The Discovery of America Part 24

[Footnote 380: [Greek: h.o.m.oios de kai peri tes exo stelon legetai; dysmikotaton men gar semeion tes oikoumenes, to ton Iberon akroterion, 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 Littre, _Dictionnaire_, s. v. "Talent;" Du Cange, _Glossarium_, "talentum, animi decretum, voluntas, desiderium, cupiditas," etc.; cf. Raynouard, _Glossaire Provencale_, 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 compa.s.s. 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 Bethencourt, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sar o Cabo de No ou voltara ou _no_," i. e. "Whoever pa.s.ses Cape _Non_ will return or _not_." See Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 173; Mariana, _Hist. de Espana_, 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, Bethencourt'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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.trated the fearful rate of multiplication of which organisms are capable in the absence of enemies or other adverse circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d had evidently created those islands for beasts alone, not for men! "En este tiempo habia en todo Portugal grandisimas murmuraciones del Infante, viendolo tan cudicioso y poner tanta diligencia en el descubrir de la tierra y costa de africa, diciendo que destruia el reino en los gastos que hacia, y consumia los vecinos del en poner en tanto peligro y dano la gente portoguesa, donde muchos morian, enviandolos en demanda de tierras que nunca los reyes de Espana pasados se atrevieron a emprender, donde habia de hacer muchas viudas y huerfanos 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 Guine_, cap. lx.x.xiii.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 (_anglice_, 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 Goncalves 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed Cape Verde, and two years later Lancarote 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 ano de 1442, viendo el Infante que se habia pasado el cabo del Boxador y que la tierra iba muy adelante, y que todos los navios que inviaba traian muchos esclavos moros, con que pagaba los gastos que hacia y que cada dia crecia mas el provecho y se prosperaba su amada negociacion, determino de inviar a suplicar al Papa Martino V., ... que hiciese gracia a la Corona real de Portogal de los reinos y senorios que habia y hobiese desde el cabo del Boxador adelante, hacia el Oriente y la India inclusive; y ansi se las concedio, ... con todas las tierras, puertos, islas, tratos, rescates, pesquerias y cosas a esto pertenecientes, poniendo censuras y penas a todos los reyes cristianos, principes, y senores y comunidades que a esto le perturbasen; despues, dicen, que los sumos pontifices, 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 Grynaeus, _Novus...o...b..s_, Basel, 1532.]

[Sidenote: Advance to the Hottentot coast.]

Prince Henry did not live to see Africa circ.u.mnavigated. 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, Joo 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 lat.i.tude 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, x.x.x. 22.

(Occasionally it is used of men, as in Pliny, viii. 79.) The meaning was the same in mediaeval 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.

Mediaeval 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 n.o.blemen 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 n.o.body 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 n.o.blemen 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 mediaeval 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 ("Ptolomee dit que es extremites de la terre habitable sont gens sauvages," Oresme, _Les ethiques 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 sh.o.r.es 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 a.n.a.logous 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 impa.s.sable fiery zone; but as to the circ.u.mnavigability 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 emba.s.sy 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. lx.x.xv.-xc.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew Dias pa.s.ses the Cape of Good Hope and enters the Indian ocean.]

The daring captain, Bartholomew Dias, started in August, 1486, and after pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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 vos outros Tormentorio, Que nunca a Ptolomeo, Pomponio, Estrabo, Plinio, e quantos pa.s.saram, 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.