Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery Part 17

The Azaneguys, Cadamosto goes on to define more exactly as a people of a colour something between black and ashen hue, whom the Portuguese once plundered and enslaved but now trade with peacefully enough. "For the Prince will not allow any wrong-doing, being only eager that they should submit themselves to the law of Christ. For at present they are in a doubt whether they should cleave to our faith or to Mahomet's slavery."

But they are a filthy race, continues the traveller, all of them mean and very abject, liars and traitorous knaves, squat of figure, noisome of breath, though of a truth they cover their mouths as of decency, saying that the mouth is a very cesspool and sewer of impurity. They oil their hair with a foul-smelling grease, which they think a great virtue and honour. Much do they make also of their gross fat women, whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s they deform usually, that they may hang out the more, straining their bodies (when) at seventeen years of age with ropes.

Ignorant and brutal as they are, they know no other Christian people but the Portuguese, who have enslaved and plundered them now fourteen years. This much is certain, that when they first saw the s.h.i.+ps of Don Henry sailing past, they thought them to be birds coming from far and cleaving the air with white wings. When the crews furled sail and drew in to the sh.o.r.e, the natives changed their minds and thought they were fishes; some, who first saw the s.h.i.+ps sailing by night, believed them to be phantoms gliding past. When they made out the men on board of them, it was much debated whether these men could be mortal; all stood on the sh.o.r.e, stupidly gazing at the new wonder.

The centre of power and of trade in these parts was not on the coast, but some way inland. Six days' journey up the country is the place called Tagaza, or the Gold-Market, whence there is a great export of salt and metals which are brought on the camels of the Arabs and Azaneguys down to the sh.o.r.e. Another route of merchants is inland to the Negro Empire of Melli and the city of Timbuctoo, where the heat is such that even animals cannot endure to labour and no green thing grows for the food of any quadruped, so that of one hundred camels bearing gold and salt (which they store in two hundred or three hundred huts) scarce thirty return home to Tagaza, for the journey is a long one, 'tis forty days from Tagaza to Timbuctoo and thirty more from Timbuctoo to Melli.

"And how comes it," proceeds Cadamosto, "that these people want to use so much salt?" and after some fanciful astrological reasoning he gives us his practical answer, "to cool their blood in the extreme heat of the sun": and so much is it needed that when they unload their camels at the entrance of the kingdom of Melli, they pack the salt in blocks on men's heads and these last carry it, like a great army of footmen, through the country. When one negro race barters the salt with another, the first party comes to the place agreed on, and lays down the salt in heaps, each man marking his own heap by some token. Then they go away out of sight, about the time of midday sun, when the second party comes up, being most anxious to avoid recognition and places by each heap so much gold as the buyer thinks good. Then they too go away. The sellers come back in the evening, each one visits his pile, and where the gold is enough for the seller's wishes, he takes it, leaves the salt and goes away for good; where it is not enough, he leaves gold and salt together and only goes away to wait again till the buyers have paid a second visit. Now, the second party coming up again, take away the salt where the gold has been accepted, but where it still lies, refused, they either add more or take their money away altogether, according to what they think to be the worth of the salt.

Once the King of Melli, who sent out a party with salt to exchange for gold, ordered his men to make captive some of the negroes who concealed themselves so carefully. They were to wait till the buyers should come up to put down their gold; then they were to rush out and seize all they could. In this way one man and only one was taken, who refused all food and died on the third day after his capture, without uttering a word, "whereby the King of Melli did not gain much," but which induced the men of Melli to believe that the other people were naturally dumb. The captors described the appearance of those who escaped their hands, "men of fine build and height, more than a palm's length greater than their own, having the lower lip brought out and hung down even to the breast, red and bleeding and disclosing their teeth which were larger than the common, their eyes black, prominent, and fierce-looking."

For this treachery the trade was broken off three whole years, till the great want of salt compelled the injured negroes to resume, and since then the business had gone on as before.

The gold thus gained is carried by the men of Melli to their city, and then portioned out in three parts; one part goes by the caravan route towards Syria, the other two thirds go to Timbuctoo, and are there divided once again, part going to Tunis, the head of Barbary, and part to the regions of Marocco, over against Granada, and without the strait of the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). And to those parts come Christian merchants, and especially Italians, to buy the gold in exchange for merchandise of every sort. For among the negroes and Azaneguys there is no coinage of gold or of silver, no money token of metal, but the whole is simply matter for exchange.

From the trade, Cadamosto changes to discourse of the politics of the natives, their manners and customs. Their government for the most part is not monarchy, but a tyranny of the richest and most powerful caste.

Their wars are waged only with offensive arms, light spears and swords; they have no defensive armour, but use horses, which they sit as the Moors do. Their ordinary garments are of cotton.

The plague of excessive drought during all the year, except from August to October, is aggravated at certain seasons by the worse plague of locusts, "and I myself have seen them flying by troops upon the sea and sh.o.r.e like an army, but of countless number." After this long digression Cadamosto comes back to the Gulf of Senegal. "And this," says he, "is the chief river of the Region of the Negroes, dividing them from the Tawny Moors." The mouth of the estuary is a mile wide, but an island lying in mid-channel divides the river into two parts just where it enters the sea. Though the central channel is deep enough, the entrance is made difficult to strangers by the shallows and sand banks on either side; every six hours the river rises and falls with the flow and ebb of the ocean, and where it pours out its waters into the sea, the flux and reflux of waters reaches to a distance of sixty miles, as say the Portuguese who have watched it. The Senegal is nearly four hundred miles beyond Cape Blanco; a sandy sh.o.r.e stretches between the two; up to the river the sailor sees from the sh.o.r.e only the wandering Azaneguys, tawny, squat, and miserable savages; across the stream to the south are the real Blacks, "well built n.o.ble-looking men," and after so long a stretch of arid and stony desert, there is now a beautiful green land, covered with fruit-bearing trees, the work of the river, which, men say, comes from the Nile, being one of the four most glorious rivers of earth that flow from the Garden of Eden and earthly paradise. For as the eastern Nile waters Egypt, so this doth water aethiopia.

Now the land of these negroes is at the entering in of aethiopia, from which to Cape Verde the land is all level, where the King of Senegal, reigning over people that have no cities, but only scattered huts, lives by the presents that his subjects bring him. Such are oxen, goats, and horses, which are much valued for their scarceness, but used without saddle, bridle, or trappings. To these presents the King adds what he can plunder by his own strength, especially slaves, of which the Blacks have a great trade with the Azaneguys. Their horses they sell also to the Christian traders on the coast. The King can have as many wives as he likes (and always keeps well above his minimum of thirty), to each of whom is a.s.signed a certain estate with slaves and cattle, but not equal; to some more, to others less. The King goes the round of these farms at will, and lives upon their produce. Any day you may see hosts of slaves bringing fruits of all sorts to the King, as he goes through the country with his motley following, all living at free quarters.

Of the negroes of these parts most go naked, but the chiefs and great men use cotton s.h.i.+rts, as the country abounds in this sort of stuff.

Cadamosto describes in great detail the native manufacture of garments, and the habits of the women; barefoot and bare-headed they go always, dressed in linen, elegant enough in apparel, vile in life and diet, always chattering, great liars, treacherous and deceitful to the last degree. b.l.o.o.d.y and remorseless are the wars the princes of these barbarians carry on against one another. They have no hors.e.m.e.n or body armour, but use darts and spears, barbed with many poisonous fangs, and several kinds of arrows, as with us. From the beginning of the world they knew nothing of s.h.i.+ps before the Portuguese came; they only used light canoes or skiffs, each of which can be carried by three men, and in which they fish and go from place to place on the river.

The boundaries of the kingdom of Senegal are the ocean on the west, the land of Gambra on the south, the inland Blackman's country on the east, and on the north the River Niger (Senegal), which, "as I have said before, divides the Azaneguys from the First Kingdom of the Negroes. And the said river," concludes Cadamosto, "five years before my coming, had been explored by the Portuguese, who hoped to open up a great commerce in those parts. So that every year from that time their s.h.i.+ps had been off that coast to trade."

Cadamosto determined to push farther up the river than any had done before, and so to come to the land of Budomel, one of the great negro princes and kingdoms, for it was the name both of place and person. When he came there he found an "Emperor so honest that he might have been an example to any Christian," who exchanged his horses, wool-fells, and linen goods for the strangers' merchandise and slaves, with deeds as honourable as his words. Our adventurer was so taken with "Lord Budomel"

that he gladly went with him two hundred and fifty miles up country, on his promising a supply of negro slaves, black but comely, and none of them more than twelve years old.

On this adventurous journey, of which we are next given a full account, Cadamosto is taken charge of by Bisboror, the Prince's nephew, "through whom I saw many things worth noting." The Venetian was not anxious to put off to sea, as the weather was very rough, so rough indeed that no boat could venture off from the bank at the river's mouth to where the s.h.i.+ps lay, and the captain had to send word to his crews by negro swimmers, who could pa.s.s any surf, "for that they excel all other living men in the water and under it, for they can dive an hour without rising."

It is not worth while to follow Cadamosto in all his long account of what he saw and heard of negro life in the course of this journey; it is as unsavoury as it is commonplace. He repeats very much of what he has said before about the Azaneguys, of their servility to their Princes, "who are to them as mortal G.o.ds"; of the everlasting progresses and wanderings of those Princes round their kingdoms, from kraal to kraal, living on the stores each wife has provided; of the kraals themselves, no towns or castles, as people at home might think, says Cadamosto, but merely collections of forty and fifty huts, with a hedge of living trees round, intertwined, and the royal palace in the middle.

The Prince of Budomel has a bodyguard of two hundred men, besides the volunteer guard of his innumerable children, who are broken up in two groups, one always at Court, "and these are made the most of," the other scattered up and down the country, as a sort of royal garrison. The wretched subjects, who "suffer more from their King with a good will than they would from any stranger under force," are punished with death for the smallest things. Only two small cla.s.ses have any privileges: ministers of religion share with the greatest n.o.bles the sole right of access to the person of the "Mortal G.o.d."

Cadamosto set up a mart in the upland and made what profits he could from their miserable poverty, making exchanges with cottons, cloths, oil, millet, skins, palm-leaves, and vegetables, and above all, of course, with gold, what little there was to be had. "Meantime the negroes came stupidly crowding about me, wondering at our Christian symbols; our white colour, our dress and shape of body, our Damascenes, garments of black silk and robes of blue cloth or dyed wool, all amazed them; some insisted that the white colour of the strangers was not natural but put on"; as with Cook and so many others the savages now behaved with Cadamosto. They spat upon his arm and tried to rub off the white paint; then they wondered more than ever when they found the flesh itself was white.

Of gold after all not much was to be got, and the exploring party was not long in returning to the caravels and pus.h.i.+ng on beyond Cape Verde.

To the last the s.h.i.+ps and their instruments were the chief terror and delight of the negroes and above all of the negro women; the whole thing was the work of demons, they said, not of men, seeing that our engines of war could fell one hundred men at one discharge; the trumpets sounding they took to be the yells of a living and furious beast of prey. Cadamosto gave them a trumpet that they might see it was made by art; they changed their minds accordingly, and decided that such things were directly made by G.o.d himself, above all admiring the different tones, and crying loudly that they had never seen anything so wonderful.

The women looked through every part of the s.h.i.+p--masts, helm, anchors, sails, and oars. The eyes painted on the bow excited them: the s.h.i.+p had eyes and could see before it, and the men who used it must be wonderful enchanters like the demons. "This specially they wondered, that we could sail out of all sight of land and yet know well enough where we were, all which, said they, could not happen, without black art. Scarcely less was their wonder at the sight of lighted candles, as they had never before seen any light but that of fire, when I shewed them how to make candles from wax which before they had always thrown aside as worthless, they were still more amazed, saying there was nothing we did not know."

And now Cadamosto was ready to put off from the coast into the ocean and strike south for the kingdom of Gambro, as he had been charged by the Prince, who had told him it was not far from the Senegal, as the negroes had reported to him at Sagres. And that kingdom, he had been told, was so rich in gold that if Christians could reach it they would gain endless riches.

So with two aims, first to find the golden land, and second to make discoveries in the unknown, the Venetian was just beginning to start afresh, when he was joined by two more s.h.i.+ps from Portugal, and they agreed to round Cape Verde together. It was only some forty miles beyond Budomel and the caravels reached it next day.

Cape Verde gets its name from its green gra.s.s and trees, like C. Blanco from its white sand. Both are very prominent, lofty, and seen from a great distance, as they run out far into the sea, but Cape Verde is more picturesque, dotted as it is with little native villages on the side of the ocean, and with three small desert islands a short distance from the mainland, where the sailors found birds' nests and eggs in thousands, of kinds unknown in Europe, and, above all, enormous sh.e.l.l-fish (turtles), of twelve pounds' weight.

Soon after pa.s.sing C. Verde, the coast makes a great sweep to the east, still covered with evergreen trees, coming down in thick woods to within a bowshot of the sea, so that from a distance the forest line seems to touch the high-water mark, "as we thought at first looking on ahead from our s.h.i.+ps. Many countries have I been in to East and West, but never did I see a prettier sight."

From the place the description again changes to the people, and we are told once more with wearisome repet.i.tions about the people beyond C.

Verde, in most ways like the negroes of the Senegal but "not obedient to that kingdom and abhorring the tyranny of the negro Princes, having no King or laws themselves, wors.h.i.+pping idols, using poisoned arrows which kill at once, even though they drew but little blood,"--in short a most truculent folk, but very fine of stature, black and comely. The whole coast east of C. Verde was found unapproachable, except for certain narrow harbours, till "with a south wind we reached the mouth of a river, called Ruim, a bowshot across at the mouth. And when we sighted this river, which was sixty miles beyond C. Verde, we cast anchor at sunset in ten or twelve paces of water, four or five miles from the sh.o.r.e, but when it was day, as the look-out saw there was a reef of rocks on which the sea broke itself, we sailed on and came to the mouth of another river as large as the Senegal, with trees growing down to the water's edge and promising a most fertile country." Cadamosto determined to land a scout here, and caused lots cast among his slave-interpreters which was to land. "And of these slaves, negroes whom the native kings in the past had sold to Portuguese and who had then been trained in Europe I had many with me who were to open the country for our trade and to parley between us and the natives. Now the lot fell upon the Genoese caravel (which had joined the explorers), to draw into the sh.o.r.e and land a prisoner, to try the good will of the natives before any one else ventured." The poor wretch, instructed to enquire about the races living on the river and their manners, polity, King's name and capital, gold supply, and other matters of commerce, had no sooner swum ash.o.r.e than he was seized and cut to pieces by some armed savages, while the s.h.i.+ps sailed on with a south wind, making no attempt to avenge their victim, till after a lovely coast, fringed with trees, low-lying, and rich exceedingly, they came to the mouth of the Gambra, three or four miles across, the haven where they would be, and where Cadamosto expected his full harvest of gold and pepper and aromatics.

The smallest caravel started at once the very next morning after the discovery to go upstream, taking a boat with it, in case the stream should suddenly get too shallow for anything larger, while the sailors were to keep sounding the river with their poles all the way. Everybody too kept a sharp look-out for native canoes. They had not long to wait.

Two miles up the river three native "Almadias" came suddenly out upon them and then stopped dead, too astonished at the s.h.i.+p and the white men in it to offer to do more, though they had at first a threatening look and were now invited to a parley by the Europeans with every sign that could be thought of.

As the natives would not come any nearer, the caravel returned to the mouth of the river, and next morning at about nine o'clock the whole fleet started together upstream to explore "with the hope of finding some more friendly natives by the kind care of Heaven." Four miles up the negroes came out upon them again in greater force, "most of them sooty black in colour, dressed in white cotton, with something like a German helmet on their heads, with two wings on either side and a feather in the middle. A Moor stood in the bow of each Almadia, holding a round leather s.h.i.+eld and encouraging his men in their thirteen canoes to fight and to row up boldly to the caravels. Now their oars were larger than ours and in number they seemed past counting." After a short breathing s.p.a.ce, while each party glared upon the other, the negroes shot their arrows and the caravels replied with their engines, which killed a whole rank of the natives. The savages then crowded round the little caravel and set upon her; they were at last beaten off with heavy loss and all fled; the slave interpreters shouting out to them as they rowed away that they might as well come to terms with men who were only there for commerce, and had come from the ends of the earth to give the King of Gambra a present from his brother of Portugal, "and for that we hoped to be exceeding well loved and cherished by the king of Gambra.

But we wanted to know who and where their king was, and what was the name of this river. They should come without fear and take of us what they would, giving us in return of theirs."

The negroes shouted back that they could not be mistaken about the strangers, they were Christians. What could they have to do with them; they knew how they had behaved to the King of Senegal. No good men could stand Christians who ate human flesh. What else did they buy negro slaves for? Christians were plundering brigands too and had come to rob them. As for their king, he was three days' journey from the river, which was called Gambra.

When Cadamosto tried to come to closer quarters, the natives disappeared, and the crews refused to venture any farther upstream. So the caravels turned back, sailed down the river, and coasted away west to Cape Verde, and so home to Portugal. But before the Venetian ends his journal, he tells us how near Prince Henry's s.h.i.+ps had now come to the Equator. "When we were in the river of Gambra, once only did we see the North Star, which was so low that it seemed almost to touch the sea." To make up for the loss of the Pole Star--sunk to "the third part of a lance's length above the edge of the water,"--Cadamosto and his men had a view of six brilliant stars, "in form of a cross," while the June night was "of thirteen hours and the day of eleven."

Cadamosto only went home to refit for a second voyage. Though at first he had been baffled by the "savagery of the men of Gambra" from finding out much about them, he resolved to try again, sailed out the very next year by way of the Canaries and Cape Blanco, and found, after three days' more sailing, certain islands off Cape Verde, where no one had been before. The lookouts saw two very large islands, towards the larger of which they sailed at once, in the hope of finding good anchorage and friendly natives. But no one, friend or foe, seemed to live there.

So next morning, says Cadamosto, that I might satisfy my own mind, I bade ten of my men, armed with missiles and cross-bows, to explore the inland. They crossed the hills that cut off the interior from the coast, but found nothing except doves, who were so tame that they could be caught in any number by the hand.

And now from another side of the first island they caught sight of three others towards the north, and of two more towards the west, which could not be clearly seen because of the great distance. "But for the matter of that, we did not care to go out of our way to find what we now expected, that all these other islands were desolate like the first. So we went on our way (due south) and so pa.s.sed another island, and, coming to the mouth of a river, landed in search of fresh water and found a beautiful and fruitful country covered with trees. Some sailors who went inland found cakes of salt, white and small, by the side of the river, and immense numbers of great turtles, with sh.e.l.ls of such size that they could make very good s.h.i.+elds for an army."

Here they stayed a couple of days, exploring in the country and fis.h.i.+ng in the river, which was so broad and deep that it would easily bear a s.h.i.+p of one hundred and fifty tons burden and a full bowshot would not carry across it. Then, naming their first discovered island Boa Vista, and the largest of the group St. James, because it was on the feast of the Apostle they found it, they sailed on along the coast of the mainland, till they came to the Place of the Two Palms, between the Senegal and Cape Verde, "and since the whole land was known to us before, we did not stay, but boldly rounded C. Verde and ran along to the Gambra." Up this they at once began to steer.

No canoes came out upon them this time, and no natives appeared, except a few who hung about some way off and did not offer to stop them. Ten miles up they found a small island, where one of the sailors died of a fever, and they called the new discovered land "St. Andrew," after him.

The natives were now much more approachable and Cadamosto's men conversed with the bolder ones who came close up to the caravel. Like the men of Senegal, two things above all astonished and confounded them, the white sails of the s.h.i.+ps and the white skins of the sailors. After much debate, carried on by yelling from boat to boat, one of the negroes came on board the caravel and was loaded with presents, to make him more communicative. The ruse was successful. The string of his tongue was quite loosed and he chattered along freely enough. The country, like the river, was called "Gambra"; its king, Farosangul, lived ten days'

journey toward the south, but he was himself under the Emperor of Melli, chief of all the negroes.

Was there no one nearer than Farosangul? Oh, yes, there was Battimansa, "King Batti," and a good many other princes who lived quite close to the river. Would he guide them to Battimansa? Yes, safe enough, his country was only some forty miles from the mouth of the Gambra.

"And so we came to Battimansa, where the river was narrowed down to about a mile in breadth," where Cadamosto offered presents to the King, and made a great speech before the negro magnates, which is abridged in the narrative, "lest the matter should become a great Iliad." King Batti returned the Portuguese presents with gifts of slaves and gold, but the Europeans were sadly disappointed with the gold. It was not at all equal to what they expected, or what the people of Senegal had talked of; "being poor themselves, they had fancied their neighbours must be rich."

On the other hand, the negroes of Gambra would give almost any price for trinkets and worthless toys, because they were new. Fifteen days, or nearly that, did the Portuguese stay there trading, and immense was the variety of their visitors in that time. Most came on board simply from wonder and to stare at them, others to sell their cotton cloths, nets, gold rings, civet and furs, baboons and marmots, fruit and especially dates. Each canoe seemed to differ in its build and its crew from the last. The river, crowded with this light craft, was "like the Rhone, near Lyons," but the natives worked their boats like gondolas, standing, one rowing and another steering with oars, that were like half a lance in shape, a pace and a half long, with a round board like a trencher tied at the end. "And with these they make very good pace, being great coasting voyagers, but not venturing far out to sea or away from their own country, lest they should be seized and sold for slaves to the Christians."

After the fortnight's stay in Battimansa's country, the crews began to fall ill and Cadamosto determined to drop down the river once more to the coast, noting as he did so all the habits of the natives. Most of them were idolaters, nearly all had implicit faith in charms, some wors.h.i.+pped "Mahmoud most vile," and some were Nomades like the Gypsies of Europe. For the most part the people of the Gambra lived like those of the Senegal, dressing in cotton and using the same food, except that they ate dog's flesh and were all tattooed, women as well as men.

We need not follow Cadamosto in his accounts of the great trees, the wild elephants, great bats and "horse-fish" of the country. A chief called Gnumi-Mansa, "King Gnumi," living near the mouth of the Gambra, took him on an elephant-hunt, in which he got the trophies, foot, trunk, and skin, that he took home and presented to Prince Henry.

On descending the Gambra, the caravel tried to coast along the unexplored land, but was driven by a storm into the open sea. After driving about some time and nearly running on a dangerous coast, they came at last to the mouth of a great river which they called Rio Grande, "for it seemed more like a gulf or arm of the sea than a river, and was nearly twenty miles across, some twenty-five leagues beyond the Gambra."

Here they met natives in two canoes, who made signs of peace, but could not understand the language of the interpreters. The new country was absolutely outside the farthest limits of earlier exploration, and discovery would have to begin afresh. Cadamosto had no mind to risk anything more. His crew were sick and tired, and he turned back to Lisbon, observing, before he left the Ra or Rio Grande, as he noticed in his earlier voyage, that the North Star almost touched the horizon and that "the tides of that coast were very marvellous. For instead of flow and ebb being six hours each, as at Venice, the flow here was but four, and the ebb eight, the tide rising with such force that three anchors could hardly hold the caravel."

CHAPTER XVIII.

VOYAGES OF DIEGO GOMEZ.

1458-60.

The last voyage of Henry's lifetime was that of his faithful servant, Diego Gomez, by which the Cape Verde islands first became clearly and fully known. It followed close upon Cadamosto's venture.