The Lusiad Part 30

If the civilized, he adds, enjoy the elegancies of life, have better food, and are more comfortably defended against the change of seasons, it is use which makes these things necessary, and they are purchased by the painful labours of the mult.i.tude who are the basis of society. To what outrages is not the man of civil life exposed? if he has property, it is in danger; and government or authority is, according to our author, the greatest of all evils. If there is a famine in North America, the savage, led by the wind and the sun, can go to a better clime; but in the horrors of famine, war, or pestilence, the ports and barriers of civilized states place the subjects in a prison, where they must perish. There still remains an infinite difference between the lot of the civilized and the savage; a difference, all entirely to the disadvantage of society, that injustice which reigns in the inequality of fortunes and conditions.

[26] The innocent simplicity of the Americans in their conferences with the Spaniards, and the horrid cruelties they suffered from them, divert our view from their complete character. Almost everything was horrid in their civil customs and religious rites. In some tribes, to cohabit with their mothers, sisters, and daughters was esteemed the means of domestic peace. In others, catamites were maintained in every village; they went from house to house as they pleased, and it was unlawful to refuse them what victuals they chose. In every tribe, the captives taken in war were murdered with the most wanton cruelty, and afterwards devoured by the victors. Their religious rites were, if possible, still more horrid. The abominations of ancient Moloch were here outnumbered; children, virgins, slaves, and captives bled on different altars, to appease their various G.o.ds. If there was a scarcity of human victims, the priests announced that the G.o.ds were dying of thirst for human blood. And, to prevent a threatened famine, the kings of Mexico were obliged to make war on the neighbouring states. The prisoners of either side died by the hand of the priest. But the number of the Mexican sacrifices so greatly exceeded those of other nations, that the Tlascalans, who were hunted down for this purpose, readily joined Cortez with about 200,000 men, and enabled him to make one great sacrifice of the Mexican nation. Who that views Mexico, steeped in her own blood, can restrain the emotion which whispers to him, This is the hand of Heaven!--By the number of these sacred butcheries, one would think that cruelty was the greatest amus.e.m.e.nt of Mexico. At the dedication of the temple of Vitzliputzli, A.D. 1486, no less than 64,080 human victims were sacrificed in four days. And, according to the best accounts, the annual sacrifices of Mexico required several thousands. The skulls of the victims sometimes were hung on strings which reached from tree to tree around their temples, and sometimes were built up in towers and cemented with lime.

In some of these towers Andrew de Tapia one day counted 136,000 skulls.

During the war with Cortez they increased their usual sacrifices, till priest and people were tired of their b.l.o.o.d.y religion.--See, for ample justification of these statements, the _Histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru_, by Prescott.--_Ed._

[27] Mahommed Ali Khan, Nawab of the Carnatic, declared, "I met the British with that freedom of openness which they love, and I esteem it my honour as well as security to be the ally of such a nation of princes."

[28] Every man must follow his father's trade, and must marry a daughter of the same occupation. Innumerable are their other barbarous restrictions of genius and inclination.

[29] Extremity; for it were both highly unjust and impolitic in government to allow importation in such a degree as might be destructive of domestic agriculture.

[30] Even that warm admirer of savage happiness, the author of _Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etabliss.e.m.e.nts_, confesses that the wild Americans seem dest.i.tute of the feeling of love. When the heat of pa.s.sion, says he, is gratified, they lose all affection and attachment for their women, whom they degrade to the most servile offices.--A tender remembrance of the first endearments, a generous partic.i.p.ation of care and hope, the compa.s.sionate sentiments of honour; all these delicate feelings, which arise into affection, and bind attachment, are indeed, incompatible with the ferocious and gross sensations of barbarians.

[31] It is a question still debated among medical writers, and by no means yet decided, whether the disease referred to is of American origin. We do not read, it is true, of any such disease in the pages of the ancient cla.s.sic writers; it has hence been inferred that it was unknown to them.--_Ed._

[32] The degeneracy of the Roman literature preceded the fate of the state, and the reason is obvious. The men of fortune grew frivolous, and superficial in every branch of knowledge, and were therefore unable to hold the reigns of empire. The degeneracy of literary taste is, therefore, the surest proof of the general ignorance.

[33] The soldiers and navigators were the only considerable gainers by their acquirements in the Indies. Agriculture and manufactures are the natural strength of a nation; these received little or no increase in Spain and Portugal by the great acquisitions of these crowns.

[34] Ariosto, who adopted the legends of the old romance, chose this period for the subject of his Orlando Furioso. Paris besieged by the Saracens, Orlando and the other Christian knights a.s.semble in aid of Charlemagne, who are opposed in their amours and in battle by Rodomont, Ferraw, and other Saracen knights. That there was a noted Moorish Spaniard, named Ferraw, a redoubted champion of that age, we have the testimony of Marcus Antonius Sabellicus, a writer of note of the fifteenth century.

[35] Small indeed in extent, but so rich in fertility, that it was called _Medulla Hispanica_, "The marrow of Spain."--Vid. Resandii Antiq.

Lusit. l. iii.

[36] In propriety most certainly a crusade, though that term has never before been applied to this war.

[37] The power of deposing, and of electing their kings, under certain circ.u.mstances, is vested in the people by the statutes of Lamego.

[38] For the character of this prince, see the note, Bk. iii. p. 96.

[39] For anecdotes of this monarch, see the notes, Bk. iii. p. 99.

[40] This great prince was the natural son of Pedro the Just. Some years after the murder of his beloved spouse, Inez de Castro (see Lusiad, Bk.

iii. p. 96), lest his father, whose severe temper he too well knew, should force him into a disagreeable marriage, Don Pedro commenced an amour with a Galician lady, who became the mother of John I., the preserver of the Portuguese monarchy.

[41] The sons of John, who figure in history, were Edward, Juan, Fernando, Pedro and Henry. Edward succeeded his father. Juan, distinguished both in the camp and cabinet, in the reign of his brother Edward had the honour to oppose the expedition against Tangier, which was proposed by his brother Fernando, in whose perpetual captivity it ended.

[42] The dominion of the Portuguese in the Indian seas cut the sinews of the Egyptian and other Mohammedan powers.

[43] Flanders has been the school-mistress of husbandry to Europe. Sir Charles Lisle, a royalist, resided in this country several years during the Commonwealth; and after the Restoration, rendered England the greatest service, by introducing the present system of agriculture.

Where trade increases, men's thoughts are set in action; hence the increase of food which is wanted is supplied by a redoubled attention to husbandry; and hence it was that agriculture was of old improved and diffused by the Phnician colonies.

[44] At the reduction of Ceuta in Africa, and in other engagements, Prince Henry displayed military genius and valour of the first magnitude. The important fortress of Ceuta was in a manner won by his own sword.

[45] Nam, in Portuguese, a negative. It is now called by corruption Cape Nun.

[46] Cape Bojador, from the Spanish, _bojar_, to compa.s.s or go about.

[47] Unluckily, he also left on this island two rabbits, whose young so increased that in a few years it was found not habitable, every vegetable being destroyed by the great increase of these animals.

[48] Madeira in Portuguese signifies timber.--_Ed._

[49] If one would trace the true character of Cortez and the Americans, he must have recourse to the numerous Spanish writers, who were either witnesses of the first wars, or soon after travelled in these countries.

[The reader cannot do better than refer to Prescott's _History of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru_ for information on these points.--_Ed._] In these he will find many anecdotes which afford a light not to be found in our modern histories. Cortez set out to take gold by force, and not by establishing any system of commerce with the natives, the only just reason for effecting a settlement in a foreign country. He was asked by various states, what commodities or drugs he wanted, and was promised abundant supply. He and his Spaniards, he answered, had a disease at their hearts, which nothing but gold could cure; and he received intelligence that Mexico abounded with it. Under pretence of a friendly conference, he made the Mexican emperor, Montezuma, his prisoner, and ordered him to pay tribute to Charles V. Immense sums were paid, but the demand was boundless. Tumults ensued. Cortez displayed amazing generalship, and some millions of those who boasted of the greatness of Montezuma were sacrificed to the disease of Cortez's heart. Pizarro, however, in the barbarity of his character, far exceeded him. There is a bright side to the character of Cortez, if we can forget that his avarice was the cause of a most unjust and most b.l.o.o.d.y war; but Pizarro is a character completely detestable, dest.i.tute of every spark of generosity. He ma.s.sacred the Peruvians because they were barbarians, and he himself could not read. Atabalipa, the Peruvian Inca, amazed at the art of reading, got a Spaniard to write the word Dios (G.o.d) on his finger. On trying if the Spaniards agreed in what it signified, he discovered that Pizarro could not read. And Pizarro, in revenge of the contempt he perceived in the face of Atabalipa, ordered that prince to be tried for his life, for having concubines, and being an idolater.

Atabalipa was condemned to be burned; but on submitting to baptism, he was only hanged. See Prescott's _Conquest of Peru_.

[50] The difficulties he surmounted, and the a.s.sistance he received, are sufficient proofs that an adventurer of inferior birth could never have carried his designs into execution.

[51] Don Pedro was villainously accused of treacherous designs by his illegitimate brother, the first Duke of Braganza. Henry left his town of Sagrez to defend his brother at court, but in vain. Pedro, finding the young king in the power of Braganza, fled, and soon after was killed in defending himself against a party who were sent to seize him. His innocence, after his death, was fully proved, and his nephew, Alonzo V., gave him an honourable burial.

[52] Henry, who undertook to extend the boundaries which ignorance had given to the world, had extended them much beyond the sensible horizon long ere Columbus appeared. Columbus indeed taught the Spaniards the use of longitude and lat.i.tude in navigation, but that great mathematician, Henry, was the author of that grand discovery, and of the _use_ of the compa.s.s. Every alteration ascribed to Columbus, had almost fifty years before been effected by Henry. Even Henry's idea of sailing to India was adopted by Columbus. It was everywhere his proposal. When he arrived in the West Indies he thought he had found the Ophir of Solomon, and thence these islands received their general name, and on his return he told John II. that he had been at the islands of India. To find the Spice Islands of the East was his proposal at the court of Spain; and even on his fourth and last voyage in 1502, three years after Gama's return, he promised the King of Spain to find India by a westward pa.s.sage. But though great discoveries rewarded his toils, his first and last purpose he never completed. It was reserved for Magalhaens to discover the westward route to the Eastern world.

Gomara and other Spanish writers relate, that while Columbus lived in Madeira, a pilot, the only survivor of a ship's crew, died at his house.

This pilot, they say, had been driven to the West Indies, or America, by tempest, and on his death-bed communicated the journal of his voyage to Columbus.

[53] Or Bethlehem, so named from the chapel.

[54] Now called St. Helen's.

[55] The voyage of Gama has been called merely a coasting one, and therefore regarded as much less dangerous and heroical than that of Columbus, or of Magalhaens. But this is one of the opinions hastily taken up, and founded on ignorance. Columbus and Magalhaens undertook to navigate unknown oceans, and so did Gama; with this difference, that the ocean around the Cape of Good Hope, which Gama was to encounter, was believed to be, and had been avoided by Diaz, as impa.s.sable. Prince Henry suggested that the current of Cape Bojador might be avoided by standing out to sea, and thus that Cape was first pa.s.sed. Gama for this reason did not coast, but stood out to sea for upwards of three months of tempestuous weather. The tempests which afflicted Columbus and Magalhaens are by their different historians described with circ.u.mstances of less horror and danger than those which attacked Gama.

All the three commanders were endangered by mutiny; but none of their crews, save Gama's, could urge the opinion of ages, and the example of a living captain, that the dreadful ocean which they attempted was impa.s.sable. Columbus and Magalhaens always found means, after detecting a conspiracy, to keep the rest in hope; but Gama's men, when he put the pilots in irons, continued in the utmost despair. Columbus was indeed ill obeyed; Magalhaens sometimes little better; but nothing, save the wonderful authority of Gama's command, could have led his crew through the tempest which he surmounted ere he doubled the Cape of Good Hope.

Columbus, with _his_ crew, must have returned. The expedients which he used to soothe them, would, under _his_ authority, have had no avail in the tempest which Gama rode through. From every circ.u.mstance it is evident that Gama had determined not to return, unless he found India.

Nothing less than such resolution to perish or attain his point could have led him on.

[56] It afterwards appeared that the Moorish King of Mombas had been informed of what happened at Mozambique, and intended to revenge it by the total destruction of the fleet.

[57] Amerigo Vespucci, describing his voyage to America, says, "Having pa.s.sed the line, _e come desideroso d'essere autore che segna.s.si la stella_--desirous to be the namer and discoverer of the Pole-star of the other hemisphere, I lost my sleep many nights in contemplating the stars of the other pole." He then laments, that as his instruments could not discover any star of less motion then ten degrees, he had not the satisfaction of giving a name to any one. But as he observed four stars, in form of an almond, which had but little motion, he hoped in his next voyage he should be able to mark them out.--All this is curious, and affords a good comment on the temper of the man who had the art to defraud Columbus, by giving his own name to America; of which he challenged the discovery. Near fifty years before the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci, the Portuguese had crossed the line; and Diaz fourteen, and Gama nearly three years before, had doubled the Cape of Good Hope; had discovered seven stars in the constellation of the south pole, and from the appearance of the four most luminous, had given it the name of "The Cross," a figure which it better resembles than that of an almond.

[58] Properly "Samudra-Rajah," King of the Sea, corrupted into Zamorim.--_Ed._

[59] "Kotwal" signifies Superintendent of the Police.--_Ed._

[60] Faria y Sousa.

[61] It was the custom of the first discoverers to erect crosses at various places remarkable in their voyage. Gama erected six: one, dedicated to St. Raphael, at the river of Good Signs; one to St. George, at Mozambique; one to St. Stephen, at Melinda; one to St. Gabriel, at Calicut; and one to St. Mary, at the island thence named, near Anchediva.

[62] _The Lusiad_; in the original, Os Lusiadas, The Lusiads, from the Latin name (_Lusitania_) of Portugal, derived from Lusus or Lysas, the companion of Bacchus in his travels, who settled a colony in Lusitania, See Plin. 1, iii. c. i.

[63] _Thro' seas where sail was never spread before._--M. Duperron de Castera, who has given a French prose translation, or rather paraphrase, of the Lusiad, has a long note on this pa.s.sage, which, he tells us, must not be understood literally. Our author, he says, could not be ignorant that the African and Indian Oceans had been navigated before the times of the Portuguese. The Phnicians, whose fleets pa.s.sed the straits of Gibraltar, made frequent voyages in these seas, though they carefully concealed the course of their navigation that other nations might not become partakers of their lucrative traffic.--See the Periplus of Hanno, in Cory's Ancient Fragments.--_Ed._

[64] _And all my country's wars._--He interweaves artfully the history of Portugal.--VOLTAIRE.

[65] _To Holy Faith unnumber'd altars rear'd._--In no period of history does human nature appear with more shocking, more diabolical features than in the wars of Cortez, and the Spanish conquerors of South America.

Zeal for the Christian religion was esteemed, at the time of the Portuguese grandeur, as the most cardinal virtue, and to propagate Christianity and extirpate Mohammedanism were the most certain proofs of that zeal. In all their expeditions this was professedly a princ.i.p.al motive of the Lusitanian monarchs, and Camoens understood the nature of epic poetry too well to omit it.

[66] Ulysses, who is the subject of the Odyssey.

[67] The voyage of aeneas, described in the aeneid of Virgil.