Lastly, the results of the Ceuta campaign in giving positive knowledge of western and inland Africa to a mind like Henry's already set on the finding of a sea-route to India, have been noticed by all contemporaries and followers, who took any interest in his plans, but it was not merely caravan news that he gained in these two visits of 1415 and 1418. Both Azurara, the chronicler of his voyages and Diego Gomez, his lieutenant, the explorer of the Cape Verde Islands and of the Upper Gambia, are quite clear about the new knowledge of the coast now gained from Moorish prisoners.

Not only did the Prince get "news of the passage of merchants from the coasts of Tunis to Timbuctoo and to Cantor on the Gambia, which inspired him to seek the lands by the way of the sea," but also "the Tawny Moors (or Azanegues) his prisoners told him of certain tall palms growing at the mouth of the Senegal or western Nile, by which he was able to guide the caravels he sent out to find that river." By the time Henry was ready to return from Ceuta to Portugal for good and all, in 1418, there were clearly before his mind the five reasons for exploring Guinea given by his faithful Azurara:

First of all was his desire to know the country beyond Cape Bojador, which till that time was quite unknown either by books or by the talk of sailors.

Second was his wish that if any Christian people or good ports should be discovered beyond that cape, he might begin a trade with them that would profit both the natives and the Portuguese, for he knew of no other nation in Europe who trafficked in those parts.

Thirdly, he believed the Moors were more powerful on that side of Africa than had been thought, and he feared there were no Christians there at all. So he was fain to find out how many and how strong his enemies really were.

Fourthly, in all his fighting with the Moors he had never found a Christian prince to help him from that side (of further Africa) for the love of Christ, therefore he wished, if he could, to meet with such.

Last was his great desire for the spread of the Christian Faith and for the redemption of the vast tribes of men lying under the wrath of God.

Behind all these reasons Azurara also believed in a sixth and deeper one, which he proceeds to state with all gravity, as the ultimate and celestial cause of the Prince's work.

"For as his ascendant was Aries, that is in the House of Mars and the Exaltation of the Sun, and as the said Mars is in Aquarius, which is the House of Saturn, it was clear that my lord should be a great conqueror, and a searcher out of things hidden from other men, according to the craft of Saturn, in whose House he was."[35]

[Footnote 35: The attempts of Henry and his family to conquer a land-empire in northern Africa are not to be separated from the maritime and coasting explorations. They were two aspects of one idea, two faces of the same enterprise.

In the same way the new bishopric of Ceuta, now founded, was a first step towards the organised conversion of the Heathen of the South. The Franciscans had founded the See of Fez and Morocco in 1233, but it had not till now been followed up.]



CHAPTER IX.

HENRY'S SETTLEMENT AT SAGRES AND FIRST DISCOVERIES.

1418-28.

Whatever the Prince owed to his stay at Ceuta beyond the general suggestion and encouragement to take up a life-profession of discovery, it was at any rate put into practice on his second and last return (1418). From that time to the end of his life he became a recluse from the Court life of Lisbon, though he soon gathered round himself a rival Court, of science and seamanship.

The old "Sacred Cape" of the Romans, then called Sagres, now the "Cape St. Vincent" of Nelson and modern maps, was his chosen home for the next forty years, though he seems to have passed a good deal of his time in his port of Lagos, close by.

In 1419 King John made him Governor for life of the Algarves (the southern province of Portugal) and the new governor at once began to rebuild and enlarge the old naval arsenal, in the neck of the Cape, into a settlement that soon became the "Prince's Town." In Lagos, his ships were built and manned; and there, and in Sagres itself, all the schemes of discovery were thought out, the maps and instruments corrected, and the accounts of past and present travellers compared by the Prince himself. His results then passed into the instructions of his captains and the equipment of his caravels. The Sacred Cape, which he now colonised, was at any rate a good centre for his work of ocean voyaging. Here, with the Atlantic washing the land on three sides, he was well on the scene of action. There were buildings on Sagres headland as old as the eleventh century; Greek geography had made this the starting-point of its shorter and continental measurements for the length of the habitable world, and the Genoese, whose policy was to buy up points of vantage on every coast, were eager to plant a colony there, but Portugal was not ready to become like the Byzantine Empire, a depot for Italian commerce, and Henry had his own reasons for securing a desolate promontory.

On this he now built himself a palace, a chapel, a study, an observatory—the earliest in Portugal—and a village for his helpers and attendants. "In his wish to gain a prosperous result for his efforts, the Prince devoted great industry and thought to the matter, and at great expense procured the aid of one Master Jacome from Majorca, a man skilled in the art of navigation and in the making of maps and instruments, and who was sent for, with certain of the Arab and Jewish mathematicians, to instruct the Portuguese in that science." So at least, says De Barros, the "Livy of Portugal." At Sagres was thus founded anew the systematic study of applied science in Christendom; it was better than the work of the old Greek "University" at Alexandria with which it has been compared, because it was essentially practical. From it "our sailors," says Pedro Nunes, "went out well taught and provided with instruments and rules which all map-makers should know." We would gladly know more of Henry's scientific work; a good many legends have grown up about it, and even his foundation of the Chair of Mathematics in the University of Lisbon or Coimbra, our best evidence of the unrecorded work of his school, has been doubted by some modern critics, even by the national historian, Alexander Herculano. But to Prince Henry's study and science two great improvements on this side may be traced: first in the art of map-making, secondly in the building of caravels and ocean craft.

The great Venetian map of Fra Mauro of the Camaldolese convent of Murano, finished in 1459, one year before the Navigator's death, is evidence for the one; Cadamosto's words, as a practical seaman, of Italian birth, in Henry's service, that the "caravels of Portugal were the best sailing ships afloat," may be proof sufficient of the other.

On both these lines, Henry took up the results of Italians and worked towards success with their aid. As Columbus and the Cabots and Verazzano in later times represented the intellectual leadership of Italy to other nations—Spain, England, and France; but had to find their career and resources not in their own commercial republics, but at the Courts of the new centralised kingdoms of the West, where a paternal despotism gave the best hope of guiding any popular movement, social or religious or political or scientific,—so in the earlier fifteenth century, mariners like Cadamosto and De Nolli, scientific draughtsmen like Fra Mauro and Andrea Bianco, looked from Venice and Genoa to the Court of Sagres and to the service of Prince Henry as their proper sphere, where they would find the encouragement and reward they sought for at home and often sought in vain.

Henry's settlement on Cape St. Vincent was not long without results. The voyage of his captain, John de Trasto, to the "fruitful" district of Grand Canary in 1415 was not in any sense a discovery, as the conquest of John de Bethencourt in 1402 had made these "Fortunate" islands perfectly well known, but the finding of Porto Santo and Madeira in 1418-20 was a real gain. For the Machin story of the English landing in Madeira was a close secret, which by good fortune passed into the Prince's keeping, but not beyond, so that as far as general knowledge went, the Portuguese were now fairly embarked upon the Sea of Darkness.

First came the sighting of the "Holy Haven" in 1418. In this year, says Azurara, two squires of the Prince's household, named John Gonsalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, eager for renown and anxious to serve their lord, had set out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea, but they were caught by a storm near Lagos and driven to the island of Porto Santo. This name they gave themselves "at this very time in their joy at thus escaping the perils of the tempest."

Zarco and Vaz returned in triumph to Sagres and reported the new-found island to be well worth a permanent settlement. Henry, always "generous," took up the idea with great interest and sent out Zarco and Vaz with another of his equerries, one Bartholomew Perestrello, to colonise, with two ships and products for a new country; corn, honey, the sugar cane from Sicily, the Malvoisie grape from Crete, even the rabbit from Portugal.

On his first return voyage Zarco had captured the pilot Morales of Seville, and from him the Prince had gained certain news of the English landing in Madeira. So it was with a definite purpose of further discovery that his captains returned to Porto Santo in 1420, with Morales as their guide. Now, as before, Zarco appears as chief in command; he had won himself a name at Ceuta, and if the tradition be true, had just brought in the first use of ship-artillery; the finding of Porto Santo was mainly credited to him.

Sailing from Lagos in June, 1420, he had no sooner reached once again the "Fair Haven" of his first success, than he was called to note a dark line, like a mark of distant land, upon the south-west horizon. The colonists he had left on his earlier visit had watched this day by day till they had made certain of its being something more than a passing appearance of sea or sky, and Morales was ready with his suggestion that this was Machin's island. The fog that hung over this part of the ocean would be natural to a thick and dank woodland like that on the island of his old adventure.

Zarco resolved to try: After eight days' rest in Porto Santo he set sail, and, observing that the fog grew less toward the east of the cloud bank, made for that point and came upon a low marshy cape, which he called St. Lawrence Head. Then, creeping round the south coast, he came to the high lands and the forests of Madeira,—so named here and now, either as De Barros says, "from the thick woods they found there," or, in the form of Machico, from the first discoverer, luckless Robert Machin. For on landing the Portuguese, guided by Morales, soon found the wooden cross and grave of the Englishman and his mistress, and it was there that Zarco, with no human being to dispute his title, "took seizin" of the island in the name of King John, Prince Henry, and the Order of Christ.

Embarking once more, he then coasted slowly round from the "River of the Flint" to "Jackdaw Point," and the "Chamber of the Wolves," where his men started a herd of sea-calves. So he came to the vast plain overgrown with fennel or "Funchal," where the chief town of after days grew up. A party sent inland to explore, reported that on every side the ocean could be seen from the hills; and Zarco, after taking in some specimens of the native wood and plants and birds at Funchal, put back in the last days of August to Portugal.

He was splendidly received at Court, made a count—"Count of the Chamber of the Wolves,"—and granted the command of the island for his own life. A little later, the commandership was made hereditary in his family. Tristam Vaz, the second in the Prince's commission, was rewarded too: the northern half of Madeira was given him as a captaincy, and in 1425 Henry began to colonise in form. Zarco, as early as May, 1421, had returned with wife and children and attendants, and begun to build the "port of Machico," and the "city of Funchal," but this did not become a state affair until four years more had gone by.

But from the first, the island, by its export of wood and dragon's blood and wheat, began to reward the trouble of discovery and settlement. Sugar and wine were brought to perfection in later years, after the great "Seven years' fire" had burnt down the forests and enriched the soil of Madeira. It was soon after Zarco's return to Funchal that he first set fire to the woods behind the fennel fields of the coast, to clear himself a way through the undergrowth into the heart of the island; the fire blazed and smouldered till it had taken well hold of the entire mass of timber that covered the upper country, nothing in the feeble resources of the first settlers could stop it, and Madeira lighted the ships of Henry on their way to the south, like a volcano, till 1428. This was at least the common story as told in Portugal, and it was often joined with another—of the rabbit plague, which ate up all the green stuff of the island in the first struggling years of Zarco's settlement, and so prevented the export of anything but timber. So much of this was brought into Portugal that Henry's lifetime is a landmark in the domestic architecture of Spain, and from the trade of the "Wood Island" is derived the lofty style of building that now began to replace the more modest fashion of the Arabs.

A charter of Henry's, dated 1430, ten years after the rediscovery of Madeira, and reciting the names of some of the first settlers, and his bequest of the island, or rather of its "spiritualties," to the Order of Christ on September 18, 1460, just before his death, are the chief links between this colony and the home country in the next generation—but in the history of institutions there are few more curious facts than the insistence of the Prince on a census for his little "Nation." From the first, the family registers of the colonists were carefully kept, and from these we see something of the wonder of men who were beginning human life, as it were, in a new land. The first children born in Madeira—a son and daughter of Ayres Ferreira, one of Zarco's comrades—were christened Adam and Eve.[36]

[Footnote 36: In 1418 and 1424-5 Henry purchased and tried to secure certain rights of possession in the Canaries, conceded by De Bethencourt; and these attempts were repeated in 1445 and 1446.]



CHAPTER X.

CAPE BOJADOR AND THE AZORES.

1428-1441.

But in spite of Zarco's success, Cape Bojador had not yet been passed, though every year, from 1418, caravels had left Sagres, "to find the coasts of Guinea."

In 1428, Don Pedro, Henry's elder brother, had come home from his travels, with all the books and charts he had collected to help the explorers—and it is practically certain that the Mappa Mundi given him in Venice acted as a direct suggestion to the next attempts on west and south—westward to the Azores, southward towards Guinea.

Kept in the royal monastery of Alcobaca till late in the sixteenth century, though now irrecoverably lost, this treasure of Don Pedro's, like his "manuscripts of travel," would seem to have been used at the Sagres school till Prince Henry's death, and at least as early as 1431 its effect was seen in the first Portuguese recovery of the Azores. All the West African islands, plainly enough described in the map of 1428, were half within, half without the knowledge of Christendom, ever and anon being brought back or rediscovered by some accident or enterprise, and then being lost to sight and memory through the want of systematic exploration. This was exactly what the Portuguese supplied. The Azores, marked on the Laurentian Portulano of 1351, were practically unknown to seamen when, after eighty years had passed, Gonzalo Cabral was sent out from Sagres to find them (1431). He reached the Formiga group—the Ant islands,—and next year (1432) returned to make further discoveries, chiefly of the island Santa Maria. But the more important advances on this side were made between 1444-50, after the first colony had been planted twelve or fourteen years, and were the result of the Prince's theoretical correction of his captains' practical oversight. From a comparison of old maps and descriptions with their accounts, he was able to correct their line of sail and so to direct them to the very islands they had searched for in vain.

But as yet these results were far distant, and the slow and sure progress of African coasting towards Cape Bojador was the chief outcome of Pedro's help. In 1430, 1431, and 1432, the Infant urged upon his captains the paramount importance of rounding the Cape, which had baffled all his caravels by its strong ocean currents and dangerous rocks. At last this became the Prince's one command: Pass the Cape if you do nothing beyond; yet the years went by, King John of good memory died in 1433, and Gil Eannes, sent out in the same year with strong hopes of success, turned aside at the Canaries and only brought a few slaves back to Portugal. A large party at Court, in the Army, and among the nobles and merchant classes, complained bitterly of the utter want of profit from Henry's schemes, and there was at this time a danger of the collapse of his movement. For though as yet he paid his own expenses, his treasury could not long have stood the drain without any incoming.

Bojador, the "paunch" or "bulging Cape," 180 miles beyond Cape Non, had been, since the days of the Laurentian Portulano (1351), and the Catalan and Portuguese voyages of 1341 and 1346, the southmost point of Christian knowledge. A long circuit was needed here, as at the Cape of Good Hope, to round a promontory that stretched, men said, fully one hundred miles into the ocean, where tides and shoals formed a current twenty miles across. It was the sight or the fancy of this furious surge which frightened Henry's crews, for it plainly forbade all coasting and compelled the seamen to strike into the open sea out of sight of land. And though the discovery of Porto Santo had proved the feasibility and the gain of venturing boldly into the Sea of Darkness, and though since that time (1418) the Prince had sent out his captains due west to the Azores and south-west to Madeira, both hundreds of miles from the continent, yet in rounding Bojador there were not only the real terrors of the Atlantic, but the legends of the tropics to frighten back the boldest.

Most mariners had heard it said that any Christian who passed Bojador would infallibly be changed into a black, and would carry to his end this mark of God's vengeance on his insolent prying. The Arab tradition of the Green Sea of Night had too strongly taken hold of Christian thought to be easily shaken off. And it was beyond the Cape which bounded their knowledge that the Saracen geographers had fringed the coast of Africa with sea-monsters and serpent rocks and water unicorns, instead of place names, and had drawn the horrible giant hand of Satan raised above the waves to seize the first of his human prey that would venture into his den. If God made the firm earth, the Devil made the unknown and treacherous ocean—this was the real lesson of most of the mediaeval maps, and it was this ingrained superstition that Henry found his worst enemy, appearing as it did sometimes even in his most trusted and daring captains.

And then again, the legends of Tropical Africa, of the mainland beyond Bojador, were hardly less terrible than those of the Tropical Ocean. The Dark Continent, with its surrounding Sea of Darkness, was the home of mystery and legend. We have seen how ready the Arabs were to write Uninhabitable over any unknown country—dark seas and lands were simply those that were dark to them, like the Dark Ages to others, but nowhere did their imagination revel in genies and fairies and magicians and all the horrors of hell, with more enthusiastic and genial interest than in Africa. Here only the northern parts could be lived in by man. In the south and central deserts, as we have heard from the Moslem doctors themselves, the sun poured down sheets of liquid flame upon the ground and kept the sea and the rivers boiling day and night with the fiery heat. So any sailors would of course be boiled alive as soon as they got near to the Torrid Zone.

It was this kind of learning, discredited but not forgotten, that was still in the minds of Gil Eannes and his friends when they came home in 1433, with lame excuses, to Henry's Court. The currents and south winds had stopped them, they said. It was impossible to get round Bojador.

The Prince was roused. He ordered the same captain to return next year and try the Cape again. His men ought to have learned something better than the childish fables of past time. "And if," said he, "there were even any truth in these stories that they tell, I would not blame you, but you come to me with the tales of four seamen who perhaps know the voyage to the Low Countries or some other coasting route, but, except for this, don't know how to use needle or sailing chart. Go out again and heed them not, for by God's help, fame and profit must come from your voyage, if you will but persevere."

The Prince was backed by the warm encouragement of the new King, Edward, his eldest brother, who had only been one month upon the throne when he bestirred himself to shew his favour to a national movement of discovery. King John had died on August 14, 1433 (the anniversary of Aljubarrota), and on September 26th, of the same year, by a charter given from Cintra, King Edward granted the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo, with the Desertas, to Henry as Grand Master of the Order of Christ.

With this encouragement the Infant sent out Gil Eannes in 1434 under the strongest charge not to return without a good account of the Cape and the seas beyond. Running far out into the open, his caravel doubled Bojador, and coming back to the coast found the sea "as easy to sail in as the waters at home," and the land very rich and pleasant. They landed and discovered no trace of men or houses, but gathered plants, "such as were called in Portugal St. Mary's roses," to present to Don Henry. Not even the southern Cape of Tempests or Good Hope was so long and obstinate a barrier as Bojador had been, and the passing of this difficulty proved the salvation of the Prince's schemes. Though again and again interrupted by political troubles between 1437 and 1449, the advance at sea went on, and never again was there a serious danger of the failure of the whole movement through general opposition and discontent.

In 1435 Gil Eannes was sent out again to follow up his success with Affonso Baldaya, the Prince's cupbearer, in a larger vessel than had yet been risked in exploration, called a varinel, or oared galley. The two captains passed fifty leagues—one hundred and fifty miles—beyond the Cape, and found traces of caravans, reached as far as an inlet they named Gurnet Bay, from its shoals of fish, and again put back to Lagos, early in the year.

There were still several months left for ocean sailing in 1435, and Henry at once despatched Baldaya again in his varinel, with orders to go as far as he could along the coast, at least till he could find some natives. One of these he was to bring home with him. Baldaya accordingly sailed 130 leagues—390 miles—beyond Cape Bojador, till he reached an estuary running some twenty miles up the country and promising to lead to a great river. This might prove to be the western Nile of the Negroes, or the famous River of Gold, Baldaya thought, and though it proved to be only an inlet of the sea, the name of Rio d'Ouro, then given by the first hopes of the Portuguese, has outlasted the disappointment that found only a sandy reach instead of a waterway to the Mountains of the Moon and the kingdom of Prester John.

Baldaya anchored here, landed a couple of horses which the Infant had given him to scour the country, and set "two young noble gentlemen" upon them to ride up country, to look for signs of natives, and if possible to bring back one captive to the ship. Taking no body-armour, but only lance and sword, the boys followed the "river" to its source, seven leagues up the country, and here came suddenly upon nineteen savages, armed with assegais. They rode up to them and drove them out of the open up to a loose mound of stones; then as evening was coming on and they could not secure a prisoner, they rode back to the sea and reached the ship about the dawn of day. "And of these boys," says the chronicler, "I myself knew one, when he was a noble gentleman of good renown in arms. His name was Hector Homen, and you will find him in our history well proved in brave deeds. The other, named Lopez d'Almeida, was a nobleman of good presence, as I have heard from those who knew him."

This first landing of Europeans on the coasts of unknown Africa, since the days of Carthaginian colonies, is one of the great moments in the story of Western expansion and discovery. For it means that Christendom on her Western side has at last got beyond the first circle of her enemies, the belt of settled Moslem ground, and has begun to touch the wider world outside, on the shore of the ocean as well as along the Eastern trade routes. And it almost seemed to be of little practical value that Marco Polo and the friars and traders who followed him had passed Islam in Asia, and reached even furthest Tartary, for it only made more clear that Asia was not Christian, and that there would have to be a deadly struggle before European influence could be restored on this side to what it had been under Alexander; but on the west, by the Atlantic coasts, once Morocco had been passed, there were only scattered savage tribes to be dealt with. Baldaya had now reached the pagans beyond Islam; the rival civilisation of the Arabs and their converts had been almost outflanked by Don Henry's ships; and the boys who rode up the Rio d'Ouro beach in 1435 were the first pickets of a great army. Their charge upon a body of grown men ten times their number, was a prophecy of the coming conquests of Christian Europe in the new worlds it was now in search of, in south and east and west.

Now Baldaya instantly followed up his pioneers. He took a party in his ship's boat and rode up the stream to the scene of the fight, with the boys on horseback riding by the bank and shewing him the stone-heap where the natives had rallied on the day before. But in the night they had all fled farther up country, leaving most of their miserable goods behind. All these were carried off, and the Portuguese left the Bay of the Horses, as they called this farthest reach of the Rio d'Ouro, and pulled back to the varinel, without any further success than a wholesome disappointment. They must go farther southward if they were to find the western Nile and the way round Africa.

Still Baldaya was not content. He wished to carry back a prisoner, as Henry had charged him, and so he coasted along fifty leagues more, from the Rio d'Ouro to the Port of Gallee, a rock that looked like a galley, where there was a more prominent headland than he had passed since Bojador. Here he landed once again, and found some native nets, made of the bark of trees, but none of the natives who made them.

In the early months of 1436 he and his varinel were again in Portuguese waters; but the land had now been touched that lay three hundred miles beyond the old African Finisterre, and in two years (1434-6) Portugal and all the Christian nations, through Henry's work, had entered on a new chapter of history. The narrower world of the Roman Empire and the Mediaeval Church was already growing into the modern globe in the break up of that old terror of the sea which had so long fixed for men the bounds that they must not pass. The land routes had been cleared to Western knowledge, though not mastered, by the Crusades; now the far more dreaded and unknown water-way was fairly entered. For up to this time there is no fair evidence that either Christian or Moorish enterprise had ever rounded Bojador, and the theoretical marking of it upon maps was a very different thing from the experience that it was just like any other cape, and no more an end of the world than Cape St. Vincent itself. Neither Genoese, nor Catalans, nor Normans of Dieppe, nor the Arab wanderers of Edrisi and Ibn Said were before Don Henry now. His discoveries of the Atlantic islands were findings, rediscoveries; his coast voyages from the year 1433 are all ventures in the true unknown.

But from 1436 to 1441, from Baldaya's second return to the start of Nuno Tristam and Antam Gonsalvez for Cape Blanco, exploration was not successful or energetic. The simple cause of this was the Infant's other business. In these years took place the fatal attempt on Tangier, the death of King Edward, and the troubles of the minority of his child, Affonso V.—Affonso the African conqueror of later years.

True it is, we read in our Chronicle of the Discovery of Guinea, that in these years there went to those parts two ships, one at a time, but the first turned back in the face of bad weather, and the other only went to the Rio d'Ouro for the skins and oil of sea wolves, and after taking in a cargo of these, went back to Portugal. And true it is, too, that in the year 1440 there were armed and sent out two caravels to go to that same land, but in that they met with contrary fortune, we do not tell any more of their voyage.



CHAPTER XI.

HENRY'S POLITICAL LIFE. 1433-1441.

The Prince's exile from politics in his hermitage at Sagres could not be absolutely unbroken. He was ready to come back to Court and to the battle field when he was needed. So he appeared at the deathbed of his father in 1433 and of his brother in 1438, at the siege of Tangier in 1437, and during the first years of the Regency (1438-40) he helped to govern for his nephew, Edward's son Affonso. From 1436 till 1441 he did not seriously turn his attention back to discovery.

What is chiefly interesting in the story of these years is the half-religious reverence paid to Henry by his brothers, by Cortes, and the whole people. He was above and beyond his age, but not so much as to be beyond its understanding. He was not a leader where there are no followers; he was one of the fortunate beings who are most valued by those who have lived on the closest terms with them, by father and by brothers.

It was believed throughout the kingdom that King John's last words were "an encouragement to the Infant to persevere in his right laudable purpose of spreading the Christian faith in the lands of darkness"; whether true or not, at any rate it was felt to fit the place and the man, and Henry's brothers, Pedro and Edward, took up loyally their father's commission to keep peace at home and sailing ships on the sea.

But the new reign was short and full of trouble. King Edward had scarcely been crowned when the scheme of an African war was revived by Don Ferdinand, the fourth of the "Famous Infants" of the House of Aviz (1433). Ferdinand, always a Crusader at heart, had refused a Cardinal's hat, that he might keep his strength for killing the enemies of Christ, and in Henry he found a ready listener. It was the Navigator, in fact, who planned and organised the scheme of campaign now pressed upon the King and the country. It was perfectly natural that he should do so. The war of Ceuta had been of the first importance to his work of discovery; it had been largely his own achievement, and his wish to conquer Heathens and Saracens and to make good Christians of them was hardly less strong than his natural bent for discovery and exploring settlement. He now took up Ferdinand's suggestion, made of it a definite project—for a storm of Tangier—and wrung a reluctant consent from Edward and from Cortes. The chief hindrance was lack of money; even the popularity of the Government could not prevent "sore grudging and murmuring among the people." Don Pedro himself was against the whole plan, and from respect to his wishes the question was referred to the Pope. Are we to make war on the infidels or no?

If the infidels in question, answered the Curia, were in Christian land and used Christian churches as mosques of Mohammed, or if they made incursions upon Christians, though always returning to their own land, or if doing none of these things they were idolaters or sinned against nature, the Princes of Portugal would do right to levy war upon them. But this should be done with prudence and piety, lest the people of Christ should suffer loss. Further, it was only just to tax a Christian people for support of an infidel war, when the said war was of necessity in defence of the kingdom. If the war was voluntary, for the conquering of fresh lands from the Heathen, it could only be waged at the King's own cost.

But before this answer arrived, the armament had been made ready, and things had gone too far to draw back; the Queen was eager for the war, and had brought King Edward to a more willing consent. So in the face of bad omens, an illness of Prince Ferdinand's, and the warning words of Don Pedro, the troops were put on board ship, August 17, 1437. On August 22d they set sail, and on the 26th landed at Ceuta, where Menezes still commanded. The European triumphs of 1415 and 1418 were still fresh in the memories of the Moors, and Don Henry was remembered as their hero. So it was to him that the tribes of the Beni Hamed sent offers of submission and tribute on the first news of the invasion. The Prince accepted their presents of gold and silver, cattle and wood, and left them in peace during the war, for the forces he had with him were barely sufficient for the siege of Tangier. Out of fourteen thousand men levied in Portugal, only six thousand answered the roll-call in Ceuta. A great number had shirked the dangers of Africa; and the room on shipboard had in itself been absurdly insufficient. The transports provided were just enough for the battalions that actually crossed, and for a fresh supply they must be sent back to Lisbon. In the council of war most were agreed upon this as the best thing on paper, but the practical difficulties were so great that Henry decided not to wait for reinforcements, but to push forward with the troops in hand.

The direct road to Tangier by way of Ximera was now found impassable, and it was determined to march the army round by Tetuan, while the fleet was brought up along the coast. Ferdinand, who was still suffering and unequal to the land journey, was to go by sea, while his elder brother, as chief captain of the whole armament, undertook to force his way along the inland routes. In this he was successful. In three days he came before Tetuan, which opened its gates at once, and on September 23d, without losing a single man, he appeared before Old Tangier, where Ferdinand was already waiting his arrival.

A rumour was now spread that the Moors were flying from Tangier as they had fled from Ceuta castle two and twenty years before, but Zala ben Zala, who commanded here as he had done there, now knew better how to defend a town, with the desperate courage of his Spanish foes. The attack instantly ordered by Henry on the gates of Tangier was roughly repulsed, and for the next fortnight the losses of the crusaders were so heavy that the siege was turned into a blockade. On September 30th, 10,000 horse and 90,000 foot came down from the upland to the coast for the relief of Tangier. Henry promptly led his little army into the open and ordered an attack, and the vast Moorish host which had taken up its station on a hill within sight of the camp, not daring to accept the challenge, wavered, broke, and rushed headlong to the mountains. But after three days they reappeared in greater numbers and even ventured down into the plain. Again Henry drove them back; again—next day—they returned; at last, after their force had been swollen to 130,000 men, and by overwhelming numbers had compelled the Christians to keep within their trenches, they threw themselves upon the Portuguese outposts. After a desperate struggle they were repulsed and a sally from the town was beaten back at the same time; the Europeans seemed ready to meet any odds. With these victories, Henry was confident that Tangier must soon fall; he ordered another escalade, but all his scaling ladders were burnt or broken and many of his men crushed beneath the overhanging parts of the wall, that were pushed down bodily upon the storming parties. In this final assault of the 5th of October, two Moors were taken who told Henry of immense succours now coming up under the Kings of Fez, of Morocco, and of Tafilet. They had with them, said the captives, at least 100,000 horse; their infantry was beyond count. Sure enough; on the 9th of October, the hills round Tangier seemed covered with the native armies, and it became clear that the siege must be raised. All that was left for Henry was to bring off his soldiers in safety. He tried his best. With quiet energy he issued his orders for all contingents; the marines and seamen were to embark at once; the artillery was given in charge of the Marshal of the Kingdom; Almada, the Hercules of Portugal, was to draw up the foot in line of battle; the Infant himself took his station with the cavalry on a small piece of rising ground.

When the Moors charged, they were well received. In spite of all their strength, one army being held ready to take another's place, as men grew tired, the Portuguese held their own. Henry had a horse killed under him; Cabral, his Master of Horse, fell at his side with five and twenty of his men; the cowardice of one regiment, who fled to the ships, almost ruined the defence; but when night fell, the Moorish columns fell sullenly back and left the Infant one more chance of flight and safety. It was the only hope, and even this was lost through the desertion of a traitor. Martin Vieyra, the apostate priest, once Henry's chaplain, now gave up to the enemy's generals the whole plan of escape.

After a long debate, it was determined, not to massacre the Christian army, but to take sureties from them that Ceuta should be restored with all the Moorish captives in the Prince's hands. These terms were accepted, for it was soon known that escape was hopeless.

But next morning a large party of Moors, with more than the ordinary Moslem treachery, made a last fierce attempt to surprise the camp. For eight hours, eight separate attacks went on; when all had failed, the retreating Berbers tried to set fire to the woodwork of the entrenchments. With the greatest trouble, Henry saved his timbers, and under cover of night fortified a new and smaller camp close to the shore. Food and water had both run short, and the besiegers, who were now become the besieged, had to kill their horses and cook them, with saddles for fuel. They were saved from a fatal drought by a lucky shower of rain, but their ruin was only a matter of time, for it was hopeless to try an embarkation under the walls of the city with all the hosts of Morocco waiting for the first chance of a successful storm; but the losses of the native kings and chiefs had been so great that they were ready to sign a written truce and to keep their cut-throats to the terms of it.

On the 15th of October, Don Henry, for the Portuguese, agreed that Ceuta, with all the Moorish prisoners kept in guard by Menezes, should be given up and that no further attack should be made by the King of Portugal on any side of Barbary for one hundred years. The arms and baggage of the crusaders were to be surrendered at once: directly this was done they were to embark, with none of the honours of war, and to sail back at once to Europe. Don Ferdinand was left with twelve nobles as hostages for the treaty till Ceuta was restored; on the other side Zala ben Zala's eldest son was all the security given. Even after this, a plot was laid to massacre the "Christian dogs" as they passed through the streets of Tangier, on their free passage to the harbour which the treaty secured them. Henry got wind of this just in time, and instantly embarked his men by boats from the shore outside the walls, but his rearguard was set upon just as they were leaving the land and about sixty were killed.

It was a terrible disaster. Although his losses were but some five hundred killed and disabled, Henry was overcome with the disgrace. As he thought of his brother among the Moors, he refused to show his face in Portugal and shut himself up in Ceuta. Here, as he worried himself to find some means of saving Ferdinand, he fell dangerously ill, till fresh hope came to him with the arrival of Don John, whom Edward had sent to the help of his brothers with some reserves from Algarve. Henry and John consulted about Ferdinand's ransom and at last offered their chief hostage, Zala ben Zala's boy, as an exchange for the Infant. It was the only ransom, they told the Moors, that would ever be thought of; Ceuta would never be surrendered.

Don John's mission was a failure, as might have been expected, and both the Princes were now recalled to Portugal, where Henry steadily refused to go to Court, staying at Sagres in an almost complete retirement from his usual interests, till King Edward's death forced him again into action. It was the unavoidable shame of the only choice given to himself and the kingdom that paralysed his energy, and made him moody and helpless through this time of inaction and disgrace.

"Captive he saw his brother, bright Fernand The Saint, aspiring high with purpose brave, Who as a hostage in the Saracen's hand Betrayed himself his 'leagured host to save. Lest bought with price of Ceita's potent town To public welfare be preferred his own."[37]

[Footnote 37: Camoens' Lusiads, iv., 52.]

The mere failure to storm Tangier was brilliantly atoned for by the bravery of the army and the repeated victories over immensely superior force. But now either Ceuta must be exchanged for Ferdinand, or the youngest and favourite brother of the House of Aviz must be left to die among the Berbers. Many, if not most of the Cortes, summoned in 1438 to Leiria to discuss the ransom, were in favour of letting Ceuta go; but all the chiefs of the Government, except the King himself, "thought it not just to deliver a whole people to the fury of the infidels for the liberty of one man." Even Henry at last agreed in this with Don Pedro and Don John.

Edward was in despair; he was willing to pay almost any price to recover Ferdinand, and in hope of finding support he now appealed from his own royal house and his nobles to the Pope, the cardinals, and the crowned heads of Europe. All agreed that a Christian city must not be bartered even for a Christian Prince; Edward's offers of money and "perpetual peace" were scornfully rejected by the Moors, who held to their bond "Ceuta or nothing"—and their wretched captive, treated to all the filthy horrors of Mussulman imprisonment and slavery and torture, died under his agony in the sixth year of his living death and the forty-first of his age, 5th June, 1443.

Before this his loss had dragged down to the same fate his eldest brother, King Edward, and but for the inspiration of a great purpose, which again put meaning into his life, Henry might have died of the same "illness of soul." Every Portuguese burned to revenge the Constant Prince; the Pope was called upon to approve a new crusade, levies were made and vessels built, when the plague broke out with terrible violence, and ravaged every class and every district as it had not since the days of the Black Death. The King, seized by it in his misery and weakness and bitter disappointment, fell a victim. The wreck of all his hopes left him with hardly a wish to live, and on September 9, 1438, at the age of forty-seven, and after a reign of five years, he died at Thomar, in the act of breaking open a letter, but not before Henry had come to his side.

To the last he kept on working for his people, and it was in the fatigue of travelling from one plague-stricken town to another that he caught the pest. Among all the kings of Christendom there was never a better, or nobler, or more luckless, an Alfred with the fortune of "Unready" Ethelred.

By his last will there was fresh trouble provided for Don Henry and Don Pedro and the Cortes. His successor—the child Affonso V., now six years of age—was strictly charged to rescue Ferdinand even at the price of Ceuta; this was nothing to practical politics; but in naming his wife, Leonor of Aragon, along with Don Pedro and Don Henry, as guardian of his children and regent of the kingdom, he put power in the wrong place.

The Portuguese were always intensely suspicious of foreign government, and after the age of Leonora Telles they might well refuse a female Regent. On the other side King Edward's Queen, who had won his absolute trust as a wife and a mother, was not willing to stand aside for Pedro or for Henry. She began to organise a party, and she worked on her side, the nobles and the patriots counterworked on theirs. Don John was the first of her husband's brothers to take his natural place as a leader of the national opposition; Henry for a time seemed to waver between friendship and loyalty; all who knew the Queen loved her, but the people hated the very notion of a foreign female reign. Like John Knox they could not be fair to the Monstrous Regiment of Women, and their voices grew clearer and clearer for Don Pedro and his rights, real or supposed. The eldest of the young King's uncles, the right-hand man of the State since his return from travel in 1428, he was the proper guardian of the kingdom; Henry was a willing exile from most of Court life, though his support was the greatest moral strength of any government; John had begun the movement of discontent, but no one thought of him before his brothers; while they lived his only part was in helping them on their way.

Donna Leonor recognised her chief danger in Don Pedro, and tried to win him over. When she summoned Cortes, she pressed him to sign the royal writs; then she offered to betroth his daughter Isabel to her son; Pedro secured a written promise, and waited for the opening of the National Assembly in 1439. Here a fierce outcry was raised by a party of the nobles against the marriage-settlement of their King, but Don Pedro was too strong to be put down. He moved on by slow and steady intrigue towards the Regency he claimed. Henry had now appeared as peacemaker, and in his brother's interests arranged a compromise. The Queen was to keep the actual charge of her children, and to train the little King for his duties; Pedro was to govern the state as "Defender of the Kingdom and of the King"; the Count of Barcellos, soon to be Duke of Braganza, the leader of the factious and fractious party, was to be bought off with the Administration of the Justice of the Interior.

The Queen at first struggled on against this dethronement; fortified herself in Alemquer, and sent for help from her old home in Aragon. At this the mob rose in fury and only Henry was able to prevent a massacre and a war that would have stopped the expansion of Portugal abroad for many a day. He went straight to Alemquer (1439), talked Queen Leonor into reason, and brought her back with him to Lisbon, where she introduced Affonso to his people and his Parliament. For another year Henry stayed at Court, completing his work of settlement and reconciliation, and towards the end of 1440 that work seemed fairly safe. The fear of civil war was over; Don Pedro's government was well started; Henry could now go back to Sagres to his other work of discovery.

It was time to do something on this side. For in the past five years scarcely any progress had been made to Guinea and the Indies.



CHAPTER XII.

FROM BOJADOR TO CAPE VERDE.

1441-5.

But with the year 1441 discovery begins again in earnest, and the original narratives of Henry's captains, which old Azurara has preserved in his chronicle, become full of life and interest. From this point to the year 1448, where ends the Chronica, its tale is exceedingly picturesque, as it was written down from the remembrance of eye-witnesses and actors in the discoveries and conquests it records. And though the detail may be wearisome to a modern reader as a wordy and emotional and unscientific history, yet the story told is delightfully fresh and vivid, and it is told with a simple naivete and truth that seems now almost lost in the self-consciousness of modern literature.

"It seems to me, says our author" (Azurara's favourite way of alluding to himself), "that the recital of this history should give as much pleasure as any other matter by which we satisfy the wish of our Prince; and the said wish became all the greater, as the things for which he had toiled so long, were more within his view. Wherefore I will now try to tell of something new," of some progress "in his wearisome seedtime of preparation."

"Now it was so that in this year 1441, as the affairs of the kingdom had now some repose, though it was not to be a long one, the Infant caused them to arm a little ship, which he gave to Antam Gonsalvez, his chamberlain, a young captain, only charging him to load a cargo of skins and oil. For because his age was so unformed, and his authority of needs so slight, he laid all the lighter his commands upon him and looked for all the less in performance."

But when Antam Gonsalvez had performed the voyage that had been ordered him, he called Affonso Goterres, another stripling of the Infant's household and the men of his ship, who were in all twenty-one, and said to them, Brothers and friends, it seems to me to be shame to turn back to our Lord's presence, with so little service done; just as we have received the lest strict orders to do more than this, so much more ought we to try it with the greater zeal. And how noble an action would it be, if we who came here only to take a cargo of such wretched merchandise as these sea wolves, should be the first to bring a native prisoner before the presence of our Lord. In reason we ought to find some hereabout, for it is certain there are people, and that they traffic with camels and other beasts, who bear their merchandise; and the traffic of these men must be chiefly towards the sea and back again; and since they have yet no knowledge of us, they will be scattered and off their guard, so that we can seize them; with all which our Lord the Infant will be not a little content, as he will thus have knowledge of who and what sort of people are the dwellers in this land. Then what shall be our reward, you know well enough from the great expense and trouble our Prince has been at, in past years, only to this one end.

The crew shouted a hearty "Do as you please; we will follow," and in the night following Antam Gonsalvez set aside nine men, who seemed to him most fit, and went up from the shore about three miles, till they came on a path, which they followed, thinking that by this they might come up with some man or woman, whom they might catch. And going on nine miles farther they came upon a track of some forty or fifty men and boys, as they thought, who had been coming the opposite way to that our men were going. Now the heat was very great and by reason of that, as well as of the trouble they had been at, the long tramp they had on foot and the failure of water, Antam Gonsalvez saw the weariness of his men, that it was very great. So let us turn back and follow after these men, said he, and turning back toward the sea, they came upon a man stark naked, walking after and driving a camel, with two spears in his hand, and of our men, as they rushed on after him, there was not one who kept any remembrance of his great weariness. As for the native, though he was quite alone, and saw so many coming down upon him, he stood on his defence, as if wishing to show that he could use those weapons of his, and making his face by far more fierce than his courage was warrant for. Affonso Goterres struck him with a dart and the Moor, frightened by his wounds, threw down his arms like a conquered thing and so was taken, not without great joy of our men. And going on a little farther they saw upon a hill the people whose track they followed. And they did not want the will to make for these also, but the sun was now very low and they very weary, and thinking that to risk more might bring them rather damage than profit, they determined to go back to their ship.

But as they were going, they came upon a blackamoor woman, a slave of the people on the hill, and some were minded to let her alone, for fear of raising a fresh skirmish, which was not convenient in the face of the people on the hill, who were still in sight and more than twice their number. But the others were not so poor-spirited as to leave the matter thus, Antam Gonsalvez crying out vehemently that they should seize her. So the woman was taken and those "on the hill made a show of coming down to her rescue; but seeing our men quite ready to receive them, they first retraced their steps and then made off in the opposite direction." And so Antam Gonsalvez took the first captives.

And for that the philosopher saith, resumes the next chapter of the chronicle, "that the beginning is two parts of the whole matter," great praise should be given to this noble squire, who now received his knighthood, as we shall tell. For now we have to see how Nuno Tristam, a noble knight, valiant and zealous, who had been brought up from boyhood at the Infant's Court, came to that place where was Antam Gonsalvez, bringing with him an armed caravel with the express order of his lord that he was to go to the port of Gallee and as far beyond as he could, and that he should try and make some prisoners by every means in his power. And you may imagine what was the joy of the two captains, both natives of one and the self-same realm and brought up in one and the self-same household, thus to meet so far from home. And now Nuno Tristam said that an Arab he had brought with him, a servant of the Infant, should speak with Gonsalvez' prisoners, and see if he understood their tongue, and that if he understood it, it would profit them much thus to know all the state and conditions of the people of that land. But the tongue of the Arab was very different from that of the captives, so that they could not understand each other.

And when Nuno Tristam perceived that he could not learn any more of the manner of that land, he would fain be gone, but envy made him wish to do something before the eyes of his fellows that should be good for all.

You know, he said to Antam Gonsalvez, that for fifteen years the Infant has been seeking in vain for certain news of this land and its people, in what law or lordship they do live. Now let us take twenty men, ten from each of the crews, and go up country in search of those that you found. Not so, said the other, for those whom we saw will have warned all the others, and peradventure when we are looking out to capture them, we may in our turn become their prisoners. But where we have gained a victory let us not return to suffer loss. Nuno Tristam said this counsel was good, but there were two squires whose longing to do well outran all besides. Gonsalo de Cintra was the first of these, whose valour we shall know more of in the progress of this history, and he counselled that as soon as it was night they should set out in search of the natives, and so it was determined. And such was their good fortune that they came early in the night to where the people lay scattered in two dwellings; now the place between the two was but small, and our men divided themselves in three parties and began to shout at the top of their voice "Portugal," "St. James for Portugal," the noise of which threw the enemy into such confusion, that they began to run without any order, as ours fell upon them. The men only made some show of defending themselves with assegais, especially two who fought with Nuno Tristam till they received their death. Three others were killed and ten were taken, of men, women, and children. But without question, many more would have been killed or taken if all our men had rushed in together at the first. And among those who were taken was one of their chiefs, named Adahu, who shewed full well in his face that he was nobler than the rest.

Then, when the matter was well over, all came to Antam Gonsalvez and begged him to be made a Knight, while he said it was against reason that for so small a service he should have so great an honour, and that his age would not allow it, and that he would not take it without doing greater things than these, and much more of that sort. But at last, by the instant demand of all others, Nuno Tristam knighted Antam Gonsalvez, and the place was called from that time "Port of the Cavalier."

When the party got back to the ships, Nuno Tristam's Arab was set to work again, with no better success, "for the language of the captives was not Moorish but Azaneguy of Sahara," the tongue of the great desert zone of West Africa, between the end of the northern strip of fertile country round Fez and Morocco, and the beginning of the rich tropical region at the Senegal, where the first real blacks were found. The Portuguese were in despair of finding a prisoner who could "tell the lord Infant what he wanted to know," but now the chief, "even as he shewed that he was more noble than the other captives, so now it appeared that he had seen more than they, and had been to other lands where he had learnt the Moorish tongue so that he understood our Arab and answered to whatever was asked of him."

And so to make trial of the people of the land and to have of them more certain knowledge, they put that Arab on shore and one of the Moorish women their captives with him, who were to speak to the natives if they could, about the ransom of those they had taken and about exchange of merchandise.

And at the end of two days there came down to the shore quite one hundred and fifty Moors on foot, and thirty-five mounted on camels and horses, and though they seemed to be a race both barbarous and bestial, there was not wanting in them a certain sharpness, with which they could cheat their enemies, for at first there only appeared three of them on the beach, and the rest lay in ambush till our men should land and they could rush out and master them, which thing they could easily have done, so many were they, if our men had been a whit less sharp than themselves. But when the Moors saw that our boats did not land, but turned back again to the ship, they discovered their treachery, and all came down in a body upon the beach, hurling stones and making gestures of defiance, shewing us the Arab we had sent to them as a captive in their hands.

So our men came back to the ship and made their division of the prisoners, according to the lot of each. And Antam Gonsalvez turned back because he had now loaded his caravel with the cargo that the Infant had ordered him, but Nuno Tristam went on, as he for his part had in charge. But as his vessel was in need of repair, he put to shore and careened and refitted it as well as he could, keeping his tides as if he were before the port of Lisbon, at which boldness of his many wondered greatly. And sailing on again, he passed the port of "Gallee," and came to a cape which he called "The White" (Cape Blanco), where the crew landed to see if they could make any captures. But after finding only the tracks of men and some nets, they turned back, seeing that for that time they could not do any more than they had already done.

Antam Gonsalvez came home first with his part of the booty and then arrived Nuno Tristam, "whose present reception and future reward were answerable to the trouble he had borne, like a fertile land that with but little sowing answers the husbandman."

The chief, or "cavalier" as he is called, whom Antam Gonsalvez brought home was able to "make the Infant understand a great deal of the state of that land where he had been," though as for the rest, they were pretty well useless, except as slaves, "for their tongue could not be understood by any other Moors who had been in that land." But the Prince was so encouraged by the sight of the first captives that he at once began to think "how it would be necessary to send to those parts many a time his ships and crews well armed, where they would have to fight with the infidels. So he determined to send at once to the Holy Father and ask of him that he should give him of the treasures of Holy Church, for the salvation of the souls of those who in this conquest should meet their end."

Pope Eugenius IV., then reigning, if not governing, in the great Apostolic See of the West, answered this appeal "with great joy" and with all the rhetoric of the Papal Register. "As it hath now been notified to us by our beloved son Henry, Duke of Viseu, Master of the Order of Christ, that trusting firmly in the aid of God, for the confusion of the Moors and enemies of Christ in those lands that they have desolated, and for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith,—and because that the Knights and Brethren of the said Order of Christ against the said Moors and other enemies of the Faith have waged war with the Grace of God, under the banner of the said Order,—and to the intent that they may bestir themselves to the said war with yet greater fervour, we do to each and all of those engaged in the said war, by Apostolic authority and by these letters, grant full remission of all those sins of which they shall be truly penitent at heart and of which they have made confession by their mouth. And whoever breaks, contradicts, or acts against the letter of this mandate, let him lie under the curse of the All-Mighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul."

And besides, adds the chronicle, rather quaintly, of more temporal and material benefits, the Infant D. Pedro, then Regent of the kingdom, gave to his brother Henry a charter, granting him the whole of the fifth of the profits which appertained to the King, and, considering that it was by him alone that the whole matter of the discovery was carried out at infinite trouble and expense, he ordered further that no one should go to those parts without D. Henry's licence and express command.

The chronicle, which has told us how Antam Gonsalvez made the first captives, now goes on to say how the same one of the Prince's captains made the first ransom. For the captive chief, "that cavalier of whom we spoke," Henry's first prize from the lands beyond Bojador, pined away in Europe, "and many times begged of Antam Gonsalvez that he would take him back to his own land, where, as he said, they would give for him five or six blackamoors, and he said, too, that there were two boys among the other captives for whom they would get a like ransom." So the Infant sent him back with Gonsalvez to his own people, "as it was better to save ten souls than three, for though they were black, yet had they souls like others, all the more as they were not of Moorish race, but Heathen and so all the easier to lead into the way of salvation. From the negroes too it would be possible to get news of the land beyond them. For not only of the Negro land did the Infant wish to know more certainly, but also of the Indies and of the land of Prester John."

So Gonsalvez sailed with his ransom, and in his ship went a noble stranger, like Vallarte the Dane, whom we shall meet later on, one of a kind which was always being drawn to Henry's Court. This was Balthasar the Austrian, a gentleman of the Emperor's Household, who had entered the Infant's service to try his fortune at Ceuta, where he had got his knighthood, and who now "was often heard to say that his great wish was to see a storm, before he left that land of Portugal, that he might tell those who had never seen one what it was like.

"And certainly his fortune favoured him. For at the first start, they met with such a storm that it was by a marvel they escaped destruction."

Again they put out to sea, and this time reached the Rio d'Ouro in safety, where they landed their chief prisoner, "very well vested in the robes that the Infant had ordered to be given him," under promise that he would soon come back and bring his tribe with him.

"But as soon as he got safely off, he very soon forgot his promises, which Antam Gonsalvez had trusted, thinking that his nobility would hold him fast and not let him break his word, but by this deceit all our men got warning that they could not trust any of the natives save under the most certain security."

The ships now went twelve miles up the Rio d'Ouro, cast anchor, and waited seven days without a sign of anybody, but on the eighth there came a Moor, on top of a white camel, with fully one hundred others who had all joined to ransom the two boys. Ten of the tribe were given in exchange for the young chiefs, "and the man who managed this barter was one Martin Fernandez, the Infant's own Ransomer of Captives, who shewed well that he had knowledge of the Moorish tongue, for he was understood by those people whom Nuno Tristam's Arab, Moor though he was by nation, could not possibly get speech with, except only the one chief, who had now escaped."

With the "Blackamoors," Antam Gonsalvez got as ransom what was even more precious, a little gold dust, the first ever brought by Europeans direct from the Guinea Coast, which more thoroughly won the Prince's cause at home and brought over more enemies and scoffers and indifferentists to his side than all the discoveries in the world.

"Many ostrich eggs, too," were included in the native ransom, "such that one day men saw at the Infant's table three dishes of the same, as fresh and as good as those of any other domestic fowls." Did the Court of Sagres suppose the ostrich to be some large kind of hen?

What was still more to the Prince's mind, "those same Moors related, that in those parts there were merchants who trafficked in that gold that was found there among them"—the same merchants, in fact, whose caravels Henry had already known on the Mediterranean coast, and whose starting-point he had now begun to touch. Ever since the days of the first Caliphs, this Sahara commerce had gone on under the control of Islam; for centuries these caravans had crossed the valleys and plains to the south of Morocco and sold their goods—pepper, slaves, and gold dust—in Moslem Ceuta and Moslem Andalusia; now, after seven hundred years of monopoly, this Moslem trade was broken in upon by the Europeans, who, in fifty years' time, broke into the greater monopoly of the Indian Seas, when Da Gama sailed from Lisbon to Malabar (1497-9).

Next year (1443) came Nuno Tristam's turn once more. People were now eager to sail in the Infant's service, after the slaves, and still more the gold dust, had been really seen and handled in Portugal, and "that noble cavalier," for each and all of the three reasons of his fellows—"to serve his lord," "to gain honour," "to increase his profit,"—was eager to follow up his first successes.

Commanding a caravel manned in great part from the Prince's household, he went out straight to Cape Blanco, the white headland, which he had been the first to reach in 1441. Passing twenty-five leagues, seventy-five miles beyond, into the bank or bight of Arguin, he saw a little island, from which twenty-five canoes came off to meet him, all hollowed out of logs of wood, with a host of native savages, "naked not for swimming in the water, but for their ancient custom." The natives hung their legs over the sides of their boats, and paddled with them like oars, so that "our men, looking at them from a distance and quite unused to the sight, thought they were birds that were skimming so over the water." As for their size, the sailors expected much greater marvels in those parts of the world, where every map and traveller's tale made the sea swarm with monsters as big as a continent.

"But as soon as they saw they were men, then were their hearts full of a new pleasure, for that they saw the chance of a capture." They launched the ship's boat at once, chased them to the shore, and captured fourteen; if the boat had been stronger, the tale would have been longer, for with a crew of seven they could not hold any more prisoners, and so the rest escaped.

With this booty they sailed on to another island, "where they found an infinite number of herons, of which they made good cheer, and so returned Nuno Tristam very joyfully to the Prince."

This last piece of discovery was of much more value than Nuno thought. He saw in it a first-rate slave hunting-ground, but it became the starting-point for trade and intercourse with the Negro States of the Senegal and the Gambia, to the south and east. It was here, in the bay of Arguin, where the long desert coast of the Sahara makes its last bend towards the rich country of the south,—that Henry built in 1448 that fort which Cadamosto found, in the next ten years, had become the centre of a great European commerce, which was also among the first permanent settlements of the new Christian exploration, one of the first steps of modern colonisation.

And now the volunteer movement had fairly begun. Where in the beginning, says Azurara, people had murmured very loudly against the Prince's enterprise, each one grumbling as if the Infant was spending some part of his property, now when the way had been fairly opened and the fruits of those lands began to be seen in Portugal in much greater abundance, men began, softly enough, to praise what they had so loudly decried. Great and small alike had declared that no profit would ever come of these ventures, but when the cargoes of slaves and gold began to arrive, all were forced to turn their blame into flattery, and to say that the Infant was another Alexander the Great, and as they saw the houses of others full of new servants from the new discovered lands and their property always increasing, there were few who did not long to try their fortune in the same adventures.

The first great movement of the sort came after Nuno's return at the end of 1443. The men of Lagos took advantage of Henry's settlement so near them in his town of Sagres, to ask for leave to sail at their own cost to the Prince's coast of Guinea. For no one could go without his licence.

One Lancarote, a "squire, brought up in the Infant's household, an officer of the royal customs in the town of Lagos, and a man of great good sense," was the spokesman of these merchant adventurers. He won his grant very easily, "the Infant was very glad of his request, and bade him sail under the banner of the Order of Christ," so that six caravels started in the spring of 1444 on the first exploring voyage that we can call national since the Prince had begun his work.

So, as the beginning of general interest in the Crusade of Discovery which Henry had now preached to his countrymen for thirty years, as the beginning of the career of Henry's chief captain, the head of his merchant allies, as the beginning, in fact, of a new and bright period, this first voyage of Lancarote's, this first Armada sent out to find and to conquer the Moors and Blacks of the unknown or half-known South, is worth more than a passing notice.

And this is not for its interest or importance in the story of discovery pure and simple, but as a proof that the cause of discovery itself had become popular, and as evidence that the cause of trade and of political ambition had become thoroughly identified with that of exploration. The expansion of the European nations, which had languished since the Crusades, had begun again. What was more unfortunate, from a modern standpoint, the African slave trade, as a part of European commerce, begins here too. It is useless to try to explain it away.

Henry's own motives were not those of the slave-driver; it seems true enough that the captives, when once brought home to Spain, were treated, under his orders, with all kindness; his own wish seems to have been to use this man-hunting traffic as a means to Christianise and civilise the native tribes, to win over the whole by the education of a few prisoners. But his captains did not always aim so high. The actual seizure of the captives—Moors and Negroes—along the coast of Guinea, was as barbarous and as ruthless as most slave-drivings. There was hardly a capture made without violence and bloodshed; a raid on a village, a fire and sack and butchery, was the usual course of things—the order of the day. And the natives, whatever they might gain when fairly landed in Europe, did not give themselves up very readily to be taught; as a rule, they fought desperately, and killed the men who had come to do them good, whenever they had a chance.

The kidnapping, which some of the Spanish patriot writers seem to think of as simply an act of Christian charity, "a corporal work of mercy," was at the time a matter of profit and money returns. Negro bodies would sell well, Negro villages would yield plunder, and, like the killing of wild Irish in the sixteenth century, the Prince's men took a Black-Moor hunt as the best of sport. It was hardly wonderful, then, that the later sailors of Cadamosto's day (1450-60) found all the coast up in arms against them, and that so many fell victims to the deadly poisoned arrows of the Senegal and the Gambia. Every native believed, as they told one of the Portuguese captains in a parley, that the explorers carried off their people to cook and eat them.

In most of the speeches that are given us in the chronicle of the time, the masters encourage their men to these slave-raids by saying, first, what glory they will get by a victory; next, what a profit can be made sure by a good haul of captives; last, what a generous reward the Prince will give for people who can tell him about these lands. Sometimes, after reprisals had begun, the whole thing is an affair of vengeance, and thus Lancarote, in the great voyage of 1445, coolly proposes to turn back at Cape Blanco, without an attempt at discovery of any sort, "because the purpose of the voyage was now accomplished." A village had been burnt, a score of natives had been killed, and twice as many taken. Revenge was satisfied.

It was only here and there that much was said about the Prince's purpose of exploration, of finding the western Nile or, Prester John, or the way round Africa to India; most of the sailors, both men and officers, seem to know that this, or something towards this, is the "will of their Lord," but it is very few who start for discovery only, and still fewer who go straight on, turning neither to right hand nor left, till they have got well beyond the farthest of previous years, and added some piece of new knowledge to the map of the known world out of the blank of the unknown.

What terrified ignorance had done before, greed did now, and the last hindrance was almost worse than the first. So one might say, impatiently, looking at the great expense, the energy, and time and life spent on the voyages of this time, and especially of the years 1444-8. More than forty ships sail out, more than nine hundred captives are brought home, and the new lands found are all discovered by three or four explorers. National interest seems awakened to very little purpose. But what explains the slow progress of discovery, explains also the fact that any progress, however slow, was made at all, apart from the personal action of Henry himself. Without the mercantile interest, the Prince's death would have been the end and ruin of his schemes for many a year.

But for the hope of adventure and of profitable plunder, and the certainty of reward; but for the assurance, so to say, of such and such a revenue on the ventures of the time, Portuguese "public opinion" would not probably have been much ahead of other varieties of the same organ. In deciding the abstract question to which the Prince had given his life, the mob of Lisbon or of Lagos would hardly have been quicker than modern mobs to rise to a notion above that of personal gain. If the cause of discovery and an empire to come had been left to them, the labour leaders might have said then in Spain, as some of them have said to-day in England, "What is all this talk about the Empire? What is it to us working men? We don't want the Empire, we want more wages." And so when the great leader was dead, and the people were left to carry out his will, his spiritual foresight of great scientific discoveries, his ideas of conversion and civilisation, were not the things for the sake of which ordinary men were reconciled to his scheme and ready to finish his work. If they thought or spoke or toiled for the finding of the way to India, it was to find the gold and spices and jewels of an earthly paradise.

This is not fancy. It is simply impossible to draw any other conclusion from the original accounts of these voyages in Azurara's chronicle, for Azurara himself, though one of Henry's first converts, a man who realised something of the grandeur of his master's schemes and their reach beyond a merely commercial ideal through discovery to empire, yet preserves in the speeches and actions of captains and seamen alike, proof enough of the thoroughly commonplace aims of most of the first discoverers.

On the other hand, the strength of the movement lay of course in the few exceptions. As long as all or nearly all the instruments employed were simply buccaneers, with a single eye to trade profits, discovery could not advance very fast or very far. Till the real meaning of the Prince's life had impressed his nearest followers with something of his own spirit, there could be no exploration, except by accident, though without this background of material gain no national interest could have been enlisted in exploration at all.

Real progress in this case was by the slow increase of that inner circle which really shared Henry's own ambition, of that group of men who went out, not to make bargains or do a little killing, but to carry the flag of Portugal and of Christ farther than it had ever been planted before, "according to the will of the Lord Infant." And as these men were called to the front, and only as they were there at all, was there any rapid advance. If two sailors, Diego Cam and Bartholomew Diaz, could within four years, in two voyages, explore the whole south-west coast of Africa from the Equator to the Cape of Tempests or of Good Hope, was it not absurd that the earlier caravels, after Bojador was once passed should hang so many years round the north-west shores of the Sahara?

Even some of the more genuine discoverers, the most trusted of the Prince's household, men like Gil Eannes, the first who saw the coasts beyond the terrible Bojador, or Diniz Diaz, or Antam Gonsalvez, or Nuno Tristam, as they come before us in Azurara's chronicle, are more like their men than their master.

He thought of the slaves they brought home "with unspeakable pleasure, as to the saving of their souls, which but for him, would have been for ever lost." They thought a good deal more, like the crowd that gathered at the slave market in Lagos, of the "distribution of the captives," and of the money they would get for each. At those sales, which Azurara describes so vividly, Henry had the bearing of one who cared little for amassing plunder, and was known, once and again, to give away his fifth of the spoil, "for his spoil was chiefly in the success of his great wishes." But his suite seems to have been as keenly on the look-out for such favours as their lord was easy in bestowing them.

To return to Lancarote's voyage:

"For that the Infant knew, by certain Moors that Nuno Tristam had carried off, that in the Isle of Naar, in the Bay of Arguin, and in the parts thereabout, were more than two hundred souls," the six caravels began with a descent on that island. Five boats were launched and thirty men in them, and they set off from the ships about sunset. And rowing all that night, we are told, they came about the time of dawn to the island that they sought. And as day was breaking they got up to a Moorish village close to the shore, where were living all the people in the island. At sight of this the boats' crews drew up, and the leaders consulted whether to go on or turn back. It was decided to attack. Thirty "Portugals" ought to be a match for five or six times as many natives; the sailors landed and rushed upon the villagers and "saw the Moors with their women and children coming out of their huts as fast as they could, when they caught sight of their enemy; and our men, crying out 'St. James, St. George, Portugal,' fell upon them, killing and taking all they could. There you might have seen mothers catch up their children, husbands their wives, each one trying to fly as best he could. Some plunged into the sea, others thought to hide themselves in the corners of their hovels, others hid their children underneath the shrubs that grew about there, where our men found them.

"And at last our Lord God, who gives to all a due reward, to our men gave that day a victory over their enemies, in recompence for all their toil in His service, for they took, what of men, women, and children, one hundred and sixty-five, without counting the slain."

Then finding from the captives that there were other well-peopled islands near at hand, they raided these for more prisoners. In their next descent they could not catch any men, but of women and little boys, not yet able to run, they seized seventeen or eighteen; soon after this they did meet the "Moormen bold," who were drawing together on all sides to defend themselves; a great power of three hundred savages chased another raiding party to their boats.

That the whole expedition had no thought of discovery was plain enough from the fact that Lancarote did not try to go beyond the White Cape (Blanco), which had been already passed several times, but turned back directly he found the hunting grounds becoming deserted, and a descent producing no prize, except one girl, who had chosen to go to sleep when the rest of the people fled up country at the first sight of the Christian boats.

The voyage was a slave chase from first to last, and two hundred and thirty-five Blacks were the result. Their landing and their sale at Lagos was a day of great excitement, a long remembered 8th of August. "Very early in the morning, because of the heat (of the later day) the sailors began to land their captives, who as they were placed all together in the field by the landing-place, were indeed a wonderful sight; for among them there were some that were almost white, of beautiful form and face; others were darker; and others again as black as moles and so hideous, alike in face and body, that they looked, to any one who saw them, the very images of a Lower Hemisphere."

But what heart so stern, exclaims the chronicler, as not to be pierced with pity to see that company. For some held down their heads, crying piteously, others looked mournfully upon one another, others stood moaning very wretchedly, sometimes looking up to the height of Heaven, calling out with shrieks of agony, as if invoking the Father of Nature; others grovelled upon the ground, beating their foreheads with their hands, while others again made their moan in a sort of dirge, in their own way, for though one could not understand the words, the sense of all was plain in the agony of those who uttered it.

But most terrible was that agony when came the partition and each possessor took away his lot. Wives were divided from husbands, fathers from sons, brothers from brothers, each being forced to go where his lot might send him. Parents and children who had been ranged opposite one another, now rushed forward to embrace, if it were for the last time; mothers, holding their little children in their arms, threw themselves down, covering their babes with their own bodies.

And yet these slaves were treated with kindness, and no difference was made between them and other and freeborn servants. The younger captives were taught trades, and those who showed that they could manage property were set free and married. Widow ladies treated the girls they bought like their own daughters, and often left them dowries by will, that they might marry as entirely free. Never have I known one of these captives, says Azurara, put in irons like other slaves, or one who did not become a Christian. Often have I been present at the baptisms or marriages of these slaves, when their masters made as much and as solemn a matter of it as if it had been a child or a parent of their own.

During Henry's life the action of buccaneers on the African coast was a good deal kept in check by the spirit and example and positive commands of the Infant, who sent out his men to explore, and could not prevent some outrages in the course of exploration. Again and again he ordered his captains to act fairly to the natives, to trade with them honourably, and to persuade them by gentler means than kidnapping to come to Europe for a time. In the last years of his life he did succeed in bettering things; by establishing a regular Government trade in the bay of Arguin he brought a good deal more under control the unchained deviltry of the Portuguese freebooters; Cadamosto and Diego Gomez, his most trusted lieutenants of this later time, were real discoverers, who tried to make friends of the natives rather than slaves.

In the early days of Portuguese exploration, it may also be said, information, first-hand news of the new countries and their dangers, was absolutely needed, and if the Negroes and the Azaneguy Moors could not or would not speak some Christian tongue and guide the caravels to Guinea, they must be carried off and made fit and proper instruments for the work.

It would be out of place here to justify or condemn this excuse or to enter on the wider question of the right or wrong of the slave-trade in general. It is enough to see how brutally the work of "saving the Heathen," was carried out by the average explorer, when discovery was used as a plea for traffic.

No one then questioned the right of Christians to make slaves of Heathen Blacks; Henry certainly did not, for he used slavery as an education, he made captives of "Gentiles" for the highest ends, as he believed, to save their souls, and to help him in the way of doing great things for his country and for Christendom. He knew more of the results than of the incidental cruelty, more of the hundreds taken than of the hundreds more killed and maimed and made homeless in the taking. For centuries past Moors had brought back slaves from the south across the Sahara to sell on the coast of Tunis and Morocco; no Christian doubted the right and—more than the right—the merit of the Prince in bringing black slaves by sea from Guinea to Lisbon, where they might be fairly saved from the grasp of "Foul Mahumet."

So if it is said that Henry started the African slave-trade of European nations, that must not be understood as the full-blooded atrocity of the West Indian planters, for the use he made of his prisoners was utterly different, though his action was the cause of incessant abuse of the best end by the worst of means.

At the time the gold question was much more important than the slave-trade, and most Portuguese, most Europeans—nobles, merchants, burghers, farmers, labourers—were much more excited by the news and the sight of the first native gold dust than by anything else whatever. It was the first few handfuls of this dust, brought home by Gonsalvez in 1442, that had such a magical effect on public opinion, that spread the exploring interest from a small circle out into every class, and that brought forward volunteers on every side. For a Guinea voyage was now the favourite plan of every adventurer.

But however they may be explained, however natural and even necessary they may seem to be, as things stood in Portugal and in Latin Christendom, the slave-trade and the gold hunger hindered the Prince's work quite as much as they helped it. If further discovery depended upon trade profits, native interpreters, and the attractions of material interest, there was at least a danger that the discoverers who were not disposed to risk anything, and only went out to line their own pockets, would hang about the well known coasts till they had loaded all the plunder they could hold, and would then simply reappear at Sagres with so many more souls for the good Prince to save, but without a word or a thought of "finding of new lands." And this, after all, was the end. Buccaneering on the north-west coast of Africa was not what Henry aimed at.