WHAT PORTUGAL HAS DONE IN THE WORLD.
Mr. Lowington and the two vice–principals
had a hearty laugh over the misadventure of
poor Bill Stout, and then discussed their plans for the
future. The Prince had been in the river five days;
and the Josephines and Tritonias were all ready to
start for Badajos the next morning. It was Friday
night; and if the party left the next morning they would
be obliged to remain over Sunday at Badajos; or, if
they travelled all the next night, they would arrive at
Toledo on Sunday morning, and this was no place for
them to be on that day. It was decided that they
should remain on board of the Prince till Monday
morning, and that the Princes should go on board the
next morning to hear Professor’s Mapps’s lecture on
Portugal.
“Have you heard any thing of Raimundo or Lingall?”
asked the principal.
“Only what we got out of Stout,” replied Mr.
Pelham. “But he was too tipsy to tell a very straight
story.”
“I don’t see how he got tipsy so quick; for he must
have reached the Prince within fifteen or twenty minutes
after he left this hotel,” added Mr. Lowington. “However,
he told me all he knew—at least, I suppose he
did—about the others who ran away with him. It
seems that Raimundo did not leave the Tritonia, and
must have stowed himself away in the hold.”
“But we searched the hold very thoroughly,” said
Mr. Pelham.
“Did you look under the dunnage?”
“No, sir: he could not have got under that.”
“Probably he did,—made a hole in the ballast. He
must have had some one to help him,” suggested the
principal.
“If any one assisted him it must have been Hugo;
for, as he is a Spaniard, they were always very thick
together.”
“I have informed Don Francisco, the lawyer, that
Raimundo had gone to Oran; and I suppose he will
be on the lookout for him. I have also written to
Manuel Raimundo in New York. He must get my
letter in a day or two,” continued the principal. “It
is a very singular case; and I should as soon have
thought of Sheridan running away as Raimundo.”
“He must have had a strong reason for doing so,”
added the vice–principal of the Tritonia.
The next morning Mr. Pelham directed Peaks to
bring his prisoner into the cabin. Bill Stout did not
remember what he had said the night before; but he
had prepared a story for the present occasion.
“Good–morning, Stout,” the vice–principal began.
“How do you feel after your spree?”
“Pretty well, sir; I did not drink but once, and I
couldn’t help it then,” replied the culprit, beginning
to reel off the explanation he had got up for the occasion.
“You couldn’t help it? That’s very odd.”
“No, sir. I met a couple of sailors on shore, and
asked them if they could tell me where the American
Prince lay. They pointed the steamer out to me, and
they insisted that I should take a drink with them.
They wouldn’t take No for an answer, and I couldn’t
get off,” whined Bill; and he always whined when he
was in a scrape.
“Doubtless you gave them No for an answer,”
laughed Mr. Pelham.
“I certainly did; for I never take any thing. They
made me drink brandy; but I put very little into the
glass, and, as I am not used to liquor, it made me very
drunk.”
“One horn would not have made you as tipsy as you
were, Stout. I think you had better tell that story to
the other marines.”
“I am telling the truth, sir: I wouldn’t lie about it.”
“I think it is a bad plan to do so,” added the vice–principal.
“Then you were coming on board, were you?”
“Yes, sir: I wanted to see you, and own up.”
“Oh! that was your plan, was it?” laughed Mr. Pelham,
amused at the pickle into which the rascal was
putting himself.
“Yes, sir: I came from Valencia on purpose to give
myself up to you. I’m sorry I ran away. I got sick of
it in a day or two.”
“This was after Lingall left you, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir; but I was sorry for it before he left. We
were almost murdered in the felucca; and I had a hard
time of it.”
“And this made you penitent.”
“Yes, sir. I shall never run away again as long as I
live.”
“I hope you will not. And you came all the way
across Spain and Portugal to give yourself up to me,”
added Mr. Pelham. “You were so very anxious to
surrender to me, that you were not content to stay a
single night at the hotel with Mr. Lowington, who is
my superior.”
“I wanted to see you; and that’s the reason I left
the hotel, and came on board last night,” protested the
culprit.
“That’s a very good story, Stout; but for your sake
I am sorry it is only a story,” said the vice–principal.
“It is the truth, sir. I hope to”—
“No, no; stop!” interposed Mr. Pelham. “Don’t
hope any thing, except to be a better fellow. Your
story won’t hold water. I was at the gangway when
you came on board, and you told me that you wanted
to go to England.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying,” pleaded Bill,
taken aback by this answer.
“Yes, you did: you were not as tipsy as you might
have been; for, when I told you the steamer was not
going to England, you called your boatman back. It is
a plain case; and you can stay in the brig till the ship
returns to Barcelona.”
The lies did not help the case a particle; and somehow
every thing seemed to go wrong with Bill Stout,
but that was because he went wrong himself.
The boats were sent on ashore for the Princes; and
when they arrived all hands were called to attend the
lecture in the grand saloon.
“Young gentlemen, I am glad to meet you again,”
the professor began. “I have said all I need say about
the geography of the peninsula. Some of you have
been through Spain and Portugal, and have seen that
the natural features of the two countries are about the
same. The lack of industry and enterprise has had
the same result in both. The people are alike in one
respect, at least: each hates the other intensely. ‘Strip
a Spaniard of his virtues, and you have a Portuguese,’
says the Spanish proverb; but I fancy one is as good as
the other. There are plenty of minerals in the ground,
plenty of excellent soil, and plenty of fish in the waters
of Portugal; but none of the sources of wealth and
prosperity are used as in England, France, and the
United States. The principal productions are wheat,
wine, olive–oil, cork, wool, and fruit. Of the forty million
dollars’ worth of agricultural products, twelve are
in wine, ten in grain, and seven in wool. More than
two–thirds of the exports are to England.
“The population of Portugal is about four millions.
It has few large towns, only two having over fifty
thousand inhabitants. Lisbon has two hundred and
seventy–five thousand, and Oporto about ninety thousand.
Coimbra,—which has the only university in
the country,—Elvas, Evora, Braga, and Setubal, are
important towns. The kingdom has six provinces;
and we are now in Estremadura, as we were yesterday
morning, though it is not the same one.
“The government is a constitutional monarchy, not
very different from that of Spain. The present king
is Luis II. The army consists of about eighteen
thousand men; and the navy, of twenty–two steamers
and twenty–five sailing vessels. The colonial possessions
of Portugal have a population equal to the kingdom
itself.
“The money of Portugal will bother you.”
At this statement Sheridan and Murray looked at
each other, and laughed.
“You seem to be pleased, Captain Sheridan,” said
the professor. “Perhaps you have had some experience
with Portuguese money.”
“Yes, sir: I went into a store to buy some photographs;
and, when I asked the price of them, the man
told me it was one thousand six hundred and forty
_reis_. I concluded that I should be busted if I bought
that dozen pictures.”
“It takes about a million of those _reis_ to make a
dollar,” added Murray.
“But, when I came to figure up the price, I found it
was only a dollar and sixty–four cents,” continued
Sheridan.
“A naval officer who dined a party of his friends
in this very city, when he found the bill was twenty–seven
thousand five hundred _reis_, exclaimed that he
was utterly ruined, for he should never be able to pay
such a bill; but it was only twenty–seven dollars and a
half. You count the _reis_ at the rate of ten to a cent
of our money,—a thousand to a dollar. About all the
copper and silver money has a number on the coin that
indicates its value in _reis_. For large sums, the count
is given in _milreis_, which means a thousand _reis_. The
gold most in use is the English sovereign, which
passes for forty–five hundred _reis_. We will now give
some attention to the history of the country.
“Portugal makes no great figure on the map of
Europe. Looking at this narrow strip of territory,
one would naturally suppose that its history would not
fill a very large volume. But small states have had
their history told in voluminous works; and Portugal
happens to belong to this class. There are histories
and chronicles of this country in the Portuguese, Spanish,
Italian, French, English, and Latin languages, not
to mention some Arabic works which I have not had
time to examine,” continued the professor, with a
smile. “Some of these works consist of from ten to
thirty volumes. Even the discoveries and conquests
of this people in the East and West require quite a
number of large volumes; for there was a time when
Portugal filled a large place in the eye of the world,
though that time was short, hardly reaching through
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
“But the history of this country does not begin at
all till the eleventh century. There was, indeed, the
old Roman province of Lusitania, which corresponded
very nearly in size with modern Portugal, except that
the latter extends farther north and not so far east.
The ancient Lusitanians were a warlike people; and
a hundred and fifty years before our era they gave
the Romans a great deal of trouble to conquer them.
Under Viriathus, the most famous of all the Lusitanians,
they routed several Roman armies; and might
have held their ground for many years longer, if their
hero had not been treacherously murdered by his own
countrymen.
“The lines of the old Roman provinces were not
preserved after the barbarians, of whom I have spoken
to you before, entered the peninsula in the fifth century.
The Arabs occupied this province with the rest
of the peninsula, after the defeat and death of King
Roderick, or Don Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic kings
of Spain; and held it till near the close of the eleventh
century, a part of it somewhat later. In 1095 Alfonso
VI., of Castile and Leon, bestowed a part of what is
now Portugal upon his son–in–law, Henri of Burgundy,
who had fought with Alfonso against the Moors, and
seemed to have the ability to protect the country given
him from the inroad of the Moslems. The region
granted to Henri extended only from the Minho to
the Tagus; and its capital was Coimbra, for Lisbon
was then a Moorish city. The new ruler was called a
count; and he had the privilege of conquering the
country as far south as the Guadiana. His son Dom
Alfonso defeated the Moors in a great battle near the
Tagus, and was proclaimed king of Portugal on the
battle–field. This was in the time of the crusades;
but Spain and Portugal had infidels enough to fight at
home, without going to the Holy Land, where hundreds
of thousands were sent to die by other countries
of Europe. Other additions were made to the
country during the next century; but since the middle
of the thirteenth century, when Sancho II. died, no
increase has been made in the peninsula. The wealth
and power of Portugal at a later period were derived
from her colonies in America, Asia, and Africa.
“John I.—Dom João, in Portuguese—led an expedition
against Ceuta, a Moorish stronghold just across
the Strait of Gibraltar, and captured the place. After
this began their wonderful series of discoveries, which
brought the whole world to the knowledge of Europe.
But the Portuguese were not the first to carry on commerce
by sea. Though merchandise had been mainly
transported by land in the East, there was some trade
on the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and on the
Indian Ocean. It does not appear that the Phœnicians,
the Carthaginians, or the Greeks, ever sailed on the
Baltic Sea; and, though the Romans explored some
parts of it, they never went far enough to ascertain that
it was bounded on all sides by land.
“The Eastern Empire of the middle ages, with its
capital at Constantinople, carried on a much more extensive
commerce than was ever known to the Romans
in the days of their universal dominion. At first the
goods brought from the East Indies were imported into
Europe from Alexandria; but, when Egypt was conquered
by the Arabs, a new route had to be found.
Merchandise was conveyed up the Indus as far as that
great river was navigable, then across the land to the
Oxus, now the Amoo, flowing into the Sea of Aral, but
then having a channel to the Caspian. From the
mouth of this river it was carried over the Caspian Sea,
and up the Volga, to about the point where there is now
a railroad connecting this river with the Don. Then
it was transported by land again to the Don, and taken
in vessels by the Black Sea to Constantinople. The
Suez Canal, opened this present year, makes an easy
and expeditious route by water for steamers, connecting
all the ports of Europe with those of India.
“During this period another commercial state was
growing up. After the fall of the Roman empire, when
the Huns under Attila were ravaging Italy, the inhabitants
of Venetia fled for safety to the group of islands
near the northern shore of the Adriatic, and laid the
foundation of the illustrious city and state of Venice.
The people of the city soon began to fit out small merchant
fleets, which they sent to all parts of the Mediterranean,
and particularly to Syria and Egypt, after
spices and other products of Arabia and India. Soon
after, the city of Genoa, on the other side of Italy,
became a rival of Venice in this trade, and Florence
and Pisa followed their example; but the Venetians,
having some natural advantages, outstripped their rivals
in the end, and became a great military and commercial
power. The crusades, in which others wasted life and
treasure, were a source of wealth to these Italian cities.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the commerce
of Europe was almost wholly confined to the
Italians. The merchants of Italy scattered themselves
in every kingdom; and the Lombards (for this was the
name by which they were known) became the merchants
and bankers everywhere. After a time, however, the
commercial spirit began to develop itself, and to make
progress in other parts of Europe; but, up to the
fifteenth century, vessels were accustomed, in their
voyages, to creep along the coast; and, though it was
known that the magnetic needle points constantly to
the North Pole, no use was made of this knowledge for
purposes of navigation.
“In 1415 the commercial spirit had reached Portugal;
and the Ceuta expedition was undertaken quite
as much in the interest of trade as of religion, for the
place was held by pirates who were daily disturbing
Portuguese commerce. Immense treasures fell to the
victors as the reward of their enterprise.
“Dom Henrique, or Henry, the son of King John,
afterwards so famous in the history of his country, had
a decided taste for study. He was an able mathematician,
and made himself master of all the astronomy
known to the Arabians, who were then the best mathematicians
of Europe. Henry also studied the works
of the ancients. At this period Ptolemy was the highest
authority in geography; and he taught that the African
Continent reached to the South Pole. But Henry had
read the ancient accounts of the circumnavigation of
Africa by the Phœnicians and others; and he believed,
that, whether these voyages had or had not been made,
good ships might sail around the southern point of the
continent. If this could be done, the Portuguese would
find a way to India by sea, and thus control the entire
trade of the East.
“The prince had many obstacles to overcome. Vessels
in that day were not built for the open sea; and
every headland and far–stretching cape seemed to be an
impossible barrier. There was a notion that near the
equator was a burning zone, where the very waters of
the ocean actually boiled under the intolerable heat of
the sun. A superstition also prevailed, that whoever
doubled Cape Bojador—on the coast of Africa, about
a thousand miles south of Lisbon—would never return;
and it was feared that the burning zone would change
those who entered it into negroes, thus dooming them
to wear the black marks of their temerity to the grave.
“The first voyage undertaken under the direction of
Prince Henry was in 1419, and covered only five
degrees of latitude. The expedition was driven out to
sea and landed at a small island north–east of Madeira,
which they named Porto Santo. The next year three
vessels were sent for a longer voyage. This fleet
reached the dreaded cape, and discovered Madeira.
On the next voyage they doubled Cape Bojador; and,
having exploded the superstition, in the course of a
few years they advanced four hundred leagues farther,
and discovered the Senegal River. Here they found
men with woolly hair and skins as black as ebony;
and they began to dread a nearer approach to the
equator.
“When they returned, their countrymen with one
voice attempted to dissuade Prince Henry from any
further attempts; but he would hear of no delay. He
applied to Pope Eugene IV.; and, representing that his
chief object was the pious wish to spread a knowledge
of the Christian faith among the idolatrous people of
Africa, he obtained a bull conferring on the people of
Portugal the exclusive right to all the countries they
had discovered, or might discover, between Cape Nun—about
three hundred miles north of Cape Bojador—and
India. Such a donation may appear ridiculous
enough to us; but it was never doubted then that the
pope had ample right to bestow such a gift; and for
a long time all the powers of Europe considered the
right of the Portuguese to be good, and acknowledged
their title to almost the whole of Africa. About this
time Prince Henry died, and little progress was made
in discovery for some years. But the Portuguese had
begun to push boldly out to sea, and had lost all dread
of the burning zone.
“In the reign of John II., from 1481 to 1495, discoveries
were pushed with greater vigor than ever before.
The Cape de Verde Islands were colonized; and
the Portuguese ships, which had advanced to the coast
of Guinea, began to return with cargoes of gold–dust,
ivory, gums, and other valuable products. It was during
the reign of this monarch that Columbus visited
Lisbon, and offered his services to Portugal; and it
appears that the king was inclined to listen to the plans
of the great navigator, but he was dissuaded from
doing so by his own courtiers.
“The revenue derived at this time from the African
coast became so important that John feared the vessels
of other nations might be attracted to it. To prevent
this, the voyages there were represented as being in the
highest degree dangerous, and even impossible except
in the peculiar vessels used by the Portuguese. The
monarchs of Castile had some idea of what was going
on, and were very eager to learn more; and in one
case came very near succeeding. A Portuguese captain
and two pilots, in the hope of a rich reward, set
out for Castile to dispose of the desired information;
but they were pursued by the king’s agents. When
overtaken, they refused to return; but two of them
were killed on the spot, and the other brought back to
Evora and quartered. The attempt of a rich Spaniard,
the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to build vessels in English
ports for the African trade, turned out no better.
King John reminded the English king, Edward IV., of
the ancient alliance between the two crowns; and so
these preparations were prohibited.
“In 1497 a Portuguese fleet under Vasco de Gama
doubled the Cape of Good Hope, or the Cape of
Storms as they called it then; and soon the voyagers
began to hear the Arabian tongue spoken on the other
shore of the continent, and found that they had nearly
circumnavigated Africa. At length, with the aid of
Mohammedan pilots, they passed the mouths of the
Arabian and Persian Gulfs, and, stretching along the
western coast of India, arrived, after a cruise of thirteen
months, at Calicut, on the shore of Malabar, less
than three hundred miles from the southern point of
the peninsula.
“The Court of Lisbon now appointed a viceroy to
rule over new countries discovered. Expeditions followed
each other in rapid succession; and, in less than
half a century more, the Portuguese were masters of
the entire trade of the Indian Ocean. Their flag floated
triumphantly along the shores of Africa from Morocco
to Abyssinia, and on the Asiatic coast from Arabia
to Siam; not to mention the vast regions of Brazil,
which this nation began to colonize about the same
time. These conquests were not made without opposition;
but the Portuguese were as remarkable for
their valor as for their enterprise, in those days; and,
for a time, their prowess was too much for their enemies
in Africa, in India, and even in Europe. The
Venetians, who had lost the trade between India and
Europe, were of course their enemies; and the Sultan
of Egypt was hostile when he found that he was about
to lose the profitable trade that passed through Alexandria.
These two powers joined hands; and the
Venetians sent from Italy to the head of the Red Sea,
at an immense expense, the materials for building a
fleet to meet and destroy the Portuguese vessels on
their passage to India. But, as soon as this fleet was
ready for active operations, it was attacked and destroyed
by the Portuguese navy.
“Thus the Portuguese were masters of an empire on
which the sun never set. It reached the height of its
glory in the reign of John III., from 1521 to 1557. He
was succeeded by his son Dom Sebastian, who made
several expeditions against the Moors in Africa. In
the last of these, he was utterly routed, his army destroyed,
and he perished on the battle–field. This
disaster seemed to initiate the decline of Portugal;
and it continued to run down till it was only the shadow
of its former greatness.
“Concerning Dom Sebastian, a very remarkable
superstition prevails, even at the present time, in
Portugal, to the effect that he will return, resume the
crown, and restore the realm to its former greatness.
For nearly two hundred years this belief has existed,
and was almost universal at one time, not among the
ignorant only, but in all classes of society. It was
claimed that he was not killed in the battle, though his
body was recognized by his page, and that he will come
back as the temporal Messiah of Portugal. Several
persons have appeared who have claimed to be the
prince, the most remarkable of whom turned up at
Venice twenty years after the prince’s presumed death.
He told a very straight story; but the Senate of Venice
banished him, and he was afterwards imprisoned in
Naples and Florence for insisting upon the truth of his
statements. He finally died in Castile; and many believed
that he was not an impostor. Several times have
been fixed for his coming; but it is not likely that he
will be able to put in an appearance, on account of the
two hundred years that have elapsed since he was in
the flesh.
“As Sebastian did not come back from Africa, his
uncle Henry assumed the crown; and at his death, as
he had no direct heirs, Philip II., the Prince of Parma,
and the Duchess of Braganza, claimed the throne, as
did several others; but Philip settled the question by
sending the Duke of Alva into Portugal, and taking
forcible possession of the kingdom. In 1580, therefore,
the whole of the vast dominions I have described
were annexed to the Spanish empire. This connection
lasted for sixty years; and the Portuguese call it ‘the
sixty years’ captivity.’ During this time the people
were never satisfied with their government, and in 1640
got up a revolution, and placed the Duke of Braganza
on the throne, under the title of John IV. This was
the beginning of the house of Braganza, which has held
the throne up to the present time.
“Even in the seventeenth century Portugal had fallen
from her high estate. She had lost part of her possessions
and all her prestige; and from that time till
the present she has had no great weight in European
politics. Some of her colonial territories returned to
the original owners, while others were taken by the
Dutch, the English, and the Spaniards. For two centuries
the most remarkable events in her history have
been misfortunes. In 1755 an earthquake destroyed
half the city of Lisbon, and buried thirty thousand
people under its ruins. It came in two shocks, the
second of which left the city a pile of ruins. Thousands
of men and women fled from the falling walls to the
quays on the river. Suddenly the ground under them
sank with all the crowd upon it; and not one of the
bodies ever came up. At the same time all the boats
and vessels, loaded down with fugitives from the ruin,
were sucked in by a fearful whirlpool; and not a vestige
of them returned to the surface.
“Fifty–five years later came the French Revolution;
in the results of which Portugal was involved. In
1807 she entered into an alliance with Great Britain;
and Napoleon decided to wipe off the kingdom from
the map of Europe. A French army was sent to
Lisbon; and at its approach the Court left for Brazil,
where it remained for several years. An English army
arrived at Oporto the next year; and with these events
began the peninsular war. The struggle lasted till
1812, and many great battles were fought in this kingdom.
The country was desolated by the strife, and the
sufferings of the people were extremely severe. Subscriptions
were raised for them in England and elsewhere;
and Sir Walter Scott wrote ‘The Vision of Don
Roderick’ in aid of the sufferers.
“In 1821 Brazil declared her independence; but it
was not acknowledged by Portugal till 1825. After
fourteen years of absence, the Court—John VI. was
king, having succeeded to the throne while in Brazil—returned
to Portugal. During this period the home
kingdom was practically a colony of Brazil; and the
people were dissatisfied with the arrangement. A constitution
was made, and the king accepted it. He had
left his son as regent of Brazil, and he was proclaimed
emperor of that country as Pedro I. He was the father
of the present emperor, Pedro II.
“John VI. died in 1826. His legitimate successor
was Pedro of Brazil; but he gave the crown to his
daughter Maria. Before she could get possession of it,
Dom Miguel, a younger son of John VI., usurped the
throne. As he did not pay much deference to the constitution,
the people revolted; and civil war raged for
several years. Pedro, having abdicated the crown of
Brazil in favor of his son, came to Portugal in 1832,
to look after the interests of his daughter. He was
made regent,—Maria da Gloria was only thirteen years
old,—and with the help of England, cleaned out the
Miguelists two years later. The little queen was declared
of age at fifteen, and took the oath to support
the constitution. She died in 1853; and her son,
Pedro V., became king when he was fifteen. But he
lived only eight years after his accession, and was
followed by his brother, Luis I., the present king.
There have been several insurrections since the Miguelists
were disposed of, but none since 1851. The
royal family have secured the affections of the people;
for the sons of Maria have proved to be wise and sensible
men. The finances are in bad condition; for the
expense of the government exceeds the income every
year. Now you have heard, and you may go and see
for yourselves.”