CHAPTER IV.

THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.

EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE.

[Sidenote: Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing around Africa.]

As it dawned upon men's minds that to find some oceanic route from Europe to the remote shores of Asia was eminently desirable, the first attempt would naturally be to see what could be done by sailing down the western coast of Africa, and ascertaining whether that continent could be circumnavigated. It was also quite in the natural order of things that this first attempt should be made by the Portuguese.

In the general history of the Middle Ages the Spanish peninsula had been to some extent cut off from the main currents of thought and feeling which actuated the rest of Europe. Its people had never joined the other Christian nations in the Crusades, for the good reason that they always had quite enough to occupy them in their own domestic struggle with the Moors. From the throes of this prolonged warfare Portugal emerged somewhat sooner than the Spanish kingdoms, and thus had somewhat earlier a surplus of energy released for work of another sort. It was not strange that the Portuguese should be the first people since the old Northmen to engage in distant maritime adventure upon a grand scale. Nor was it strange that Portuguese seamanship should at first have thriven upon naval warfare with Mussulmans. It was in attempting to suppress the intolerable nuisance of Moorish piracy that Portuguese ships became accustomed to sail a little way down the west coast of Africa; and such voyages, begun for military purposes, were kept up in the interests of commerce, and presently served as a mighty stimulus to geographical curiosity. We have now to consider at some length how grave was the problem that came up for immediate solution.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Views of Eratosthenes, B. C. 276-196.]

[Sidenote: Opposing theory of Ptolemy, cir. A. D. 150.]

With regard to the circumnavigability of Africa two opposite opinions were maintained by the ancient Greek and Latin writers whose authority the men of the Middle Ages were wont to quote as decisive of every vexed question. The old Homeric notion of an ocean encompassing the terrestrial world, although mentioned with doubt by Herodotus,[339] continued to survive after the globular form of the earth had come to be generally maintained by ancient geographers. The greatest of these geographers, Eratosthenes, correctly assumed that the Indian ocean was continuous with the Atlantic,[340] and that Africa could be circumnavigated, just as he incorrectly assumed that the Caspian sea was a huge gulf communicating with a northern ocean, by which it would be possible to sail around the continent of Asia as he imagined it.[341] A similar opinion as to Africa was held by Posidonius and by Strabo.[342] It was called in question, however, by Polybius,[343] and was flatly denied by the great astronomer Hipparchus, who thought that certain observations on the tides, reported by Seleucus of Babylon, proved that there could be no connection between the Atlantic and Indian oceans.[344] Claudius Ptolemy, writing in the second century after Christ, followed the opinion of Hipparchus, and carried to an extreme the reaction against Eratosthenes. By Ptolemy's time the Caspian had been proved to be an inland sea, and it was evident that Asia extended much farther to the north and east than had once been supposed. This seems to have discredited in his mind the whole conception of outside oceans, and he not only gave an indefinite northward and eastward extension to Asia and an indefinite southern extension to Africa, but brought these two continents together far to the southeast, thus making the Indian ocean a land-locked sea.[345]

[Footnote 339: [Greek: Ton de Okeanon logo men legousi ap' heliou anatoleon arxamenon gen peri pasan rheein, ergo de ouk apodeiknysi.] Herodotus, iv. 8.]

[Footnote 340: [Greek: Kai gar kat' auton Eratosthene ten ektos thalattan hapasan syrroun einai, hoste kai ten Hesperion kai ten Erythran thalattan mian einai.] Strabo, i. 3, Sec. 13.]

[Footnote 341: Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, vol. i. p. 644.]

[Footnote 342: Strabo, ii. 3, Sec. 4; xvii. 3, Sec. 1.]

[Footnote 343: [Greek: Kathaper de kai tes Asias kai tes Libyes, katho synaptousin allelais peri ten Aithiopian, oudeis echei legein atrekos heos ton kath' hemas kairon, poteron epeiros esti kata to syneches ta pros ten mesembrian, e thalatte periechetai.] Polybius, iii. 38.]

[Footnote 344: Bunbury, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 15.]

[Footnote 345: See the map of Ptolemy's world, above, p. 264.]

[Sidenote: Story of the Phoenician voyage, in the time of Necho.]

These views of Hipparchus and Ptolemy took no heed of the story told to Herodotus of the circumnavigation of Africa by a Phoenician squadron at some time during the reign of Necho in Egypt (610-595 B. C.).[346] The Phoenician ships were said to have sailed from the Red Sea and to have returned through the Mediterranean in the third year after starting. In each of the two autumn seasons they stopped and sowed grain and waited for it to ripen, which in southern Africa would require ten or twelve weeks.[347] On their return to Egypt they declared ("I for my part do not believe them," says Herodotus, "but perhaps others may") that in thus sailing from east to west around Africa they had the sun upon their right hand. About this alleged voyage there has been a good deal of controversy.[348] No other expedition in any wise comparable to it for length and difficulty can be cited from ancient history, and a critical scholar is inclined to look with suspicion upon all such accounts of unique and isolated events. As we have not the details of the story, it is impossible to give it a satisfactory critical examination. The circumstance most likely to convince us of its truth is precisely that which dear old Herodotus deemed incredible. The position of the sun, to the north of the mariners, is something that could hardly have been imagined by people familiar only with the northern hemisphere. It is therefore almost certain that Necho's expedition sailed beyond the equator.[349] But that is as far as inference can properly carry us; for our experience of the uncritical temper of ancient narrators is enough to suggest that such an achievement might easily be magnified by rumour into the story told, more than a century after the event, to Herodotus. The data are too slight to justify us in any dogmatic opinion. One thing, however, is clear. Even if the circumnavigation was effected,—which, on the whole, seems improbable,—it remained quite barren of results. It produced no abiding impression upon men's minds[350] and added nothing to geographical knowledge. The veil of mystery was not lifted from southern Africa. The story was doubted by Strabo and Posidonius, and passed unheeded, as we have seen, by Hipparchus and Ptolemy.

[Footnote 346: Ptolemy expressly declares that the equatorial regions had never been visited by people from the northern hemisphere: [Greek: Tines de eisin hai oikeseis ouk an echoimen pepeismenos eipein. Atriptoi gar eisi mechri tou deuro tois apo tes kath' hemas oikoumenes, kai eikasian mallon an tis e historian hegesaito ta legomena peri auton.] Syntaxis, ii. 6.]

[Footnote 347: Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii. p. 29, note 8.]

[Footnote 348: The story is discredited by Mannert, Geographie der Griechen und Roemer, bd. i. pp. 19-26; Gossellin, Recherches sur la geographie des Anciens, tom. i. p. 149; Lewis, Astronomy of the Ancients, pp. 508-515; Vincent, Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean, vol. i. pp. 303-311, vol. ii. pp. 13-15; Leake, Disputed Questions of Ancient Geography, pp. 1-8. It is defended by Heeren, Ideen ueber die Politik, den Verkehr, etc., 3e aufl., Goettingen, 1815, bd. i. abth. ii. pp. 87-93; Rennell, Geography of Herodotus, pp. 672-714; Grote, History of Greece, vol. iii. pp. 377-385. The case is ably presented in Bunbury's History of Ancient Geography, vol. i. pp. 289-296, where it is concluded that the story "cannot be disproved or pronounced to be absolutely impossible; but the difficulties and improbabilities attending it are so great that they cannot reasonably be set aside without better evidence than the mere statement of Herodotus, upon the authority of unknown informants." Mr. Bunbury (vol. i. p. 317) says that he has reasons for believing that Mr. Grote afterwards changed his opinion and came to agree with Sir George Lewis.]

[Footnote 349: In reading the learned works of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, one is often reminded of what Sainte-Beuve somewhere says of the great scholar Letronne, when he had spent the hour of his lecture in demolishing some pretty or popular belief: "Il se frotta les mains et s'en alla bien content." When it came to ancient history, Sir George was undeniably fond of "the everlasting No." In the present case his skepticism seems on the whole well-judged, but some of his arguments savour of undue haste toward a negative conclusion. He thus strangely forgets that what we call autumn is springtime in the southern hemisphere (Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 511). His argument that the time alleged was insufficient for the voyage is fully met by Major Rennell, who has shown that the time was amply sufficient, and that the direction of winds and ocean currents would make the voyage around southern Africa from east to west much easier than from west to east.]

[Footnote 350: "No trace of it could be found in the Alexandrian library, either by Eratosthenes in the third, or by Marinus of Tyre in the second, century before Christ, although both of them were diligent examiners of ancient records." Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, p. 90.]

[Sidenote: Voyage of Hanno.]

Of Phoenician and other voyages along the Atlantic coast of Africa we have much more detailed and trustworthy information. As early as the twelfth century before Christ traders from Tyre had founded Cadiz (Gades),[351] and at a later date the same hardy people seem to have made the beginnings of Lisbon (Olisipo). From such advanced stations Tyrian and Carthaginian ships sometimes found their way northward as far as Cornwall, and in the opposite direction fishing voyages were made along the African coast. The most remarkable undertaking in this quarter was the famous voyage of the Carthaginian commander Hanno, whose own brief but interesting account of it has been preserved.[352] This expedition consisted of sixty penteconters (fifty-oared ships), and its chief purpose was colonization. Upon the Mauritanian coast seven small trading stations were founded, one of which—Kerne, at the mouth of the Rio d' Ouro[353]—existed for a long time. From this point Hanno made two voyages of exploration, the second of which carried him as far as Sierra Leone and the neighbouring Sherboro island, where he found "wild men and women covered with hair," called by the interpreters "gorillas."[354] At that point the ships turned back, apparently for want of provisions.

[Footnote 351: Rawlinson's History of Phoenicia, pp. 105, 418; Pseudo-Aristotle, Mirab. Auscult., 146; Velleius Paterculus, i. 2, Sec. 6.]

[Footnote 352: Hanno, Periplus, in Mueller, Geographi Graeci Minores, tom. i. pp. 1-14. Of two or three commanders named Hanno it is uncertain which was the one who led this expedition, and thus its date has been variously assigned from 570 to 470 B. C.]

[Footnote 353: For the determination of these localities see Bunbury, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 318-335. There is an interesting Spanish description of Hanno's expedition in Mariana, Historia de Espana, Madrid, 1783, tom. i. pp. 89-93.]

[Footnote 354: The sailors pursued them, but did not capture any of the males, who scrambled up the cliffs out of their reach. They captured three females, who bit and scratched so fiercely that it was useless to try to take them away. So they killed them and took their skins home to Carthage. Periplus, xviii. According to Pliny (Hist. Nat., vi. 36) these skins were hung up as a votive offering in the temple of Juno (i. e. Astarte or Ashtoreth: see Apuleius, Metamorph., xi. 257; Gesenius, Monumenta Phoenic., p. 168), where they might have been seen at any time before the Romans destroyed the city.]

[Sidenote: Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus.]

No other expedition in ancient times is known to have proceeded so far south as Sierra Leone. Two other voyages upon this Atlantic coast are mentioned, but without definite details. The one was that of Sataspes (about 470 B. C.), narrated by Herodotus, who merely tells us that a coast was reached where undersized men, clad in palm-leaf garments, fled to the hills at sight of the strange visitors.[355] The other was that of Eudoxus (about 85 B. C.), related by Posidonius, the friend and teacher of Cicero. The story is that this Eudoxus, in a voyage upon the east coast of Africa, having a philological turn of mind, wrote down the words of some of the natives whom he met here and there along the shore. He also picked up a ship's prow in the form of a horse's head, and upon his return to Alexandria some merchants professed to recognize it as belonging to a ship of Cadiz. Eudoxus thereupon concluded that Africa was circumnavigable, and presently sailed through the Mediterranean and out upon the Atlantic. Somewhere upon the coast of Mauritania he found natives who used some words of similar sound to those which he had written down when visiting the eastern coast, whence he concluded that they were people of the same race. At this point he turned back, and the sequel of the story was unknown to Posidonius.[356]

[Footnote 355: Herodotus, iv. 43.]

[Footnote 356: The story is preserved by Strabo, ii. 3, Sec.Sec. 4, 5, who rejects it with a vehemence for which no adequate reason is assigned.]

[Sidenote: Wild exaggerations.]

It is worthy of note that both Pliny and Pomponius Mela, quoting Cornelius Nepos as their authority, speak of Eudoxus as having circumnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to Cadiz; and Pliny, moreover, tells us that Hanno sailed around that continent as far as Arabia,[357]—a statement which is clearly false. These examples show how stories grow when carelessly and uncritically repeated, and they strongly tend to confirm the doubt with which one is inclined to regard the tale of Necho's sailors above mentioned. In truth, the island of Gorillas, discovered by Hanno, was doubtless the most southerly point on that coast reached by navigators in ancient times. Of the islands in the western ocean the Carthaginians certainly knew the Canaries (where they have left undoubted inscriptions), probably also the Madeiras, and possibly the Cape Verde group.[358]

[Footnote 357: Pliny, Hist. Nat., ii. 67; Mela, De Situ Orbis, iii. 9.]

[Footnote 358: After the civil war of Sertorius (B. C. 80-72), the Romans became acquainted with the Canaries, which, because of their luxuriant vegetation and soft climate, were identified with the Elysium described by Homer, and were commonly known as the Fortunate islands. "Contra Fortunatae Insulae abundant sua sponte genitis, et subinde aliis super aliis innascentibus nihil sollicitos alunt, beatius quam aliae urbes excultae." Mela, iii. 10.

[Greek: Alla s' es Elysion pedion kai peirata gaies athanatoi pempsousin, hothi xanthos Rhadamanthys, teper rheiste biote pelei anthropoisin; ou niphetos, out' ar cheimon polys oute pot' ombros, all' aiei Zephyroio ligy pneiontas aetas Okeanos aniesin anapsychein anthropous.] Odyssey, iv. 563.

Since Horace's time (Epod. vi. 41-66) the Canary islands have been a favourite theme for poets. It was here that Tasso placed the loves of Rinaldo and Armida, in the delicious garden where

Vezzosi augelli infra le verde fronde Temprano a prova lascivette note. Mormora l' aura, e fa le foglie e l' onde Garrir, che variamente ella percote. Gerusalemme Liberata, xvi. 12.]



[Sidenote: Views of Pomponius Mela, cir. A. D. 50.]

The extent of the knowledge which the ancients thus had of western Africa is well illustrated in the map representing the geographical theories of Pomponius Mela, whose book was written about A. D. 50. Of the eastern coast and the interior Mela knew less than Ptolemy a century later, but of the Atlantic coast he knew more than Ptolemy. The fact that the former geographer was a native of Spain and the latter a native of Egypt no doubt had something to do with this. Mela had profited by the Carthaginian discoveries. His general conception of the earth was substantially that of Eratosthenes. It was what has been styled the "oceanic" theory, in contrast with the "continental" theory of Ptolemy. In the unvisited regions on all sides of the known world Eratosthenes imagined vast oceans, Ptolemy imagined vast deserts or impenetrable swamps. The former doctrine was of course much more favourable to maritime enterprise than the latter. The works of Ptolemy exercised over the mediaeval mind an almost despotic sway, which, in spite of their many merits, was in some respects a hindrance to progress; so that, inasmuch as the splendid work of Strabo, the most eminent follower of Eratosthenes, was unknown to mediaeval Europe until about 1450, it was fortunate that the Latin treatise of Mela was generally read and highly esteemed. People in those days were such uncritical readers that very likely the antagonism between Ptolemy and Mela may have failed to excite comment,[359] especially in view of the lack of suitable maps such as emphasize that antagonism to our modern minds. But in the fifteenth century, when men were getting their first inklings of critical scholarship, and when the practical question of an ocean voyage to Asia was pressing for solution, such a point could no longer fail to attract attention; and it happened fortunately that the wet theory, no less than the dry theory, had a popular advocate among those classical authors to whose authority so much deference was paid.

[Footnote 359: Just as our grandfathers used to read the Bible without noticing such points as the divergences between the books of Kings and Chronicles, the contradictions between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, the radically different theories of Christ's personality and career in the Fourth Gospel as compared with the three Synoptics, etc.]

[Sidenote: Ancient theory of the five zones.]

[Sidenote: The Inhabited World and the Antipodes.]

If the Portuguese mariners of the generation before Columbus had acquiesced in Ptolemy's views as final, they surely would not have devoted their energies to the task of circumnavigating Africa. But there were yet other theoretical or fanciful obstacles in the way. When you look at a modern map of the world, the "five zones" may seem like a mere graphic device for marking conveniently the relations of different regions to the solar source of heat; but before the great Portuguese voyages and the epoch-making third voyage of Vespucius, to be described hereafter, a discouraging doctrine was entertained with regard to these zones. Ancient travellers in Scythia and voyagers to "Thule"—which in Ptolemy's scheme perhaps meant the Shetland isles[360]—had learned something of Arctic phenomena. The long winter nights,[361] the snow and ice, and the bitter winds, made a deep impression upon visitors from the Mediterranean;[362] and when such facts were contrasted with the scorching blasts that came from Sahara, the resulting theory was undeniably plausible. In the extreme north the ocean must be frozen and the country uninhabitable by reason of the cold; contrariwise, in the far south the ocean must be boiling hot and the country inhabitable only by gnomes and salamanders. Applying these ideas to the conception of the earth as a sphere, Pomponius Mela tells us that the surface of the sphere is divided into five zones, of which only two are fit to support human life. About each pole stretches a dead and frozen zone; the southern and northern hemispheres have each a temperate zone, with the same changes of seasons, but not occurring at the same (but opposite) times; the north temperate zone is the seat of the Oecumene ([Greek: oikoumene]), or Inhabited World; the south temperate zone is also inhabited by the Antichthones or Antipodes, but about these people we know nothing, because between us and them there intervenes the burning zone, which it is impossible to cross.[363]

[Footnote 360: Bunbury, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 492, 527. The name is used in different geographical senses by various ancient writers, as is well shown in Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, pp. 467-481.]

[Footnote 361: The Romans, at least by the first century A. D., knew also of the shortness of northern nights in summer.

Arma quidem ultra Littora Invernae promovimus, et modo captas Orcadas, ac minima contentos nocte Britannos. Juvenal, ii. 159.

See also Pliny, Hist. Nat., iv. 30; Martianus Capella, vi. 595; Achilles Tatius, XXXV.]

[Footnote 362: The reader will remember Virgil's magnificent description of a Scythian winter (Georg., iii. 352):—

Illic clausa tenent stabulis armenta; neque ullae Aut herbae campo apparent, aut arbore frondes: Sed jacet aggeribus niveis informis, et alto Terra gelu late, septemque assurgit in ulnas; Semper hiems, semper spirantes frigora Cauri. Tum Sol pallentes haud unquam discutit umbras; Nec cum invectus equis altum petit aethera, nec cum Praecipitem Oceani rubro lavit aequore currum. Concrescunt subitae currenti in flumine crustae; Undaque jam tergo ferratos sustinet orbes, Puppibus illa prius patulis, nunc hospita plaustris, AEraque dissiliunt vulgo, vestesque rigescunt Indutae, caeduntque securibus humida vina Et totae solidam in glaciem vertere lacunae, Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis. Interea toto non secius aere ningit; Intereunt pecudes; stant circumfusa pruinis Corpora magna boum; confertoque agmine cervi Torpent mole nova, et summis vix cornibus exstant. ................................................. Ipsi in defossis specubus, secura sub alta Otia agunt terra, congestaque robora, totasque Advolvere focis ulmos, ignique dedere. Hic noctem ludo ducunt, et pocula laeti Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis. Talis Hyperboreo Septem subjecta trioni Gens effraena virum Rhipaeo tunditur Euro, Et pecudum fulvis velantur corpora saetis.

The Roman conception of the situation of these "Hyperboreans" and of the Rhipaean mountains may be seen in the map of Mela's world.]

[Footnote 363: "Huic medio terra sublimis cingitur undique mari: eodemque in duo latera, quae hemisphaeria nominantur, ab oriente divisa ad occasum, zonis quinque distinguitur. Mediam aestus infestat, frigus ultimas: reliquae habitabiles paria agunt anni tempora, verum non pariter. Antichthones alteram, nos alteram incolimus. Illius situ ab ardorem intercedentis plagae incognito, hujus dicendus est," etc. De Situ Orbis, i. 1. A similar theory is set forth by Ovid (Metamorph., i. 45), and by Virgil (Georg., i. 233):—

Quinque tenent coelum zonae; quarum una corusco Semper Sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni; Quam circum extremae dextra laevaque trahuntur, Caerulea glacie concretae atque imbribus atris. Has inter mediamque, duae mortalibus aegris Munere concessae Divum; et via secta per ambas, Obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo.]

[Sidenote: Curious notions about Ceylon.]

This notion of an antipodal world in the southern hemisphere will have especial interest for us when we come to deal with the voyages of Vespucius. The idea seems to have originated in a guess of Hipparchus that Taprobane—the island of Ceylon, about which the most absurd reports were brought to Europe—might be the beginning of another world. This is very probable, says Mela, with delightful naivete, because Taprobane is inhabited, and still we do not know of anybody who has ever made the tour of it.[364] Mela's contemporary, the elder Pliny, declares that Taprobane "has long been regarded" as part of another world, the name of which is Antichthon, or Opposite-Earth;[365] at the same time Pliny vouchsafes three closely-printed pages of information about this mysterious country. Throughout the Middle Ages the conception of some sort of an antipodal inhabited world was vaguely entertained by writers here and there, but many of the clergy condemned it as implying the existence of people cut off from the knowledge of the gospel and not included in the plan of salvation.

[Footnote 364: "Taprobane aut grandis admodum insula aut prima pars orbis alterius Hipparcho dicitur; sed quia habitata, nec quisquam circummeasse traditur, prope verum est." De Situ Orbis, iii. 7.]

[Footnote 365: "Taprobanen alterum orbem terrarum esse, diu existimatum est, Antichthonum appellatione." Hist. Nat., vi. 24.]

[Sidenote: The fiery zone.]

As to the possibility of crossing the torrid zone, opinion was not unanimous. Greek explorers from Alexandria (cir. B. C. 100) seem to have gone far up the Nile toward the equator, and the astronomer Geminus quotes their testimony in proof of his opinion that the torrid zone is inhabitable.[366] Panaetius, the friend of the younger Scipio Africanus, had already expressed a similar opinion. But the flaming theory prevailed. Macrobius, writing about six hundred years later, maintained that the southernmost limit of the habitable earth was 850 miles south of Syene, which lies just under the tropic of Cancer.[367] Beyond this point no man could go without danger from the fiery atmosphere. Beyond some such latitude on the ocean no ship could venture without risk of being engulfed in some steaming whirlpool.[368] Such was the common belief before the great voyages of the Portuguese.

[Footnote 366: Geminus, Isagoge, cap. 13.]

[Footnote 367: Macrobius, Somnium Scipionis, ii. 8. Strabo (ii. 5, Sec.Sec. 7, 8) sets the southern boundary of the Inhabited World 800 miles south of Syene, and the northern boundary at the north of Ireland.]

[Footnote 368: Another notion, less easily explicable and less commonly entertained, but interesting for its literary associations, was the notion of a mountain of loadstone in the Indian ocean, which prevented access to the torrid zone by drawing the nails from ships and thus wrecking them. This imaginary mountain, with some variations in the description, is made to carry a serious geographical argument by the astrologer Pietro d' Abano, in his book Conciliator Differentiarum, written about 1312. (See Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, p. 100.) It plays an important part in one of the finest tales in the Arabian Nights,—the story of the "Third Royal Mendicant."]

[Sidenote: Going downhill.]

Besides this dread of the burning zone, another fanciful obstacle beset the mariner who proposed to undertake a long voyage upon the outer ocean. It had been observed that a ship which disappears in the offing seems to be going downhill; and many people feared that if they should happen thus to descend too far away from the land they could never get back again. Men accustomed to inland sea travel did not feel this dread within the regions of which they had experience, but it assailed them whenever they thought of braving the mighty waters outside.[369] Thus the master mariner, in the Middle Ages, might contemplate the possible chance of being drawn by force of gravity into the fiery gulf, should he rashly approach too near; and in such misgivings he would be confirmed by Virgil, who was as much read then as he is to-day and esteemed an authority, withal, on scientific questions; for according to Virgil the Inhabited World descends toward the equator and has its apex in the extreme north.[370]

[Footnote 369: Ferdinand Columbus tells us that this objection was urged against the Portuguese captains and afterwards against his father: "E altri di cio quasi cosi disputavano, come gia i Portoghesi intorno al navigare in Guinea; dicendo che, se si allargasse alcuno a far cammino diritto al occidente, come l' Ammiraglio diceva, non potrebbe poi tornare in Ispagna per la rotondita della sfera; tenendo per certissime, che qualunque uscisse del emisperio conosciuto da Tolomeo, anderebbe in giu, e poi gli sarebbe impossibile dar la volta; e affermando che cio sarebbe quasi uno ascendere all' insu di un monte. Il che non potrebbono fare i navigli con grandissimo vento." Vita deli' Ammiraglio, Venice, 1571, cap. xii. The same thing is told, in almost the same words, by Las Casas, since both writers followed the same original documents: "Anidian mas, que quien navegase por via derecha la vuelta del poniente, como el Cristobal Colon proferia, no podria despues volver, suponiendo que el mundo era redondo y yendo hacia el occidente iban cuesta abajo, y saliendo del hemisferio que Ptolomeo escribio, a la vuelta erales necesario subir cuesta arriba, lo que los navios era imposible hacer." The gentle but keen sarcasm that follows is very characteristic of Las Casas: "Esta era gentil y profunda razon, y senal de haber bien el negocio entendido!" Historia de las Indias, tom. i. p. 230.]

[Footnote 370: Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces Consurgit, premitur Libyae devexus in austros. Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum Sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi. Georg., i. 240.

For an account of the deference paid to Virgil in the Middle Ages, as well as the grotesque fancies about him, see Tunison's Master Virgil, 2d ed., Cincinnati, 1890.]

[Sidenote: Superstitious fancies.]

To such notions as these, which were supposed to have some sort of scientific basis, we must add the wild superstitious fancies that clustered about all remote and unvisited corners of the world. In maps made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in such places as we should label "Unexplored Region," there were commonly depicted uncouth shapes of "Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras dire," furnishing eloquent testimony to the feelings with which the unknown was regarded. The barren wastes of the Sea of Darkness awakened a shuddering dread like that with which children shrink from the gloom of a cellar. When we remember all these things, and consider how the intelligent purpose which urged the commanders onward was scarcely within the comprehension of their ignorant and refractory crews, we can begin to form some idea of the difficulties that confronted the brave mariners who first sought an ocean route to the far-off shores of Cathay.

[Sidenote: Clumsiness of the caravels.]

[Sidenote: Famine and scurvy.]

Less formidable than these obstacles based on fallacious reasoning or superstitious whim were those that were furnished by the clumsiness of the ships and the crudeness of the appliances for navigation. As already observed, the Spanish and Portuguese caravels of the fifteenth century were less swift and manageable craft than the Norwegian "dragons" of the tenth. Mere yachts in size we should call them, but far from yachtlike in shape or nimbleness. With their length seldom more than thrice their width of beam, with narrow tower-like poops, with broad-shouldered bows and bowsprit weighed down with spritsail yards, and with no canvas higher than a topsail, these clumsy caravels could make but little progress against head-winds, and the amount of tacking and beating to and fro was sometimes enough to quadruple the length of the voyage. For want of metallic sheathing below the waterline the ship was liable to be sunk by the terrible worm which, in Hakluyt's phrase, "many times pearceth and eateth through the strongest oake." For want of vegetable food in the larder, or anything save the driest of bread and beef stiffened with brine, the sailors were sure to be attacked by scurvy, and in a very long voyage the crew was deemed fortunate that did not lose half its number from that foul disease. Often in traversing unknown seas the sturdy men who survived all other perils were brought face to face with starvation when they had ventured too far without turning back.[371] We need not wonder that the first steps in oceanic discovery were slow and painful.

[Footnote 371: Or simply because a wrong course happened to be taken, through ignorance of atmospheric conditions, as in the second homeward and third outward voyages of Columbus. See below, pp. 485, 490.]

[Sidenote: The mariner's compass.]

First among the instruments without which systematic ocean navigation would have been impossible, the magnetic compass had been introduced into southern Europe and was used by Biscayan and Catalan sailors before the end of the twelfth century.[372] Parties of Crusaders had learned the virtues of the suspended needle from the Arabs, who are said to have got their knowledge indirectly from China in the course of their eastern voyages.[373] It seems to have been at Amalfi that the needle was first enclosed in a box and connected with a graduated compass-card. Apparently it had not come into general use in the middle of the thirteenth century, for in 1258 the famous Brunetto Latini, afterwards tutor of Dante, made a visit to Roger Bacon, of which he gives a description in a letter to his friend the poet Guido Cavalcanti: "The Parliament being summoned to assemble at Oxford, I did not fail to see Friar Bacon as soon as I arrived, and (among other things) he showed me a black ugly stone called a magnet, which has the surprising property of drawing iron to it; and upon which, if a needle be rubbed, and afterwards fastened to a straw so that it shall swim upon water, the needle will instantly turn toward the Pole-star: therefore, be the night ever so dark, so that neither moon nor star be visible, yet shall the mariner be able, by the help of this needle, to steer his vessel aright. This discovery, which appears useful in so great a degree to all who travel by sea, must remain concealed until other times; because no master mariner dares to use it lest he should fall under the imputation of being a magician; nor would the sailors venture themselves out to sea under his command, if he took with him an instrument which carries so great an appearance of being constructed under the influence of some infernal spirit.[374] A time may arrive when these prejudices, which are of such great hindrance to researches into the secrets of nature, will be overcome; and it will be then that mankind shall reap the benefit of the labours of such learned men as Friar Bacon, and do justice to that industry and intelligence for which he and they now meet with no other return than obloquy and reproach."[375]

[Footnote 372: Navarrete, Discurso historico sobre los progresos del arte de navegar en Espana, p. 28; see also Raymond Lully's treatise, Libro felix, o Maravillas del mundo (A. D. 1286).]

[Footnote 373: See Humboldt's Kosmos, bd. i. p. 294; Klaproth, Lettre a M. de Humboldt sur l'invention de la boussole, pp. 41, 45, 50, 66, 79, 90. But some of Klaproth's conclusions have been doubted: "Pour la boussole, rien ne prouve que les Chinois l'aient employee pour la navigation, tandis que nous la trouvons des le xi^{e} siecle chez les Arabes qui s'en servent non seulement dans leurs traversees maritimes, mais dans les voyages de caravanes au milieu des deserts," etc. Sedillot, Histoire des Arabes, tom. ii. p. 130.]

[Footnote 374: Is it not a curious instance of human perversity that while customary usage from time immemorial has characterized as "acts of God" such horrible events as famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, on the other hand when some purely beneficent invention has appeared, such as the mariner's compass or the printing press, it has commonly been accredited to the Devil? The case of Dr. Faustus is the most familiar example.]

[Footnote 375: This version is cited from Major's Prince Henry the Navigator, p. 58.]

[Sidenote: Latitude and longitude.]

That time was after all not so long in arriving, for by the end of the thirteenth century the compass had come to be quite generally used,[376] and the direction of a ship's course could be watched continuously in foul and fair weather alike. For taking the sun's altitude rude astrolabes and jack-staffs were in use, very crazy affairs as compared with the modern quadrant, but sufficiently accurate to enable a well-trained observer, in calculating his latitude, to get somewhere within two or three degrees of the truth. In calculating longitude the error was apt to be much greater, for in the absence of chronometers there were no accurate means for marking differences in time. It was necessary to depend upon the dead-reckoning, and the custom was first to sail due north or south to the parallel of the place of destination and then to turn at right angles and sail due east or west. Errors of eight or even ten degrees were not uncommon. Thus at the end of a long outward voyage the ship might find itself a hundred miles or more to the north or south, and six or seven hundred miles to the east or west, of the point at which it had been aimed. Under all these difficulties, the approximations made to correct sailing by the most skilful mariners were sometimes wonderful. Doubtless this very poverty of resources served to sharpen their watchful sagacity.[377] To sail the seas was in those days a task requiring high mental equipment; it was no work for your commonplace skipper. Human faculty was taxed to its utmost, and human courage has never been more grandly displayed than by the glorious sailors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

[Footnote 376: Huellmann, Staedtewesen des Mittelalters, bd. i. pp. 125-137.]

[Footnote 377: Compare the remarks of Mr. Clark Russell on the mariners of the seventeenth century, in his William Dampier, p. 12.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Prince Henry the Navigator, 1394-1463.]

[Sidenote: His idea of an ocean route to the Indies, and what it might bring.]

We are now prepared to appreciate the character of the work that was done in the course of the first attempts to find an oceanic route from Europe to Asia. Then, as in other great epochs of history, men of genius arose to meet the occasion. In 1394 was born Prince Henry of Portugal, since known as Henry the Navigator.[378] He was fourth son of King John I., the valiant and prudent king under whom began the golden age of Portugal, which lasted until the conquest of that country in 1580 by Philip II. of Spain. Henry's mother was Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt. He was therefore cousin to our own Henry V. of England, whom he quite equalled in genius, while the laurels that he won were more glorious than those of Agincourt. In 1415, being then in his twenty-first year, Prince Henry played a distinguished part in the expedition which captured Ceuta from the Moors. While in Morocco he gathered such information as he could concerning the interior of the continent; he learned something about the oases of Sahara, the distant river Gambia, and the caravan trade between Tunis and Timbuctoo, whereby gold was carried from the Guinea coast to Mussulman ports on the Mediterranean. If this coast could be reached by sea, its gold might be brought to Lisbon as well. To divert such treasure from the infidel and secure it for a Christian nation was an enterprise fitted to kindle a prince's enthusiasm. While Henry felt the full force of these considerations, his thoughts took a wider range. The views of Pomponius Mela had always been held in high esteem by scholars of the Spanish peninsula,[379] and down past that Gold Coast Prince Henry saw the ocean route to the Indies, the road whereby a vast empire might be won for Portugal and millions of wandering heathen souls might be gathered into the fold of Christ. To doubt the sincerity of the latter motive, or to belittle its influence, would be to do injustice to Prince Henry,—such cynical injustice as our hard-headed age is only too apt to mete out to that romantic time and the fresh enthusiasm which inspired its heroic performances. Prince Henry was earnest, conscientious, large-minded, and in the best sense devout; and there can be no question that in his mind, as in that of Columbus, and (with somewhat more alloy) in the minds of Cortes and others, the desire of converting the heathen and strengthening the Church served as a most powerful incentive to the actions which in the course of little more than a century quite changed the face of the world.

[Footnote 378: My chief authorities for the achievements of Prince Henry and his successors are the Portuguese historians, Barros and Azurara. The best edition of the former is a modern one, Barros y Couto, Decadas da Asia, nova edicao con Indice geral, Lisbon, 1778-88, 24 vols. 12mo. I also refer sometimes to the Lisbon, 1752, edition of the Decada primeira, in folio. The priceless contemporary work of Azurara, written in 1453 under Prince Henry's direction, was not printed until the present century; Azurara, Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista de Guine, Paris, 1841, a superb edition in royal quarto, edited by the Viscount da Carreira, with introduction and notes by the Viscount de Santarem.]

[Footnote 379: Partly, perhaps, because Mela was himself a Spaniard, and partly because his opinions had been shared and supported by St. Isidore, of Seville (A. D. 570-636), whose learned works exercised immense authority throughout the Middle Ages. It is in one of St. Isidore's books (Etymologiarum, xiii. 16, apud Migne, Patrologia, tom. lxxxii. col. 484) that we first find the word "Mediterranean" used as a proper name for that great land-locked sea.]

[Sidenote: The Sacred Promontory.]

Filled with such lofty and generous thoughts, Prince Henry, on his return from Morocco, in 1418, chose for himself a secluded place of abode where he could devote himself to his purposes undisturbed by the court life at Lisbon or by political solicitations of whatever sort. In the Morocco campaign he had won such military renown that he was now invited by Pope Martin V. to take chief command of the papal army; and presently he received similar flattering offers from his own cousin, Henry V. of England, from John II. of Castile, and from the Emperor Sigismund, who, for shamefully violating his imperial word and permitting the burning of John Huss, was now sorely pressed by the enraged and rebellious Bohemians. Such invitations had no charm for Henry. Refusing them one and all, he retired to the promontory of Sagres, in the southernmost province of Portugal, the ancient kingdom of Algarve, of which his father now appointed him governor. That lonely and barren rock, protruding into the ocean, had long ago impressed the imagination of Greek and Roman writers; they called it the Sacred Promontory, and supposed it to be the westernmost limit of the habitable earth.[380] There the young prince proceeded to build an astronomical observatory, the first that his country had ever seen, and to gather about him a school of men competent to teach and men eager to learn the mysteries of map-making and the art of navigation. There he spent the greater part of his life; thence he sent forth his captains to plough the southern seas; and as year after year the weather-beaten ships returned from their venturesome pilgrimage, the first glimpse of home that greeted them was likely to be the beacon-light in the tower where the master sat poring over problems of Archimedes or watching the stars. For Henry, whose motto was "Talent de bien faire," or (in the old French usage) "Desire[381] to do well," was wont to throw himself whole-hearted into whatever he undertook, and the study of astronomy and mathematics he pursued so zealously as to reach a foremost place among the experts of his time. With such tastes and such ambition, he was singularly fortunate in wielding ample pecuniary resources; if such a combination could be more often realized, the welfare of mankind would be notably enhanced. Prince Henry was Grand Master of the Order of Christ, an organization half military, half religious, and out of its abundant revenues he made the appropriations needful for the worthy purpose of advancing the interests of science, converting the heathen, and winning a commercial empire for Portugal. At first he had to encounter the usual opposition to lavish expenditure for a distant object without hope of immediate returns; but after a while his dogged perseverance began to be rewarded with such successes as to silence all adverse comment.

[Footnote 380: [Greek: Homoios de kai peri tes exo stelon legetai; dysmikotaton men gar semeion tes oikoumenes, to ton Iberon akroterion, ho kalousin Ieron.] Strabo, ii. 5, Sec. 14; cf. Dionysius Periegetes, v. 161. In reality it lies not quite so far west as the country around Lisbon.]

[Footnote 381: See Littre, Dictionnaire, s. v. "Talent;" Du Cange, Glossarium, "talentum, animi decretum, voluntas, desiderium, cupiditas," etc.; cf. Raynouard, Glossaire Provencale, tom. v. p. 296. French was then fashionable at court, in Lisbon as well as in London.]

[Sidenote: The Madeira and Canary islands.]

The first work in hand was the rediscovery of coasts and islands that had ceased to be visited even before the breaking up of the Roman Empire. For more than a thousand years the Madeiras and Canaries had been well-nigh forgotten, and upon the coast of the African continent no ship ventured beyond Cape Non, the headland so named because it said "No!" to the wistful mariner.[382] There had been some re-awakening of maritime activity in the course of the fourteenth century, chiefly due, no doubt, to the use of the compass. Between 1317 and 1351 certain Portuguese ships, with Genoese pilots, had visited not only the Madeiras and Canaries, but even the Azores, a thousand miles out in the Atlantic; and these groups of islands are duly laid down upon the so-called Medici map of 1351, preserved in the Laurentian library at Florence.[383] The voyage to the Azores was probably the greatest feat of ocean navigation that had been performed down to that time, but it was not followed by colonization. Again, somewhere about 1377 Madeira seems to have been visited by Robert Machin, an Englishman, whose adventures make a most romantic story; and in 1402 the Norman knight, Jean de Bethencourt, had begun to found a colony in the Canaries, for which, in return for aid and supplies, he did homage to the King of Castile.[384] As for the African coast, Cape Non had also been passed at some time during the fourteenth century, for Cape Bojador is laid down on the Catalan map of 1375; but beyond that point no one had dared take the risks of the unknown sea.

[Footnote 382: The Portuguese proverb was "Quem passar o Cabo de Nao ou voltara ou nao," i. e. "Whoever passes Cape Non will return or not." See Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, tom. i. p. 173; Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. i. p. 91; Barros, tom. i. p. 36.]

[Footnote 383: An engraved copy of this map may be found in Major's Prince Henry the Navigator, London, 1868, facing p. 107. I need hardly say that in all that relates to the Portuguese voyages I am under great obligation to Mr. Major's profoundly learned and critical researches. He has fairly conquered this subject and made it his own, and whoever touches it after him, however lightly, must always owe him a tribute of acknowledgment.]

[Footnote 384: See Bontier and Le Verrier, The Canarian, or, Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canaries, translated and edited by R. H. Major, London, 1872 (Hakluyt Soc). In 1414, Bethencourt's nephew, left in charge of these islands, sold them to Prince Henry, but Castile persisted in claiming them, and at length in 1479 her claim was recognized by treaty with Portugal. Of all the African islands, therefore, the Canaries alone came to belong, and still belong, to Spain.]

[Sidenote: Gil Eannes passes Cape Bojador.]

The first achievement under Prince Henry's guidance was the final rediscovery and colonization of Porto Santo and Madeira in 1418-25 by Gonsalvez Zarco, Tristam Vaz, and Bartholomew Perestrelo.[385] This work occupied the prince's attention for some years, and then came up the problem of Cape Bojador. The difficulty was twofold; the waves about that headland were apt to be boisterous, and wild sailor's fancies were apt to enkindle a mutinous spirit in the crews. It was not until 1433-35 that Gil Eannes, a commander of unusually clear head and steady nerves, made three attempts and fairly passed the dreaded spot. In the first attempt he failed, as his predecessors had done, to double the cape; in the second attempt he doubled it; in the third he sailed nearly two hundred miles beyond.

[Footnote 385: Perestrelo had with him a female rabbit which littered on the voyage, and being landed, with her young, at Porto Santo, forthwith illustrated the fearful rate of multiplication of which organisms are capable in the absence of enemies or other adverse circumstances to check it. (Darwin, Origin of Species, chap. iii.) These rabbits swarmed all over the island and devoured every green and succulent thing, insomuch that they came near converting it into a desert. Prince Henry's enemies, who were vexed at the expenditure of money in such colonizing enterprises, were thus furnished with a wonderful argument. They maintained that God had evidently created those islands for beasts alone, not for men! "En este tiempo habia en todo Portugal grandisimas murmuraciones del Infante, viendolo tan cudicioso y poner tanta diligencia en el descubrir de la tierra y costa de Africa, diciendo que destruia el reino en los gastos que hacia, y consumia los vecinos del en poner en tanto peligro y dano la gente portoguesa, donde muchos morian, enviandolos en demanda de tierras que nunca los reyes de Espana pasados se atrevieron a emprender, donde habia de hacer muchas viudas y huerfanos con esta su porfia. Tomaban por argumento, que Dios no habia criado aquellas tierras sino para bestias, pues en tan poco tiempo en aquella isla tantos conejos habia multiplicado, que no dejaban cosa que para sustentacion de los hombres fuese menester." Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, tom. i. p. 180. See also Azurara, Chronica do descobrimento e conquista de Guine, cap. lxxxiii.]



[Sidenote: Beginning of the modern slave-trade, 1442.]

[Sidenote: Papal grant of heathen countries to the Portuguese crown.]

[Sidenote: Advance to Sierra Leone.]

This achievement of Gil Eannes (anglice, plain Giles Jones) marks an era. It was the beginning of great things. When we think of the hesitation with which this step was taken, and the vociferous applause that greeted the successful captain, it is strange to reflect that babes were already born in 1435 who were to live to hear of the prodigious voyages of Columbus and Gama, Vespucius and Magellan. After seven years a further step was taken in advance; in 1442 Antonio Goncalves brought gold and negro slaves from the Rio d' Ouro, or Rio del Oro, four hundred miles beyond Cape Bojador. Of this beginning of the modern slave-trade I shall treat in a future chapter.[386] Let it suffice here to observe that Prince Henry did not discourage but sanctioned it. The first aspect which this baleful traffic assumed in his mind was that of a means for converting the heathen, by bringing black men and women to Portugal to be taught the true faith and the ways of civilized people, that they might in due season be sent back to their native land to instruct their heathen brethren. The kings of Portugal should have a Christian empire in Africa, and in course of time the good work might be extended to the Indies. Accordingly a special message was sent to Pope Eugenius IV., informing him of the discovery of the country of these barbarous people beyond the limits of the Mussulman world, and asking for a grant in perpetuity to Portugal of all heathen lands that might be discovered in further voyages beyond Cape Bojador, even so far as to include the Indies.[387] The request found favour in the eyes of Eugenius, and the grant was solemnly confirmed by succeeding popes. To these proceedings we shall again have occasion to refer. We have here to observe that the discovery of gold and the profits of the slave-trade—though it was as yet conducted upon a very small scale—served to increase the interest of the Portuguese people in Prince Henry's work and to diminish the obstacles in his way. A succession of gallant captains, whose names make a glorious roll of honour, carried on the work of exploration, reaching the farthest point that had been attained by the ancients. In 1445 Dinis Fernandez passed Cape Verde, and two years later Lancarote found the mouth of the Gambia. In 1456 Luigi Cadamosto—a Venetian captain in the service of Portugal—went as far as the Rio Grande; in 1460 Diego Gomez discovered the Cape Verde islands; and in 1462 Piedro de Cintra reached Sierra Leone.[388] At the same time, in various expeditions between 1431 and 1466, the Azores (i. e. "Hawk" islands) were rediscovered and colonized, and voyages out into the Sea of Darkness began to lose something of their manifold terrors.

[Footnote 386: See below, vol. ii. pp. 429-431.]

[Footnote 387: "En el ano de 1442, viendo el Infante que se habia pasado el cabo del Boxador y que la tierra iba muy adelante, y que todos los navios que inviaba traian muchos esclavos moros, con que pagaba los gastos que hacia y que cada dia crecia mas el provecho y se prosperaba su amada negociacion, determino de inviar a suplicar al Papa Martino V., ... que hiciese gracia a la Corona real de Portogal de los reinos y senorios que habia y hobiese desde el cabo del Boxador adelante, hacia el Oriente y la India inclusive; y ansi se las concedio, ... con todas las tierras, puertos, islas, tratos, rescates, pesquerias y cosas a esto pertenecientes, poniendo censuras y penas a todos los reyes cristianos, principes, y senores y comunidades que a esto le perturbasen; despues, dicen, que los sumos pontifices, sucesores de Martino, como Eugenio IV. y Nicolas V. y Calixto IV. lo confirmaron." Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, tom. i. p. 185. The name of Martin V. is a slip of the memory on the part of Las Casas. That pope had died of apoplexy eleven years before. It was Eugenius IV. who made this memorable grant to the crown of Portugal. The error is repeated in Irving's Columbus, vol. i. p. 339.]

[Footnote 388: The first published account of the voyages of Cadamosto and Cintra was in the Paesi nouamente retrouati, Vicenza, 1507, a small quarto which can now sometimes be bought for from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars. See also Grynaeus, Novus Orbis, Basel, 1532.]

[Sidenote: Advance to the Hottentot coast.]

Prince Henry did not live to see Africa circumnavigated. At the time of his death, in 1468, his ships had not gone farther than the spot where Hanno found his gorillas two thousand years before. But the work of this excellent prince did not end with his death. His adventurous spirit lived on in the school of accomplished navigators he had trained. Many voyages were made after 1462, of which we need mention only those that marked new stages of discovery. In 1471 two knights of the royal household, Joao de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar, sailed down the Gold Coast and crossed the equator; three years later the line was again crossed by Fernando Po, discoverer of the island that bears his name. In 1484 Diego Cam went on as far as the mouth of the Congo, and entered into very friendly relations with the negroes there. In a second voyage in 1485 this enterprising captain pushed on a thousand miles farther, and set up a cross in 22 deg. south latitude on the coast of the Hottentot country. Brisk trading went on along the Gold Coast, and missionaries were sent to the Congo.[389]

[Footnote 389: It was in the course of these voyages upon the African coast that civilized Europeans first became familiar with people below the upper status of barbarism. Savagery and barbarism of the lower types were practically unknown in the Middle Ages, and almost, though probably not quite unknown, to the civilized peoples of the Mediterranean in ancient times. The history of the two words is interesting. The Greek word [Greek: barbaros], whence Eng. barbarian (=Sanskrit barbara, Latin balbus), means "a stammerer," or one who talks gibberish, i. e. in a language we do not understand. Aristophanes (Aves, 199) very prettily applies the epithet to the inarticulate singing of birds. The names Welsh, Walloon, Wallachian, and Belooch, given to these peoples by their neighbours, have precisely the same meaning (Kuhn's Zeitschrift, ii. 252); and in like manner the Russians call the Germans Nyemetch, or people who cannot talk (Schafarik, Slawische Alterthumer, i. 443; Pott, Etym. Forsch., ii. 521). The Greeks called all men but themselves barbarians, including such civilized people as the Persians. The Romans applied the name to all tribes and nations outside the limits of the Empire, and the Italians of the later Middle Ages bestowed it upon all nations outside of Italy. Upon its lax use in recent times I have already commented (above, pp. 25-35). The tendency to apply the epithet to savages is modern. The word savage, on the other hand, which came to us as the Old French sauvage or salvage (Ital. selvaggio, salvatico), is the Latin silvaticus, sylvaticus, salvaticus, that which pertains to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized by the epithet sylvaticus in Varro, De re rustica, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent silvestris, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22. (Occasionally it is used of men, as in Pliny, viii. 79.) The meaning was the same in mediaeval Latin (Du Cange, Glossarium, Niort, 1886, tom. vii. p. 686) and in Old French, as "La douce voiz du loussignol sauvage" (Michel, Chansons de chatelain de Coucy, xix.). In the romance of Robert le Diable, in the verses

Sire, se vos fustes Sauvages Viers moi, je n'i pris mie garde, etc.,

the reference is plainly to degenerate civilized men frequenting the forests, such as bandits or outlaws, not to what we call savages.

Mediaeval writers certainly had some idea of savages, but it was not based upon any actual acquaintance with such people, but upon imperfectly apprehended statements of ancient writers. At the famous ball at the Hotel de Saint Pol in Paris, in 1393, King Charles VI. and five noblemen were dressed in close-fitting suits of linen, thickly covered from head to foot with tow or flax, the colour of hair, so as to look like "savages." In this attire nobody recognized them, and the Duke of Orleans, in his eagerness to make out who they were, brought a torch too near, so that the flax took fire, and four of the noblemen were burned to death. See Froissart's Chronicles, tr. Johnes, London, 1806, vol. xi. pp. 69-76. The point of the story is that savages were supposed to be men covered with hair, like beasts, and Froissart, in relating it, evidently knew no better. Whence came this notion of hairy men? Probably from Hanno's gorillas (see above, p. 301), through Pliny, whose huge farrago of facts and fancies was a sort of household Peter Parley in mediaeval monasteries. Pliny speaks repeatedly of men covered with hair from head to foot, and scatters them about according to his fancy, in Carmania and other distant places (Hist. Nat., vi. 28, 36, vii. 2).

Greek and Roman writers seem to have had some slight knowledge of savagery and the lower status of barbarism as prevailing in remote places ("Ptolomee dit que es extremites de la terre habitable sont gens sauvages," Oresme, Les Ethiques d'Aristote, Paris, 1488), but their remarks are usually vague. Seldom do we get such a clean-cut statement as that of Tacitus about the Finns, that they have neither horses nor houses, sleep on the ground, are clothed in skins, live by the chase, and for want of iron use bone-tipped arrows (Germania, cap. 46). More often we have unconscionable yarns about men without noses, or with only one eye, tailed men, solid-hoofed men, Amazons, and parthenogenesis. The Troglodytes, or Cave-dwellers, on the Nubian coast of the Red Sea seem to have been in the middle status of barbarism (Diodorus, iii. 32; Agatharchides, 61-63), and the Ichthyophagi, or Fish-eaters, whom Nearchus found on the shores of Gedrosia (Arrian, Indica, cap. 29), were probably in a lower stage, perhaps true savages. It is exceedingly curious that Mela puts a race of pygmies at the headwaters of the Nile (see map above, p. 304). Is this only an echo from Iliad, iii. 6, or can any ancient traveller have penetrated far enough inland toward the equator to have heard reports of the dwarfish race lately visited by Stanley (In Darkest Africa, vol. ii. pp. 100-104, 164)? Strabo had no real knowledge of savagery in Africa (cf. Bunbury, Hist. Ancient Geog., ii. 331). Sataspes may have seen barbarians of low type, possibly on one of the Canary isles (see description of Canarians in Major's Prince Henry, p. 212). Ptolemy had heard of an island of cannibals in the Indian ocean, perhaps one of the Andaman group, visited A. D. 1293 by Marco Polo. The people of these islands rank among the lowest savages on the earth, and Marco was disgusted and horrified; their beastly faces, with huge prognathous jaws and projecting canine teeth, he tried to describe by calling them a dog-headed people. Sir Henry Yule suggests that the mention of Cynocephali, or Dog-heads, in ancient writers may have had an analogous origin (Marco Polo, vol. ii. p. 252). This visit of the Venetian traveller to Andaman was one of very few real glimpses of savagery vouchsafed to Europeans before the fifteenth century; and a general review of the subject brings out in a strong light the truthfulness and authenticity of the description of American Indians in Eric the Red's Saga, as shown above, pp. 185-192.]

[Sidenote: Effect of these discoveries upon the theories of Ptolemy and Mela.]

These voyages into the southern hemisphere dealt a damaging blow to the theory of an impassable fiery zone; but as to the circumnavigability of the African continent, the long stretch of coast beyond the equator seemed more in harmony with Ptolemy's views than with those of Mela. The eastward trend of the Guinea coast was at first in favour of the latter geographer, but when Santarem and Escobar found it turning southward to the equator the facts began to refute him. According to Mela they should have found it possible at once to sail eastward to the gulf of Aden. What if it should turn out after all that there was no connection between the Atlantic and Indian oceans? Every added league of voyaging toward the tropic of Capricorn must have been fraught with added discouragement, for it went to prove that, even if Ptolemy's theory was wrong, at any rate the ocean route to Asia was indefinitely longer than had been supposed. But was it possible to imagine any other route that should be more direct? To a trained mariner of original and imaginative mind, sojourning in Portugal and keenly watching the progress of African discovery, the years just following the voyage of Santarem and Escobar would be a period eminently fit for suggesting such a question. Let us not forget this date of 1471 while we follow Prince Henry's work to its first grand climax.

[Sidenote: News of Prester John.]

About the time that Diego Cam was visiting the tribes on the Congo, the negro king of Benin, a country by the mouth of the Niger, sent an embassy to John II. of Portugal (Prince Henry's nephew), with a request that missionary priests might be sent to Benin. It has been thought that the woolly-haired chieftain was really courting an alliance with the Portuguese, or perhaps he thought their "medicine men" might have the knack of confounding his foes. The negro envoy told King John that a thousand miles or so east of Benin there was an august sovereign who ruled over many subject peoples, and at whose court there was an order of chivalry whose badge or emblem was a brazen cross. Such, at least, was the king's interpretation of the negro's words, and forthwith he jumped to the conclusion that this African potentate must be Prester John, whose name was redolent of all the marvels of the mysterious East. To find Prester John would be a long step toward golden Cathay and the isles of spice. So the king of Portugal rose to the occasion, and attacked the problem on both flanks at once. He sent Pedro de Covilham by way of Egypt to Aden, and he sent Bartholomew Dias, with three fifty-ton caravels, to make one more attempt to find an end to the Atlantic coast of Africa.

[Sidenote: Covilham's journey.]

Covilham's journey was full of interesting experiences. He sailed from Aden to Hindustan, and on his return visited Abyssinia, where the semi-Christian king took such a liking to him that he would never let him go. So Covilham spent the rest of his life, more than thirty years, in Abyssinia, whence he was able now and then to send to Portugal items of information concerning eastern Africa that were afterwards quite serviceable in voyages upon the Indian ocean.[390]

[Footnote 390: See Major's India in the Fifteenth Century, pp. lxxxv.-xc.]

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

The daring captain, Bartholomew Dias, started in August, 1486, and after passing nearly four hundred miles beyond the tropic of Capricorn, was driven due south before heavy winds for thirteen days without seeing land. At the end of this stress of weather he turned his prows eastward, expecting soon to reach the coast. But as he had passed the southernmost point of Africa and no land appeared before him, after a while he steered northward and landed near the mouth of Gauritz river, more than two hundred miles east of the Cape of Good Hope. Thence he pushed on about four hundred miles farther eastward as far as the Great Fish river (about 33 deg. 30' S., 27 deg. 10' E.), where the coast begins to have a steady trend to the northeast. Dias was now fairly in the Indian ocean, and could look out with wistful triumph upon that waste of waters, but his worn-out crews refused to go any farther and he was compelled reluctantly to turn back. On the way homeward the ships passed in full sight of the famous headland which Dias called the Stormy Cape; but after arriving at Lisbon, in December, 1487, when the report of this noble voyage was laid before King John II., his majesty said, Nay, let it rather be called the Cape of Good Hope, since there was now much reason to believe that they had found the long-sought ocean route to the Indies.[391] Though this opinion turned out to be correct, it is well for us to remember that the proof was not yet complete. No one could yet say with certainty that the African coast, if followed a few miles east of Great Fish river, would not again trend southward and run all the way to the pole. The completed proof was not obtained until Vasco da Gama crossed the Indian ocean ten years later.

[Footnote 391: The greatest of Portuguese poets represents the Genius of the Cape as appearing to the storm-tossed mariners in cloud-like shape, like the Jinni that the fisherman of the Arabian tale released from a casket. He expresses indignation at their audacity in discovering his secret, hitherto hidden from mankind:—

Eu sou aquelle occulto e grande Cabo, A quem chamais vos outros Tormentorio, Que nunca a Ptolomeo, Pomponio, Estrabo, Plinio, e quantos passaram, fui notorio: Aqui toda a Africana costa acabo Neste meu nunca vista promontorio, Que para o polo Antarctico se estende, A quem vossa ousadia tanto offende. Camoens, Os Lusiadas, v. 50.]

[Sidenote: Some effects of the discovery.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus.]

This voyage of Bartholomew Dias was longer and in many respects more remarkable than any that is known to have been made before that time. From Lisbon back to Lisbon, reckoning the sinuosities of the coast, but making no allowance for tacking, the distance run by those tiny craft was not less than thirteen thousand miles. This voyage completed the overthrow of the fiery-zone doctrine, so far as Africa was concerned; it penetrated far into the southern temperate zone where Mela had placed his antipodal world; it dealt a staggering blow to the continental theory of Ptolemy; and its success made men's minds readier for yet more daring enterprises. Among the shipmates of Dias on this ever memorable voyage was a well-trained and enthusiastic Italian mariner, none other than Bartholomew, the younger brother of Christopher Columbus. There was true dramatic propriety in the presence of that man at just this time; for not only did all these later African voyages stand in a direct causal relation to the discovery of America, but as an immediate consequence of the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope we shall presently find Bartholomew Columbus in the very next year on his way to England, to enlist the aid of King Henry VII. in behalf of a scheme of unprecedented boldness for which his elder brother had for some years been seeking to obtain the needful funds. Not long after that disappointing voyage of Santarem and Escobar in 1471, this original and imaginative sailor, Christopher Columbus, had conceived (or adopted and made his own) a new method of solving the problem of an ocean route to Cathay. We have now to sketch the early career of this epoch-making man, and to see how he came to be brought into close relations with the work of the Portuguese explorers.



CHAPTER V.

THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.

WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE.

[Sidenote: Sources of information concerning the life of Columbus: Las Casas and Ferdinand Columbus.]

[Sidenote: The Biblioteca Colombina at Seville.]

Our information concerning the life of Columbus before 1492 is far from being as satisfactory as one could wish. Unquestionably he is to be deemed fortunate in having had for his biographers two such men as his friend Las Casas, one of the noblest characters and most faithful historians of that or any age, and his own son Ferdinand Columbus, a most accomplished scholar and bibliographer. The later years of Ferdinand's life were devoted, with loving care, to the preparation of a biography of his father; and his book—which unfortunately survives only in the Italian translation of Alfonso Ulloa,[392] published in Venice in 1571—is of priceless value. As Washington Irving long ago wrote, it is "an invaluable document, entitled to great faith, and is the cornerstone of the history of the American continent."[393] After Ferdinand's death, in 1539, his papers seem to have passed into the hands of Las Casas, who, from 1552 to 1561, in the seclusion of the college of San Gregorio at Valladolid, was engaged in writing his great "History of the Indies."[394] Ferdinand's superb library, one of the finest in Europe, was bequeathed to the cathedral at Seville.[395] It contained some twenty thousand volumes in print and manuscript, four fifths of which, through shameful neglect or vandalism, have perished or been scattered. Four thousand volumes, however, are still preserved, and this library (known as the "Biblioteca Colombina") is full of interest for the historian. Book-buying was to Ferdinand Columbus one of the most important occupations in life. His books were not only carefully numbered, but on the last leaf of each one he wrote a memorandum of the time and place of its purchase and the sum of money paid for it.[396] This habit of Ferdinand's has furnished us with clues to the solution of some interesting questions. Besides this, he was much given to making marginal notes and comments, which are sometimes of immense value, and, more than all, there are still to be seen in this library a few books that belonged to Christopher Columbus himself, with very important notes in his own handwriting and in that of his brother Bartholomew. Las Casas was familiar with this grand collection in the days of its completeness, he was well acquainted with all the members of the Columbus family, and he had evidently read the manuscript sources of Ferdinand's book; for a comparison with Ulloa's version shows that considerable portions of the original Spanish text—or of the documents upon which it rested—are preserved in the work of Las Casas.[397] The citation and adoption of Ferdinand's statements by the latter writer, who was able independently to verify them, is therefore in most cases equivalent to corroboration, and the two writers together form an authority of the weightiest kind, and not lightly to be questioned or set aside.

[Footnote 392: Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; Nelle quali s' ha particolare, & vera relatione della vita, & de' fatti dell' Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo, suo padre: Et dello scoprimento, ch' egli fece dell' Indie Occidentali, dette Monde-Nuovo, hora possedute dal Sereniss. Re Catolico: Nuouamente di lingua Spagnuola tradotte nell' Italiana dal S. Alfonso Vlloa. Con. privilegio. IN VENETIA, M D LXXI. Appresso Francesco de' Franceschi Sanese. The principal reprints are those of Milan, 1614; Venice, 1676 and 1678; London, 1867. I always cite it as Vita dell' Ammiraglio.]

[Footnote 393: Irving's Life of Columbus, New York, 1868, vol. iii. p. 375. My references, unless otherwise specified, are to this, the "Geoffrey Crayon," edition.]

[Footnote 394: Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, ahora por primera vez dada a luz por el Marques de la Fuensanta del Valle y D. Jose Sancho Rayon, Madrid, 1875, 5 vols. 8vo.]

[Footnote 395: "Fu questo D. Ernando di non minor valore del padre, ma di molte piu lettere et scienze dotato che quelle non fu; et il quale lascio alla Chiesa maggiore di Siviglia, dove hoggi si vede honorevolmente sepolto, una, non sola numerosissima, ma richissima libraria, et piena di molti libri in ogni facolta et scienza rarissimi: laquale da coloro che l' han veduta, vien stimata delle piu rare cose di tutta Europa." Moleto's prefatory letter to Vita dell' Ammiraglio, April 25, 1571.]

[Footnote 396: For example, "Manuel de la Sancta Fe catolica, Sevilla, 1495, in-4. Costo en Toledo 34 maravedis, ano 1511, 9 de Octubre, No. 3004." "Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, Sevilla, 1502, in-4. Muchas figuras. Costo en Roma 25 cuatrines, por Junio de 1515. No. 2417," etc. See Harrisse, Fernand Colomb, Paris, 1872, p. 13.]

[Footnote 397: "L' autorita di Las Casas e d' una suprema e vitale importanza tanto nella storia di Cristoforo Colombo, come nell' esame delle Historie di Fernando suo figlio.... E dal confronto tra questi due scrittori emergera una omogeneita si perfetta, che si potrebbe coi termini del frate domenicano ritrovare o rifare per due terzi il testo originale spagnuolo delle Historie di Fernando Colombo." Peragallo, L' autenticita delle Historie di Fernando Colombo, Genoa, 1884, p. 23.]

[Sidenote: Bernaldez and Peter Martyr.]

[Sidenote: Letters of Columbus.]

Besides these books of most fundamental importance, we have valuable accounts of some parts of the life of Columbus by his friend Andres Bernaldez, the curate of Los Palacios near Seville.[398] Peter Martyr, of Anghiera, by Lago Maggiore, was an intimate friend of Columbus, and gives a good account of his voyages, besides mentioning him in sundry epistles.[399] Columbus himself, moreover, was such a voluminous writer that his contemporaries laughed about it. "God grant," says Zuniga in a letter to the Marquis de Pescara, "God grant that Gutierrez may never come short for paper, for he writes more than Ptolemy, more than Columbus, the man who discovered the Indies."[400] These writings are in great part lost, though doubtless a good many things will yet be brought to light in Spain by persistent rummaging. We have, however, from sixty to seventy letters and reports by Columbus, of which twenty-three at least are in his own handwriting; and all these have been published.[401]

[Footnote 398: Historia de los Reyes Catolicos D. Fernando y D^a Isabel. Cronica inedita del siglo XV, escrita por el Bachiller Andres Bernaldez, cura que fue de Los Palacios, Granada, 1856, 2 vols. small 4to. It is a book of very high authority.]

[Footnote 399: De orbe novo Decades, Alcala, 1516; Opus epistolarum, Compluti (Alcala), 1530; Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, Nos. 88, 160.]

[Footnote 400: "A Gutierrez vuestro solicitador, ruego a Dios que nunca le falte papel, porque escribe mas que Tolomeo y que Colon, el que hallo las Indias." Rivadeneyra, Curiosidades bibliograficas, p. 59, apud Harrisse, Christophe Colomb, tom. i. p. 1.]

[Footnote 401: Harrisse, loc. cit., in 1884, gives the number at sixty-four.]

[Sidenote: Defects in Ferdinand's information.]

Nevertheless, while these contemporary materials give us abundant information concerning the great discoverer, from the year 1492 until his death, it is quite otherwise with his earlier years, especially before his arrival in Spain in 1484. His own allusions to these earlier years are sometimes hard to interpret;[402] and as for his son Ferdinand, that writer confesses, with characteristic and winning frankness, that his information is imperfect, inasmuch as filial respect had deterred him from closely interrogating his father on such points, or, to tell the plain truth, being still very young when his father died, he had not then come to recognize their importance.[403] This does not seem strange when we reflect that Ferdinand must have seen very little of his father until in 1502, at the age of fourteen, he accompanied him on that last difficult and disastrous voyage, in which the sick and harassed old man could have had but little time or strength for aught but the work in hand. It is not strange that when, a quarter of a century later, the son set about his literary task, he should now and then have got a date wrong, or have narrated some incidents in a confused manner, or have admitted some gossiping stories, the falsehood of which can now plainly be detected. Such blemishes, which occur chiefly in the earlier part of Ferdinand's book, do not essentially detract from its high authority.[404] The limits which bounded the son's accurate knowledge seem also to have bounded that of such friends as Bernaldez, who did not become acquainted with Columbus until after his arrival in Spain.

[Footnote 402: Sometimes from a slip of memory or carelessness of phrasing, on Columbus's part, sometimes from our lacking the clue, sometimes from an error in numerals, common enough at all times.]

[Footnote 403: "Ora, l' Ammiraglio avendo cognizione delle dette scienze, comincio ad attendere al mare, e a fare alcuni viaggi in levante e in ponente; de' quali, e di molte altre cose di quei primi di io non ho piena notizia; perciocche egli venne a morte a tempo che io non aveva tanto ardire, o pratica, per la riverenza filiale, che io ardissi di richiederlo di cotali cose; o, per parlare piu veramente, allora mi ritrovava io, come giovane, molto lontano da cotal pensiero." Vita dell' Ammiraglio, cap. iv.]

[Footnote 404: Twenty years ago M. Harrisse published in Spanish and French a critical essay maintaining that the Vita dell' Ammiraglio was not written by Ferdinand Columbus, but probably by the famous scholar Perez de Oliva, professor in the university of Salamanca, who died in 1530 (D. Fernando Colon, historiador de su padre, Seville, 1871; Fernand Colomb: sa vie, ses oeuvres, Paris, 1872). The Spanish manuscript of the book had quite a career. As already observed, it is clear that Las Casas used it, probably between 1552 and 1561. From Ferdinand's nephew, Luis Columbus, it seems to have passed in 1568 into the hands of Baliano di Fornari, a prominent citizen of Genoa, who sent it to Venice with the intention of having it edited and published with Latin and Italian versions. All that ever appeared, however, was the Italian version made by Ulloa and published in 1571. Harrisse supposes that the Spanish manuscript, written by Oliva, was taken to Genoa by some adventurer and palmed off upon Baliano di Fornari as the work of Ferdinand Columbus. But inasmuch as Harrisse also supposes that Oliva probably wrote the book (about 1525) at Seville, under Ferdinand's eyes and with documents furnished by him, it becomes a question, in such case, how far was Oliva anything more than an amanuensis to Ferdinand? and there seems really to be precious little wool after so much loud crying. If the manuscript was actually written "sous les yeux de Fernand et avec documents fournis par lui," most of the arguments alleged to prove that it could not have emanated from the son of Columbus fall to the ground. It becomes simply a question whether Ulloa may have here and there tampered with the text, or made additions of his own. To some extent he seems to have done so, but wherever the Italian version is corroborated by the Spanish extracts in Las Casas, we are on solid ground, for Las Casas died five years before the Italian version was published. M. Harrisse does not seem as yet to have convinced many scholars. His arguments have been justly, if somewhat severely, characterized by my old friend, the lamented Henry Stevens (Historical Collections, London, 1881, vol. i. No. 1379), and have been elaborately refuted by M. d'Avezac, Le livre de Ferdinand Colomb: revue critique des allegations proposees contre son authenticite, Paris, 1873; and by Prospero Peragallo, L' autenticita delle Historie di Fernando Colombo, Genoa, 1884. See also Fabie, Vida de Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, Madrid, 1869, tom. i. pp. 360-372.]

[Sidenote: Researches of Henry Harrisse.]

In recent years elaborate researches have been made, by Henry Harrisse and others, in the archives of Genoa, Savona, Seville, and other places with which Columbus was connected, in the hope of supplementing this imperfect information concerning his earlier years.[405] A number of data have thus been obtained, which, while clearing up the subject most remarkably in some directions, have been made to mystify and embroil it in others. There is scarcely a date or a fact relating to Columbus before 1492 but has been made the subject of hot dispute; and some pretty wholesale reconstructions of his biography have been attempted.[406] The general impression, however, which the discussions of the past twenty years have left upon my mind, is that the more violent hypotheses are not likely to be sustained, and that the newly-ascertained facts do not call for any very radical interference with the traditional lines upon which the life of Columbus has heretofore been written.[407] At any rate there seems to be no likelihood of such interference as to modify our views of the causal sequence of events that led to the westward search for the Indies; and it is this relation of cause and effect that chiefly concerns us in a history of the Discovery of America.

[Footnote 405: See Harrisse, Christophe Colomb, Paris, 1884, 2 vols., a work of immense research, absolutely indispensable to every student of the subject, though here and there somewhat over-ingenious and hypercritical, and in general unduly biased by the author's private crotchet about the work of Ferdinand.]

[Footnote 406: One of the most radical of these reconstructions may be found in the essay by M. d'Avezac, "Canevas chronologique de la vie de Christophe Colomb," in Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie, Paris, 1872, 6e serie, tom. iv. pp. 5-59.]

[Footnote 407: Washington Irving's Life of Columbus, says Harrisse, "is a history written with judgment and impartiality, which leaves far behind it all descriptions of the discovery of the New World published before or since." Christophe Colomb, tom. i. p. 136. Irving was the first to make use of the superb work of Navarrete, Coleccion de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los Espanoles desde fines del siglo XV., Madrid, 1825-37, 5 vols. 4to. Next followed Alexander von Humboldt, with his Examen critique de l'histoire de la geographie de Nouveau Continent, Paris, 1836-39, 5 vols. 8vo. This monument of gigantic erudition (which, unfortunately, was never completed) will always remain indispensable to the historian.]