--for a sum of money in return for a cession
of his interim rights; and Prince Henry authorised this contract by a
decree from Lagos (May 17th, 1458), confirmed by King Affonso V at
Cintra (August 17th, 1459).
[Footnote 205: He accompanied Zarco in the second voyage of
1420.]
Young Bartholemew entered into his governorship in 1473, and it was
formally confirmed to him (15th March, 1473) by Affonso V. It was his
sister, a daughter of the elder Bartholemew, named Felipa Moñiz de
Perestrello, whom Christopher Columbus married in Lisbon; after which he
lived for some time in Porto Santo, enjoying the use of Perestrello's
papers, maps, and instruments.
Before many years had passed, Madeira became famous for its corn and
honey, its sugar cane,[206] and, above all, its wine. The Malvoisie[207]
grape, introduced from Crete, throve excellently, and at last produced
the Madeira of commerce. When Cadamosto visited the island, in 1455, he
found vine culture already advanced, and become the staple industry of
the colonists, who exported red and white wine annually to Europe, and
found a market for the vine staves as bows.
[Footnote 206: Introduced from Sicily.]
[Footnote 207: "Malmsey," or "Malvasie," from Monemvasia or
Malvasia in the Morea, the original seat of its culture.]
As early as 1430[208] the Infant issued a charter, regulating the
settlement of Madeira; herein Ayres Ferreira (whose children, "Adam and
Eve," were the first Europeans born in the island) is mentioned as a
companion of Zarco. An early tradition, which has not yet been
substantiated, also maintained that Prince Henry instituted family
registers for his colonists in this group.[209] In 1433 (September
26th), King Duarte, in a charter from Cintra, granted the islands of
Madeira, Porto Santo, and the Desertas to the Infant Henry; and in 1434
(October 26th), the spiritualities of the same were bestowed on the
Order of Christ.[210] In December, 1452, a contract was made at
Albufeira between the Infant D. Henry and Diego de Teive, one of his
"esquires," for the construction of a water-mill to aid in the
manufacture of cane-sugar,[211] the third part of the produce to go to
the Prince. Finally, in 1455, on Cadamosto's visit, the island possessed
four settlements and 800 inhabitants, and this prosperity seems to have
steadily continued. The charter of 1460[212] has been already noticed.
[Footnote 208: See Cordeiro, _Historia Insulana_, Bk. III, ch.
XV.]
[Footnote 209: The late Count de Rilvas communicated this fact
to Mr. R. H. Major.]
[Footnote 210: _Documentos ... do Torre do Tombo_, p. 2.]
[Footnote 211: See Gaspar Fructuoso, _Saudades da terra_, ed.
Azevedo (1873), pp. 65, 113, 665; Martins, _Os Filhos de D.
João_, pp. 80 and _n._ 1, 258 and _n._ 2.]
[Footnote 212: This was issued on September 18th, 1460,
bestowing the ecclesiastical revenues of Porto Santo and
Madeira on the Order of Christ, the temporalities on King
Affonso V. and his successors. It must be taken in connection
with the Charters of June 7th, 1454, December 28th, 1458, and
September 15th, 1448, all relating to the trade of Guinea, and
the first two conferring special privileges on the Order of
Christ, or revising such privileges already granted; see the
_Collection_ of Pedro Alvarez, Part III, fols. 17-18; Major,
_Prince Henry_, 303.]
From the work of the Portuguese among the Atlantic Islands arises one
question of special interest. Did this westward enterprise of Prince
Henry's seamen, which undoubtedly carried them in the Azores and Cape
Verdes a great distance (from 20 to 22 degrees) westward of Portugal,
lead them on further to a discovery of any part of the American
mainland?
On the strength of an enigmatical inscription in the 1448 Map of Andrea
Bianco, such a discovery of the north-east corner of Brazil in or before
this year has been suggested;[213] but this, it must be admitted, is
quite lacking in demonstrative evidence, however possible in itself. Yet
once more, the "accidental" discovery of this same Land of the Holy
Cross by Cabral in 1500 has been urged to much the same effect. For, if
really accidental, a similar event might well have happened in earlier
years--especially from the time of the Azores settlement of 1432, etc.;
or if not accidental, it was based on information obtained from older
navigators, who reached the same country.[214] Such older navigators
towards the west were said to have been Diego de Teive and Pedro
Velasco, who in 1452 claimed to have sailed more than 150 leagues west
of Fayal; Gonçalo Fernandez de Tavira, who in 1462 sailed (in one
tradition) W.N.W. of Madeira and the Canaries; Ruy Gonçalvez de Camara,
who in 1473 tried to discover land west of the Cape Verdes; with a
certain number of later instances. Some weight has also been attached to
a statement of Las Casas, that on his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus
planned a southern journey from the Cape Verde Islands in search of
lands--especially because, proceeds Las Casas, "he wished to see what
was the meaning of King John of Portugal, when he said there was _terra
firma_ to the South. Some of the ... inhabitants of ... Santiago came to
... him,[215] and said that to the South-West of the Isle of Fogo[216]
an island was seen, and that King John wished to make discoveries
towards the South-West, and that canoes had been known to go from the
Guinea coast to the West with merchandise."
[Footnote 213: The inscription apparently runs "Isola
Otinticha xe longa a ponente 1500 mia;" which has been
translated--(1) "Genuine island distant 1,500 miles to the
west." (2) "Genuine island, 1,500 miles long to the west." (3)
"Genuine island extends 1,500 miles to the west." Also,
reading ... a [= e] la sola otinticha. (4) "Is the only
genuine ..." (The first line being altogether separate in
sense from what follows--"xe longa," etc.) Once more,
supplying "questa carta," (5) "This map is the only genuine
one," leaving the second line unintelligible. (6) "Genuine
island, stretching 1,500 miles westwards, ten miles broad."
And lastly, reading Antillia for Otinticha, (7) "Island of
Antillia," etc. (This would explain the difficulty of the
Antillia Isle being otherwise absent from the 1448 Bianco.)
See Desimoni, in _Atti della Società ligure di Storia patria_,
1864, vol. iii, p. cxiv; Canale, in _Storia del Commercio
degl'Italiani_, 1866, p. 455; Fischer, _Sammlung ... Welt- und
See-Karten italienischen Ursprungs_, Venice, 1886, p. 209;
_Proceedings R. G. S._, London, March 1895, pp. 221-240.
Whatever the explanation, it must be remembered that this Map
and Inscription were never produced by Portugal as evidence of
a Pre-Columbian discovery, either in 1492-3, or later, in
formal negotiations with Spain--as at Badajoz in 1524. It is
possible that the delineation and legend in question were
added by a later hand; and it is probable that, if really
inserted by Bianco himself, the reference is to one of the
legendary Atlantic Islands under a new form. It cannot well be
identified with that stated by Galvano to have been discovered
about 1447, for the latter was reached by a course of 1,500
miles due west from the Straits of Gibraltar, which would
bring us to the Azores. The coast line of the "Genuine Island"
is, moreover, quite inconsistent with the north-east
shore-land of South America.]
[Footnote 214: The most singular point in this controversy is
that the pilots of Cabral's fleet professed to recognise the
new land as the same they had seen marked on an old map
existing in Portugal. This is stated by one John, "Bachelor in
Arts and Medicine, and Physician and Cosmographer to King
Emanuel." He accompanied the expedition of 1500, and declared
that the country where Cabral landed was identical with a
tract marked upon a Mappemonde belonging to Pero Vaz Bisagudo,
a Portuguese.]
[Footnote 215: Columbus.]
[Footnote 216: In the Cape Verdes.]
Further, Antonio Galvano, after speaking of a voyage which took place in
1447, goes on to mention another (undated, but probably conceived by the
author as falling within a year or two of the last) in these terms. "It
is moreover told that in the meantime a Portuguese ship, coming out of
the Straits of Gibraltar, was carried westwards by a storm much further
than was intended, and arrived at an island where there were seven
cities, and people who spoke our language." This, however, is too much
like an echo of the old Spanish tale of the Seven Bishops and their
cities in the Island of "Antillia."
In the same connection a number of still looser and more doubtful
assertions exist in Portuguese archives and chronicles. Thus, in 1457,
the Infant D. Fernando, as heir of Prince Henry, planned Atlantic
explorations; in 1484 and 1486 similar designs were
entertained--possibly on the strength of Columbus' recent suggestions,
which are known to have directly occasioned one unsuccessful venture at
this time; and in 1473 João Vaz da Costa Cortereal was reported, by a
now-exploded legend, to have actually discovered Newfoundland.
THE "SCHOOL OF SAGRES," ETC.
Few things in connection with the life of Henry the Navigator are more
interesting than the tradition of his educational and intellectual work,
especially for the furtherance of geography, in the alleged School of
Sagres and other supposed foundations or benefactions. Unfortunately,
this tradition is not as clearly established as it might be, and it has
been made more difficult by constant exaggeration. Not content with
asserting that the Infant aimed at drawing the commerce of Cadiz and
Ceuta--without reckoning other ports--to his town at Sagres, some have
indulged in pictures of a geographical university established by the
Prince upon this headland--pictures which are quite beyond any known
means of verification. These flourishes, however, need not cause one to
run into another extreme, and deny that Sagres became, during the latter
part of Henry's life, especially from 1438 to his death, the centre of
the exploring movement and the scientific study which the Infant
inspired. At Sagres,[217] according to what may be called the older
view--which, resting mainly upon Barros, is adopted by Major, de Veer,
Wauwermans, and even Martins--Prince Henry usually resided, not merely
during the last years of his life, or after his return from the Tangier
expedition of 1437, but from the time of his reappearance in Portugal
after the relief of Ceuta in 1418. At first, however (1418-1438) it was
called Tercena[218] Nabal, or Naval Arsenal, after it emerged from the
stage of a little harbour of refuge for passing ships; and only
afterwards did it become (from 1438 onwards) the Villa do Iffante, "my
town," from which some of Prince Henry's charters are dated. Shortly
before the completion of Azurara's chronicle, according to this view,
the town was fortified with strong walls and enlarged by the building of
new houses.[219] In this settlement (within the narrow space of some 100
acres), there were said to have been, besides the Infant's own Court or
palace, a church, a chapel,[220] a study, and an observatory (the
earliest in Portugal), together with an arsenal, a dockyard, and a fort.
Here cartography and astronomical geography were diligently studied, and
practical mariners were equipped for their work.
[Footnote 217: See Azurara, _Guinea_, iv; Barros, _Asia_,
Decade I, i, 16.]
[Footnote 218: From the Venetian _Darcena_; see Goes, _Chron.
do pr. D. João IV_; O. Martins, _Filhos de D. João I_, p. 75.]
[Footnote 219: It retained its importance till the Prince's
death, when it gradually declined; it was sacked by Drake in
1597; and ruined by earthquakes. Finally it became again as
deserted as before the Infant's time. Ferdinand Denis believed
that before the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 there were traces of
a much earlier habitation of the Sagres Promontory, including
buildings (Moorish?) at least as old as the XIth century. The
headland measures only one kilometre in circuit, half a
kilometre in its extreme length.]
[Footnote 220: Prince Henry's will refers to the Church of St.
Catherine, and the Chapel of St. Mary; see the _MS.
Collection_ of Pedro Alvarez, iii; Martins, _Os Filhos de D.
João_, p. 74. The observatory was not on Sagres Cape proper,
but "un peu en avant quand on vient de l'Ouest" (V. St.
Martin).]
Two original statements of Portuguese authors have been often quoted to
support this tradition. The first comes from John de Barros, the Livy of
Portugal (A.D. 1496-1570). "In his wish to gain a prosperous result from
his efforts, the Prince devoted great industry and thought to the
matter, and at great expense procured the aid of one Master Jacome[221]
from Majorca, a man skilled in the art of navigation and in the making
of maps and instruments, who was sent for, with certain of the Arab and
Jewish mathematicians, to instruct the Portuguese officers in that
science." Secondly, we have the statement of the mathematician Pedro
Nuñes, that the Infant's mariners were "well taught and provided with
instruments and rules of astrology and geometry which all map-makers
should know."[222] On the other hand, it has been contended that there
is no satisfactory evidence of the Infant's town having ever been
finished, or of the Prince ever having lived there continuously, except
during the last years of his life; and that our best authorities do not
warrant us in believing that the settlement was even begun before the
Tangier expedition. Henry's earlier charters are, with one exception,
dated from other places, and his residence before 1438 seems to have
been usually at Lisbon, Lagos, or Reposeira. Further, we have no right
to speak of the "School," or "University," or "Academy" of Sagres; there
may have been both teachers and learners, but there was nothing of an
"institution for instruction" in the Prince's establishment.
[Footnote 221: Jacob or James, who, according to one
tradition, came to the Infant's "Court" shortly after the
disaster of Tangier, in or about 1438. To this name the
Viscount de Juromenha in his notes to Rackzynski, _Les Arts en
Portugal_, 205, adds that of Master Peter, the cartographic
artist of the Infant, who illuminated his maps in colours and
adorned them with legends and pictures. The existence of this
Peter rests upon a document at Batalha discovered by
Juromenha. See also O. Martins, _Filhos de D. João I_, p. 73.]
[Footnote 222: Wauwermans, _Henri le Navigateur et l'Academie
Portugaise de Sagres_, gives little or no help towards the
controverted question which he assumes as settled in his
title. It is a general essay on the course of
fifteenth-century exploration; its most useful portions are
devoted to tracing the connections between geographical study
in Portugal and the Netherlands.]
Such is the minimising view; and most, in face of this sharp divergence,
will agree with Baron Nordenskjöld that a really critical study of the
subject, especially from a local antiquarian, is desirable. Very
plausibly does Nordenskjöld himself sum up the probabilities of the case
when he concludes that "a small school of navigation, important for the
period in question, has probably received from laudatory biographers the
name of an 'Academy.'"[223] The Swedish geographer, however, adds from
his own special researches some important observations. He believes that
in the La Cosa map of 1500[224] we have work which was based upon the
observations of the Infant's captains, who, as shown in these results,
were evidently able to keep reliable reckoning and take fairly correct
altitudes. "Further, the extension of the normal or typical portolano
along the West coast of Africa, as on the portolanos of Benincasa and
others of the latter part of the fifteenth century, is shown by the
legends of the same to have been based on observations made during the
marine expeditions of Prince Henry."
[Footnote 223: Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 121 A.]
[Footnote 224: Plates xliii and xliv of Nordenskjöld's
_Periplus_.]
No charts or other productions of the "Sagres School," in any definite
sense of this term, no geographical or astronomical works emanating from
the "Court" of the Infant, are now extant. But it may reasonably be
inferred from passages in Azurara's _Chronicle of Guinea_ that such
charts were not only draughted under the Prince's orders, but used by
his sailors;[225] Cadamosto tells us of the chart he kept on his voyage
of 1455, probably by direction of the Infant; while it is probably true
that the "extension of the portolanos beyond Cape Bojador, in
Benincasa,[226] for instance, as well as in Fra Mauro's work of 1457-9,
depended on information given by native and foreign skippers" sent out
by Henry. Of course, it is obvious, in the light of present knowledge,
that neither he nor his school in any sense invented the portolano type;
although the mention of Master Jacome of Majorca reminds us of one of
the earliest centres of the new scientific cartography[227] (which was
probably first made effective by Catalan skippers and draughtsmen), and
suggests that the Infant was in touch with the best map-science of the
time. "Neither is it correct to say that he introduced hydrographic
plane charts or map graduation in accordance with geographical
co-ordinates."
[Footnote 225: See Azurara, _Guinea_, ch. lxxviii;
Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 121; Santarem, _Essai sur
Cosmographie_, vol. iii, p. lix. Affonso Cerveira, Azurara's
predecessor, was probably not a "pupil" of the "Sagres
School," as some have supposed.]
[Footnote 226: Especially in his works of 1467-8 and 1471.]
[Footnote 227: In the Balearic isles. See pp. cxvii-cxix of
this Introduction.]
But his life was almost certainly not without direct influence in the
improvement of cartography, and the extension of the scientific type of
map beyond its fourteenth-century limits--an improvement which we see in
the great map of Fra Mauro executed shortly before the Infant's death.
Also, he made his nation take a real interest in geographical discovery,
broke down their superstitious fear of ocean sailing, and made a
beginning in the circumnavigation of Africa. He altered the conditions
of maritime exploration by giving permanence, organisation, and
governmental support to a movement which had up to this time proved
disappointing for lack of these very means. And he certainly improved
the art of shipbuilding, which Cadamosto remarks upon as having rendered
the caravels of Portugal the best sailing ships afloat.
As to the build of these caravels we are fortunately not without data.
Cadamosto, indeed, though he describes them as the best sailing ships at
sea in his time, does not give any details; but from other sources[228]
it is possible to form some idea of their peculiar features. They were
usually 20-30 metres long, 6-8 metres in breadth; were equipped with
three masts, without rigging-tops, or yards; and had lateen sails
stretched upon long oblique poles, hanging suspended from the masthead.
These "winged arms," when their triangular sails were once spread,
grazed the gunwale of the caravel, the points bending in the air
according to the direction of the wind. They usually ran with all their
sail, turning by means of it, and sailing straight upon a bow-line,
driving before the wind. When they wished to change their course, it was
enough to trim the sails.
[Footnote 228: See Osorio, _Vida e feitos d'el rei D. Manoel_,
i, p. 193; O. Martins, _Os Filhos de D. João I_, p. 75;
Candido Correa, _Official Catalogue of the Naval Exposition of
1888 in Portugal_, where was exhibited a facsimile of an old
caravel; see also the plans in D. Pacheco Pereira's
_Esmeraldo_, and the article in the _Revista Portuguesa
Colonial_, May 20th, 1898, pp. 32-52. In the last-named study,
which is specially worthy of notice, we have a detailed
account of (1) the _Barca_, (2) the _Barinel_, (3) the
_Caravel_, (4) the _Nau_, which are classed as _navios dos
descobrimentos_, followed by the _navios dos conquistas_,
viz., (5) the _Fusta_, (6) the _Catur_, (7) the _Almadia de
Cathuri_, (8) the _Galé_, (9) the _Galiota_, (10) the
_Brigantim_, (11) the _Galeaça_, (12) the _Taforea_, (13) the
_Galeão_, (14) the _Carraca_. Illustrations of Nos. 1, 3, 4,
5, 6, 8, 10, and 13 are added.]
It was with this type of vessel that the Madeira and Canary groups were
"gained from the secrets of the Ocean;" that the Azores, at a distance
of twenty-two degrees west of Portugal, and in the heart of the
Atlantic, were discovered and colonised; and that open sea navigation of
almost equal boldness was successfully employed in the finding and
settlement of the Cape Verdes. Before the end of the year 1446,
according to Azurara's estimate, the Infant had sent out fifty-one of
these ships along the mainland coast of Africa, and they had passed 450
leagues[229] beyond Cape Bojador, which before the Prince's time was the
furthest point "clearly known on the coast of the Great Sea." Also, the
work of the "School of Sagres" may perhaps be recognised in Azurara's
further claim that "what had before been laid down on the
Mappemonde was not certain, but only by guesswork," whereas now
it was "all from the survey by the eyes of our seamen," and that "all
this coast towards the South with many points our prince commanded to
add to the sailing chart."
[Footnote 229: Azurara, _Guinea_, ch. lxxviii.]
It has been noticed that D. Pedro, according to the Portuguese
tradition, presented Henry with a copy of Marco Polo's travels, and a
map of the same, either drawn by the explorer himself or by one who knew
his works, and belonged to his own city. Thereby, we are told, the work
of the Infant was much furthered, and Galvano suggests that the same was
extant in 1528, and that it contained many wonderful anticipations of
later discoveries.[230]
[Footnote 230: "... Venice ... whence he [Pedro] brought a map
which had all the circuit of the world described. The Strait
of Magellan was called the Dragon's Tail; and there were also
the Cape of Good Hope and the coast of Africa.... Francisco de
Sousa Tavarez told me that in the year 1528, the Infant D.
Fernando showed him a map which had been found in the Cartorio
of Alcobaça, which had been made more than 120 years before,
the which contained all the navigation of India with the Cape
of Good Hope."--Galvano, _Discovery of World, sub ann._ 1428.]
It has also been surmised, without any certain evidence,[231] that D.
Pedro presented his brother with various maps of Gabriel Valsecca,[232]
and with the writings of Georg Purbach, the instructor of Regiomontanus.
Much more certain and interesting is the allusion to the Infant's
collection of old maps in the history of the discovery of St. Michael
(1443-4) in the Azores. A runaway slave, having escaped to the highest
peak in the Isle of St. Maria, sighted a distant land, and returned to
his master to gain pardon with this news. Prince Henry was informed of
this, consulted his ancient charts, and found them confirm the slave's
discovery. So he sent out Gonçalo Velho Cabral to seek for the same.
Cabral failed; but on his returning to the Prince, the latter showed him
from the ancient maps how he had only missed it by a slight error of
direction. On his second trial the explorer was successful, and reached
St. Michael on May 8, 1444.
[Footnote 231: But see Gaspar Fructuoso, _Saudades da terra_
(ed. Azevedo, 1873), bk. ii, p. 9; Cordeiro, _Historia
Insulana_, ii, p. 2; Santos, _Memoria sobre dois antigos
mappas, etc._, in _Mem. de Litt. da Academia_, viii, pp.
275-301; O. Martins, _Os Filhos de D. João I_, p. 72.]
[Footnote 232: One of which (A.D. 1434-1439) is our authority
for the earliest known Portuguese voyage to any part of the
Azores; viz., that of Diego de Sevill in 1427 (a date
hypothetically converted by Major into 1432). This map of
Valsecca's only gives St. Mary and the Formigas as known in
1439; see pp. cxxxi, cxxxiv of this Introduction.]
* * * * *
Prince Henry's connection with the Coimbra-Lisbon University (founded by
King Dinis in 1300) opens another side of the same question. We have
already mentioned the tradition that in 1431 the Infant provided new
quarters in the parish of St. Thomas, in Lisbon, for the teachers and
students, and afterwards established Chairs of Theology and Mathematics.
This has been called by some a "Reform of Ancient Schools" under his
influence and direction;[233] and recent enquiry[234] has endeavoured to
prove that the Protector of Portuguese Studies was also the founder (in
1431) of a Chair of Medicine, and the donor of a room or lecture-hall in
which was painted by his order a picture of Galen. In 1448 the Infant
subsidised the Chair of Theology by a grant of twelve marks of silver
annually from the revenues of Madeira.[235] It is perhaps noteworthy
that the Prince does not appear to have founded any lectureship, or made
any benefaction to promote directly the study of geography, though
ancient texts bearing on this subject were now beginning to attract
considerable attention. It may be open to question how far a university
would then have welcomed an instructor in practical navigation or
draughtsmanship; but students would have probably listened to lectures
upon Ptolemy, or Strabo, or other classical geographers, and thereby a
great impetus might have been given to the new exploring spirit. Thus in
general we may fairly conclude that, so far as the Portuguese seamen of
the next generation, Bartholemew Diaz, Da Gama, Cão, and others,
"received their training from the Infant's School," it was usually
through a rougher and more practical tradition than that of a
class-room--by means of older mariners who had served in the Prince's
ships rather than by university lecturers whom he had appointed.
[Footnote 233: See O. Martins, _Filhos de D. João I_, pp.
63-4.]
[Footnote 234: Cf. Max. Lemos, _A medicina em Portugal_,
1881.]
[Footnote 235: J. S. Ribeiro, _Historia dos estabel.
scientific, litt. e art. de Portugal_, i, p. 31.]
MAPS AND SCIENTIFIC GEOGRAPHY UP TO AND DURING PRINCE HENRY'S LIFE.
Ancient maps were not without high merits in certain cases, and a little
after Prince Henry's time the Renaissance editions of Ptolemy played a
very important part in geographical history. But in the first part of
the fifteenth century neither the work of the Alexandrian astronomer and
cartographer, nor the ancient road maps of the Roman Empire and
surrounding lands[236] seem to have been sufficiently known for the
exercise of much influence in the progress of discovery or of
geographical knowledge. The same result follows, for different reasons,
in the case of almost all the earlier mediæval maps and charts,[237]
which are quite unscientific in character, and often rather picture
books of natural history legends than delineations of the world.
[Footnote 236: _E.g._, the Peutinger Table.]
[Footnote 237: Viz., before the end of the thirteenth century;
see _Dawn of Modern Geography_, ch. vi, on "Geographical
Theory in the Earlier Middle Ages," and especially pp.
273-284, 327-340, 375-391.]
Strictly scientific map-making begins with the Mediterranean portolani.
The earliest existing specimen of these is of about 1300, but the type
then formed[238] must have been for some time in process of elaboration;
and it is even probable that a fully-developed example from the middle
of the thirteenth century may yet be discovered.
[Footnote 238: _E.g._, in the Carte Pisane and the work of
Giovann de Carignano.]
"A sea-chart--probably a portolano--is mentioned as early as the account
of the Crusade of St. Louis, in 1270."[239] So in Raymond Lulli's _Arbor
Scientiæ_, written about 1300, we have reference to compass, chart and
needle, as necessary for sailors.[240] Once again, it is probable that
Andrea Bianco's planisphere of 1436[241] is only a re-edition of a
thirteenth-century work, when the "Normal Portolano" was just in process
of making, but had not reached even the comparative perfection of the
Carte Pisane, Carignano, or Vesconte examples.
[Footnote 239: See d'Avezac, _Bolletino d. Soc. Geog. Ital._,
1874, p. 408; Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 16 A.]
[Footnote 240: See d'Avezac, _Coup d'œil historique sur la
projection des Cartes de Geographie_ (1863), p. 38.]
[Footnote 241: Reproduced in part at the end of this edition
of _Azurara_, vol. i, Plate 4.]
The earliest dated portolan is that of 1311, by Petrus Vesconte; and
from this time the maps of this class, whose central feature is an
accurate Mediterranean coast-line, increase rapidly, being indeed all
reproductions of one type,[242] occasionally introducing additions or
corrections, especially in outlying parts, but not often varying much
from one another in the central portions. The type is reasonably
believed by some[243] to have originated among the Catalans, either of
Spain, France, or the Balearic Isles, well within the thirteenth
century.[244] In connection with this, we may recall the point mentioned
by Barros, that Prince Henry the Navigator obtained the services of
Master Jacome, or James, from Majorca to instruct the Portuguese
captains in navigation, map-making, and the proper handling of nautical
instruments.
[Footnote 242: Thus Nordenskjöld sums up after an exhaustive
review of all the chief early portolans: "Not only are the
coast-legends the same, even the ... names in red ink of
places considered of special importance to navigators were not
essentially different in the three centuries from Vesconte to
Voltius. Moreover: (1) The Mediterranean and Black Sea have
exactly the same shape on all these maps; (2) a
distance-scale, with the same unit of length, such as
otherwise is used only on the Spanish and French Mediterranean
coasts, occurs on all these maps, independently of the land of
their origin; (3) the distances across the Mediterranean and
Black Sea, measured with this scale, agree perfectly on the
islands and capes remain almost unaltered on portolanos from
the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. So that it may be
thought proved that all these portolanos are only amended
codices of the same original" (_Periplus_, 45 A).]
[Footnote 243: _E.g._, Nordenskjöld, in his last work
(_Periplus_, 46, 47).]
[Footnote 244: Nordenskjöld conjectures probably between 1266
and 1300.]
These plans of practical seamen are a striking contrast, in their often
modern accuracy, to the results of the literary or theological geography
portrayed in such works as those of the "Beatus School," or of Robert of
Haldingham.[245] Map surveys of this kind were apparently unknown to the
ancient world. The old _Peripli_ were sailing directions, not drawn but
written; and the only Arabic portolan known to exist was copied from an
Italian example. Long after the Italian leadership in exploration and
commerce had begun to pass away, Italian science kept control of
cartographical work; thus, among the early portolani, not only the
majority--413 out of 498--but the most valuable, were executed by the
countrymen of Carignano and Vesconte.
[Footnote 245: Cf. (1) the Beatus maps of "St. Sever,"
"Ashburnham," "Turin," "London," of 1109, "Valladolid,"
"Madrid," etc., of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries;
(2) the Hereford _Mappemonde_ of the late thirteenth
century, with which may be compared the Ebstorf world-map of
c. 1300; see Konrad Miller, _Die ältesten Weltkarten_, Heft v,
1896.]
This department of geographical history is only just beginning to be
appreciated at its full value--as marking the vital transition from
ancient to modern, from empirical to scientific--but this need not
surprise us much. The portolani, as has been well said, never had for
their object to provide a popular or fashionable amusement; they were
not drawn to illustrate the works of classical authors or learned
prelates; still less did they illustrate the legends and dreams of
chivalry and historical romance; they were seldom drawn by learned men;
and small enough in return was the acknowledgment which the learned but
too often made them, when the great geographical compilers of the
Renaissance and Reformation times incorporated the earlier coast-charts
in grander and more ambitious works.
Unquestionably, however, it is in maps of the portolano type that we
must look for Prince Henry's primary geographical teachers, though the
influence of books--and even of the older theoretical designs in
cartography--must not be forgotten. Therefore, to understand his
position--to realise what he had to draw from--we must briefly describe
the chief designs which it was possible for him to consult for his
scientific purposes, for his Ptolemaic ambition, διορθῶσαι τὸν ἀρχαῖον
πίνακα [diorthôsai ton archaion pinaka].
(1) The "Carte Pisane" of the latest thirteenth or earliest fourteenth
century is probably only a copy of an earlier work, though now itself
our earliest example of the portolano type. The Mediterranean on this
example (as well as the Black Sea, where it has survived injury) shows
the new scientific or surveying method, but the Atlantic coasts of Spain
and France, and still more the shore-lines of Britain, are of a
different and inferior character. This alone points to an earlier date
than, _e.g._, the works of Vesconte and Dulcert. In West Africa only a
part of the Maroccan coast now remains.
(2) The Map of Giovanni di Carignano,[246] of _c._ 1300?-1310, though
much damaged, shows the Black Sea and Britain with contours differing
somewhat from the ordinary portolan; and the same is noticeable in the
Baltic. The West African coast does not extend to Cape Non. Another work
by Carignano, of _c._ 1306, "specially referring to Central Asia," is
said to exist, but its present position is unknown.
[Footnote 246: Signed "Johannes presbyter, rector Sancti Marci
de Porta Janue me fecit." A priest answering to this
description flourished in Genoa, 1306-1344; this may have been
a younger relative.]
(3) A portolan of the early fourteenth(?) century, belonging to
Professor Tammar Luxoro, of Genoa, in 1882, and usually called after
him, is believed by Nordenskjöld to be a "slightly altered copy of the
normal portolano in its original form." In N.W. Africa it only gives us
the shore-line as far as Sallé, with a series of names, beginning at
Arzilla.[247]
[Footnote 247: No Atlantic islands exist on the Tammar Luxoro
portolan.]
(4) Marino Sanudo the Elder, to his work, _Liber Secretorum fidelium
Crucis_, written between 1306 and 1321, added an atlas of ten maps.
Among these, I-V form an ordinary portolano, corresponding especially
with Vesconte's work,[248] but giving us no special information upon
Africa; while No. VI is the famous map of the world often reproduced.
Here a thoroughly conventional Africa is laid down, of the "Strabonian"
or "Macrobian" type: its length, from east to west, traversed by the
Negro Nile from near the Mountains of the Moon to the Atlantic, is equal
to fully twice the breadth from north to south. The deep inlet in the
West African coast penetrating east to a "Regio VII Montium" immediately
south of the Negro Nile, is a prototype of the similar feature in Fra
Mauro, and is perhaps only an exaggeration of the Sinus Hesperius of
Ptolemy. This map was probably known to Prince Henry, like the book it
accompanied, which contained many important particulars of
fourteenth-century trade and navigation. The Mappemonde is a compromise
between, or combination of, the portolano and the Mediæval theoretical
map, and is quite a landmark in the history of cartography.
[Footnote 248: Konrad Kretschmer believes Sanudo's maps to
have been draughted entirely or principally by Vesconte.]
(5) Pietro Vesconte of Genoa has left three or four works executed
between 1311 and 1321, and still extant, viz.: (α) Of 1311, which lacks
the Western Mediterranean and West Africa, what remains giving us a
"normal portolano" of the Levant and Black Sea. (β) Of 1318, depicting
the entire Mediterranean, etc., with the Atlantic, North Sea coasts of
Europe (in ten plates), and West Africa as far as "Mogador." (γ) Of 1318
(in six maps), which for our purposes need not be discriminated from
(β); and lastly (δ) Of 1320, a map of the world, with plans of cities, a
special chart of Palestine, etc. The Mappemonde, which principally
concerns us here, is extremely like Sanudo's, and is perhaps the work of
the same artist--Vesconte himself. Another work, of 1321, by Vesconte,
is mentioned in Santarem,[249] but its whereabouts is now unknown.
[Footnote 249: _Essai sur l'Histoire de la Cosmographie_, i,
272, ed. of 1849.]
Once more a work of 1327, signed "Perrinus Vesconte fecit ... MCCCXXVII
in Veneciis" is conjectured to be only another "normal-portolan" by
_Pietro_ Vesconte.
(6) Angelino Dulcert, a Catalan, composed in August 1339, in Majorca
("in civitate Majoricarum") a portolan of great merit. Dulcert's Baltic
somewhat resembles Carignano's, but with more numerous legends. A star
("the Star in the East") placed by this draughtsman south of the Caspian
is copied, or at least paralleled, in the Atlas Catalan of 1375 (No. 9,
p. cxxvi), in the Andrea Bianco of 1436, and in the Borgian map of
1430-50, as well as in the Anonymous Catalan planisphere hereafter
noticed (No. 14, p. cxxviii). Dulcert's Africa probably served in some
respects as a prototype for the Catalan Atlas of 1375, and Prince Henry
may have studied the Continent in one or other of these delineations,
which are among the most complete pictures of the Sahara coasts and
Sudan interior coming down from any period before that of his voyages.
Some of the Canaries are marked in about their right position, with
Lançarote showing the Cross of Genoa, and Fuerteventura to the south,
while almost in the latitude of Ceuta appear "Canaria," St. Brandan's
Isle, etc. On the mainland a long stretch of shore-line is given beyond
Cape Non or Nun, but it is drawn very conventionally in a S.S.E.
direction, with seven names,[250] or titles, and an inscription of two
lines, the whole seeming to show pretty clearly that the draughtsman
knew nothing at first hand of the coast between Non and Boyador, but was
led to conjecture a continuation of the Desert Littoral. In the
Interior, the Atlas range, the large seated figure of a king with
sceptre, and most of the towns depicted on eminences, reappear with
slight alterations in the Atlas Catalan; which, however, adds many
details.
[Footnote 250: One being merely "Plagae Arenae."]
(7) Next comes the most famous, and perhaps in some respects the most
advanced, specimen of the early portolani: that usually quoted as the
Medicean or Laurentian Portolan of 1351 ("Atlante Mediceo," or
"Portolano Laurenziano-Gaddiano"). The author was anonymous, but almost
certainly a Genoese, and his work consists of eight plates, or tables.
The second of these is the Mappemonde, which is the only one that need
be noticed here. The Africa of this map, taken as a whole, is drawn with
a nearer approach to general correctness than on any chart anterior to
the voyage of B. Diaz in 1486;[251] both the Guinea coast to the
Camaroons, and the southern projection of the Continent, are
extraordinarily well conceived for the time. No details or names are
inserted on the W. African mainland shore beyond Cape Bojador and the
River of Gold--"Palolus."[252] In this it is similar to the Pizigani map
of 1367.[253]
[Footnote 251: See _Azurara_, Hakluyt Soc. ed., vol. i,
Reproduction at end, No. 1]
[Footnote 252: For Pactolus (?).]
[Footnote 253: A considerable knowledge of the Atlantic
Islands is also shown, sixteen names being given. This number,
however, is less than we have in the _Conosçimiento_ of
slightly earlier date, _c_. 1330 (?).]
(8) Francisco Pizigano, of Venice, 1367-1373, aided by his brother
Marco, executed two famous works still extant: (α) In 1367, a large
chart comprising a good deal beyond the normal portolano's Mediterranean
and Black Sea;--_e.g._, part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, the Baltic,
the Caspian, etc. It is signed, "MCCCLXVII, Hoc opus compoxuid
Franciscus Pizigano Veneciar et domnus In Venexia meffecit Marcus die
xii Decembris." (β) In 1373, a normal portolano, signed "MCCCLXXIII a
die viii de zugno Francischo Pisigany Venician in Venexia me fecit." The
N.W. Africa of these two maps shows no advance on the Laurentian
Portolano.
(9) The Atlas Catalan of 1375 is said to have been executed for Charles
V of France, in whose library it was entered with the title, "Une quarte
de mer en tableaux faicte par manière de unes tables, painte et
histoirée, figurée et escripte, et fermant a quatre fermoners de
cuivre." It is in six plates, the last four of which compose a
mappemonde--"the most comprehensive cartographic work of the fourteenth
century," especially rich in legends, and showing us the normal
portolan, for shore-lines, blended with the theoretical map, for the
interiors of countries, all designed on the most elaborate scale. The
West African coast on this example is brought down to, and a little
beyond, Cape Bojador, southwest of which appear the Catalan explorers of
1346[254] in their boat, with an inscription.[255] Beginning with
Arzilla, and continuing south, we have besides the recognisable Sallé,
Cantin, Mogador, and No[n], 35 other names before we reach Cavo de
Buyet(e)der, after which we have only the legend "Danom," and the
conclusion, "Cap de Finister(r)a occidental de Affricha."[256] More
attention is given to the interior of North Africa in this design than
in any other map of the fourteenth century.
[Footnote 254: Jayme Ferrer, etc.]
[Footnote 255: Quoted and discussed above, pp. lxiii-lxiv.]
[Footnote 256: Names are given to twenty-seven islands in the
Atlantic, among them St. Brandan's isle, most of the Canaries,
the whole Madeira group and several of the Azores.]
(10) Guglielmo Soleri, of Majorca, between _c._ 1380 and 1385, executed
two designs of some value, both "normal-portolans:" (α) is undated,
probably executed about 1380, and signed "Guill'mo Soleri civis
Majoricarum me ficit." (β) is inscribed "Guillmus Solerii civis
Majoricarum me fecit anno MCCCLXXXV."
In (β) West Africa has a fairly good extension, a little beyond the
latitude of the Canaries, where the rough and torn southern edge of the
map cuts across all.[257]
[Footnote 257: The Soleri of 1380 gives twenty Atlantic
islands; nineteen appear in the Soleri of 1385 (some
legendary). In neither is any addition made to earlier lists.]
(11) Next in order comes an anonymous Atlas of 1384 (?) in six sheets,
usually called, after two of its possessors, the Pinelli-Walckenaer
Portolano. It is probably a Genoese work. Its West Africa extends about
as far as (or a little beyond) the Soleri of 1385, to what is apparently
Cape Bojador, slightly south of the Canaries. Ten names occur beyond C.
Non, among them Cavo de Sablon and Enbucder.[258] The little harbour
existing to the south of Bojador seems indicated here.
[Footnote 258: Bojador?]
(12) And now, coming to the fifteenth century, we have first the
"Combitis" Portolan of _c._ 1410--an anonymous work, but inscribed "Haec
tabula ex testamento domini Nicolai de Combitis devenit in Monasterio
Cartusiae florentinae." This is, in some respects, closely similar to
the Vesconte of 1318.
(13) Another cartographer of the early fifteenth century is Cristoforo
Buondelmonte--otherwise Ensenius--whose "Description of the Cyclades" is
accompanied by maps; who was the author of an important graduated chart
of the North of Europe; and who also left a roughly-sketched
mappemonde--perhaps a copy of a much older work--which may conceivably
have been known to Prince Henry and have encouraged his explorations.
This shows an Africa somewhat similar in contour to Fra Mauro's of
1457-9, but almost without names.[259]
[Footnote 259: Reproduced in Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 111,
and labelled only "before 1481." The only name on the West
African mainland is well down S.W., "India [portus?] pbīs
fons." The deep indent on the middle of the W. African coast,
noticed in several other maps and even in Fra Mauro, appears
here on a great scale.]
(14) Last among these works of the "Preparatory Time," we may take an
anonymous Catalan planisphere of the early fifteenth century (in the
National Library of Florence) closely resembling the great Atlas of
1375.
This completes the list of important maps for the period immediately
preceding the new Portuguese discoveries, and shows us the most likely
examples of cartography for Prince Henry's study. Some of these he may
have owned; many of them he probably inspected in person or by deputy.
It is probable enough that he was acquainted with some of the
pre-scientific or "theoretical" designs, such as those of the "Beatus"
type from the eighth and subsequent centuries; those which are to be
found illustrating manuscripts of Sallust, Higden, Matthew Paris, St.
Jerome, or Macrobius' Commentary on the "Dream of Scipio;" and those of
Arabic geographers like Edrisi[260]--to name only a few examples--but he
can hardly have derived much assistance from them. The great thirteenth
century wheel-map pictures--as, for instance, those we know as the
Hereford or Ebstorf Mappemondes--expressed the very antithesis of his
spirit; and the same must be said of the greater part of the Mediæval
cartography before the appearance of the portolani.
[Footnote 260: Twelfth century.]
From certain books of travel, such as those of Carpini, Rubruquis,
Odoric, Pegolotti, or Marco Polo, he may, however, have received great
assistance. The merchants and missionaries who opened so much of Asia to
the knowledge of Europe during the Crusading period, furnished the most
direct stimulus for the discovery of a direct ocean route to the
treasures of the East. And to find such a route by the circumnavigation
of Africa was, as we have suggested before, one of the primary objects
of the Infant's life and work.
But, in addition to the Maps of his predecessors, the Infant was almost
certainly acquainted with some of the chief cartographical works of his
own time, falling within the period of his exploring activity, and we
must finish this brief survey with some notice of these. Continuing the
catalogue, we have
(15) A map by Mecia de Viladestes of 1413. This is a Catalan portolano,
signed "Mecia de Viladestes me fecit in ano 1413," and is noticeable as
containing a reference to the voyage of Jayme Ferrer in 1346, similar to
that on the great Catalan atlas of 1375.[261]
[Footnote 261: A work by the same author, of 1457, is said to
be at the Carthusian Monastery of Segorbe, near Valencia, but
it is not yet fully identified, and is supposed by some to be
the same as that just noticed.]
(16) Four, or possibly five, specimens of Jacobus Giroldis'
draughtsmanship belonging to the years 1422-1446, viz., (α) a
Mediterranean portolan of 1422, signed "MCCCCXXII mense Junii die primo
Jachobus de Giroldis Veneciis me fecit;" (β) a Portolan atlas in six
sheets, of A.D. 1426, thought by some to resemble the work of Andrea
Bianco in river-markings, legends, etc. This work possesses a
distance-scale, but no graduation for latitude. It is inscribed,
"Jachobus de Ziraldis [Ziroldis?] de Veneciis me fecit ... MCCCCXXVI."
The West Africa of this work ends at Bojador ("Buider"), and gives us
thirty-nine names between Arzilla and this point. Its nomenclature here
is very similar to, though somewhat less full than, that of the Catalan
atlas (1375).[262] Besides these two works, Giroldis has left others of
less importance, viz., (γ), a Portolan atlas of 1443, consisting of six
maps; (δ), a Portolan atlas, also of six maps, dated 1446; (ε?), a
Portolano, unsigned, in the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana at Florence, which is
perhaps his work.
[Footnote 262: The same is the case with the Atlantic Islands;
but though giving us fewer actual isles, it supplies more
names to points therein--thirty-two in all.]
Passing by the (for our purposes) less important Portolans of Battista
Becharius, or Beccario, of Genoa, executed in 1426 and 1435; of
Francisco de Cesani of Venice (1421), of Claudius Clavus[263] (1427), of
Cholla de Briaticho (1430), there are only about ten maps or atlases
belonging to this period which have still to be noticed, and which with
some probability may be connected with the work of Prince Henry.
[Footnote 263: An important chart for N. European cartography,
and for the fact that it is one of the earliest graduated
non-Ptolemaic maps.]
These are--not counting the lost map brought back by D. Pedro from
Venice in 1428,--
(17) The Atlas of 1435-1445, by Gratiosus Benincasa, of Ancona.
(18) The so-called Andrea Bianco of 1436.
(19) The Andrea Bianco of 1448.
(20) The Portolano of 1434-39 by Gabriele de Valsecca, of Majorca,
together with one of 1447 by the same draughtsman.
(21) The anonymous planisphere of 1447.
(22) The planispheres of 1448 and 1452, by Giovanni Leardo (Leardus), of
Venice.
(23) The planisphere of 1455, by Bartolommeo Pareto, of Genoa; and
(24) The planisphere of 1457-9, by Fra Mauro of the Camaldolese Convent
of Murano, in Venice.
As to these, we need only remark:
No. (17) is the earliest known work of Gracioso Benincasa, consists of
sixty-two maps, and belongs to a MS. giving sailing directions, etc. Its
West Africa does not call for special remark, though the later
discoveries of Prince Henry's lifetime are admirably illustrated in the
same draughtsman's work of 1468, 1471, etc.
No. (18) consists of ten maps, including a graduated Ptolemaic
mappemonde, and a circular world-map, somewhat resembling Vesconte,
probably copied and re-edited from a very early portolan, with a certain
theoretical extension.[264] The original of this is supposed by some to
have been a late thirteenth-century work; its West African names and
detailed charting end at Cape Non--an incredibly backward point for the
time of revision, viz., A.D. 1436. A ship is, however, depicted in full
sail far down the west coast[265] of a Continent whose general shape is
conceived as "Strabonian" or "Macrobian," with its length from east to
west, and consequently possessing a long southern shore. The Negro Nile
flows straight from Babylon or Cairo, into the Atlantic, near (but north
of) the picture labelled Rex de Maroco. The western Mediterranean,
Adriatic and Ægaean, as well as the Black Sea and Caspian, are poorly
drawn, and suggest an early and crude type of portolan.
[Footnote 264: See _Azurara_, Hakluyt Soc. ed., vol. i, Map
No. 4 at end of volume.]
[Footnote 265: Is this an addition of the Editor to bring it
up to date? The reviser must, however, have added very largely
to this map; _e_. _g_., both Russia and Turkey (?), as here
depicted, do not correspond at all to the _late_ thirteenth
century, but agree better with the fifteenth; though for 1436
Russia seems unduly magnified. _Imperium Tartarorum_ appears
immediately north of the Sea of Azov. The Moslem prince near
the Bosphorus is probably meant for the Ottoman Sultan.]
No. (19), signed "Andrea Biancho venician comito di galia mi fexe a
LONDRA MCCCCXXXXVIII," was probably executed with a special view of
illustrating the discoveries of the Portuguese along West Africa, and
contains the enigmatical inscription in the S.W., which some have
construed into a Portuguese discovery of South America about this
time.[266] Besides the interest of this controversy, and of the fact
that it was one of the first scientific maps drawn in England, this
chart gives us in West Africa some of the earliest indications of the
new Portuguese discoveries. Thus, beyond Cape Bojador, or Buyedor, we
have on the mainland shore-line twenty-seven names reaching to Cape Roxo
or Rosso, and including Rio d'Oro, Porto do Cavalleiro ("Pro
Chavalero"), the Port of Galé ("Pedra de Gala"), Cape Branco, Cape St.
Anne, and Cape Verde.
[Footnote 266: See pp. ciii-cvi.]
This example has often been spoken of as the earliest map-register of
Prince Henry's discoveries, but herein it must yield to
No. (20), the Valsecca (Vallesecha) of 1434-9, which mentions the
discoveries of Diego de Sevill in the Azores in 1427,[267] and maps the
north-west coast of Africa scientifically to Cape Bojador (Bujeteder)
and "theoretically" for some way beyond.
[Footnote 267: See p. cxiv of this Introduction.]
No. (21), of 1447, inscribed, "... Vera cosmographorum cum marino
accordata terra, quorundam frivolis narrationibus rejectis MCCCCXLVII,"
denotes, as Nordenskjöld points out, not any connection with Marinus of
Tyre (by means of a since lost MS., or otherwise), but merely the
author's purpose, viz., "to present here a picture of the world,
according to the conception of learned cosmographers, adapted to or
grouped round a skipper-chart or portolan of the Inner Sea."
West Africa, in this chart, does not present anything specially
noteworthy.
No. (22). Similar in purpose to No. (8) are both the Leardo Maps of 1448
and 1452, which in detail are somewhat similar to the Bianco of 1436.
The West African coast of these Designs does not call for special
notice.
No. (23), of 1455, signed "Presbiter Bartolomeus de Pareto civis Janue
... composuit ... MCCCCLV. in Janua," is not of high value for its date,
and shows no evidence of correspondence with Prince Henry's work. The
West Africa of this design need not be specially noticed here.
No. (24), the most famous of the whole series, is more fully noticed on
pp. cxl-cxliv. Fra Mauro was, perhaps, helped by Cadamosto among others.
It is noteworthy that the Doge Foscarini, in the letter quoted below,
pp. cxl-cxli, couples the success of Cadamosto and the work of Fra
Mauro, as two things which should induce Prince Henry to persevere.[268]
[Footnote 268: See Major, _Henry Navigator_, p. 312.]
A new mappemonde,[269] discovered by Kretschmer in the Vatican Library,
and noticed in his monograph of 1891, is of 1448; while under date of
1444, Santarem refers to a "Portolan portugais inédit," which is not
further known.
[Footnote 269: The "Walsperger," _Eine neue mittelälterliche
Weltkarte_.]
These were the works[270] which in cartography bore most closely upon
the Infant's explorations; and we may here summarise the evidence of the
same as to the advance of knowledge along the West African coast and
among the Atlantic Islands.
[Footnote 270: On all these maps, see especially G. Uzielli
and P. Amat di S. Filippo, _Studi biographici e bibliographici
sulla storia della Geografia in Italia_, ii, Mappemonde, etc.,
dei secoli xiii-xvii, Roma, 1882--especially pp. 49, 52, 54,
55, 57-8, 60, 62, 64, 66, 72-3, 230-1; Theobald Fischer,
_Sammlung Mittelälterlicher Welt und See-karten_, Venice,
1886, pp. 111, 117-9, 127, 150-5, 207-213, 220; Santarem,
_Atlas_, 1849; Santarem, _Essai sur l'histoire de la
Cosmographie_, etc., 1849-52; Santarem, _Notices sur plusieurs
monuments géographiques du moyen âge_, etc. (Bull. Soc. Géog.,
3e série, vii, Paris, 1847), especially pp. 289, 295;
Santarem, _Recherches sur la priorité des découvertes
portugaises_, 1842; C. Desimoni and L. T. Belgrano, "_Atlante
... posseduto dal Prof. Tammar Luxoro_ ..." in _Atti della
societa ligure di storia patria_, v, Genoa, 1867; K.
Kretschmer, _Marino Sanudo der Altere_, in _Zeitschrift d.
Ges. f. Erdkunde_, Berlin, xxvi, 1891; H. Simonsfeld, in
_Neues Archiv für altere deutsche Geschichtskunde_, vii,
especially pp. 43, etc., Hannover, 1881; E. T. Hamy, _La
mappemonde d'Angelino Dulcert_ (Bull. Géog. Hist, et Descr.,
1886-7); ibid., _Les origines de la Cartographie de l'Europe
Septentrionale_, 1888; ibid., _Cresques lo Juheu, note sur un
géographe juif Catalan de la fin du XIVe siécle_, 1891;
Jomard, _Atlas ("Monuments de la Géographe"), 1862; Choix de
Documents Géographiques conservés a la Biblèque Nata'e_,
especially p. 4, Paris, 1883; Buchon and Tastu, _Notices et
Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque du Roi_, xiv, 2nd partie,
Paris, 1841, especially p. 67; G. Marcel, _Recueil des
Portolans_, Paris, 1886; Hommaire de Hell, in _Bulletin de la
Soc. de Géog._, 3e série, vii, Paris, 1847, p. 302; M. A. P.
d'Avezac (-Maçaya) "... _Notice sur un Atlas de la Biblèque
Walckenaer_" (Bull. Soc. Géog., 3e série, viii, Paris, 1847,)
especially p. 142, etc.; P. Matkovic, in _Mittheilungen der K.
K. Geog. Gesellsch._, vi, p. 83, etc., Vienna, 1862;
Cortambert, _Introduction à l'Atlas ... par feu M. Jomard_
(Bull. Soc. Géog., 6e série, xviii, Paris, 1879) p. 74; R. H.
Major, _Henry the Navigator_, London, 1868; _Notice des objets
exposés dans la section de Géographie_, Paris, 1889
(Exposition), especially p. 14; Lelewel, _Géographie de Moyen
Age_, especially _Epilogue_, pp. 167-184, Brussels, 1857;
Placido Zurla, _Il Mappemonde di Fra Mauro Camaldolese_,
Venice, 1806; A. E. Nordenskjöld, _Facsimile Atlas_,
Stockholm, 1886; _Periplus_, Stockholm, 1897.]
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, as we have seen, there is no
cartographical evidence of knowledge extending far beyond the Straits of
Gibraltar--either down the mainland shore or among the Islands in the
Ocean. But on Dulcert's Portolan of 1339, and on other productions of
the same epoch, such as the _Conosçimiento_ of about 1330, we meet with
some of the Islands, and with the Continental coast as far as Bojador.
Thus, in the _Conosçimiento_ and the Laurentian Portolano of 1351, "the
most important of the Azores, the Madeira group, and the Canary Islands,
are denoted by the names they still bear," or by the prototypes of these
names.[271] The same Medicean or Laurentian map of 1351, the Pizzigani
of 1367-1373, the Catalan[272] of 1375, and others, "bear inscriptions
even beyond C. Bojador"--inscriptions, however, which do not in their
scattered and half-fabulous character give any decisive evidence of
actual exploration to the south of this point before Henry's time.[273]
Moreover, the shape of Africa in the "Atlante Mediceo" of 1351,[274]
suggests--though it can hardly be said to prove--actual observations far
beyond Cape Bojador made by the crews of storm-driven or India-seeking
ships. But, after all, the map knowledge shown of Africa to the south of
latitude 26° N. was so incomplete and so vague--perhaps even in the
Laurentian Portolan the engrafting of a great theory on a tiny plant of
fact--that the claim of first discovery in more southern regions cannot
well be refused to Gil Eannes, Dinis Diaz, Cadamosto, and the other
explorers of the Infant's school.
[Footnote 271: _E.g._, Legname for Madeira, "The Isle of
Wood."]
[Footnote 272: We must note that the ship of the Catalan
explorers, with the accompanying legend commemorative of the
expedition of 1346, is depicted in this map _as well to the
south of Bojador_.]
[Footnote 273: Though Nordenskjöld seems to think otherwise.]
[Footnote 274: See _Azurara_, vol. i, Plate 1, at end of
volume.]
On the other hand, all the Atlantic groups, except the Cape Verdes and
some of the Azores, were evidently known in whole or part to some of the
fourteenth-century navigators and draughtsmen.
A good deal of hearsay knowledge about the interior of Africa is also
indicated, as we have seen, in some of these maps, especially the
Dulcert of 1339, and the Catalan of 1375; and in this connection we must
refer to what has been said upon the trade-routes of North Africa; but
these elaborate pictures of mountain ranges, Moslem kings, traders with
their camels, and towns on eminences, have little more pretence to
scientific accuracy than the Negro Nile of so many old geographers,
which is probably a mistaken combination of the real but separate
courses of the Benue, the Niger, and the Senegal.
Once more we have seen that the first two portolani plainly influenced
by Prince Henry's discoveries are the Valsecca[275] of 1434-9 and the
1448 map of Andrea Bianco, drawn in London; and that the 1436 Bianco is
probably a copy of a thirteenth-century work, showing no clear evidence
of the new explorations. As to the Bianco of 1448, we may here add a
word to what has been already said. On this example we find the west
coast of Africa end suddenly with Cape Rosso, or Roxo, immediately south
of Cape Verde, and "from this point the coast is drawn straight eastward
in a style which indicates that the country beyond is unknown;" the
"outline of this southern shore of Africa being delineated according to
the maps of the Macrobius type." The work of 1448 is frequently copied
in following years; as, for example, on several designs of Gratiosus
Benincasa (1435 to 1482), wherein the west coast of Africa, from Ceuta
to Cape Verde, "has the same contours and the same names."[276] All of
these charts are believed by Nordenskjöld to be copies of the same
Portuguese original. On the other hand, "Benincasa's Atlas of 1471 is
widely divergent as regards the legends, and extends much further
south.[277] It reproduces the discoveries along the coast down to Pedro
de Sintra's voyage of 1462-3, and seems in part to be based on direct
information from Cadamosto."[278]
[Footnote 275: The Valsecca Map delineates the West African
coast to Cape Bojador (C. de Bujeteder). Beyond this the
outline of the coast is "suggested" for a distance about as
great as from the Straits to Bojador, but with no names or
legends except "Plagens arenosas," "Tarafal," "Bujeteder," and
at the extreme south, "Tisilgame."]
[Footnote 276: This is especially true of the Benincasa of
1467. Nordenskjöld gives twenty-eight parallel names from this
and the Bianco of 1448 between Bojador and Capes Verde and
Rosso.]
[Footnote 277: To Rio de Palmeri, immediately beyond Cape St.
Anne.]
[Footnote 278: This may be seen, as Nordenskjöld suggests
(_Periplus_, p. 127), by comparing the names on the lower part
of Benincasa's West Africa with the following names occurring
in Cadamosto's account of De Sintra's voyage: Rio di Besegue,
Capo di Verga, Capo di Sagres, Rio di San Vicenzo, Rio Verde,
Cape Liedo, Fiume rosso. Capo rosso, Isola rossa, Rio di Santa
Maria della nave, Isola di Scanni, Capo di Santa Anna, Fiume
della palme, Rio de Fiume, Capo di monte, Capo Cortesi, Bosco
di Santa Maria. Benincasa, however, appears to have access to
other sources besides Cadamosto, as many of his names are not
found in the latter.]
Lastly, a more special notice must be taken of the great map of Fra
Mauro, 1457-9.
In this undertaking[279] Andrea Bianco is said to have assisted, and the
work was (either originally or in copy) executed for the Portuguese
Government, and assisted by the same. King Affonso V supplied the
draughtsmen with charts on which the recent discoveries of Prince
Henry's seamen were laid down. Payment was liberal (12 to 15 sous a day
to every one of the common artisans and copyists); and the Doge
Francesco Foscarini, "when he witnessed the plan and the beginning of
Mauro's work," trusted that Prince Henry would find therein fresh
reasons for pressing on his explorations. The completed mappemonde was
sent to Portugal, in charge of Stefano Trevigiano, on April 24th, 1459.
This was based, perhaps, in part on the map, or maps, illustrating the
voyages of Marco Polo, in the Doges' Palace in Venice, apparently on one
of the walls of the Sala della Scudo. The "Polo" portions of the New
Design were, however, chiefly in the Far East. In N.W. Africa, Cape
Verde and Cape Rosso are marked, and near the S.W. coast of the
Continent is a long inscription about the Portuguese voyages, stating
that the latter "here gave new names to rivers, bays, harbours, etc.,
and that they made new charts, of which he (Fra Mauro) had had many in
his possession." At the extreme south point of Africa is the name
"Diab," with a legend telling how an Indian junk was said to have been
storm-driven to this point in about 1420, and (without reaching land) to
have sailed further westward for 2,000 miles during forty days. After
this the Indians turned back, and after seventy days' sail, returned to
Cavo di Diab, where they found on shore a huge bird's egg, as large as a
barrel.[280] Fra Mauro had also himself spoken with a trustworthy
person, who said that he had sailed from India past Sofala to "Garbin,"
a place located in the middle of the west coast of Africa close to
"Dafur." "Fundan," again, a little south of Cape Rosso, may represent
some Portuguese coast-name which has not elsewhere survived.
[Footnote 279: See Zurla, _Il Mappemonde di Fra Mauro_,
Venezia, 1806, p. 62; Humboldt's _Kritische Untersuchungen_,
i, p. 274; Ongania and Santarem's Reproductions of the Map
itself; Nordenskjöld's _Periplus_, 127-8.]
[Footnote 280: Egg of the Rukh, or Roc?]
Yet, apart from these references, there is but little evidence of the
new discoveries forthcoming, and, from a critical point of view, Fra
Mauro's planisphere is somewhat disappointing. True it is in certain
regions (its Mediterranean and Black Sea, for instance), of the
portolano type, but in the more outlying parts of the world, and even in
much of Africa, it is far more similar to one of the old Macrobius type
of wheel-maps (continued in such fifteenth-century specimens[281] as the
"Borgian" design of _c._ 1430), than to a specimen of enlightened
cartography like the "Laurentian" example of 1351. The traditional
centre at Jerusalem is not taken, but a point slightly north of Babylon
serves instead. In Africa numerous tribes and cities are marked even
beyond the Equator, in regions inscribed as "Inhabitabiles propter
calorem;" but the general shape of the west coast is hardly
satisfactory. Fra Mauro knows nothing of the great bend of the Guinea
coast; N.W. Africa appears not as a great projection, but only as a
gently-sloping shoulder of land; Cape Verde is not the westernmost point
of the Continent. This position is given to the traditional "Promontory
of Seven Mountains" (north of the Western Nile), which we have met with
in earlier examples. To the south of the Green Cape appears a long and
narrow inlet of sea,[282] which can hardly be supposed to represent in
any way the South coast of "Guinea" from Sierra Leone to Benin, but
perhaps is a combination and exaggeration of the great estuaries so
recently visited by Henry's seamen--the Gambia, the Casamansa, the Rio
Grande or Geba, and others. The Western or Negro Nile is drawn as
flowing straight from Meroe in Nubia to the Atlantic, passing through a
great swamp (Lake Chad?), an elongated piece of open water in the
country of Melli (the Middle Niger in flood?), and the course of the
Senegal. South of Cape Roxo, the coast, trending gradually south-east,
exhibits a very broken contour and is fringed with many
islands--evidence only too certain that the draughtsman is working by
the light of imagination. Finally, although Africa is rightly conceived
as on the whole projecting into the Southern Ocean, and having its
length or greatest dimension from south to north rather than from east
to west, it is greatly twisted out of shape by the inclination S.E.,
which bends round its southmost point almost to the longitude of
Guzerat.[283] The general size of the Continent, however, is more
accurately guessed[284] than on most maps of this or earlier time. Here
Fra Mauro is nearer the truth even than the Laurentian Portolano of
1351, so far superior to the work of 1457-9 in many respects. Parallels
of latitude and meridians of longitude are not indicated in the
Camaldolese mappemonde, which has been sometimes referred to as "an
immeasurable advance on all earlier cartography;" and the importance of
this famous design, as an index to current geographical ideas, and as a
world-picture of great size and magnificence, possessing in its time
considerable official importance, must not lead us to take it as an
example of cartographical perfection.
[Footnote 281: Cp. also the elliptical Florentine example of
1447 (Nordenskjöld, _Facsimile Atlas_, 116), or Leardus'
Mappemondes of 1448 and 1452 (_ibid._ 61).]
[Footnote 282: "Sinus Ethiopicus:" very similar to that
depicted on the Leardus of 1448. On the southern side of this
is "Fundan."]
[Footnote 283: Perhaps a Ptolemaic concession.]
[Footnote 284: Still more is this the case with Asia, where
Fra Mauro is in some ways more satisfactory than anywhere
else, and contrasts well even with the "Harleian" or Dieppe
Map of _c._ 1536, and many other similar works.]
* * * * *
The use of the magnetic needle is essentially connected with the
portolan type of map; this instrument was well known to Prince Henry's
sailors, and is referred to by the Infant himself as being, like the
sailing chart, a necessity for navigators.[285] But it could hardly come
into general employment till men reached beyond the mediæval stage of a
magnetic needle enclosed in a tube so as to float on water.
[Footnote 285: _Azurara_, ch. ix.]
In the Discovery of the Compass four stages may be distinguished:
(1) The discovery of a species of stone with polar-magnetic qualities,
_i.e._, with the power of attracting iron.
(2) The discovery that steel or hardened iron could be made
polar-magnetic by rubbing it with a lode-stone.
(3) The discovery that the magnet (or magnetised iron) possessed the
quality of definite direction, one of its poles always indicating the
north, if it were so supported or suspended that it could move freely.
(4) The discovery of using the magnetised iron needle as a compass.
The first dates from a high antiquity, and is noticed by Plato,
Theophrastus, Pliny, Ptolemy, Claudian, and many writers of the Mediæval
as well as of the Classical period. The subsequent advances we cannot
date, for Europe, earlier than the twelfth century; when Alexander
Neckam and Guyot de Provins (_c._ 1190-1200) show us that some
investigators had advanced as far as the third of the stages above
recounted.
It is now generally understood that magnetic cars, "based on the same
principle as the compass," were used in China much earlier than this.
The Helleno-Roman world of antiquity, in describing the magnet, only
dwelt on its attraction for iron, and did not notice its power of
indicating the poles; whereas the Celestials were aware in the first
place of the communication of magnetic fluid to iron, and in the second
place of the mysterious power of iron so magnetized, as early as about
A.D. 120. The earliest use of the water-compass in China is fixed by
Klaproth at A.D. 1111-17; and as to the magnetic figures or magnetic
cars with which in earlier times Chinese junks sailed to the south of
Asia, and Chinese travellers made their way across the plains and
mountains to the west of their country, it must not be assumed that
their use was universal. Thus, in the fifth century A.D., when Wu-Ti,
afterwards Emperor, stormed Singanfu (417 A.D.), he seized upon one of
these as a great curiosity.
It is uncertain, as already remarked, when the complete compass, or even
the polarity of the magnet, was first discovered in Europe. We may,
however, note the following evidence:
(1) Alexander Neckam, an English monk of St. Albans (born 1157, died
1217), who had studied for some time in the University of Paris, refers
more than once to what we may suppose was a compass needle, placed on a
metal point.[286] This, he implies, was then in common use among
sailors, and was not merely a secret of the learned. For, "when the
mariners cannot see the sun clearly in murky weather or at night, and
cannot tell which way their prow is tending, they put a needle above a
magnet, which revolves until its point looks North and then stands
still." These words were probably written between 1190-1200.
[Footnote 286: Cf. Neckam's references. (α) In his work,
_De Utensilibus_: "Qui ergo munitam vult habere navem ...
habeat etiam acum jaculo superpositam: rotabitur enim et
circumvolvetur, donec cuspis acus respiciat Septentrionem,
sicque comprehendent quo tendere debeant nautae, cum Cynosura
latet in aeris turbatione, quamvis ea occasum nunquam teneat
propter circuli brevitatem." (β) In his _De Naturis Rerum_,
c. 98: "Nautae ... mare legentes, cum beneficium claritatis
solis in tempore nubilo non sentiunt, aut ... cum caligine
... tenebrarum mundus obvolvitur, acum super magnetem ponunt,
quae circulariter circumvolvitur usque dum ejus motu cessante,
cuspis ipsius Septentrionalem Plagam respiciat."]
(2) Guyot de Provins, a satirist of Languedoc, in his poem, _La Bible_,
written about 1200, wishes the Pope would more nearly resemble the
Pole-star,[287] which always stands immovable in the firmament and
guides the sailor. Even in darkness and mist can the Pole-star make
itself felt. For the mariner has only to place in a vessel of water a
straw pierced by a needle which has been rubbed with a black and ugly
stone, that will draw iron to itself; and the point of the needle
unfailingly turns towards the Pole-star.
[Footnote 287: "La tresmontaine."]
(3) Jacques de Vitry, the French historian-bishop, writing about 1218,
in his _Historia Orientalis_, speaks of "the iron needle which always
turns to the North Star after it has touched the magnet" or
"adamant."[288]
[Footnote 288: "Acus ferrea, postquam adamantem contigerit, ad
stellam septentrionalem ... semper convertitur; unde valde
necessarium est navigantibus in mari."]
(4) "An unknown singer of the same period" speaks of sailors to
Friesland, Venice, Greece or Acre, finding in the Pole-star a sign-post
in heaven. Even in darkness and mist the star can still help them, for
it has the same power as the magnet of attracting iron. So mariners
attach an iron needle to a piece of cork and rub it with a black
lodestone. The cork and needle are then put into water, and never fail
to point to the north.
(5) Brunetto Latini, writing about 1260, tells how Roger Bacon showed
him[289] a magnet, a stone black and ugly, and explained its use. If one
rubbed a needle with it, and then put the needle, fixed to a straw, in
water, the point of the needle always turned towards "the Star." By this
the sailor could hold a straight course, whether the stars were visible
or no.
[Footnote 289: In Oxford, A.D. 1258. This is not a very
certain tradition.]
(6) In the _Landnamabok_, or Icelandic Book of Settlement, the main text
of which was finished before 1148, there occurs a passage, probably
added about 1300,[290] which describes a voyage of the ninth century
(_c._ 868) to Iceland, and explains the use of ravens to direct this
early course--"for at that time the sailors of the northern countries
had not yet any lodestone."
[Footnote 290: See Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 50. "The
_Landnamabok_ was written by Are Torgillson Frode, who died in
1148;" but "the passage here in question first occurs in a
copy or revision by Hauk Erlandsson, who lived at the end of
the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth."]
(7) The Arabic author of the _Baïlak el Kibjaki_, or "Handbook for
Merchants in the Science of Stones," relates how, in 1242, on a voyage
from Tripoli to Alexandria, he himself witnessed the use of the
polarized needle. He adds that Moslem merchants sailing to India,
instead of the magnet-needle attached to a straw, tube or cork, used a
hollow iron fish which, thrown into water, pointed north and south.
"Subsequently the instrument was improved by degrees, till it assumed
the shape of a box, containing a needle moving freely on a metal point,
and covered by a compass-rose." It is here probably that the share of
Amalfi is to be found,[291] and it may have been Flavio Gioja, or some
other citizen of the oldest commercial republic of Italy, who first
fitted the magnet into the box, and connected it with the compass-card,
thus making it generally and easily available.[292]
[Footnote 291: "Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis."]
[Footnote 292: Such a compass-box is figured on the margins of
some MSS. of Dati's _Sphera_ of the early fifteenth century.
See Nordenskjöld _Periplus_, p. 45.]
This it certainly was not in Latini's time. "No mariner could use it
(the polarized magnet), nor would sailors venture themselves to sea ...
with an instrument so like one of infernal make." In the latter part of
the thirteenth century, and not before, its use seems to have crept in
among Mediterranean pilots and captains, and in the course of the
fourteenth century it was almost universally accepted.
A mistake has been made on one point. The first scientific (or
portolano) type of map is generally associated with the first scientific
use of the magnet; but portolani began while men had not advanced beyond
the use of the primitive water-compass above described; and "accurate
determination by means of this" must have been very difficult on a
tossing sea. "A comparison of the contours of the Mediterranean,
according to various portolanos, with a modern chart, shows that the
normal portolano contained no mistake due to the misdirection of the
compass."[293] Nor do the earliest portolani contain any compass-roses
or wind-roses. Gradually these were introduced into the new charts,_
e.g._, they are found in the Catalan Atlas of 1375, in the Pinelli of
1384, and in many fifteenth-century portolani; but not till the
sixteenth century do we have a number of these roses drawn on the same
map-sheet.
[Footnote 293: _Periplus_, p. 47.]
The use of the quadrant by Prince Henry and his sailors is expressly
mentioned by Diego Gomez; but neither in this case, nor in that of the
compass, are we warranted in assuming (as some authorities have done)
that to the Infant is due the first use of astronomical instruments at
sea.
C. RAYMOND BEAZLEY.
13, THE PARAGON, BLACKHEATH.
_March 27th, 1899._
FACSIMILE OF PRINCE HENRY'S INITIAL SIGNATURE.
[I. D. A. = Iffante Dom Anrique.]
[Illustration: autograph]
[Illustration: map of western Africa
HAKLUYT. S. I. v. C]
AZURARA'S CHRONICLE
OF THE
DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF
GUINEA.
CHAPTER XLI.
How they took the ten Moors.
For that night there was no other agreement, save that each one took all
the rest he could; but on the next day they all joined together to
advise what they ought to do, for it was not a suitable place in which
to take prolonged repose. And the captains, falling to talk about the
matter, agreed among themselves that they should enter into their boats
with certain of their people, and Luis Affonso Cayado as captain (who
was to go along the shore), and that he should land with some of his
men, leaving with the boats another in his place. Then he was to make
his way by land with those men whom he took with him, and the boats were
to follow after him a short way from the beach, while the caravels came
two leagues behind, so as not to be discovered. And as they marched in
this order they fell in with the track of Moors who were going into the
Upland, and they went in doubt whether they should follow that track and
go after them, holding that it might be a perilous matter to enter so
far into the country where they had been now discovered, as they did not
know the people that might be in the land. But their will, which was now
burning to accomplish the affair, left no place to bare reason; and
without more fear they went forward till they arrived at a place about
three leagues further on where there were some few Moors, the which not
only lacked courage to defend themselves, but even the heart to fly. And
these were in all ten, counting men, women, and children.