The Discovery of America Part 23

Ipsi in defossis specubus, secura sub alta Otia agunt terra, congestaque robora, totasque Advolvere focis ulmos, ignique dedere.

Hic noctem ludo duc.u.n.t, et pocula laeti Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis.

Talis Hyperboreo Septem subjecta trioni Gens effraena virum Rhipaeo tunditur Euro, Et pecudum fulvis velantur corpora saetis.

The Roman conception of the situation of these "Hyperboreans"

and of the Rhipaean mountains may be seen in the map of Mela's world.]

[Footnote 363: "Huic medio terra sublimis cingitur undique mari: eodemque in duo latera, quae hemisphaeria nominantur, ab oriente divisa ad occasum, zonis quinque distinguitur. Mediam aestus infestat, frigus ultimas: reliquae habitabiles paria agunt anni tempora, verum non pariter. Antichthones alteram, nos alteram incolimus. Illius situ ab ardorem intercedentis plagae 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 zonae; quarum una corusco Semper Sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni; Quam circ.u.m extremae dextra laevaque trahuntur, Caerulea glacie concretae atque imbribus atris.

Has inter mediamque, duae mortalibus aegris Munere concessae Divum; 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 _navete_, 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...o...b..s alterius Hipparcho dicitur; sed quia habitata, nec quisquam circ.u.mmea.s.se 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] Panaetius, the friend of the younger Scipio Africa.n.u.s, 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 lat.i.tude 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 a.s.sociations, 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 a.s.sailed 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 ci quasi cos disputavano, come gia i Portoghesi intorno al navigare in Guinea; dicendo che, se si allarga.s.se alcuno a far cammino diritto al occidente, come l' Ammiraglio diceva, non potrebbe poi tornare in Ispagna per la rotondita della sfera; tenendo per certissime, che qualunque uscisse del emisperio conosciuto da Tolomeo, anderebbe in giu, e poi gli sarebbe impossibile dar la volta; e affermando che ci sarebbe quasi uno ascendere all'

insu 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 doc.u.ments: "Anidian mas, que quien navegase por via derecha la vuelta del poniente, como el Cristobal Colon proferia, no podria despues volver, suponiendo que el mundo era redondo y yendo hacia el occidente iban cuesta abajo, y saliendo del hemisferio que Ptolomeo escribi, a la vuelta erales necesario subir cuesta arriba, lo que los navios era imposible hacer." The gentle but keen sarcasm that follows is very characteristic of Las Casas: "Esta era gentil y profunda razon, y senal de haber bien el negocio entendido!" _Historia de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 230.]

[Footnote 370: Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces Consurgit, premitur Libyae devexus in austros.

Hic vertex n.o.bis 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: Superst.i.tious fancies.]

To such notions as these, which were supposed to have some sort of scientific basis, we must add the wild superst.i.tious fancies that cl.u.s.tered 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 Chimaeras 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 sh.o.r.es of Cathay.

[Sidenote: Clumsiness of the caravels.]

[Sidenote: Famine and scurvy.]

Less formidable than these obstacles based on fallacious reasoning or superst.i.tious 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 p.o.o.ps, 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 st.u.r.dy 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 compa.s.s.]

First among the instruments without which systematic ocean navigation would have been impossible, the magnetic compa.s.s 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 compa.s.s-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 a.s.semble 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 Espana_, p. 28; see also Raymond Lully's treatise, _Libro felix, o Maravillas del mundo_ (A. D. 1286).]

[Footnote 373: See Humboldt's _Kosmos_, bd. i. p. 294; Klaproth, _Lettre a 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 employee pour la navigation, tandis que nous la trouvons des le xi^{e} siecle chez les Arabes qui s'en servent non seulement dans leurs traversees maritimes, mais dans les voyages de caravanes au milieu des deserts," etc. Sedillot, _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 G.o.d" such horrible events as famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, on the other hand when some purely beneficent invention has appeared, such as the mariner's compa.s.s 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: Lat.i.tude and longitude.]

That time was after all not so long in arriving, for by the end of the thirteenth century the compa.s.s 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 alt.i.tude 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 lat.i.tude, 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: Hullmann, _Stadtewesen 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 edico 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 Guine_, 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. lx.x.xii. 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.