1295-1487.
In the opulent and insular city of Venice, there arrived, a few years
before the close of the thirteenth century, three strangely clad
sun-embrowned men. If any notice had been taken of them when they
disembarked from the Mediterranean galley in which they had come from
Negropont, this attention had, it is likely, been bestowed upon their odd
garb and imperfect pronunciation of the Italian words which they used
while obtaining a boatman to convey them to that part of the city known
as the confine of S. Giovanni Crisostomo.
The unique story respecting the return of these famous travellers to
Venice will always be deemed the prologue that introduces the notable
acts of the explorers of the Atlantic coast territory of America in the
fifteenth century. It is therefore properly entitled to a conspicuous
place on the first pages of the history of the discovery of America.
Five centuries ago it charmed the Venetians with its vivid colorings,
and gave to the Orient an entrancing vision that made the name of Cathay
for a time a synonym for an earthly paradise. It pictured to them a
far-off El Dorado, abounding with gold, gems, and spicery, a country
naturally delightful and artificially magnificent. America lay in some
of the navigable ways which were sought by acquisitive Europeans to go
to it, and thus the return of Nicolò, Maffeo, and Marco Polo, in 1295,
to Venice, after an absence of twenty-four years, is inseparably linked
to the great chain of events connecting it with the discovery of the
new continent of the western hemisphere.[74] Ramusio, the distinguished
Italian collector of information relating to voyages and travels, has
preserved the account of the strange revelations made by the three
travellers on their return from Cathay.[75]
“When they arrived here the same fate befell them which happened to
Ulysses, who, when he returned after his twenty years’ wanderings to his
native Ithaca, was recognized by none of his people. In like manner these
three gentlemen, who had been absent so many years from their native
city, were not identified by any of their kinsfolk, who believed that
they had been dead for many years, as had been reported. They were quite
changed in appearance by the prolongation and hardships of their journeys
and by the trouble and anxieties they had experienced; and they had a
certain indescribable smack of the Tartar both in demeanor and accent,
having indeed almost forgotten their Venetian tongue. Their clothes, too,
were coarse and shabby, and of a Tartar cut. They proceeded on their
arrival to their house, in this city, in the confine of S. Giovanni
Crisostomo, where you may see it to this day. The house, which in those
days was a lofty and handsome palace, is now known by the name of the
Court of the Millions, for a reason which I will tell you presently.
“When they reached the palace, they found it occupied by some of their
relatives, and they had the utmost difficulty in making the latter
understand who they were. For these good people seeing them to be in
appearance so unlike what they were formerly, and in dress so shabby,
flatly refused to believe that they were those very gentlemen of the
Polo family whom they thought had been dead many years. So these three
gentlemen,—this is a story I have often heard when I was a boy from the
illustrious Messere Gasparo Malpiero, a gentleman of very great age and
a senator of eminent virtue and integrity, whose house was on the canal
of Santa Marianna, at the corner, over the mouth of the brook of S.
Giovanni Crisostomo, and just midway among the buildings of the aforesaid
Court of the Millions, and he said he had heard the story from his own
father and grandfather, and from other old men among the neighbors,—the
three gentlemen, I say, devised a scheme by which they should obtain at
once from their kinsfolk the recognition they desired, and secure the
honorable notice of the whole city; and this was it:
“They invited a number of their kindred to an entertainment, which they
purposely prepared with great state and splendor in their house. When the
hour arrived for sitting down to table all three came from their chambers
clothed in crimson satin, fashioned in long robes reaching to the ground,
such as people in those days wore within doors. And when water for the
hands had been served, and the guests were seated, they took off these
robes and put on others of crimson damask, while the first suits were by
their orders cut and divided among the servants. Then after partaking
of some of the dishes they went out again and came back in robes of
crimson velvet, and when they had again taken their seats, the second
suits were divided as the first. When dinner was over they did the like
with the robes of velvet, after they had put on dresses of the ordinary
fashion worn by their guests. These proceedings caused much wonder and
amazement among their relatives. But when the cloth had been drawn, and
all the servants had been ordered to retire from the dining-hall, Messere
Marco, the youngest of the three, rose from the table, and going into
another chamber brought forth the three shabby dresses of coarse stuff
which they had worn when they first arrived. Straightway they took sharp
knives and began to rip open some of the seams and welts, and to take
out of them many gems of the greatest value, such as rubies, sapphires,
carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds, all of which had been stitched up in
these dresses in a manner so artful that nobody could have suspected the
fact. For when they took leave of the Grand Khan they changed all the
wealth which he had bestowed upon them for these rubies, emeralds, and
other gems, being well aware of the impossibility of carrying with them
so great an amount of gold on a journey so long and so difficult.
“Now the exhibition of this large number of gems and precious stones,
all scattered over the table, threw the guests into fresh amazement,
insomuch that they seemed quite bewildered and speechless. They now saw
that in spite of all their former doubts these were really the honored
and worthy gentlemen of the Polo family as they had claimed to be, and
they therefore paid them the greatest honor and reverence. And when the
story became current in Venice, straightway the whole city, gentle and
simple, flocked to the house to embrace them, and to make much of them,
with every conceivable demonstration of affection and respect.
“On Messere Maffeo, who was the eldest, the Venetians conferred the
honors of an office which was of great dignity in those days; while the
young men came daily to visit and converse with the ever-polite and
gracious Messere Marco, and to ask him questions about Cathay[76] and the
Grand Khan, all of which he answered with such kindly courtesy that every
man felt himself in a manner his debtor. And as it happened that in the
story, which he was constantly called on to repeat, of the magnificence
of the Grand Khan, he would speak of his revenues as amounting to ten
or fifteen millions of gold; and in like manner, when recounting other
instances of great wealth in those parts, he would always make use of the
term millions, so they gave him the nickname of Messere Marco Millioni,
an appellation which I have seen in the public records of this republic
where mention is made of him. The court of his house, in the confine of
S. Giovanni Crisostomo, has always from that time been known as the Corte
del Millioni.”[77]
These conversational descriptions respecting the remote dominions of
the Grand Khan, with which Marco Polo often interested the imaginative
Venetians, were to have a much wider field of influence in another
form,—one which was a most potent element among the leading agencies
which opened to the people of Western Europe great pathways of discovery
and of commerce around the earth. In order to perceive how these
descriptions of Cathay led to the exploration of the Atlantic Ocean
and the discovery of the continent of America, the fortunes of Marco
Polo must be followed farther. It appears that shortly after his return
to Venice he was placed in command of a fleet, which subsequently was
captured by the Genoese in a naval engagement. While confined in Genoa
as a prisoner of war, his remarkable adventures as an explorer of remote
eastern countries became known, and he was often visited and questioned
by inquisitive people. Wearied by the frequent repetition of the story
of his wanderings in Cathay, he at last applied himself to writing an
account of his extensive journeys by the aid of such notes and memoranda
as he had taken while in the East. Assisted by a Genoese gentleman, he
completed his curious and instructive narrative, which was soon copied,
translated into different languages, and distributed among the people of
Europe.[78]
As justly claimed by Yule, Marco Polo was the first traveller “to trace a
route across the longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after
kingdom which he had seen with his own eyes; the deserts of Persia, the
flowering plateaux and wild gorges of Badakhshan, the jade-bearing rivers
of Khotan, the Mongolian steppes, ... the new and brilliant court that
had been established at Cambaluc; the first traveller to reveal China
in all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge cities, its
rich manufactures, its swarming population, the inconceivably vast fleets
that quickened its seas and its inland waters; to tell us of the nations
on its borders with all their eccentricities of manners and worship;
of Tibet with its sordid devotees; of Burma, with its golden pagodas
and their tinkling crowns; of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin China, of Japan,
the Eastern Thule, with its rosy pearls and golden-roofed palaces; the
first to speak of that museum of beauty and wonder, still so imperfectly
ransacked, the Indian archipelago, source of aromatics then so highly
prized and whose origin was so dark; of Java, the pearl of islands;
of Sumatra with its many kings, its strange costly products, and its
cannibal races; of the naked savages of Nicobar and Andaman; of Ceylon,
the isle of gems, with its sacred mountain and its tomb of Adam; of India
the great, not as a dreamland of Alexandrian fables but as a country
seen and partially explored, with its virtuous Brahmans, its obscene
ascetics, its diamonds and the strange tales of their acquisition, its
sea-beds of pearl, and its powerful sun; the first in medieval times to
give any distinct account of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia
and the semi-Christian island of Socotra; to speak, though indeed dimly,
of Zanzibar with its negroes and its ivory, and of the vast and distant
Madagascar, bordering on the dark ocean of the South, with its ruc and
other monstrocities; and, in a remotely opposite region, of Siberia
and the Arctic Ocean, of dog-sledges, white bears, and reindeer-riding
Tunguses.”[79]
Never before had the people of Europe heard of such extraordinary wealth
and unlimited resources as existed in the far-off countries visited by
Marco Polo. His novel descriptions of stately, gold-covered palaces,
of the royal magnificence of the entertainments of the Grand Khan, of
the intoxicating fragrance of an endless profusion of rare flowers,
of luscious fruits and sweet spicery, of heavily laden argosies of
valuable merchandise floating on noble rivers, and of vast collections of
gold, silver, and precious stones, were read with the most exaggerated
conceptions of their reality. These enchanting details respecting Cathay
and the adjacent countries were fully confirmed in the fourteenth century
by Sir John Mandeville, who, in 1322, departed from England, and after
an absence of thirty-four years in different countries returned to
write, in Latin, in French, and in English, a narrative of his extended
travels.[80]
Dazzled by the splendor of the Orient the people of Western Europe were
eager to enter into commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of
Cathay. But there were innumerable barriers, both natural and political,
obstructing all the overland ways to the East. Chief among the obstacles
classed as political was the selfish exclusiveness of the different
governments possessing the intervening territory. Had there been no
national opposition to the establishment of a protected system of
overland commerce between Western Europe and Eastern Asia, the distance
was too great to be travelled over by slowly moving caravans.
As early as the year 1343 the aggressive enterprise of the Venetians had
obtained from the sultan of Egypt the exclusive privilege of sending
ships to trade in the ports of that country and of Syria. The merchants
of Venice thereupon established commercial agencies at Alexandria and
Damascus. Their factors penetrated Central and Southern Asia, and became
active participants in the remunerative traffic of those regions. The
prized productions of the islands in the Indian Ocean, such as pepper,
cinnamon, cloves, and other spices, were transported by them to Venice
and distributed through Europe. Although the ocean along the western
and southern coast of Africa to the East was believed to be navigable,
no attempt was made in the fourteenth century to sail by it to the
Moluccas or Spice Islands. Concerning the early navigation of the
sea-path along the coast of Africa, from the Pillars of Hercules to the
Arabian Sea, Herodotus says that when Necho, king of Egypt, “had ceased
digging the canal leading from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he sent
certain Phœnicians in ships, with orders to sail between the Pillars of
Hercules into the Northern Sea [the Mediterranean], and so to return to
Egypt. These Phœnicians, taking their course from the Red Sea, entered
the Southern Ocean. On the approach of autumn they landed in Libya
[Africa], and planted some corn in the place where they happened to find
themselves. When this was ripe, and they had cut it down, they again
departed. Having thus consumed two years, they in the third doubled the
Pillars of Hercules, and returned to Egypt. Their account may obtain
attention from others, but to me it seems incredible, for they affirmed,
that having sailed around Libya, they had the sun on their right hand.
Thus was Libya for the first time known.”[81]
Pliny, the celebrated encyclopedist of ancient times, says that “while
the power of Carthage was at its height, Hanno published an account of
a voyage which he made from Gades [Cadiz, Spain], to the extremity of
Arabia.[82] ... Besides, we learn from Cornelius Nepos, that one Eudoxus,
a contemporary of his, when he was fleeing from King Lathyrus, set out
from the Arabian Gulf, and was carried as far as Gades.[83] And long
before him, Cælius Antipater informs us that he had seen a person who
had sailed from Spain to Æthiopia for the purpose of trade. The same
Cornelius Nepos, when speaking of the northern circumnavigation, tells us
that Q. Metellus Celer, the colleague of L. Afranius in the consulship,
but then a proconsul in Gaul,[84] had a present made to him by the king
of the Suevi,[85] of certain Indians, who, sailing from India for the
purpose of commerce, had been driven by tempests to Germany.”[86]
These statements were quoted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to
support the growing belief that India could be reached in a short time by
sailing round the coast of Africa. But the want of nautical instruments
restrained seamen from undertaking a voyage which carried them beyond the
sight of familiar coasts and beneath new constellations. It was extremely
perilous for European navigators to attempt to sail to India before they
had acquired a knowledge of the use of the mariner’s compass and of the
astrolabe. The polarity of the magnet was known among oriental nations
several centuries before the Christian era. The use of the magnetic
needle for the guidance of vessels, however, did not become popular in
Europe until as late as the fourteenth century.[87] The slowness with
which its use grew into favor with European seamen is ascribable to the
prevailing superstition which hung like a darkening cloud over the minds
of the people. The strange conservatism of the age is well described in
a letter written, as it seems, in the year 1258, by Brunetto Latini, a
learned Italian, Dante’s tutor, to Guido Cavalcanti of Florence. Speaking
of his visit to Roger Bacon, the English philosopher and monk, at Oxford,
England, he says:
“The Parliament being summoned to assemble at Oxford, I did not fail
to see Friar Bacon as soon as I arrived, and [among other things] he
showed me a black ugly stone, called a magnet, which has the surprising
property of drawing iron to it; and upon which, if a needle be rubbed,
and afterwards fastened to a straw, so that it shall swim upon water,
the needle will instantly turn toward the pole-star; therefore, be the
night ever so dark, so that neither moon nor star be visible, yet shall
the mariner be able, by the help of the needle, to steer his vessel
aright.[88]
“This discovery, which appears useful in so great a degree to all who
travel by sea, must remain concealed until other times, because no
master-mariner dares to use it lest he should fall under a supposition of
his being a magician; nor would even the sailors venture themselves out
to sea under his command if he took with him an instrument which carries
so great an appearance of being constructed under the influence of some
infernal spirit. A time may come when these prejudices, which are of such
great hindrance to researches into the secrets of nature, will probably
be no more; and then it will be that mankind shall reap the benefit of
the labors of such learned men as Friar Bacon, and do justice to that
industry and intelligence for which he and they now meet with no other
return than obloquy and reproach.”[89]
About the beginning of the fourteenth century, Flavia Gioja of Amalfi,
in Naples, devised what were then known as the eight points of the
superficies—the four cardinal and the four intermediate points of the
compass-card.[90] From this time forward the use of the magnet gradually
found favor with European seamen.
The most enthusiastic projector of voyages of discovery undertaken to
ascertain the character of the land and water divisions of the earth, in
the early part of the fifteenth century, was Prince Henry, the son of
King John I. of Portugal.[91] When twenty-one years of age, he witnessed,
in 1415, the taking of Ceuta, on the northern coast of Africa, opposite
the southern extremity of Portugal. While at this opulent city, he
learned from its merchants and traders that the continent extended far
southward and was inhabited by many strange people. Fixing his residence
on the promontory of Sagres, at the southwestern extremity of Portugal,
he began to send the most experienced seamen in the service of Portugal
to explore the western coast of Africa. For a time Cape de Não, in north
latitude, 28° 45´ was considered the limit of safe navigation. It was a
common saying among Portuguese seamen, that “He who should pass Cabo
de Não, either will return or not.”[92] Beyond it was Cape Bojador, in
26° 12´ north latitude. This rocky headland, for a time, was also deemed
perilous and impassable. “Beyond this cape” it was said, “there is no
people whatever; the ground is as barren as that of Libya,—no water,
no trees, no grass in it; the sea is so shallow that at a league from
the land it is only a fathom deep; the currents are so strong that a
ship passing the cape cannot return.”[93] The attempts made by Prince
Henry’s mariners to double the two capes are thus commented upon by
Antonio Galvano, the Portuguese historian,[94] in his treatise respecting
the routes by which spices came from India to the year 1550: “In those
days none of the Portuguese had yet passed Cabo de Não in 29 degrees of
latitude.” But after it was doubled, “when they came to another cape
named Bojador, there was not one of them that dared to risk his life
beyond it. The prince was exceedingly displeased with their want of
confidence and unmanly timidity.”[95] Of the number of seamen that had
made unsuccessful attempts to pass the cape was Gil Eannes. Disappointed
as Prince Henry was by these failures to accomplish that which he had
ordered them to do, he nevertheless gave his timorous navigators all the
encouragement he could to induce them to make other and more persistent
efforts to double the formidable headland. In 1434, he again sent Gil
Eannes to explore the coast beyond Cape Bojador. Before the latter
departed the prince endeavored to dispel the terrifying fancies that
might deter him from attempting to prosecute the undertaking for which he
was commissioned. “You cannot incur such peril” said the prince, “that
the promised reward shall not be commensurate thereto. It is very strange
to me that you should be governed by a fear of something of which you are
ignorant, for if the things reported had any authentication, I should not
find fault with you for believing them. The stories of the four seamen
driven out of their course to Flanders or to the ports to which they were
sailing are not to be credited, for they had not and could not have used
the needle and the chart. But do you go notwithstanding, and make your
voyage without being influenced by their opinions, and, by the grace of
God, you will not fail to secure, by your enterprise, both honor and
compensation.”[96] Gil Eannes followed the advice of his sanguine patron,
and succeeded the same year in doubling Cape Bojador and in exploring a
part of the coast beyond it.
South of Cape Bojador it was believed that a zone of scorching heat
would be entered by vessels sailing toward the equator. Pliny adverts
to it in these words: “The middle of the earth, over which is the path
of the sun, is parched and set on fire by the luminary, and is consumed
by being so near the heat. There are only two of the zones which are
temperate—those which lie between the torrid and the frigid zones—and
these are separated from each other, in consequence of the scorching
heat of the heavenly bodies.”[97] Conceiving this statement to be as
fallacious as many other declarations of the early geographers had been,
Prince Henry, in 1454, sent Luigi da Cadamosto, a Venetian navigator,
to explore the coast beyond Cape Bojador so long invested with so many
imaginary terrors. In 1462 Pedro de Cintra sailed three hundred miles
beyond Sierre Leone.
As it was necessary for seamen to know the latitude and longitude of the
places to which they desired to sail, another nautical instrument besides
the mariner’s compass was needed by them.[98] The adaptation of an
instrument called the astrolabe, by which the latitudes of places could
be determined, apparently originated with King John II. of Portugal.[99]
It is said that “when Prince Henry began the discovery of Guinea that all
mariners were accustomed to sail along the coasts, and that they always
steered their courses by observing the physical features of the land,
which are still used as guides.”
“This method of navigating permitted them to make voyages from place to
place; but when they wished to sail in the open sea, losing sight of the
coast and standing out on the wide ocean, they perceived the numerous
errors they had made in calculating and judging the day’s run, for they
had been accustomed to allow so much way to the ship in the twenty-four
hours on account of the currents and the other mysteries of the sea,
the facts of which are clearly demonstrated by navigating by altitude.
But as necessity is the teacher of all arts, in the time of King John
II., the matter of navigation was assigned by him to Master Roderic,
and Master Joseph, a Jew, (who were his physicians,) and to one Martin
of Bohemia, a native of those parts, who boasted of being a pupil of
John of Monteregius, a famous astronomer among the professors of that
science,[100] and these devised the way of navigating by the sun’s
altitude, and they made tables of his declination such as are now used
by navigators, now more complete than they were at the beginning when the
great wooden astrolabes were first used.”[101]
This novel and serviceable nautical instrument, first made of wood and
of a triangular shape, was soon in general use on Portuguese vessels.
The astrolabe was improved from time to time. At the beginning of the
seventeenth century, when the French seaman, Samuel de Champlain, was
exploring the St. Lawrence River and its tributaries, it was a disk
of brass, having one of its faces marked with degrees and minutes. A
brass rule, called a label, with sight-holes, turning upon a pivot at
the centre of the instrument, moved over the marked circumference of
the disk. At the zenith part of the instrument there was a small ring
by which it could be suspended from the thumb of the person taking an
observation. When used the astrolabe was turned to the sun, so that his
rays could freely pass through the two sight-holes of the label. In this
position the altitude of the sun was indicated on the divided limb of the
instrument. Opposite the zenith point was a small eyelet from which a
weight could be suspended to keep the instrument from shaking when used.
[Illustration: A representation of the astrolabe found in 1867 in the
county of North Renfrew, province of Ontario, Canada, supposed to have
been lost by Champlain on his way to Ottawa in 1613. The diameter of
the instrument is “five inches and five-eights.” _Vide_ “Champlain’s
astrolabe.” By A. J. Russell. Montreal, 1879.]
In the fifteenth century the day’s run of a ship was commonly reckoned
by the pilot. In an old nautical work it is said: “In order to know the
speed of the ship over the length of the course the pilot must set down
in his journal the progress the vessel has made according to hours; and
to do this he must know that the greatest distance that a ship advances
in an hour is four miles, and with feebler breezes, three or only
two.”[102] Time was measured by sand-glasses, or _ampolletas_, as they
were called by the Spaniards. Forty-eight changes of these half-hour
glasses equalled the space of a day.[103]
In 1487 the persistent enterprise of the Portuguese in exploring a
commercial route to India along the west and south coasts of Africa was
notably signalized by the success attending the expedition commanded by
the adventurous seaman, Bartolomeu Dias. The indomitable zeal of this
Portuguese mariner enabled him to reach the southern extremity of Africa,
where he found a bold promontory to which he gave the name of Cabo
Tormentoso, (the Stormy Cape,) commemorative of the adverse winds and bad
weather encountered there. King John II., personally appreciating the
good fortune attending the explorations of the navigators of Portugal in
this direction during the previous seventy years, in which time more than
six thousand miles of coast-line had been inspected by them, called the
promontory discovered by Dias, Cabo de Boa Esperança (the Cape of Good
Hope).[104]