Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery Part 19

And when Greek geography came to be reprinted and revived, this was in part at least a consequence of that revival of true science which had begun in that very dark time, the night of the twelfth century, where we are not likely to see any signs of dawn till we look, not so much at what is written now, as at what the poor besotted savages of the ages of Abelard and Bernard and Aquinas and Dante have left to bear witness of themselves.

Between Henry's return from Alcacer and his death, while the great Venetian map was in making, two years went by, years in which Diego Gomez was finding the Cape Verde islands and pus.h.i.+ng the farthest south of European discovery still farther south, but of the Prince's own working, apart from that of his draughtsmen, we have little or nothing, but a set of charters. These charters were concerned with the trade profits of the Guinea commerce and the settlers in the new found lands off the continent--Madeira, the Azores, the Canaries,--and have an interest as being a sort of last will and testament of the Prince to his nation, settling his colonies, providing for the working of the lands he had explored, before it should be too late. Already on the 7th June, 1454, Affonso had granted to the Order of Christ, for the explorations "made and to be made at the expense of the aforesaid Order," the spiritual jurisdiction of Guinea, Nubia, and Ethiopia, with all rights as exercised in Europe and at the Mother house of Thomar.

Now on the 28th December, 1458, Prince Henry granted "in his town" that "the said Order should receive one twentieth of all merchandise from Guinea," slaves, gold and all other articles; the rest of the profit to fall to the Prince's successor in this "Kingdom of the Seas." In the same way on the 18th September, 1460, the Prince grants away the Church Revenues of Porto Santo and Madeira to the Order of Christ, and the temporalities to the Crown of Portugal. It was his to give, for by Royal Decree of September 15, 1448, the whole control of the African and ocean trade and colonies had been expressly conferred upon the Infant. No s.h.i.+ps as we have seen could sail beyond Bojador without his permit; whoever transgressed this forfeited his s.h.i.+p; and all s.h.i.+ps sailing with his permit were obliged to pay him one fifth or one tenth of the value of their freight.

But the end was in sight. The Prince was now sixty-six, and he had spent himself too strenuously for there to be much hope of a long life in him.

Of late years, pressed by the increasing claims of his work, he had borrowed enormous sums from his half brother, the millionaire Duke of Braganza. Now his body failed him like his treasures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKETCH-MAP OF FRA MAURO'S MAPPE-MONDE. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]

What we know of his death is mainly from his body servant, Captain Diego Gomez, who was with him at the last. "In the year of Christ 1460, the Lord Infant Henry fell sick in his own town, on Cape St. Vincent, and of that sickness he died on Thursday, November 13th, in the selfsame year. And King Affonso, who was then at Evora with all his men, made great mourning on the death of a Prince so mighty, who had sent out so many fleets, and had won so much from Negro-land, and had fought so constantly against the Saracens for the Faith.

"And at the end of the year, the King bade me come to him. Now till then I had stayed in Lagos by the body of the Prince my lord, which had been carried into the Church of St. Mary in that town. And I was bidden to look and see if the body of the Prince were at all corrupted, for it was the wish of the King to remove it to the Monastery of Batalha which D.

Henry's father King John had built. But when I came and looked at the body, I found it dry and sound, clad in a rough s.h.i.+rt of horse-hair.

Well doth the Church repeat 'Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.'

"For how the Lord Infant had been chaste, a virgin to the day of his death, and what and how many good deeds he had done in his life, is to be remembered, though it is not for me here to speak of this. For that would be a long tale. But the King Affonso had the body of his uncle carried to Batalha and laid in the chapel that King John had built, where also lie buried the aforesaid King John and his Queen Phillipa, mother of my lord the Prince, and all the five brothers of the Infant."

He was brawny and large of frame, says Azurara, strong of limb as any.

His complexion was fair by nature, but by his constant toil and exposure of himself it had become quite dark. His face was stern and when angry, very terrible. Brave as he was in heart and keen in mind, he had a pa.s.sion for the doing of great things. Luxury and avarice never found lodgment within him. For from a youth, he quite left off the use of wine, and more than this, as it was commonly reported, he pa.s.sed all his days in unbroken chast.i.ty. He was so generous that no other uncrowned Prince in Europe had so n.o.ble a household, so large and splendid a school for the young n.o.bles of his country.

For all the best men of his nation and still more those who came to him from foreign lands were welcomed at his Court, so that often the medley of tongues and peoples and customs to be heard and seen there was a wonder. And none who worthily came to him left the Court without some proof of his kindness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE REc.u.mBENT STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY. FROM HIS TOMB IN BATALHA CHURCH.]

Only to himself was he severe. All his days were spent in work, and it would not easily be believed how often he pa.s.sed the night without sleep, so that by his untiring industry he conquered the impossibilities of other men. His virtues and graces it is too much to reckon up; wise and thoughtful, of wonderful knowledge and calm bearing, courteous in language and manner and most dignified in address, yet no subject of the lowest rank could show more obedience and respect to his sovereign than this uncle to his nephew, from the very beginning of his reign, while King Affonso was still a minor. Constant in adversity and humble in prosperity, my Lord the Infant never cherished hatred or ill will against any, even though they had grievously offended him, so that some, who spoke as if they knew everything, said that he was wanting in retributive justice, though in all other ways most impartial. Thus they complained that he forgave some of his soldiers who deserted him in the attack on Tangier, when he was in the greatest danger. He was wholly given up to the public service, and was always glad to try new plans for the welfare of the Kingdom at his own expense. He gloried in warfare against the Infidels and in keeping peace with all Christians. And so he was loved by all, for he loved all, never injuring any, nor failing in due respect and courtesy towards any person however humble, without forgetting his own position. A foul or indecent word was never heard to issue from his lips.

To Holy Church, above all, he was most obedient, attending all its services and in his own chapel causing them to be rendered as solemnly as in any Cathedral Church. All holy things he reverenced, and he delighted to shew honour and to do kindness to all the ministers of religion. Nearly one half of the year was pa.s.sed by him in fasting, and the hands of the poor never went out empty from his presence. His heart never knew fear except the fear of sin.

CHAPTER XX.

THE RESULTS OF PRINCE HENRY'S WORK.

Henry's own life is in one way the least important part of him. We have seen how many were the lines of history and of progress--in Christendom, in Portugal, in Science--that met in him; how Greek and Arabic geography, both knowledge and practical exploration, was as much a part of what he found to work with as the memoirs of Christian pilgrims, traders, and travellers for a thousand years; how the exploring and expanding energy which the Northmen poured into Europe, leading directly to the Crusading movement, was producing in the Portugal of the fifteenth century the very same results as in the France and Italy and England of the twelfth and thirteenth: and now, on the failure of the Syrian crusades, the Spanish counterpart of those crusades, the greatest of social and religious upheavals in the Middle Ages, had reached such a point of success that the victorious Christians of Spain could look out for new worlds to conquer. Again we have seen how the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth century progress in science, especially in geographical maps and plans, the great extension of land travel and the new beginnings of ocean voyaging during the same time, must be taken into any view of the Prince's life and work. We have now to look for a moment at the immense results of that same life which had so vast and so long a preparation.

For just as we cannot see how that work of his could have been done without each and every part of that many-sided preparation in the history of the past, so it is quite as difficult to see how the great achievements of the generation that followed him and of the century, that wonderful sixteenth century, which followed the age of Henry's courtiers and disciples, could have been realised without the impetus he had given and the knowledge he had spread.

For it was not merely that his seamen had broken down the middle wall of superst.i.tious terror and had pierced through into the unknown South for a distance of nearly two thousand miles; it was not merely that between 1412 and 1460 Europeans pa.s.sed the limits of the West and of the South, as legend had so long fixed them; not merely that the most difficult part of the African coast, between Bojador and the Gulf of Guinea, had been fairly pa.s.sed and that the waterway to India was more than half found. This was true enough. When Vasco da Gama was once round the South Cape, he soon found himself not in an unknown and untraversed ocean, but embarked upon one of the great trade routes of the Mahometan world. The main part of the distance between the Prince's farthest and the southern Cape of Good Hope, was pa.s.sed in two voyages, in four years (1482-6).

But there was more than this. Henry did not only accomplish the first and most difficult steps of his own great central project, the finding of the way round Africa to India; he not only began the conversion of the natives, the civilisation of the coast tribes and the colonisation of certain trading sites; he also founded that school of thought and practice which made all the great discoveries that have so utterly eclipsed his own.

From that school came Columbus, who found a western route to India, starting from the suggestion of Henry's attempt by south and east; Bartholomew Diaz, who reached and rounded the southernmost point of the old-world continent and laid open the Indian Ocean to European sailors; Da Gama, who was the first of those sailors to reap the full advantage of the work of ninety years, the first who sailed from Lisbon to Calicut and back again; Albuquerque, who founded the first colonial empire of Modern Europe, the first great out-settlement of Christendom, the Portuguese trade dominion in the East; Magellan, who finally proved what all the great discoverers were really a.s.suming--the roundness of the world; the nameless adventurers who seem to have touched Australia some time before 1530; the draughtsmen who left us our first true map of the globe. So it is not in the actual things done by the Prince's efforts that we can measure his importance in history. It is because his work was infinitely suggestive, because he laid a right foundation for the onward movement of Europe and Christendom, because he was the leader of a true Renaissance and Reformation, that he is so much more than a figure in the story of Portugal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLUMBUS AS S. CHRISTOPHER, CARRYING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, IN THE FORM OF THE INFANT JESUS, ACROSS THE OCEAN.]

There are figures which are of national interest: there are others which are less than that, figures of family or provincial importance; others again which are always dear to us as human beings, as men who felt the ordinary wants and pa.s.sions and lived the ordinary life of men with a brilliancy and an intense power that was all their own; there are other men who stand out as those who have changed more or less, but changed vitally and really, the course of the world's history; without whom the whole of our modern society, our boasted civilisation, would have been profoundly different.

For after all the modern Christian world of Europe has something to boast of, though its writers spend much of their time in reviling and decrying it. It is something that our Western world has conquered or worsted every other civilisation upon earth; that with the single exception of China, it has made everyone of the coveted tracts of Asia its own; that it has discovered, settled, and developed a new continent to be the equal of the old; that it has won not a complete but a good working knowledge of the whole surface of the globe. We are at home in the world now, we say, and if we would know what that means, we must look at the Europe of the tenth or even the fourteenth century, look at the theoretic maps of the Middle Ages, look at the legends and the pseudo-science of a civilisation which was shut up within itself and condemned for so long to fight in a narrowing circle against incessant attacks from without and the barbarism which this state of things kept alive within. Then perhaps we shall take things a little less for granted, and perhaps also we shall begin to think that if this great advance, the greatest thing in Modern History as we know it, that which is the distinction and glory of the last three hundred years, is at all due to the inspiration and the action of Henry of Portugal, an obscure Prince of the fifteenth century, that obscure Prince may possibly belong to the rank of the great civilisers, the men who have most altered society and advanced it, men like Alexander and Caesar and the founders of the great world religions.

It may be as well to trace out very shortly the evidence for such a claim as this and to see, how the Prince's work was followed up, first on his own lines to south and east; second, on other lines, which his own suggested, to west and north.

1. King Affonso V., Henry's nephew, though rather more of a hard fighter and tournament king than a man who could fully take up his uncle's plans, had yet caught enough of his inspiration to push on steadily, though slowly, the advance round Africa. He had already done his best to get the great map of Fra Mauro finished: this, which embodied all the achievements of the Navigator and gave the most complete and perfect view of the world that had ever yet appeared, had come out in 1459, just before Henry's death, the last tribute of science to the Prince's work.

Now, in 1461, left alone to deal with the discovery and conquest of Guinea, Affonso repaired Henry's fort in the Bay of Arguin and sent one Pedro de Cintra to survey the coast beyond the Rio Grande, the farthest point of Cadamosto in his first voyage, as generally known. Pedro went six hundred miles into the Bight of Benin, pa.s.sed a mountain range called Sierra Leone from the lion-like growl of the thunder on its summits, and turned back near the point afterwards known as Fort La Mina (1461). Some time in the next few years, another courtier, one Sueiro da Costa followed Pedro de Cintra to Guinea, but without any new results; when Cadamosto left Portugal (Feb. 1, 1463), he tells us "there were no more voyages to the new-found parts."

The slave-trade nearer home was now, indeed, absorbing all energies and Affonso's main relation with African voyaging is to be found in his regulations for the security of this trade.

But in 1471 there was another move in the line of further discovery. For exploring energy was not dead or worn out, but only waiting a leader.

Fernando Po now reached the island in the farthest inlet of the Gulf of Guinea, which is still called after him, finding as he went on that the eastern bend of Africa, which men had followed so confidently since 1445, the year of the rounding of Cape Verde, now ended with a sharp turn to the south. It was a great disappointment. But in spite of this discouragement, at the very same time two of the foremost of the Portuguese pilots, Martin Fernandez and Alvaro Esteeves, pa.s.sed the whole of the Guinea Coast, the Bights of Benin and of Biafra, and crossed the Equator, into a new Heaven and a new Earth, on the edge of which the caravels of Portugal had long been hovering, as they saw like Cadamosto, stars unknown in the Northern Hemisphere and more and more nearly lost sight of the Northern Pole.

In 1475 Cape St. Catherine, two degrees south of the Line, was reached and then after six more years of languis.h.i.+ng exploration and flouris.h.i.+ng trade, King John II. succeeded Affonso V. and took up the work, in the spirit of Prince Henry the Navigator.

Now in six short years, exploration carried out the main part of the design of so many years, the southern Cape of Africa was rounded and the way to India laid open. For the time had come, and the man, John, added a new chapter to discovery by the travellers he sent across the Dark Continent and the sailors he despatched to the Arctic Seas to find a north-east pa.s.sage to China.

He died just as he was fitting up the expedition that was to enter upon the promised land, and the glory of Da Gama's voyage fell to one who had not laboured, but entered upon the fruits of the toil of other men, the palace-king, Emanuel the Fortunate. But at least the names of Diaz, and Diego Cam, and Covilham, the rounding of the Cape of Storms, the first journey (though an overland one), straight from Lisbon to Malabar, belong to the second founder of Portuguese and European discovery, John the Perfect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VASCO DA GAMA. FROM THE PORTRAIT IN POSSESSION OF COUNT OF LAVRADIO.]

Less than four months after his father's death, John, who as heir apparent, had drawn part of his income from the African trade and its fisheries, sent out Diego de Azambuga with ten caravels to superintend three undertakings: first the construction of a fort at St. George da Mina, to secure the trade of the Guinea Coast; second, the rebuilding of Henry's old fort at Arguin; third, the exploration of the yet unknown coast as far as possible. For this, stones, brick, wood, mortar, and tools for building were sent out with the fleet, and carved pillars were taken to be set up in all fresh discovered lands, instead of the wooden crosses that had previously done duty. Each pillar was fourteen hands high, was carved in front with the royal arms and on the sides with the names of the King and the Discoverer, with the date of discovery in Latin and Portuguese.

Azambuga's fleet sailed on the 11th of December, 1480, made a treaty with the chief Bezeghichi, near Cape Verde, and reached La Mina, on the south coast of Guinea, on January 19, 1482, after a year spent in fort building and treaty making with the natives of north-west Africa. Fort and church at La Mina were finished in twenty days, and Azambuga sent back his s.h.i.+ps with a great cargo in slaves and gold, but without any news of fresh discovery. John was not disposed to be content with this.

In 1484, Diego Cam was ordered to go as far to the south as he could, and not to "wait anywhere for other matters." He pa.s.sed Cape St.

Catherine, just beyond the Line, which since 1475 had been the limit of knowledge, and continuing south, reached the mighty river Congo, called by the natives Zaire, and now known as the second of African rivers, the true counterpart of that western Nile, which every geographer since Ptolemy had reproduced and which, in the Senegal, the Gambia, and the Niger, the Portuguese had again and again sought to find their explanation.

Cam, by agreement with the natives, took back four hostages to act as interpreters and next year returned to and pa.s.sed the Congo, and sailed two hundred leagues beyond, to the site of the modern Walvisch Bay (1485).

Here, as the coast seemed to stretch interminably south, though he had now really pa.s.sed quite nine-tenths of the distance to the southern Cape, Cam turned back to the Congo, where he persuaded the King and people to profess themselves Christians and allies of Portugal. Already, in 1484, a native emba.s.sy to King John had brought such an account of an inland prince, one Ogane, a Christian at heart, that all the Court of Lisbon thought he must be the long lost Prester John, and the Portuguese monarch, all on fire with this hope, sent out at once in search of this "great Catholic lord," by sea and land.

Bartholomew Diaz sailed in August, 1486, with two s.h.i.+ps, first to search for the Prester, and then to explore as much new land and sea as he could find within his reach. Two envoys, Covilham and Payva, were sent on the same errand, by way of Jerusalem, Arabia, and Egypt; another expedition was sent to ascend the Senegal to its junction with the Nile; a fourth party started to find the way to Cathay by the North-east pa.s.sage.

Camoens has sung of the travels of Covilham, who first saw cloves and cinnamon, pepper and ginger, and who pined away in a state of confinement at the Prester's Abyssinian Court, but the voyage of Diaz hardly finds a place in the _Lusiads_ and the very name of the discoverer is generally forgotten. Vasco da Gama has robbed him only too successfully.

John Diaz had been the second captain to double Bojador; Diniz Diaz, in 1445, had been the discoverer of Senegal and of Cape Verde; now, forty years later, Bartholomew Diaz achieved the greatest feat of discovery in all history, before Columbus; for the Northmen's finding America was an unknown and transitory good fortune, while the voyage of 1486 changed directly or indirectly the knowledge, the trade, the whole face of the world at once and forever.

Sailing with "two little friggits," each of fifty tons burden, in the belief that s.h.i.+ps which sailed down the coast of Guinea might be sure of reaching the end of the continent, by persisting to the south, Diaz, in one voyage of sixteen months, performed the main task which Henry seventy years ago had set before his nation.

Pa.s.sing Walvisch Bay and the farthest pillar of Diego Cam, he reached a headland where he set up his first new pillar at what is still known as Diaz Point. Still coasting southwards and tacking frequently, he pa.s.sed the Orange River, the northern limit of the present Cape Colony. Then putting well out to sea Diaz ran thirteen days before the wind due south, hoping by this wide sweep to round the southern point of the continent, which could not now be far off. Finding the cold become almost Arctic and buffeted by tremendous seas, he changed his course to east, and then as no land appeared after five days, to north. The first land seen was a bay where cattle were feeding, now called Flesh Bay, which Diaz named from the cows and cowherds he saw there. After putting ash.o.r.e two natives, some of those lately carried from Guinea or Congo to Portugal, and sent out again to act as scouts for the European colonies, the s.h.i.+ps sailed east, seeking in vain for the land's end, till they found the coast tend gradually but steadily towards the north.

Their last pillar was set up in Algoa Bay, the first land trodden by Christians beyond the Cape. At the Great Fish River, sixty miles farther on and quite five hundred miles beyond the point that Diaz was looking for so anxiously, the crew refused to go any farther and the Admiral turned back, only certain of one thing, that he had missed the Cape, and that all his trouble was in vain. Worn out with the worry of his bitter disappointment and incessant useless labour, he was coasting slowly back, when one day the veil fell from his eyes. For there came in sight that "so many ages unknown promontory" round which lay the way to India, and to find which had been the great ambition of all enterprise since the expansion of Europe had begun afresh in the opening years of that fifteenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AFFONSO D' ALBUQUERQUE.]

While Diaz was still tossing in the storms off the Great Cape, Covilham and his friends had started from Lisbon to settle the course of the future sea-route to India by an "observation of all the coasts of the Indian Ocean," to explore what they could of Upper Africa, to find Prester John, and to ally the Portuguese experiment with anything they could find of Christian power in Greater or Middle or Further India.

As King John's Senegal adventurers had been exploring the Niger, the Sahara caravan routes, the city of Timbuctoo and the fancied western Nile, so the Abyssinian travellers surveyed all the ground of Africa and Malabar which the first fleet that could round the Cape of Storms must come to. "Keep southward," Covilham wrote home from Cairo after his first visit to Calicut on one side and to Mozambique on the other, "if you persist, Africa must come to an end. And when s.h.i.+ps come to the Eastern Ocean let them ask for Sofala and the island of the Moon (Madagascar), and they will find pilots to take them to Malabar."