THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.
_EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE._
[Sidenote: Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing
around Africa.]
As it dawned upon men's minds that to find some oceanic route from
Europe to the remote shores of Asia was eminently desirable, the first
attempt would naturally be to see what could be done by sailing down the
western coast of Africa, and ascertaining whether that continent could
be circumnavigated. It was also quite in the natural order of things
that this first attempt should be made by the Portuguese.
In the general history of the Middle Ages the Spanish peninsula had been
to some extent cut off from the main currents of thought and feeling
which actuated the rest of Europe. Its people had never joined the other
Christian nations in the Crusades, for the good reason that they always
had quite enough to occupy them in their own domestic struggle with the
Moors. From the throes of this prolonged warfare Portugal emerged
somewhat sooner than the Spanish kingdoms, and thus had somewhat earlier
a surplus of energy released for work of another sort. It was not
strange that the Portuguese should be the first people since the old
Northmen to engage in distant maritime adventure upon a grand scale.
Nor was it strange that Portuguese seamanship should at first have
thriven upon naval warfare with Mussulmans. It was in attempting to
suppress the intolerable nuisance of Moorish piracy that Portuguese
ships became accustomed to sail a little way down the west coast of
Africa; and such voyages, begun for military purposes, were kept up in
the interests of commerce, and presently served as a mighty stimulus to
geographical curiosity. We have now to consider at some length how grave
was the problem that came up for immediate solution.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Views of Eratosthenes, B. C. 276-196.]
[Sidenote: Opposing theory of Ptolemy, cir. A. D. 150.]
With regard to the circumnavigability of Africa two opposite opinions
were maintained by the ancient Greek and Latin writers whose authority
the men of the Middle Ages were wont to quote as decisive of every vexed
question. The old Homeric notion of an ocean encompassing the
terrestrial world, although mentioned with doubt by Herodotus,[339]
continued to survive after the globular form of the earth had come to be
generally maintained by ancient geographers. The greatest of these
geographers, Eratosthenes, correctly assumed that the Indian ocean was
continuous with the Atlantic,[340] and that Africa could be
circumnavigated, just as he incorrectly assumed that the Caspian sea
was a huge gulf communicating with a northern ocean, by which it would
be possible to sail around the continent of Asia as he imagined it.[341]
A similar opinion as to Africa was held by Posidonius and by
Strabo.[342] It was called in question, however, by Polybius,[343] and
was flatly denied by the great astronomer Hipparchus, who thought that
certain observations on the tides, reported by Seleucus of Babylon,
proved that there could be no connection between the Atlantic and Indian
oceans.[344] Claudius Ptolemy, writing in the second century after
Christ, followed the opinion of Hipparchus, and carried to an extreme
the reaction against Eratosthenes. By Ptolemy's time the Caspian had
been proved to be an inland sea, and it was evident that Asia extended
much farther to the north and east than had once been supposed. This
seems to have discredited in his mind the whole conception of outside
oceans, and he not only gave an indefinite northward and eastward
extension to Asia and an indefinite southern extension to Africa, but
brought these two continents together far to the southeast, thus making
the Indian ocean a land-locked sea.[345]
[Footnote 339: [Greek: Ton de Ôkeanon logô men legousi ap'
hêliou anatoleôn arxamenon gên peri pasan rheein, ergô de ouk
apodeiknysi.] Herodotus, iv. 8.]
[Footnote 340: [Greek: Kai gar kat' auton Eratosthenê tên ektos
thalattan hapasan syrroun einai, hôste kai tên Hesperion kai
tên Erythran thalattan mian einai.] Strabo, i. 3, § 13.]
[Footnote 341: Bunbury, _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i.
p. 644.]
[Footnote 342: Strabo, ii. 3, § 4; xvii. 3, § 1.]
[Footnote 343: [Greek: Kathaper de kai tês Asias kai tês
Libyes, katho synaptousin allêlais peri tên Aithiopian, oudeis
echei legein atrekôs heôs tôn kath' hêmas kairôn, poteron
êpeiros esti kata to syneches ta pros tên mesêmbrian, ê
thalattê periechetai.] Polybius, iii. 38.]
[Footnote 344: Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 15.]
[Footnote 345: See the map of Ptolemy's world, above, p. 264.]
[Sidenote: Story of the Phoenician voyage, in the time of Necho.]
These views of Hipparchus and Ptolemy took no heed of the story told to
Herodotus of the circumnavigation of Africa by a Phoenician squadron at
some time during the reign of Necho in Egypt (610-595 B. C.).[346] The
Phoenician ships were said to have sailed from the Red Sea and to have
returned through the Mediterranean in the third year after starting. In
each of the two autumn seasons they stopped and sowed grain and waited
for it to ripen, which in southern Africa would require ten or twelve
weeks.[347] On their return to Egypt they declared ("I for my part do
not believe them," says Herodotus, "but perhaps others may") that in
thus sailing from east to west around Africa they had the sun upon their
right hand. About this alleged voyage there has been a good deal of
controversy.[348] No other expedition in any wise comparable to it for
length and difficulty can be cited from ancient history, and a critical
scholar is inclined to look with suspicion upon all such accounts of
unique and isolated events. As we have not the details of the story, it
is impossible to give it a satisfactory critical examination. The
circumstance most likely to convince us of its truth is precisely that
which dear old Herodotus deemed incredible. The position of the sun, to
the north of the mariners, is something that could hardly have been
imagined by people familiar only with the northern hemisphere. It is
therefore almost certain that Necho's expedition sailed beyond the
equator.[349] But that is as far as inference can properly carry us; for
our experience of the uncritical temper of ancient narrators is enough
to suggest that such an achievement might easily be magnified by rumour
into the story told, more than a century after the event, to Herodotus.
The data are too slight to justify us in any dogmatic opinion. One
thing, however, is clear. Even if the circumnavigation was
effected,--which, on the whole, seems improbable,--it remained quite
barren of results. It produced no abiding impression upon men's
minds[350] and added nothing to geographical knowledge. The veil of
mystery was not lifted from southern Africa. The story was doubted by
Strabo and Posidonius, and passed unheeded, as we have seen, by
Hipparchus and Ptolemy.
[Footnote 346: Ptolemy expressly declares that the equatorial
regions had never been visited by people from the northern
hemisphere: [Greek: Tines de eisin hai oikêseis ouk an echoimen
pepeismenôs eipein. Atriptoi gar eisi mechri tou deuro tois apo
tês kath' hêmas oikoumenês, kai eikasian mallon an tis ê
historian hêgêsaito ta legomena peri autôn.] _Syntaxis_, ii.
6.]
[Footnote 347: Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, vol. iii. p. 29, note
8.]
[Footnote 348: The story is discredited by Mannert, _Geographie
der Griechen und Römer_, bd. i. pp. 19-26; Gossellin,
_Recherches sur la géographie des Anciens_, tom. i. p. 149;
Lewis, _Astronomy of the Ancients_, pp. 508-515; Vincent,
_Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean_,
vol. i. pp. 303-311, vol. ii. pp. 13-15; Leake, _Disputed
Questions of Ancient Geography_, pp. 1-8. It is defended by
Heeren, _Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr_, etc., 3e aufl.,
Göttingen, 1815, bd. i. abth. ii. pp. 87-93; Rennell,
_Geography of Herodotus_, pp. 672-714; Grote, _History of
Greece_, vol. iii. pp. 377-385. The case is ably presented in
Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i. pp. 289-296,
where it is concluded that the story "cannot be disproved or
pronounced to be absolutely impossible; but the difficulties
and improbabilities attending it are so great that they cannot
reasonably be set aside without better evidence than the mere
statement of Herodotus, upon the authority of unknown
informants." Mr. Bunbury (vol. i. p. 317) says that he has
reasons for believing that Mr. Grote afterwards changed his
opinion and came to agree with Sir George Lewis.]
[Footnote 349: In reading the learned works of Sir George
Cornewall Lewis, one is often reminded of what Sainte-Beuve
somewhere says of the great scholar Letronne, when he had spent
the hour of his lecture in demolishing some pretty or popular
belief: "Il se frotta les mains et s'en alla bien content."
When it came to ancient history, Sir George was undeniably fond
of "the everlasting No." In the present case his skepticism
seems on the whole well-judged, but some of his arguments
savour of undue haste toward a negative conclusion. He thus
strangely forgets that what we call autumn is springtime in the
southern hemisphere (_Astronomy of the Ancients_, p. 511). His
argument that the time alleged was insufficient for the voyage
is fully met by Major Rennell, who has shown that the time was
amply sufficient, and that the direction of winds and ocean
currents would make the voyage around southern Africa from east
to west much easier than from west to east.]
[Footnote 350: "No trace of it could be found in the
Alexandrian library, either by Eratosthenes in the third, or by
Marinus of Tyre in the second, century before Christ, although
both of them were diligent examiners of ancient records."
Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, p. 90.]
[Sidenote: Voyage of Hanno.]
Of Phoenician and other voyages along the Atlantic coast of Africa we
have much more detailed and trustworthy information. As early as the
twelfth century before Christ traders from Tyre had founded Cadiz
(Gades),[351] and at a later date the same hardy people seem to have
made the beginnings of Lisbon (Olisipo). From such advanced stations
Tyrian and Carthaginian ships sometimes found their way northward as far
as Cornwall, and in the opposite direction fishing voyages were made
along the African coast. The most remarkable undertaking in this quarter
was the famous voyage of the Carthaginian commander Hanno, whose own
brief but interesting account of it has been preserved.[352] This
expedition consisted of sixty penteconters (fifty-oared ships), and its
chief purpose was colonization. Upon the Mauritanian coast seven small
trading stations were founded, one of which--Kerne, at the mouth of the
Rio d' Ouro[353]--existed for a long time. From this point Hanno made
two voyages of exploration, the second of which carried him as far as
Sierra Leone and the neighbouring Sherboro island, where he found "wild
men and women covered with hair," called by the interpreters
"gorillas."[354] At that point the ships turned back, apparently for
want of provisions.
[Footnote 351: Rawlinson's _History of Phoenicia_, pp. 105,
418; Pseudo-Aristotle, _Mirab. Auscult._, 146; Velleius
Paterculus, i. 2, § 6.]
[Footnote 352: Hanno, _Periplus_, in Müller, _Geographi Græci
Minores_, tom. i. pp. 1-14. Of two or three commanders named
Hanno it is uncertain which was the one who led this
expedition, and thus its date has been variously assigned from
570 to 470 B. C.]
[Footnote 353: For the determination of these localities see
Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. i. pp. 318-335. There is an
interesting Spanish description of Hanno's expedition in
Mariana, _Historia de España_, Madrid, 1783, tom. i. pp.
89-93.]
[Footnote 354: The sailors pursued them, but did not capture
any of the males, who scrambled up the cliffs out of their
reach. They captured three females, who bit and scratched so
fiercely that it was useless to try to take them away. So they
killed them and took their skins home to Carthage. _Periplus_,
xviii. According to Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, vi. 36) these skins
were hung up as a votive offering in the temple of Juno (i. e.
Astarte or Ashtoreth: see Apuleius, _Metamorph._, xi. 257;
Gesenius, _Monumenta Phoenic._, p. 168), where they might have
been seen at any time before the Romans destroyed the city.]
[Sidenote: Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus.]
No other expedition in ancient times is known to have proceeded so far
south as Sierra Leone. Two other voyages upon this Atlantic coast are
mentioned, but without definite details. The one was that of Sataspes
(about 470 B. C.), narrated by Herodotus, who merely tells us that a
coast was reached where undersized men, clad in palm-leaf garments, fled
to the hills at sight of the strange visitors.[355] The other was that
of Eudoxus (about 85 B. C.), related by Posidonius, the friend and
teacher of Cicero. The story is that this Eudoxus, in a voyage upon the
east coast of Africa, having a philological turn of mind, wrote down the
words of some of the natives whom he met here and there along the shore.
He also picked up a ship's prow in the form of a horse's head, and upon
his return to Alexandria some merchants professed to recognize it as
belonging to a ship of Cadiz. Eudoxus thereupon concluded that Africa
was circumnavigable, and presently sailed through the Mediterranean and
out upon the Atlantic. Somewhere upon the coast of Mauritania he found
natives who used some words of similar sound to those which he had
written down when visiting the eastern coast, whence he concluded that
they were people of the same race. At this point he turned back, and the
sequel of the story was unknown to Posidonius.[356]
[Footnote 355: Herodotus, iv. 43.]
[Footnote 356: The story is preserved by Strabo, ii. 3, §§ 4,
5, who rejects it with a vehemence for which no adequate reason
is assigned.]
[Sidenote: Wild exaggerations.]
It is worthy of note that both Pliny and Pomponius Mela, quoting
Cornelius Nepos as their authority, speak of Eudoxus as having
circumnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to Cadiz; and Pliny, moreover,
tells us that Hanno sailed around that continent as far as
Arabia,[357]--a statement which is clearly false. These examples show
how stories grow when carelessly and uncritically repeated, and they
strongly tend to confirm the doubt with which one is inclined to regard
the tale of Necho's sailors above mentioned. In truth, the island of
Gorillas, discovered by Hanno, was doubtless the most southerly point on
that coast reached by navigators in ancient times. Of the islands in the
western ocean the Carthaginians certainly knew the Canaries (where they
have left undoubted inscriptions), probably also the Madeiras, and
possibly the Cape Verde group.[358]
[Footnote 357: Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, ii. 67; Mela, _De Situ
Orbis_, iii. 9.]
[Footnote 358: After the civil war of Sertorius (B. C. 80-72),
the Romans became acquainted with the Canaries, which, because
of their luxuriant vegetation and soft climate, were identified
with the Elysium described by Homer, and were commonly known as
the Fortunate islands. "Contra Fortunatæ Insulæ abundant sua
sponte genitis, et subinde aliis super aliis innascentibus
nihil sollicitos alunt, beatius quam aliæ urbes excultæ." Mela,
iii. 10.
[Greek: Alla s' es Êlysion pedion kai peirata gaiês
athanatoi pempsousin, hothi xanthos Rhadamanthys,
têper rhêïstê biotê pelei anthrôpoisin;
ou niphetos, out' ar cheimôn polys oute pot' ombros,
all' aiei Zephyroio ligy pneiontas aêtas
Ôkeanos aniêsin anapsychein anthrôpous.]
_Odyssey_, iv. 563.
Since Horace's time (_Epod._ vi. 41-66) the Canary islands have
been a favourite theme for poets. It was here that Tasso placed
the loves of Rinaldo and Armida, in the delicious garden where
Vezzosi augelli infra le verde fronde
Temprano a prova lascivette note.
Mormora l' aura, e fa le foglie e l' onde
Garrir, che variamente ella percote.
_Gerusalemme Liberata_, xvi. 12.]
[Illustration: Pomponius Mela's World, cir. A. D. 50.]
[Sidenote: Views of Pomponius Mela, cir. A. D. 50.]
The extent of the knowledge which the ancients thus had of western
Africa is well illustrated in the map representing the geographical
theories of Pomponius Mela, whose book was written about A. D. 50. Of
the eastern coast and the interior Mela knew less than Ptolemy a
century later, but of the Atlantic coast he knew more than Ptolemy. The
fact that the former geographer was a native of Spain and the latter a
native of Egypt no doubt had something to do with this. Mela had
profited by the Carthaginian discoveries. His general conception of the
earth was substantially that of Eratosthenes. It was what has been
styled the "oceanic" theory, in contrast with the "continental" theory
of Ptolemy. In the unvisited regions on all sides of the known world
Eratosthenes imagined vast oceans, Ptolemy imagined vast deserts or
impenetrable swamps. The former doctrine was of course much more
favourable to maritime enterprise than the latter. The works of Ptolemy
exercised over the mediæval mind an almost despotic sway, which, in
spite of their many merits, was in some respects a hindrance to
progress; so that, inasmuch as the splendid work of Strabo, the most
eminent follower of Eratosthenes, was unknown to mediæval Europe until
about 1450, it was fortunate that the Latin treatise of Mela was
generally read and highly esteemed. People in those days were such
uncritical readers that very likely the antagonism between Ptolemy and
Mela may have failed to excite comment,[359] especially in view of the
lack of suitable maps such as emphasize that antagonism to our modern
minds. But in the fifteenth century, when men were getting their first
inklings of critical scholarship, and when the practical question of an
ocean voyage to Asia was pressing for solution, such a point could no
longer fail to attract attention; and it happened fortunately that the
wet theory, no less than the dry theory, had a popular advocate among
those classical authors to whose authority so much deference was paid.
[Footnote 359: Just as our grandfathers used to read the Bible
without noticing such points as the divergences between the
books of Kings and Chronicles, the contradictions between the
genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, the radically
different theories of Christ's personality and career in the
Fourth Gospel as compared with the three Synoptics, etc.]
[Sidenote: Ancient theory of the five zones.]
[Sidenote: The Inhabited World and the Antipodes.]
If the Portuguese mariners of the generation before Columbus had
acquiesced in Ptolemy's views as final, they surely would not have
devoted their energies to the task of circumnavigating Africa. But there
were yet other theoretical or fanciful obstacles in the way. When you
look at a modern map of the world, the "five zones" may seem like a mere
graphic device for marking conveniently the relations of different
regions to the solar source of heat; but before the great Portuguese
voyages and the epoch-making third voyage of Vespucius, to be described
hereafter, a discouraging doctrine was entertained with regard to these
zones. Ancient travellers in Scythia and voyagers to "Thule"--which in
Ptolemy's scheme perhaps meant the Shetland isles[360]--had learned
something of Arctic phenomena. The long winter nights,[361] the snow and
ice, and the bitter winds, made a deep impression upon visitors from the
Mediterranean;[362] and when such facts were contrasted with the
scorching blasts that came from Sahara, the resulting theory was
undeniably plausible. In the extreme north the ocean must be frozen and
the country uninhabitable by reason of the cold; contrariwise, in the
far south the ocean must be boiling hot and the country inhabitable only
by gnomes and salamanders. Applying these ideas to the conception of the
earth as a sphere, Pomponius Mela tells us that the surface of the
sphere is divided into five zones, of which only two are fit to support
human life. About each pole stretches a dead and frozen zone; the
southern and northern hemispheres have each a temperate zone, with the
same changes of seasons, but not occurring at the same (but opposite)
times; the north temperate zone is the seat of the Oecumene ([Greek:
oikoumenê]), or Inhabited World; the south temperate zone is also
inhabited by the Antichthones or Antipodes, but about these people we
know nothing, because between us and them there intervenes the burning
zone, which it is impossible to cross.[363]
[Footnote 360: Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. ii. pp. 492, 527. The
name is used in different geographical senses by various
ancient writers, as is well shown in Lewis's _Astronomy of the
Ancients_, pp. 467-481.]
[Footnote 361: The Romans, at least by the first century A. D.,
knew also of the shortness of northern nights in summer.
Arma quidem ultra
Littora Invernæ promovimus, et modo captas
Orcadas, ac minima contentos nocte Britannos.
Juvenal, ii. 159.
See also Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, iv. 30; Martianus Capella, vi.
595; Achilles Tatius, XXXV.]
[Footnote 362: The reader will remember Virgil's magnificent
description of a Scythian winter (_Georg._, iii. 352):--
Illic clausa tenent stabulis armenta; neque ullæ
Aut herbæ campo apparent, aut arbore frondes:
Sed jacet aggeribus niveis informis, et alto
Terra gelu late, septemque assurgit in ulnas;
Semper hiems, semper spirantes frigora Cauri.
Tum Sol pallentes haud unquam discutit umbras;
Nec cum invectus equis altum petit æthera, nec cum
Præcipitem Oceani rubro lavit æquore currum.
Concrescunt subitæ currenti in flumine crustæ;
Undaque jam tergo ferratos sustinet orbes,
Puppibus illa prius patulis, nunc hospita plaustris,
Æraque dissiliunt vulgo, vestesque rigescunt
Indutæ, cæduntque securibus humida vina
Et totæ solidam in glaciem vertêre lacunæ,
Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis.
Interea toto non secius aëre ningit;
Intereunt pecudes; stant circumfusa pruinis
Corpora magna boum; confertoque agmine cervi
Torpent mole nova, et summis vix cornibus exstant.
.................................................
Ipsi in defossis specubus, secura sub alta
Otia agunt terra, congestaque robora, totasque
Advolvere focis ulmos, ignique dedere.
Hic noctem ludo ducunt, et pocula læti
Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis.
Talis Hyperboreo Septem subjecta trioni
Gens effræna virûm Rhipæo tunditur Euro,
Et pecudum fulvis velantur corpora sætis.
The Roman conception of the situation of these "Hyperboreans"
and of the Rhipæan mountains may be seen in the map of Mela's
world.]
[Footnote 363: "Huic medio terra sublimis cingitur undique
mari: eodemque in duo latera, quæ hemisphæria nominantur, ab
oriente divisa ad occasum, zonis quinque distinguitur. Mediam
æstus infestat, frigus ultimas: reliquæ habitabiles paria agunt
anni tempora, verum non pariter. Antichthones alteram, nos
alteram incolimus. Illius situ ab ardorem intercedentis plagæ
incognito, hujus dicendus est," etc. _De Situ Orbis_, i. 1. A
similar theory is set forth by Ovid (_Metamorph._, i. 45), and
by Virgil (_Georg._, i. 233):--
Quinque tenent coelum zonæ; quarum una corusco
Semper Sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni;
Quam circum extremæ dextra lævaque trahuntur,
Cærulea glacie concretæ atque imbribus atris.
Has inter mediamque, duæ mortalibus ægris
Munere concessæ Divûm; et via secta per ambas,
Obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo.]
[Sidenote: Curious notions about Ceylon.]
This notion of an antipodal world in the southern hemisphere will have
especial interest for us when we come to deal with the voyages of
Vespucius. The idea seems to have originated in a guess of Hipparchus
that Taprobane--the island of Ceylon, about which the most absurd
reports were brought to Europe--might be the beginning of another world.
This is very probable, says Mela, with delightful _naïveté_, because
Taprobane is inhabited, and still we do not know of anybody who has ever
made the tour of it.[364] Mela's contemporary, the elder Pliny,
declares that Taprobane "has long been regarded" as part of another
world, the name of which is Antichthon, or Opposite-Earth;[365] at the
same time Pliny vouchsafes three closely-printed pages of information
about this mysterious country. Throughout the Middle Ages the conception
of some sort of an antipodal inhabited world was vaguely entertained by
writers here and there, but many of the clergy condemned it as implying
the existence of people cut off from the knowledge of the gospel and not
included in the plan of salvation.
[Footnote 364: "Taprobane aut grandis admodum insula aut prima
pars orbis alterius Hipparcho dicitur; sed quia habitata, nec
quisquam circummeasse traditur, prope verum est." _De Situ
Orbis_, iii. 7.]
[Footnote 365: "Taprobanen alterum orbem terrarum esse, diu
existimatum est, Antichthonum appellatione." _Hist. Nat._, vi.
24.]
[Sidenote: The fiery zone.]
As to the possibility of crossing the torrid zone, opinion was not
unanimous. Greek explorers from Alexandria (cir. B. C. 100) seem to have
gone far up the Nile toward the equator, and the astronomer Geminus
quotes their testimony in proof of his opinion that the torrid zone is
inhabitable.[366] Panætius, the friend of the younger Scipio Africanus,
had already expressed a similar opinion. But the flaming theory
prevailed. Macrobius, writing about six hundred years later, maintained
that the southernmost limit of the habitable earth was 850 miles south
of Syene, which lies just under the tropic of Cancer.[367] Beyond this
point no man could go without danger from the fiery atmosphere. Beyond
some such latitude on the ocean no ship could venture without risk of
being engulfed in some steaming whirlpool.[368] Such was the common
belief before the great voyages of the Portuguese.
[Footnote 366: Geminus, _Isagoge_, cap. 13.]
[Footnote 367: Macrobius, _Somnium Scipionis_, ii. 8. Strabo
(ii. 5, §§ 7, 8) sets the southern boundary of the Inhabited
World 800 miles south of Syene, and the northern boundary at
the north of Ireland.]
[Footnote 368: Another notion, less easily explicable and less
commonly entertained, but interesting for its literary
associations, was the notion of a mountain of loadstone in the
Indian ocean, which prevented access to the torrid zone by
drawing the nails from ships and thus wrecking them. This
imaginary mountain, with some variations in the description, is
made to carry a serious geographical argument by the astrologer
Pietro d' Abano, in his book _Conciliator Differentiarum_,
written about 1312. (See Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_,
p. 100.) It plays an important part in one of the finest tales
in the _Arabian Nights_,--the story of the "Third Royal
Mendicant."]
[Sidenote: Going downhill.]
Besides this dread of the burning zone, another fanciful obstacle beset
the mariner who proposed to undertake a long voyage upon the outer
ocean. It had been observed that a ship which disappears in the offing
seems to be going downhill; and many people feared that if they should
happen thus to descend too far away from the land they could never get
back again. Men accustomed to inland sea travel did not feel this dread
within the regions of which they had experience, but it assailed them
whenever they thought of braving the mighty waters outside.[369] Thus
the master mariner, in the Middle Ages, might contemplate the possible
chance of being drawn by force of gravity into the fiery gulf, should he
rashly approach too near; and in such misgivings he would be confirmed
by Virgil, who was as much read then as he is to-day and esteemed an
authority, withal, on scientific questions; for according to Virgil the
Inhabited World descends toward the equator and has its apex in the
extreme north.[370]
[Footnote 369: Ferdinand Columbus tells us that this objection
was urged against the Portuguese captains and afterwards
against his father: "E altri di ciò quasi così disputavano,
come già i Portoghesi intorno al navigare in Guinea; dicendo
che, se si allargasse alcuno a far cammino diritto al
occidente, come l' Ammiraglio diceva, non potrebbe poi tornare
in Ispagna per la rotondità della sfera; tenendo per
certissime, che qualunque uscisse del emisperio conosciuto da
Tolomeo, anderebbe in giù, e poi gli sarebbe impossibile dar la
volta; e affermando che ciò sarebbe quasi uno ascendere all'
insù di un monte. Il che non potrebbono fare i navigli con
grandissimo vento." _Vita deli' Ammiraglio_, Venice, 1571, cap.
xii. The same thing is told, in almost the same words, by Las
Casas, since both writers followed the same original documents:
"Añidian mas, que quien navegase por vía derecha la vuelta del
poniente, como el Cristóbal Colon proferia, no podria despues
volver, suponiendo que el mundo era redondo y yendo hácia el
occidente iban cuesta abajo, y saliendo del hemisferio que
Ptolomeo escribiò, á la vuelta érales necesario subir cuesta
arriba, lo que los navíos era imposible hacer." The gentle but
keen sarcasm that follows is very characteristic of Las Casas:
"Esta era gentil y profunda razon, y señal de haber bien el
negocio entendido!" _Historia de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 230.]
[Footnote 370:
Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipæasque arduus arces
Consurgit, premitur Libyæ devexus in austros.
Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum
Sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi.
_Georg._, i. 240.
For an account of the deference paid to Virgil in the Middle
Ages, as well as the grotesque fancies about him, see Tunison's
_Master Virgil_, 2d ed., Cincinnati, 1890.]
[Sidenote: Superstitious fancies.]
To such notions as these, which were supposed to have some sort of
scientific basis, we must add the wild superstitious fancies that
clustered about all remote and unvisited corners of the world. In maps
made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in such places as we
should label "Unexplored Region," there were commonly depicted uncouth
shapes of "Gorgons and Hydras and Chimæras dire," furnishing eloquent
testimony to the feelings with which the unknown was regarded. The
barren wastes of the Sea of Darkness awakened a shuddering dread like
that with which children shrink from the gloom of a cellar. When we
remember all these things, and consider how the intelligent purpose
which urged the commanders onward was scarcely within the comprehension
of their ignorant and refractory crews, we can begin to form some idea
of the difficulties that confronted the brave mariners who first sought
an ocean route to the far-off shores of Cathay.
[Sidenote: Clumsiness of the caravels.]
[Sidenote: Famine and scurvy.]
Less formidable than these obstacles based on fallacious reasoning or
superstitious whim were those that were furnished by the clumsiness of
the ships and the crudeness of the appliances for navigation. As already
observed, the Spanish and Portuguese caravels of the fifteenth century
were less swift and manageable craft than the Norwegian "dragons" of the
tenth. Mere yachts in size we should call them, but far from yachtlike
in shape or nimbleness. With their length seldom more than thrice their
width of beam, with narrow tower-like poops, with broad-shouldered bows
and bowsprit weighed down with spritsail yards, and with no canvas
higher than a topsail, these clumsy caravels could make but little
progress against head-winds, and the amount of tacking and beating to
and fro was sometimes enough to quadruple the length of the voyage. For
want of metallic sheathing below the waterline the ship was liable to be
sunk by the terrible worm which, in Hakluyt's phrase, "many times
pearceth and eateth through the strongest oake." For want of vegetable
food in the larder, or anything save the driest of bread and beef
stiffened with brine, the sailors were sure to be attacked by scurvy,
and in a very long voyage the crew was deemed fortunate that did not
lose half its number from that foul disease. Often in traversing unknown
seas the sturdy men who survived all other perils were brought face to
face with starvation when they had ventured too far without turning
back.[371] We need not wonder that the first steps in oceanic discovery
were slow and painful.
[Footnote 371: Or simply because a wrong course happened to be
taken, through ignorance of atmospheric conditions, as in the
second homeward and third outward voyages of Columbus. See
below, pp. 485, 490.]
[Sidenote: The mariner's compass.]
First among the instruments without which systematic ocean navigation
would have been impossible, the magnetic compass had been introduced
into southern Europe and was used by Biscayan and Catalan sailors before
the end of the twelfth century.[372] Parties of Crusaders had learned
the virtues of the suspended needle from the Arabs, who are said to have
got their knowledge indirectly from China in the course of their eastern
voyages.[373] It seems to have been at Amalfi that the needle was first
enclosed in a box and connected with a graduated compass-card.
Apparently it had not come into general use in the middle of the
thirteenth century, for in 1258 the famous Brunetto Latini, afterwards
tutor of Dante, made a visit to Roger Bacon, of which he gives a
description in a letter to his friend the poet Guido Cavalcanti: "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 this needle, to steer his vessel aright.
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 the imputation
of being a magician; nor would 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.[374] A time may arrive when these prejudices, which
are of such great hindrance to researches into the secrets of nature,
will be overcome; and it will be then that mankind shall reap the
benefit of the labours 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."[375]
[Footnote 372: Navarrete, _Discurso historico sobre los
progresos del arte de navegar en España_, p. 28; see also
Raymond Lully's treatise, _Libro felix, ó Maravillas del mundo_
(A. D. 1286).]
[Footnote 373: See Humboldt's _Kosmos_, bd. i. p. 294;
Klaproth, _Lettre à M. de Humboldt sur l'invention de la
boussole_, pp. 41, 45, 50, 66, 79, 90. But some of Klaproth's
conclusions have been doubted: "Pour la boussole, rien ne
prouve que les Chinois l'aient employée pour la navigation,
tandis que nous la trouvons dès le xi^{e} siècle chez les
Arabes qui s'en servent non seulement dans leurs traversées
maritimes, mais dans les voyages de caravanes au milieu des
déserts," etc. Sédillot, _Histoire des Arabes_, tom. ii. p.
130.]
[Footnote 374: Is it not a curious instance of human perversity
that while customary usage from time immemorial has
characterized as "acts of God" such horrible events as famines,
pestilences, and earthquakes, on the other hand when some
purely beneficent invention has appeared, such as the mariner's
compass or the printing press, it has commonly been accredited
to the Devil? The case of Dr. Faustus is the most familiar
example.]
[Footnote 375: This version is cited from Major's _Prince Henry
the Navigator_, p. 58.]
[Sidenote: Latitude and longitude.]
That time was after all not so long in arriving, for by the end of the
thirteenth century the compass had come to be quite generally used,[376]
and the direction of a ship's course could be watched continuously in
foul and fair weather alike. For taking the sun's altitude rude
astrolabes and jack-staffs were in use, very crazy affairs as compared
with the modern quadrant, but sufficiently accurate to enable a
well-trained observer, in calculating his latitude, to get somewhere
within two or three degrees of the truth. In calculating longitude the
error was apt to be much greater, for in the absence of chronometers
there were no accurate means for marking differences in time. It was
necessary to depend upon the dead-reckoning, and the custom was first to
sail due north or south to the parallel of the place of destination and
then to turn at right angles and sail due east or west. Errors of eight
or even ten degrees were not uncommon. Thus at the end of a long outward
voyage the ship might find itself a hundred miles or more to the north
or south, and six or seven hundred miles to the east or west, of the
point at which it had been aimed. Under all these difficulties, the
approximations made to correct sailing by the most skilful mariners were
sometimes wonderful. Doubtless this very poverty of resources served to
sharpen their watchful sagacity.[377] To sail the seas was in those days
a task requiring high mental equipment; it was no work for your
commonplace skipper. Human faculty was taxed to its utmost, and human
courage has never been more grandly displayed than by the glorious
sailors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
[Footnote 376: Hüllmann, _Städtewesen des Mittelalters_, bd. i.
pp. 125-137.]
[Footnote 377: Compare the remarks of Mr. Clark Russell on the
mariners of the seventeenth century, in his _William Dampier_,
p. 12.]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Prince Henry the Navigator, 1394-1463.]
[Sidenote: His idea of an ocean route to the Indies, and what it might
bring.]
We are now prepared to appreciate the character of the work that was
done in the course of the first attempts to find an oceanic route from
Europe to Asia. Then, as in other great epochs of history, men of genius
arose to meet the occasion. In 1394 was born Prince Henry of Portugal,
since known as Henry the Navigator.[378] He was fourth son of King John
I., the valiant and prudent king under whom began the golden age of
Portugal, which lasted until the conquest of that country in 1580 by
Philip II. of Spain. Henry's mother was Philippa, daughter of John of
Gaunt. He was therefore cousin to our own Henry V. of England, whom he
quite equalled in genius, while the laurels that he won were more
glorious than those of Agincourt. In 1415, being then in his
twenty-first year, Prince Henry played a distinguished part in the
expedition which captured Ceuta from the Moors. While in Morocco he
gathered such information as he could concerning the interior of the
continent; he learned something about the oases of Sahara, the distant
river Gambia, and the caravan trade between Tunis and Timbuctoo, whereby
gold was carried from the Guinea coast to Mussulman ports on the
Mediterranean. If this coast could be reached by sea, its gold might be
brought to Lisbon as well. To divert such treasure from the infidel and
secure it for a Christian nation was an enterprise fitted to kindle a
prince's enthusiasm. While Henry felt the full force of these
considerations, his thoughts took a wider range. The views of Pomponius
Mela had always been held in high esteem by scholars of the Spanish
peninsula,[379] and down past that Gold Coast Prince Henry saw the
ocean route to the Indies, the road whereby a vast empire might be won
for Portugal and millions of wandering heathen souls might be gathered
into the fold of Christ. To doubt the sincerity of the latter motive, or
to belittle its influence, would be to do injustice to Prince
Henry,--such cynical injustice as our hard-headed age is only too apt to
mete out to that romantic time and the fresh enthusiasm which inspired
its heroic performances. Prince Henry was earnest, conscientious,
large-minded, and in the best sense devout; and there can be no question
that in his mind, as in that of Columbus, and (with somewhat more alloy)
in the minds of Cortes and others, the desire of converting the heathen
and strengthening the Church served as a most powerful incentive to the
actions which in the course of little more than a century quite changed
the face of the world.
[Footnote 378: My chief authorities for the achievements of
Prince Henry and his successors are the Portuguese historians,
Barros and Azurara. The best edition of the former is a modern
one, Barros y Couto, _Decadas da Asia, nova edicão con Indice
geral_, Lisbon, 1778-88, 24 vols. 12mo. I also refer sometimes
to the Lisbon, 1752, edition of the _Decada primeira_, in
folio. The priceless contemporary work of Azurara, written in
1453 under Prince Henry's direction, was not printed until the
present century; Azurara, _Chronica do Descobrimento e
Conquista de Guiné_, Paris, 1841, a superb edition in royal
quarto, edited by the Viscount da Carreira, with introduction
and notes by the Viscount de Santarem.]
[Footnote 379: Partly, perhaps, because Mela was himself a
Spaniard, and partly because his opinions had been shared and
supported by St. Isidore, of Seville (A. D. 570-636), whose
learned works exercised immense authority throughout the Middle
Ages. It is in one of St. Isidore's books (_Etymologiarum_,
xiii. 16, apud Migne, _Patrologia_, tom. lxxxii. col. 484) that
we first find the word "Mediterranean" used as a proper name
for that great land-locked sea.]
[Sidenote: The Sacred Promontory.]
Filled with such lofty and generous thoughts, Prince Henry, on his
return from Morocco, in 1418, chose for himself a secluded place of
abode where he could devote himself to his purposes undisturbed by the
court life at Lisbon or by political solicitations of whatever sort. In
the Morocco campaign he had won such military renown that he was now
invited by Pope Martin V. to take chief command of the papal army; and
presently he received similar flattering offers from his own cousin,
Henry V. of England, from John II. of Castile, and from the Emperor
Sigismund, who, for shamefully violating his imperial word and
permitting the burning of John Huss, was now sorely pressed by the
enraged and rebellious Bohemians. Such invitations had no charm for
Henry. Refusing them one and all, he retired to the promontory of
Sagres, in the southernmost province of Portugal, the ancient kingdom of
Algarve, of which his father now appointed him governor. That lonely and
barren rock, protruding into the ocean, had long ago impressed the
imagination of Greek and Roman writers; they called it the Sacred
Promontory, and supposed it to be the westernmost limit of the habitable
earth.[380] There the young prince proceeded to build an astronomical
observatory, the first that his country had ever seen, and to gather
about him a school of men competent to teach and men eager to learn the
mysteries of map-making and the art of navigation. There he spent the
greater part of his life; thence he sent forth his captains to plough
the southern seas; and as year after year the weather-beaten ships
returned from their venturesome pilgrimage, the first glimpse of home
that greeted them was likely to be the beacon-light in the tower where
the master sat poring over problems of Archimedes or watching the stars.
For Henry, whose motto was "Talent de bien faire," or (in the old French
usage) "Desire[381] to do well," was wont to throw himself
whole-hearted into whatever he undertook, and the study of astronomy and
mathematics he pursued so zealously as to reach a foremost place among
the experts of his time. With such tastes and such ambition, he was
singularly fortunate in wielding ample pecuniary resources; if such a
combination could be more often realized, the welfare of mankind would
be notably enhanced. Prince Henry was Grand Master of the Order of
Christ, an organization half military, half religious, and out of its
abundant revenues he made the appropriations needful for the worthy
purpose of advancing the interests of science, converting the heathen,
and winning a commercial empire for Portugal. At first he had to
encounter the usual opposition to lavish expenditure for a distant
object without hope of immediate returns; but after a while his dogged
perseverance began to be rewarded with such successes as to silence all
adverse comment.
[Footnote 380: [Greek: Homoiôs de kai peri tês exô stêlôn
legetai; dysmikôtaton men gar sêmeion tês oikoumenês, to tôn
Ibêrôn akrôtêrion, ho kalousin Ieron.] Strabo, ii. 5, § 14; cf.
Dionysius Periegetes, v. 161. In reality it lies not quite so
far west as the country around Lisbon.]
[Footnote 381: See Littré, _Dictionnaire_, s. v. "Talent;" Du
Cange, _Glossarium_, "talentum, animi decretum, voluntas,
desiderium, cupiditas," etc.; cf. Raynouard, _Glossaire
Provençale_, tom. v. p. 296. French was then fashionable at
court, in Lisbon as well as in London.]
[Sidenote: The Madeira and Canary islands.]
The first work in hand was the rediscovery of coasts and islands that
had ceased to be visited even before the breaking up of the Roman
Empire. For more than a thousand years the Madeiras and Canaries had
been well-nigh forgotten, and upon the coast of the African continent no
ship ventured beyond Cape Non, the headland so named because it said
"No!" to the wistful mariner.[382] There had been some re-awakening of
maritime activity in the course of the fourteenth century, chiefly due,
no doubt, to the use of the compass. Between 1317 and 1351 certain
Portuguese ships, with Genoese pilots, had visited not only the Madeiras
and Canaries, but even the Azores, a thousand miles out in the Atlantic;
and these groups of islands are duly laid down upon the so-called Medici
map of 1351, preserved in the Laurentian library at Florence.[383] The
voyage to the Azores was probably the greatest feat of ocean navigation
that had been performed down to that time, but it was not followed by
colonization. Again, somewhere about 1377 Madeira seems to have been
visited by Robert Machin, an Englishman, whose adventures make a most
romantic story; and in 1402 the Norman knight, Jean de Béthencourt, had
begun to found a colony in the Canaries, for which, in return for aid
and supplies, he did homage to the King of Castile.[384] As for the
African coast, Cape Non had also been passed at some time during the
fourteenth century, for Cape Bojador is laid down on the Catalan map of
1375; but beyond that point no one had dared take the risks of the
unknown sea.
[Footnote 382: The Portuguese proverb was "Quem passar o Cabo
de Não ou voltará ou _não_," i. e. "Whoever passes Cape _Non_
will return or _not_." See Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_,
tom. i. p. 173; Mariana, _Hist. de España_, tom. i. p. 91;
Barros, tom. i. p. 36.]
[Footnote 383: An engraved copy of this map may be found in
Major's _Prince Henry the Navigator_, London, 1868, facing p.
107. I need hardly say that in all that relates to the
Portuguese voyages I am under great obligation to Mr. Major's
profoundly learned and critical researches. He has fairly
conquered this subject and made it his own, and whoever touches
it after him, however lightly, must always owe him a tribute of
acknowledgment.]
[Footnote 384: See Bontier and Le Verrier, _The Canarian, or,
Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canaries_,
translated and edited by R. H. Major, London, 1872 (Hakluyt
Soc). In 1414, Béthencourt's nephew, left in charge of these
islands, sold them to Prince Henry, but Castile persisted in
claiming them, and at length in 1479 her claim was recognized
by treaty with Portugal. Of all the African islands, therefore,
the Canaries alone came to belong, and still belong, to Spain.]
[Sidenote: Gil Eannes passes Cape Bojador.]
The first achievement under Prince Henry's guidance was the final
rediscovery and colonization of Porto Santo and Madeira in 1418-25 by
Gonsalvez Zarco, Tristam Vaz, and Bartholomew Perestrelo.[385] This work
occupied the prince's attention for some years, and then came up the
problem of Cape Bojador. The difficulty was twofold; the waves about
that headland were apt to be boisterous, and wild sailor's fancies were
apt to enkindle a mutinous spirit in the crews. It was not until 1433-35
that Gil Eannes, a commander of unusually clear head and steady nerves,
made three attempts and fairly passed the dreaded spot. In the first
attempt he failed, as his predecessors had done, to double the cape; in
the second attempt he doubled it; in the third he sailed nearly two
hundred miles beyond.
[Footnote 385: Perestrelo had with him a female rabbit which
littered on the voyage, and being landed, with her young, at
Porto Santo, forthwith illustrated the fearful rate of
multiplication of which organisms are capable in the absence of
enemies or other adverse circumstances to check it. (Darwin,
_Origin of Species_, chap. iii.) These rabbits swarmed all over
the island and devoured every green and succulent thing,
insomuch that they came near converting it into a desert.
Prince Henry's enemies, who were vexed at the expenditure of
money in such colonizing enterprises, were thus furnished with
a wonderful argument. They maintained that God had evidently
created those islands for beasts alone, not for men! "En este
tiempo habia en todo Portugal grandísimas murmuraciones del
Infante, viéndolo tan cudicioso y poner tanta diligencia en el
descubrir de la tierra y costa de África, diciendo que destruia
el reino en los gastos que hacia, y consumia los vecinos dél en
poner en tanto peligro y daño la gente portoguesa, donde muchos
morian, enviándolos en demanda de tierras que nunca los reyes
de España pasados se atrevieron á emprender, donde habia de
hacer muchas viudas y huérfanos con esta su porfia. Tomaban por
argumento, que Dios no habia criado aquellas tierras sino para
bestias, pues en tan poco tiempo en aquella isla tantos conejos
habia multiplicado, que no dejaban cosa que para sustentacion
de los hombres fuese menester." Las Casas, _Hist. de las
Indias_, tom. i. p. 180. See also Azurara, _Chronica do
descobrimento e conquista de Guiné_, cap. lxxxiii.]
[Illustration: Portuguese voyages on the coast of Africa.]
[Sidenote: Beginning of the modern slave-trade, 1442.]
[Sidenote: Papal grant of heathen countries to the Portuguese crown.]
[Sidenote: Advance to Sierra Leone.]
This achievement of Gil Eannes (_anglicè_, plain Giles Jones) marks an
era. It was the beginning of great things. When we think of the
hesitation with which this step was taken, and the vociferous applause
that greeted the successful captain, it is strange to reflect that babes
were already born in 1435 who were to live to hear of the prodigious
voyages of Columbus and Gama, Vespucius and Magellan. After seven years
a further step was taken in advance; in 1442 Antonio Gonçalves brought
gold and negro slaves from the Rio d' Ouro, or Rio del Oro, four hundred
miles beyond Cape Bojador. Of this beginning of the modern slave-trade I
shall treat in a future chapter.[386] Let it suffice here to observe
that Prince Henry did not discourage but sanctioned it. The first aspect
which this baleful traffic assumed in his mind was that of a means for
converting the heathen, by bringing black men and women to Portugal to
be taught the true faith and the ways of civilized people, that they
might in due season be sent back to their native land to instruct their
heathen brethren. The kings of Portugal should have a Christian empire
in Africa, and in course of time the good work might be extended to the
Indies. Accordingly a special message was sent to Pope Eugenius IV.,
informing him of the discovery of the country of these barbarous people
beyond the limits of the Mussulman world, and asking for a grant in
perpetuity to Portugal of all heathen lands that might be discovered in
further voyages beyond Cape Bojador, even so far as to include the
Indies.[387] The request found favour in the eyes of Eugenius, and the
grant was solemnly confirmed by succeeding popes. To these proceedings
we shall again have occasion to refer. We have here to observe that the
discovery of gold and the profits of the slave-trade--though it was as
yet conducted upon a very small scale--served to increase the interest
of the Portuguese people in Prince Henry's work and to diminish the
obstacles in his way. A succession of gallant captains, whose names make
a glorious roll of honour, carried on the work of exploration, reaching
the farthest point that had been attained by the ancients. In 1445 Dinis
Fernandez passed Cape Verde, and two years later Lançarote found the
mouth of the Gambia. In 1456 Luigi Cadamosto--a Venetian captain in the
service of Portugal--went as far as the Rio Grande; in 1460 Diego Gomez
discovered the Cape Verde islands; and in 1462 Piedro de Cintra reached
Sierra Leone.[388] At the same time, in various expeditions between 1431
and 1466, the Azores (i. e. "Hawk" islands) were rediscovered and
colonized, and voyages out into the Sea of Darkness began to lose
something of their manifold terrors.
[Footnote 386: See below, vol. ii. pp. 429-431.]
[Footnote 387: "En el año de 1442, viendo el Infante que se
habia pasado el cabo del Boxador y que la tierra iba muy
adelante, y que todos los navíos que inviaba traian muchos
esclavos moros, con que pagaba los gastos que hacia y que cada
dia crecia más el provecho y se prosperaba su amada
negociacion, determinó de inviar á suplicar al Papa Martino V.,
... que hiciese gracia á la Corona real de Portogal de los
reinos y señoríos que habia y hobiese desde el cabo del Boxador
adelante, hácia el Oriente y la India inclusive; y ansí se las
concedió, ... con todas las tierras, puertos, islas, tratos,
rescates, pesquerías y cosas á esto pertenecientes, poniendo
censuras y penas á todos los reyes cristianos, príncipes, y
señores y comunidades que á esto le perturbasen; despues,
dicen, que los sumos pontífices, sucesores de Martino, como
Eugenio IV. y Nicolas V. y Calixto IV. lo confirmaron." Las
Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 185. The name of
Martin V. is a slip of the memory on the part of Las Casas.
That pope had died of apoplexy eleven years before. It was
Eugenius IV. who made this memorable grant to the crown of
Portugal. The error is repeated in Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i.
p. 339.]
[Footnote 388: The first published account of the voyages of
Cadamosto and Cintra was in the _Paesi nouamente retrouati_,
Vicenza, 1507, a small quarto which can now sometimes be bought
for from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars. See also Grynæus,
_Novus Orbis_, Basel, 1532.]
[Sidenote: Advance to the Hottentot coast.]
Prince Henry did not live to see Africa circumnavigated. At the time of
his death, in 1468, his ships had not gone farther than the spot where
Hanno found his gorillas two thousand years before. But the work of this
excellent prince did not end with his death. His adventurous spirit
lived on in the school of accomplished navigators he had trained. Many
voyages were made after 1462, of which we need mention only those that
marked new stages of discovery. In 1471 two knights of the royal
household, João de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar, sailed down the Gold
Coast and crossed the equator; three years later the line was again
crossed by Fernando Po, discoverer of the island that bears his name. In
1484 Diego Cam went on as far as the mouth of the Congo, and entered
into very friendly relations with the negroes there. In a second voyage
in 1485 this enterprising captain pushed on a thousand miles farther,
and set up a cross in 22° south latitude on the coast of the Hottentot
country. Brisk trading went on along the Gold Coast, and missionaries
were sent to the Congo.[389]
[Footnote 389: It was in the course of these voyages upon the
African coast that civilized Europeans first became familiar
with people below the upper status of barbarism. Savagery and
barbarism of the lower types were practically unknown in the
Middle Ages, and almost, though probably not quite unknown, to
the civilized peoples of the Mediterranean in ancient times.
The history of the two words is interesting. The Greek word
[Greek: barbaros], whence Eng. _barbarian_ (=Sanskrit
_barbara_, Latin _balbus_), means "a stammerer," or one who
talks gibberish, i. e. in a language we do not understand.
Aristophanes (_Aves_, 199) very prettily applies the epithet to
the inarticulate singing of birds. The names _Welsh_,
_Walloon_, _Wallachian_, and _Belooch_, given to these peoples
by their neighbours, have precisely the same meaning (Kuhn's
_Zeitschrift_, ii. 252); and in like manner the Russians call
the Germans _Nyemetch_, or people who cannot talk (Schafarik,
_Slawische Alterthumer_, i. 443; Pott, _Etym. Forsch._, ii.
521). The Greeks called all men but themselves barbarians,
including such civilized people as the Persians. The Romans
applied the name to all tribes and nations outside the limits
of the Empire, and the Italians of the later Middle Ages
bestowed it upon all nations outside of Italy. Upon its lax use
in recent times I have already commented (above, pp. 25-35).
The tendency to apply the epithet to savages is modern. The
word _savage_, on the other hand, which came to us as the Old
French _sauvage_ or _salvage_ (Ital. _selvaggio_, _salvatico_),
is the Latin _silvaticus_, _sylvaticus_, _salvaticus_, that
which pertains to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its
earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather
than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized
by the epithet _sylvaticus_ in Varro, _De re rustica_, i. 40;
and either this adjective, or its equivalent _silvestris_, was
used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as
wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or
wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22.
(Occasionally it is used of men, as in Pliny, viii. 79.) The
meaning was the same in mediæval Latin (Du Cange, _Glossarium_,
Niort, 1886, tom. vii. p. 686) and in Old French, as "La douce
voiz du loussignol sauvage" (Michel, _Chansons de chatelain de
Coucy_, xix.). In the romance of _Robert le Diable_, in the
verses
Sire, se vos fustes Sauvages
Viers moi, je n'i pris mie garde, etc.,
the reference is plainly to degenerate civilized men
frequenting the forests, such as bandits or outlaws, not to
what we call savages.
Mediæval writers certainly had some idea of savages, but it was
not based upon any actual acquaintance with such people, but
upon imperfectly apprehended statements of ancient writers. At
the famous ball at the Hotel de Saint Pol in Paris, in 1393,
King Charles VI. and five noblemen were dressed in
close-fitting suits of linen, thickly covered from head to foot
with tow or flax, the colour of hair, so as to look like
"savages." In this attire nobody recognized them, and the Duke
of Orleans, in his eagerness to make out who they were, brought
a torch too near, so that the flax took fire, and four of the
noblemen were burned to death. See Froissart's _Chronicles_,
tr. Johnes, London, 1806, vol. xi. pp. 69-76. The point of the
story is that savages were supposed to be men covered with
hair, like beasts, and Froissart, in relating it, evidently
knew no better. Whence came this notion of hairy men? Probably
from Hanno's gorillas (see above, p. 301), through Pliny, whose
huge farrago of facts and fancies was a sort of household Peter
Parley in mediæval monasteries. Pliny speaks repeatedly of men
covered with hair from head to foot, and scatters them about
according to his fancy, in Carmania and other distant places
(_Hist. Nat._, vi. 28, 36, vii. 2).
Greek and Roman writers seem to have had some slight knowledge
of savagery and the lower status of barbarism as prevailing in
remote places ("Ptolomée dit que es extremités de la terre
habitable sont gens sauvages," Oresme, _Les Éthiques
d'Aristote_, Paris, 1488), but their remarks are usually vague.
Seldom do we get such a clean-cut statement as that of Tacitus
about the Finns, that they have neither horses nor houses,
sleep on the ground, are clothed in skins, live by the chase,
and for want of iron use bone-tipped arrows (_Germania_, cap.
46). More often we have unconscionable yarns about men without
noses, or with only one eye, tailed men, solid-hoofed men,
Amazons, and parthenogenesis. The Troglodytes, or
Cave-dwellers, on the Nubian coast of the Red Sea seem to have
been in the middle status of barbarism (Diodorus, iii. 32;
Agatharchides, 61-63), and the Ichthyophagi, or Fish-eaters,
whom Nearchus found on the shores of Gedrosia (Arrian,
_Indica_, cap. 29), were probably in a lower stage, perhaps
true savages. It is exceedingly curious that Mela puts a race
of pygmies at the headwaters of the Nile (see map above, p.
304). Is this only an echo from _Iliad_, iii. 6, or can any
ancient traveller have penetrated far enough inland toward the
equator to have heard reports of the dwarfish race lately
visited by Stanley (_In Darkest Africa_, vol. ii. pp. 100-104,
164)? Strabo had no real knowledge of savagery in Africa (cf.
Bunbury, _Hist. Ancient Geog._, ii. 331). Sataspes may have
seen barbarians of low type, possibly on one of the Canary
isles (see description of Canarians in Major's _Prince Henry_,
p. 212). Ptolemy had heard of an island of cannibals in the
Indian ocean, perhaps one of the Andaman group, visited A. D.
1293 by Marco Polo. The people of these islands rank among the
lowest savages on the earth, and Marco was disgusted and
horrified; their beastly faces, with huge prognathous jaws and
projecting canine teeth, he tried to describe by calling them a
dog-headed people. Sir Henry Yule suggests that the mention of
Cynocephali, or Dog-heads, in ancient writers may have had an
analogous origin (_Marco Polo_, vol. ii. p. 252). This visit of
the Venetian traveller to Andaman was one of very few real
glimpses of savagery vouchsafed to Europeans before the
fifteenth century; and a general review of the subject brings
out in a strong light the truthfulness and authenticity of the
description of American Indians in Eric the Red's Saga, as
shown above, pp. 185-192.]
[Sidenote: Effect of these discoveries upon the theories of Ptolemy and
Mela.]
These voyages into the southern hemisphere dealt a damaging blow to the
theory of an impassable fiery zone; but as to the circumnavigability of
the African continent, the long stretch of coast beyond the equator
seemed more in harmony with Ptolemy's views than with those of Mela. The
eastward trend of the Guinea coast was at first in favour of the latter
geographer, but when Santarem and Escobar found it turning southward to
the equator the facts began to refute him. According to Mela they
should have found it possible at once to sail eastward to the gulf of
Aden. What if it should turn out after all that there was no connection
between the Atlantic and Indian oceans? Every added league of voyaging
toward the tropic of Capricorn must have been fraught with added
discouragement, for it went to prove that, even if Ptolemy's theory was
wrong, at any rate the ocean route to Asia was indefinitely longer than
had been supposed. But was it possible to imagine any other route that
should be more direct? To a trained mariner of original and imaginative
mind, sojourning in Portugal and keenly watching the progress of African
discovery, the years just following the voyage of Santarem and Escobar
would be a period eminently fit for suggesting such a question. Let us
not forget this date of 1471 while we follow Prince Henry's work to its
first grand climax.
[Sidenote: News of Prester John.]
About the time that Diego Cam was visiting the tribes on the Congo, the
negro king of Benin, a country by the mouth of the Niger, sent an
embassy to John II. of Portugal (Prince Henry's nephew), with a request
that missionary priests might be sent to Benin. It has been thought that
the woolly-haired chieftain was really courting an alliance with the
Portuguese, or perhaps he thought their "medicine men" might have the
knack of confounding his foes. The negro envoy told King John that a
thousand miles or so east of Benin there was an august sovereign who
ruled over many subject peoples, and at whose court there was an order
of chivalry whose badge or emblem was a brazen cross. Such, at least,
was the king's interpretation of the negro's words, and forthwith he
jumped to the conclusion that this African potentate must be Prester
John, whose name was redolent of all the marvels of the mysterious East.
To find Prester John would be a long step toward golden Cathay and the
isles of spice. So the king of Portugal rose to the occasion, and
attacked the problem on both flanks at once. He sent Pedro de Covilham
by way of Egypt to Aden, and he sent Bartholomew Dias, with three
fifty-ton caravels, to make one more attempt to find an end to the
Atlantic coast of Africa.
[Sidenote: Covilham's journey.]
Covilham's journey was full of interesting experiences. He sailed from
Aden to Hindustan, and on his return visited Abyssinia, where the
semi-Christian king took such a liking to him that he would never let
him go. So Covilham spent the rest of his life, more than thirty years,
in Abyssinia, whence he was able now and then to send to Portugal items
of information concerning eastern Africa that were afterwards quite
serviceable in voyages upon the Indian ocean.[390]
[Footnote 390: See Major's _India in the Fifteenth Century_,
pp. lxxxv.-xc.]
[Sidenote: Bartholomew Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope and enters the
Indian ocean.]
The daring captain, Bartholomew Dias, started in August, 1486, and after
passing nearly four hundred miles beyond the tropic of Capricorn, was
driven due south before heavy winds for thirteen days without seeing
land. At the end of this stress of weather he turned his prows eastward,
expecting soon to reach the coast. But as he had passed the southernmost
point of Africa and no land appeared before him, after a while he
steered northward and landed near the mouth of Gauritz river, more than
two hundred miles east of the Cape of Good Hope. Thence he pushed on
about four hundred miles farther eastward as far as the Great Fish river
(about 33° 30' S., 27° 10' E.), where the coast begins to have a steady
trend to the northeast. Dias was now fairly in the Indian ocean, and
could look out with wistful triumph upon that waste of waters, but his
worn-out crews refused to go any farther and he was compelled
reluctantly to turn back. On the way homeward the ships passed in full
sight of the famous headland which Dias called the Stormy Cape; but
after arriving at Lisbon, in December, 1487, when the report of this
noble voyage was laid before King John II., his majesty said, Nay, let
it rather be called the Cape of Good Hope, since there was now much
reason to believe that they had found the long-sought ocean route to the
Indies.[391] Though this opinion turned out to be correct, it is well
for us to remember that the proof was not yet complete. No one could
yet say with certainty that the African coast, if followed a few miles
east of Great Fish river, would not again trend southward and run all
the way to the pole. The completed proof was not obtained until Vasco da
Gama crossed the Indian ocean ten years later.
[Footnote 391: The greatest of Portuguese poets represents the
Genius of the Cape as appearing to the storm-tossed mariners in
cloud-like shape, like the Jinni that the fisherman of the
Arabian tale released from a casket. He expresses indignation
at their audacity in discovering his secret, hitherto hidden
from mankind:--
Eu sou aquelle occulto e grande Cabo,
A quem chamais vós outros Tormentorio,
Que nunca á Ptolomeo, Pomponio, Estrabo,
Plinio, e quantos passaram, fui notorio:
Aqui toda a Africana costa acabo
Neste meu nunca vista promontorio,
Que para o polo Antarctico se estende,
A quem vossa ousadia tanto offende.
Camoens, _Os Lusiadas_, v. 50.]
[Sidenote: Some effects of the discovery.]
[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus.]
This voyage of Bartholomew Dias was longer and in many respects more
remarkable than any that is known to have been made before that time.
From Lisbon back to Lisbon, reckoning the sinuosities of the coast, but
making no allowance for tacking, the distance run by those tiny craft
was not less than thirteen thousand miles. This voyage completed the
overthrow of the fiery-zone doctrine, so far as Africa was concerned; it
penetrated far into the southern temperate zone where Mela had placed
his antipodal world; it dealt a staggering blow to the continental
theory of Ptolemy; and its success made men's minds readier for yet more
daring enterprises. Among the shipmates of Dias on this ever memorable
voyage was a well-trained and enthusiastic Italian mariner, none other
than Bartholomew, the younger brother of Christopher Columbus. There was
true dramatic propriety in the presence of that man at just this time;
for not only did all these later African voyages stand in a direct
causal relation to the discovery of America, but as an immediate
consequence of the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope we shall presently
find Bartholomew Columbus in the very next year on his way to England,
to enlist the aid of King Henry VII. in behalf of a scheme of
unprecedented boldness for which his elder brother had for some years
been seeking to obtain the needful funds. Not long after that
disappointing voyage of Santarem and Escobar in 1471, this original and
imaginative sailor, Christopher Columbus, had conceived (or adopted and
made his own) a new method of solving the problem of an ocean route to
Cathay. We have now to sketch the early career of this epoch-making man,
and to see how he came to be brought into close relations with the work
of the Portuguese explorers.