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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of
+Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D., by C. Raymond Beazley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D.
+       With an Account of Geographical Progress Throughout the Middle Ages As the Preparation for His Work.
+
+
+Author: C. Raymond Beazley
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2006  [eBook #18757]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR, THE
+HERO OF PORTUGAL AND OF MODERN DISCOVERY, 1394-1460 A.D.***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations and maps.
+      See 18757-h.htm or 18757-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/5/18757/18757-h/18757-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/5/18757/18757-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Heroes of the Nations.
+
+PER VOLUME, CLOTH, $1.50.--HALF MOROCCO, $1.75.
+
+
+I.--Nelson, and the Naval Supremacy of England. By W. CLARK RUSSELL,
+author of "The Wreck of the Grosvenor," etc.
+
+II.--Gustavus Adolphus, and the Struggle of Protestantism for Existence.
+By C.R.L. FLETCHER, M.A., late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
+
+III.--Pericles, and the Golden Age of Athens. By EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A.,
+Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+IV.--Theodoric the Goth, the Barbarian Champion of Civilisation. By
+THOMAS HODGKIN, author of "Italy and Her Invaders," etc.
+
+V.--Sir Philip Sidney: Type of English Chivalry. By H.R. FOX BOURNE.
+
+VI.--Julius Cæsar, and the Organisation of the Roman Empire. By WARDE
+FOWLER, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.
+
+VII.--Wyclif, Last of the Schoolmen and First of the English Reformers.
+By LEWIS SERGEANT.
+
+VIII.--Napoleon, Warrior and Ruler; and the Military Supremacy of
+Revolutionary France. By WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS.
+
+IX.--Henry of Navarre, and the Huguenots in France. By P.F. WILLERT,
+M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
+
+X.--Cicero, and the Fall of the Roman Republic. By J.L.
+STRACHAN-DAVIDSON, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+XI.--Abraham Lincoln, and the Downfall of American Slavery. By NOAH
+BROOKS.
+
+XII.--Prince Henry (of Portugal) the Navigator, and the Age of
+Discovery. By C.R. BEAZLEY, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
+
+XIII.--Julian the Philosopher, and the Last Struggle of Paganism against
+Christianity. By ALICE GARDNER, Lecturer on Ancient History, Newnham
+College.
+
+XIV.--Louis XIV., and the Zenith of the French Monarchy. By ARTHUR
+HASSALL, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.
+
+(For titles of volumes next to appear and for further details of this
+Series see prospectus at end of volume.)
+
+G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, PUBLISHERS
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Heroes of the Nations
+
+Edited by Evelyn Abbot, M.A.
+Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford
+
+
+FACTA DUCIS VIVENT, OPEROSAQUE GLORIA RERUM.--OVID, IN LIVIAM, 265.
+
+THE HERO'S DEEDS AND HARD-WON FAME SHALL LIVE.
+
+
+
+PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
+THE HERO OF PORTUGAL AND OF MODERN DISCOVERY
+1394-1460 A.D.
+
+With an Account of Geographical Progress Throughout the Middle Ages As
+the Preparation for His Work
+
+by
+
+C. RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A., F.R.G.S.
+
+Fellow of Merton College, Oxford; Geographical Student in the University
+of Oxford, 1894
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    Venient annis sæcula seris
+    Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
+    Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
+    Tethys que novos detegat orbes,
+    Nec sit terris ultima Thule.
+
+SENECA, _Medea_ 376/380.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: GATEWAY AT BELEM. WITH STATUE, BETWEEN THE DOORS, OF
+PRINCE HENRY IN ARMOUR.]
+
+
+
+G. P. Putnam's Sons
+New York
+27 West Twenty-Third Street
+London
+24 Bedford Street, Strand
+The Knickerbocker Press
+1895
+Copyright, 1894
+by
+G. P. Putnam's Sons
+Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
+Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by
+The Knickerbocker Press, New York
+G. P. Putnam's Sons
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                  PAGE
+  PREFACE                                         xvii
+
+
+  INTRODUCTION.
+
+  THE GREEK AND ARABIC IDEAS OF THE WORLD, AS
+  THE CHIEF INHERITANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN
+  MIDDLE AGES IN GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.             1
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+
+  EARLY CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS (CIRCA 333-867)          29
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  VIKINGS OR NORTHMEN (CIRCA 787-1066)              50
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  THE CRUSADES AND LAND TRAVEL (CIRCA 1100-1300)    76
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  MARITIME EXPLORATION (CIRCA 1250-1410)           106
+
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE IN CHRISTENDOM FROM THE
+  FIRST CRUSADES (CIRCA 1100-1460)                 114
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  PORTUGAL TO 1400 (1095-1400)                     123
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  HENRY'S POSITION AND DESIGNS AT THE TIME OF
+  THE FIRST VOYAGES, 1410-15                       138
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  PRINCE HENRY AND THE CAPTURE OF CEUTA (1415)     147
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+
+  HENRY'S SETTLEMENT AT SAGRES AND FIRST DISCOVERIES
+  (1418-28)                                        160
+
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+
+  CAPE BOJADOR AND THE AZORES (1428-41)            168
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+
+  HENRY'S POLITICAL LIFE (1433-41)                 179
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+
+  FROM BOJADOR TO CAPE VERDE (1441-5)              192
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  THE ARMADA OF 1445                               228
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  VOYAGES OF 1446-8                                240
+
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+
+  THE AZORES (1431-60)                             250
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  THE TROUBLES OF THE REGENCY AND THE FALL OF
+  DON PEDRO (1440-9)                               257
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  CADAMOSTO (1455-6)                               261
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  VOYAGES OF DIEGO GOMEZ (1458-60)                 289
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  HENRY'S LAST YEARS AND DEATH (1458-60)           299
+
+
+  CHAPTER XX.
+
+  THE RESULTS OF PRINCE HENRY'S WORK               308
+
+
+  INDEX                                            325
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                          PAGE
+
+  MAIN GATE OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH AT BELEM,      _Frontispiece_
+
+  Built on the site of an old sailor's chapel, existing in
+  Prince Henry's day, and used by his men. In the niche
+  between the two great entrance doors, is a statue of Prince
+  Henry in armour.
+
+
+  THE MONASTERY CHURCH AT BATALHA[1]                       132
+
+  West front of church in which Prince Henry and his
+  House lie buried. This church was founded by the Prince's
+  father, King John, in memory of his victory over Castille
+  at Aljubarrota.
+
+
+  BATALHA CHURCH--PORTUGAL'S WESTMINSTER[1]                136
+
+  The aisle containing the tombs of Prince Henry and his
+  brothers, the Infants of the House of Aviz.
+
+
+  EFFIGIES OF KING JOHN THE GREAT AND QUEEN PHILIPPA       148
+
+  Henry's father and mother, from their tomb in the Abbey
+  of Batalha.
+
+
+  GATEWAY OF THE CHURCH AT THOMAR                          154
+
+  The Mother Church of the Order of Christ, of which
+  Henry was Grand-Master.
+
+
+  HENRY IN MORNING DRESS[2]                                258
+
+  The original forms the frontispiece to the Paris MS. of
+  Azurara's _Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_.
+
+
+  COIMBRA UNIVERSITY                                       298
+
+
+  THE RECUMBENT STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY                     306
+
+  From his tomb in Batalha Church; with his escutcheons (1)
+  as titular King of Cyprus; (2) as Knight of the Garter of
+  England; (3) as Grand Master of the Order of Christ.
+
+
+  ALLEGORICAL PIECE[3]                                     310
+
+  Supposed to represent Columbus, as St. Christopher,
+  carrying across the ocean the Christian faith, in the
+  form of the infant Christ. From the map of Juan de la
+  Cosa, 1500.
+
+
+  VASCO DA GAMA[4]                                         314
+
+  From a portrait in the possession of the Count of
+  Lavradio.
+
+
+  AFFONSO D'ALBUQUERQUE[5]                                 318
+
+[Footnote 1: From a water-colour.]
+
+[Footnote 2: From Major's _Life of Henry the Navigator_.]
+
+[Footnote 3: From the Hakluyt Society's _Select Letters of Columbus_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: From the Hakluyt Society's edition of _Three Voyages of
+Vasco da Gama_.]
+
+[Footnote 5: From the Hakluyt Society's edition of Albuquerque's
+_Commentaries_.]
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF MAPS.[6]
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY                            2
+
+  From Nordenskjöld's fac-simile atlas
+
+
+  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO EDRISI. _c._ 1150            24
+
+  As reconstructed by M. Reinaud from the written
+  descriptions of the Arabic geographer. This illustrates
+  the extremely unreal and untrue conception of the earth
+  among Moslem students, especially those who followed the
+  theories of Ptolomy--_e.g._, in the extension to
+  Africa eastward, so as practically or actually to join
+  China, making the Indian Ocean an inland sea.
+
+
+  THE MAPPE-MONDE OF ST. SEVER                             48
+
+  (B. Mus., Map room, shelf 35 [5], sheet 6). Of uncertain
+  date, between _c._ 780-980 but probably not later
+  than the 10th century. One of the earliest examples of
+  Christian map-making.
+
+
+  THE ANGLO-SAXON MAP                                      54
+
+  (B. Mus., Cotton mss., Tib. B.V., fol. 59). This gives
+  us the most interesting and accurate view of the world
+  that we get in the pre-Crusading Christian science. The
+  square, but not conventional outline is detailed with
+  considerable care and precision. The writing, though
+  minute, is legible; but the Nile, which, like the Red
+  Sea in Africa, is coloured _red_, in contrast to the
+  ordinary _grey_ of water in this example, is made to
+  wander about Africa from side to side, with occasional
+  disappearances, in a thoroughly mythical fashion. This
+  map, from a ms. of Priscian's _Peviegesis_, appears
+  to have been executed at the end of the 10th century; it
+  is on vellum, highly finished, and has been engraved, in
+  outline, in Playfair's _Atlas_ (Pl. I), and more fully
+  in the _Penny Magazine_ (July 22, 1837). In the reign
+  of Henry II., it appears to have belonged to Battle Abbey.
+
+
+  THE TURIN MAP OF THE 11TH CENTURY                        76
+
+  (B. Mus., Map room. From Ottino's reproduction).
+  One of the oldest and simplest of Christian Mappe-Mondes,
+  giving a special prominence to Paradise, (with the figures
+  of Adam, Eve, and the serpent), to the mountains and
+  rivers of the world, and to the four winds of heaven. It is
+  to be associated with the Spanish map of 1109, and the
+  Mappe-Monde of St. Sever.
+
+
+  THE SPANISH-ARABIC MAP OF 1109                           84
+
+  (B. Mus., Add. mss., 11695). The original, gorgeously
+  coloured, represents the crudest of Christian and Moslem
+  notions of the world. Even more crude than in the Turin
+  map and the Mappe-Monde of St. Sever, both of which offer
+  some resemblances to this. The earth is represented as of
+  quadrangular shape, surrounded by the ocean. At the E.
+  is Paradise with the figures of the Temptation. A part of
+  the S. is cut off by the Red Sea, which is straight (and
+  coloured red), just as the straight Mediterranean, with its
+  quadrangular islands, divides the N.W. quarter, or Europe,
+  from the S.W. quarter, or Africa. The Ægean Sea joins
+  the Mediterranean at a right angle, in the centre of the
+  map. In the ocean, bordering the whole, are square
+  islands, _e.g._, Tile (Thule), Britania, Scocia,
+  Fu(o)rtunarum insula. The Turin map occurs in another
+  copy of the same work--_A Commentary on the Apocalypse_.
+
+
+  THE PSALTER MAP OF THE 13TH CENTURY                      92
+
+  (B. Mus., Add. mss., 28, 681). A good illustration of
+  the circular type of mediæval map, which is sometimes
+  little better than a panorama of legends and monsters.
+  Christ at the top; the dragons crushed beneath him at the
+  bottom; Jerusalem, the navel of the earth, in the middle
+  as a sort of bull's-eye to a target, all show a "religious"
+  geography. The line of queer figures, on the right side,
+  figuring the S. coast of Africa, suggests a parallel with the
+  still more fanciful Mappe-Monde of Hereford. (For copy
+  see Bevan and Phillott's edition of the Hereford map).
+
+
+  THE S.W., OR AFRICAN SECTION OF THE HEREFORD
+  MAP _c._ 1275-1300                                 106
+
+  (B. Mus., King's Lib., XXIII). The S. coast of Africa,
+  as in the Psalter map, is fringed with monstrous tribes;
+  monstrous animals fill up a good deal of the interior; half
+  of the wheel representing Jerusalem in the middle of the
+  world appears in the N.E. corner; and the designer's idea
+  of the Mediterranean and Atlantic islands is specially noteworthy.
+  The Hereford map is a specimen of the thoroughly
+  traditional and unpractical school of mediæval geographers
+  who based their work on books, or fashionable collections
+  of travellers' tales--such as Pliny, Solinus, or Martianus
+  Capella--and who are to be distinguished from the scientific
+  school of the same period, whose best works were the
+  Portolani, or coast-charts of the early 14th century.
+
+
+  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MARINO SANUTO. _c._ A.D. 1306   114
+
+  (B. Mus., King's Lib., 149 F. 2 p. 282). The shape of
+  Africa in this map is supposed by some to be valuable in the
+  history of geographical advance, as suggesting the possibility
+  of getting round from the Atlantic into the Indian Ocean.
+
+
+  SKETCH MAP OF DULCERT'S PORTOLANO OF 1339               116
+
+  (From Nordenskjöld's fac-simile atlas). This illustrates
+  the accuracy of the 14th century coast-charts, especially in
+  the Mediterranean.
+
+
+  THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351                        120
+
+  (From the Medicean Lib. at Florence; reproduced in
+  B. Mus., Map room, shelf 158, 22, 23). This is the most
+  remarkable of all the Portolani of the 14th century, as
+  giving a view of the world, and especially Africa, which is
+  far nearer the actual truth than could be expected. Especially
+  its outline of S. Africa and of the bend of the Guinea
+  coast, is surprisingly near the truth, even as a guess, in
+  a chart made one hundred and thirty-five years before the
+  Cape of Good Hope was first rounded.
+
+
+  N.W. SECTION OF THE CATALAN MAP OF 1375-6               124
+
+  (B. Mus., Map room, 13, 14). This gives the British
+  Islands, the W. coasts of Europe, N. Africa as far as Cape
+  Boyador, and the Canaries and other islands in the Atlantic.
+  The interior of Africa is filled with fantastic pictures of
+  native tribes; the boat load of men off Cape Boyador in the
+  extreme S.W. of the map probably represents the Catalan
+  explorers of the year 1346, whose voyage in search of the
+  "River of Gold" this map commemorates.
+
+
+  CHART OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, BY BARENTSZOON          128
+
+  (Engraved in copper 1595. Almost an unaltered copy of
+  a Portolano from the 14th century. From Nordenskjöld's
+  fac-simile atlas). This illustrates the remarkable
+  correctness in the drawing of the Mediterranean basin
+  and the coasts of W. Europe, reached by the Italian and
+  Balearic coast-charts, or Portolani, in the 14th century.
+
+
+  THE BORGIAN MAP OF 1450                                 290
+
+  (B. Mus., Map room, shelf 2 [6], 13, 14; copy of 1797).
+  This map was executed just before the fall of Constantinople
+  (1453), and gives a view of the world as imagined
+  in the 15th century. It is very fantastic and
+  unscientific, but remarkable among its kind for its
+  comparative freedom from ecclesiastical influence.
+
+
+  WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA
+  MAURO, 1457-9                                           302
+
+  (_Cf._ reproduction in B. Mus., Add. mss., 11267, and
+  photographic copy in Map room). This map of Fra Mauro
+  of Murano, (near Venice), is usually understood to be a sort
+  of picture, not merely of the world as then known, but of
+  Prince Henry's discoveries in particular on the W. African
+  coast. From this point of view it is perhaps disappointing;
+  the inlet of the Rio d'Ouro(?), to the S. of the Sahara,
+  is exaggerated beyond all recognition; at the S. Cape (of
+  Good Hope) a great island is depicted, separated from the
+  mainland by a narrow channel--possibly Madagascar
+  displaced.
+
+
+  SKETCH-MAP OF FRA MAURO'S MAPPE-MONDE                   304
+
+  As reduced and simplified in Lelewel's _Atlas_.
+  The corners of the table are filled up with four small
+  circles representing: (1) The Ptolemaic System in the
+  Spheres. (2) The lunar influences over the tides. (3) The
+  circles described in the terrestial globe. (4) A picture
+  of the expulsion from Eden, with the four sacred rivers.
+
+
+  MAP OF 1492                                             322
+
+  (B. Mus., Add. mss. 15760). This gives a general view
+  of the Portuguese discoveries along the whole W. coast of
+  Africa, and just beyond the Cape of Good Hope, which
+  was rounded in 1486.
+
+[Footnote 6: **Missing.** Please see the Transcriber's Note
+at the foot of the text.]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This volume aims at giving an account, based throughout upon original
+sources, of the progress of geographical knowledge and enterprise in
+Christendom throughout the Middle Ages, down to the middle or even the
+end of the fifteenth century, as well as a life of Prince Henry the
+Navigator, who brought this movement of European Expansion within sight
+of its greatest successes. That is, as explained in Chapter I., it has
+been attempted to treat Exploration as one continuous thread in the
+story of Christian Europe from the time of the conversion of the Empire;
+and to treat the life of Prince Henry as the turning-point, the central
+epoch in a development of many centuries: this life, accordingly, has
+been linked as closely as possible with what went before and prepared
+for it; one third of the text, at least, has been occupied with the
+history of the preparation of the earlier time, and the difference
+between our account of the eleventh-and fifteenth-century Discovery, for
+instance, will be found to be chiefly one of less and greater detail.
+This difference depends, of course, on the prominence in the later time
+of a figure of extraordinary interest and force, who is the true hero in
+the drama of the Geographical Conquest of the Outer World that starts
+from Western Christendom. The interest that centres round Henry is
+somewhat clouded by the dearth of complete knowledge of his life; but
+enough remains to make something of the picture of a hero, both of
+science and of action.
+
+Our subject, then, has been strictly historical, but a history in which
+a certain life, a certain biographical centre, becomes more and more
+important, till from its completed achievement we get our best outlook
+upon the past progress of a thousand years, on this side, and upon the
+future progress of those generations which realised the next great
+victories of geographical advance.
+
+The series of maps which illustrate this account, give the same
+continuous view of the geographical development of Europe and
+Christendom down to the end of Prince Henry's age. These are, it is
+believed, the first English reproductions in any accessible form of
+several of the great charts of the Middle Ages, and taken together they
+will give, it is hoped, the best view of Western or Christian map-making
+before the time of Columbus that is to be found in any English book,
+outside the great historical atlases.
+
+In the same way the text of this volume, especially in the earlier
+chapters, tries to supply a want--which is believed to exist--of a
+connected account from the originals known to us, of the expansion of
+Europe through geographical enterprise, from the conversion of the
+Empire to the period of those discoveries which mark most clearly the
+transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chief authorities have been:
+
+For the Introductory chapter: (1) Reinaud's account of the Arabic
+geographers and their theories in connection with the Greek, in his
+edition of Abulfeda, Paris, 1848; (2) Sprenger's Massoudy, 1841; (3)
+Edrisi, translated by Amédée Jaubert; (4) Ibn-Batuta (abridgment),
+translated by S. Lee, London, 1829; (5) Abulfeda, edited and translated
+by Reinaud; (6) Abyrouny's _India_, specially chapters i., 10-14; xvii.,
+18-31; (7) texts of Strabo and Ptolemy; (8) Wappäus' _Heinrich der
+Seefahrer_, part 1.
+
+I. For Chapter I. (Early Christian Pilgrims): (1) _Itinera et
+Descriptiones Terræ Sanctæ_, vols. i. and ii., published by the Société
+de l'Orient, Latin, Geneva, 1877 and 1885, which give the original texts
+of nearly all the Palestine Pilgrims' memoirs to the death of Bernard
+the Wise; (2) the Publications of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society;
+(3) Thomas Wright's _Early Travels in Palestine_ (Bohn); (4) Avezac's
+_Recueil pour Servir à l'histoire de la géographie_; (5) some recent
+German studies on the early pilgrim records, _e.g._, Gildemeister on
+Antoninus of Placentia.
+
+II. For Chapter II. (The Vikings): (1) Snorro Sturleson's _Heimskringla_
+or Sagas of the Norse Kings; (2) Dozy's essays; (3) the, possibly
+spurious, _Voyages of the Zeni_, with the Journey of Ivan Bardsen, in
+the Hakluyt Society's Publications.
+
+III. For Chapter III. (The Crusades and Land Travel): (1) Publication of
+the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society; (2) Avezac's edition of the
+originals in his _Recueil pour Sevir à l'histoire de la géographie_; (3)
+Yule's _Cathay and the Way Thither_; (4) Yule's Marco Polo; (5) Benjamin
+of Tudela and others in Wright's _Early Travels in Palestine_; (6)
+Yule's _Friar Jordanus_; (7) Sir John Mandeville's _Travels_.
+
+IV. For Chapter IV. (Maritime Exploration): (1) The Marino Sanuto Map of
+1306; (2) the Laurentian Portolano of 1351; (3) The Catalan Map of
+1375-6; (4) scattered notices collected in early chapters of R.H.
+Major's _Prince Henry the Navigator_; (5) Béthencourt's _Conquest of the
+Canaries_ (Hakluyt Society, ed., Major); (6) Wappäus' _Heinrich der
+Seefahrer_, part 2.
+
+V. For Chapter V. (Geographical Science): (1) Neckam's _De Naturis
+Rerum_; (2) the seven chief Mappe-Mondes of the fourteenth and early
+fifteenth centuries; (3) the leading Portolani; (4) scattered notices,
+_e.g._, from Guyot de Provins' "Bible," Brunetto Latini, Beccadelli of
+Palermo, collected in early chapters of Major's _Henry the Navigator_;
+(5) Wauwerman's _Henri le Navigateur_.
+
+VI. For Chapter VI. (Portugal to 1400): (1) _The Chronicle of Don John
+I._; (2) Oliveiro Martins' _Sons of Don John I._; (3) A. Herculano's
+_History of Portugal_; (4) Osbernus de Expugnatione Lixbonensi.
+
+VII. For Chapter VII. (Henry's position in 1415): Azurara's _Discovery
+and Conquest of Guinea_.
+
+VIII. For Chapter VIII. (Ceuta): (1) Azurara's _Chronicle of the
+Conquest of Ceuta_; (2) Azurara's _Discovery of Guinea_.
+
+IX. For Chapter IX. (Henry's Settlement at Sagres): (1) Azurara's
+_Guinea_; (2) De Barro's _Asia_; (3) Wauwerman's _Henri le Navigateur et
+l'École Portugaise de Sagres_.
+
+X. For Chapter X. (Cape Bojador and the Azores): (1) Azurara's _Guinea_;
+(2) O. Martins' _Sons of Don John I._
+
+XI. For Chapter XI. (Henry's Political Life, 1433-41): (1) Pina's
+_Chronicle of King Edward_; (2) O. Martins' _Sons of Don John I._; (3)
+Azurara's _Chronicle of John I._; (4) Pina's _Chronicle of Affonso V._
+
+XII. For Chapter XII. (From Boyador to Cape Verde).--(1) Azurara's
+_Guinea_; (2) De Barros; (3) Pina's _Chronicle of Affonso V._; (4) O.
+Martins' _Sons of Don John I._
+
+For Chapters XIII. to the end.--(1) Azurara's _Discovery and Conquest of
+Guinea_; (2) Narratives of Cadamosto and Diego Gomez; (3) Pina's
+_Chronicle of Affonso V._; (4) Prince Henry's Charters.
+
+The three modern lives of Prince Henry which I have chiefly consulted
+are:
+
+R.H. Major's _Henry the Navigator_, Wappäus' _Heinrich der Seeffahrer_,
+and De Weer's _Prinz Heinrich_, with O. Martins' _Lives of the Infants
+of the House of Aviz_ in his _Sons of Don John I._
+
+The maps and illustrations have been planned in a regular series.
+
+I. As to the former, they are meant to show in an historical succession
+the course of geographical advance in Christendom down to the death of
+Prince Henry (1460). Setting aside the Ptolemy, which represents the
+knowledge of the world at its height in the pre-Christian civilisation,
+and the Edrisi which represents the Arabic followers of Ptolemy, whose
+influence upon early Christian geography was very marked, all the maps
+reproduced belong to the science of the Christian ages and countries.
+The two Mappe-mondes above referred to are both placed in the
+introductory chapter, and are treated only as the most important
+examples of the science which the Græco-Roman Empire bequeathed to
+Christendom, but which between the seventh and thirteenth centuries was
+chiefly worked upon by the Arabs. Among early Christian maps, that of
+St. Sever, possibly of the eighth century, the Anglo-Saxon map of the
+tenth century, the Turin Map of the eleventh, and the Spanish map of the
+twelfth (1109), represent very crude and simple types of sketches of the
+world, in which within a square or oblong surrounded by the ocean a few
+prominent features only, such as the main divisions of countries, are
+attempted. The Anglo-Saxon example, though greatly superior to the
+others given here, essentially belongs to this kind of work, where some
+little truth is preserved by a happy ignorance of the travellers' tales
+that came into fashion later, but where there is only the vaguest and
+most general knowledge of geographical facts.
+
+On the other hand, in the next group, to which the Psalter map is
+allied, and in which the Hereford map is our best example, mythical
+learning--drawn from books like Pliny, Solinus, St. Isidore, and
+Martianus Capella, which collected stories of beasts and monsters,
+stones and men, divine, human, and natural marvels on the principle
+_Credo quia impossible_--has overpowered every other consideration, and
+a map of the world becomes a great picture-book of curious objects, in
+which the very central and primary interest of geography is lost. But by
+the side of and almost at the same time as these specimens of
+geographical mythology, geographical science had taken a new start in
+the coast charts or portolani of Balearic and Italian seamen, some
+specimens of which form our next set of maps.
+
+Dulcert's portolano of 1339 and the Laurentian of 1351 are two of the
+best examples of this kind of work, which gave us our first really
+accurate map of any part of the globe, but which for some time was
+entirely confined to coast drawing, and was meant to supply the
+practical wants of captains, pilots, and seamen. The Catalan atlas of
+1375-6 shows the portolano type extended to a real Mappa Mundi; the
+elaborate carefulness and sumptuousness of this example prepares us for
+the still higher work of Andrea Bianco and of Benincasa in the fifteenth
+century. As the Laurentian portolano of 1351 commemorates the voyage of
+1341 and marks its discoveries in the Atlantic islands, so the Catalan
+map of 1375-6 commemorates the Catalan voyage of 1346, and gives the
+best and most up-to-date picture of the N.W. African coast as it was
+known before Prince Henry's discoveries.
+
+Last of these groups of maps is that of examples from Henry's own age,
+such as the Fra Mauro map of 1459 or the maps of Andrea Bianco and
+Benincasa (_e.g._, 1436, 1448, 1468), among which the first-named is the
+only one we have been able to give here.
+
+The Borgian map of 1450 is given as an extraordinary specimen of what
+could be done as late as 1450, not as an example of geographical
+progress; and the map of 1492, recording Portuguese discoveries down to
+the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, is added to illustrate the
+advance of explorers in the years closely following Henry's death, as it
+was realised at the time.
+
+The maps have in most cases been set from the modern standpoint, but, as
+will readily be seen by the position of the names, the normal mediæval
+setting was quite different, with the S. or E. at the top.
+
+II. The illustrations aim at giving portraits or pictures of the chief
+persons and places connected with the life of Prince Henry. There are
+three of the Prince himself; one from the Paris MS. of Azurara, one from
+the gateway of the great convent church of Belem, one from the recumbent
+statue over his tomb at Batalha. Two others give: (1) The whole group of
+the royal tombs of Henry's house,--of his father, mother, and brothers
+in the aisle at Batalha, and (2) the recumbent statues of his father and
+mother, John and Philippa, in detail; the exterior and general effect of
+the same church--Portugal's Westminster, and the mausoleum of the
+Navigator's own family of Aviz--comes next, in a view of this greatest
+of Portuguese shrines.
+
+Coimbra University, with which as rector or chancellor or patron Prince
+Henry was so closely connected, for which he once provided house room,
+and in which his benefactions earned him the title of "Protector of the
+studies of Portugal" is given to illustrate his life as a student and a
+man of science; the mother church of the order of Christ at Thomar may
+remind us of another side of his life--as a military monk, grand master
+of an order of religious chivalry which at least professed to bind its
+members to a single life, and which under his lead took an active part
+in the exploration and settlement of the African coasts and the Atlantic
+islands.
+
+The portraits of Columbus, Da Gama, and Albuquerque, which conclude this
+set of illustrations, are given as portraits of three of Prince Henry's
+more or less conscious disciples and followers, of three men who did
+most to realise his schemes. The first of these, who owed to Portuguese
+advance towards the south the suggestion of corresponding success in the
+west, and who found America by the western route to India,--as Henry had
+planned nearly a century before to round Africa and reach Malabar by the
+eastern and southern way,--was the nearest of the Prince's successful
+imitators in time, the greatest in achievement; he was not a mere
+follower of the Portuguese initiative, for he struck out a new line or
+at least a neglected one, made the greatest of all geographical
+additions to human knowledge, and took the most daring plunge into the
+unknown that has ever been taken--but Columbus, beside his independent
+position and interest, was certainly on one side a disciple of Henry the
+Navigator, and drew much of his inspiration from the impulse that the
+Prince had started. Da Gama, the first who sailed direct from Lisbon to
+India round Africa, and Albuquerque, the maker, if not the founder, of
+the Portuguese empire in the East, were simply the realisers of the vast
+ambitions that take their start from the work and life of Prince Henry,
+and he has a right to claim them as two leading champions of his plans
+and policy. In many points Albuquerque, like Columbus, is more than a
+follower; but in the main outline of his achievement he follows upon the
+work of other men, and, among these men, of none so much as the Hero of
+Portugal and of modern discovery.
+
+Lastly. I have to thank many friends generally for their constant
+kindness and readiness to assist in any way, and in particular several
+for the most generous and valuable help in certain parts.
+
+Mr. T.A. Archer, besides the benefit of his suggestions throughout, has
+given special aid in Chapters I., III., V., and the Introductory
+Chapter, especially where anything is said of the connection of
+geographical progress with the Crusades.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Compare Archer and Kingsford, _The Crusades_, in the
+_Stories of the Nations_.]
+
+Mr. F. York Powell has revised Chapter II. on the Vikings, and Professor
+Margoliouth has done the same for the Introductory Chapter on Greek and
+Arabic geography; Mr. Coote has not only given me every help in the map
+room of the British Museum, but has read the proofs of Chapter V. Mr.
+H. Yule-Oldham in Chapter XVIII. on the Voyage of Cadamosto, and Mr.
+Prestage in Chapters VIII. and IX. on Prince Henry's capture of Ceuta
+and settlement at Sagres, have been most kind in offering suggestions.
+For several hints useful in Chapter I.--the early Christian pilgrims--I
+have also to thank Professor Sanday; and for revision of a great part of
+the proof-sheets of the entire book, Mr. G.N. Richardson and the Rev.
+W.H. Hutton.
+
+As to the illustrations, of portraits and monuments, etc., I am
+especially obliged to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University (Dr.
+Boyd), who has allowed his water-colour paintings of Portuguese subjects
+to be reproduced; and to the Rev. R. Livingstone of Pembroke, and Sir
+John Hawkins of Oriel, for their loan of photographs.
+
+
+
+
+PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR.
+
+    The Lusitanian Prince who, heaven-inspired,
+    To love of useful glory roused mankind,
+    And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.
+
+THOMSON: _Seasons, Summer, 1010-2._
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+THE GREEK AND ARABIC IDEAS OF THE WORLD, AS THE CHIEF INHERITANCE OF THE
+CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES IN GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.
+
+
+Arabic science constitutes one of the main links between the older
+learned world of the Greeks and Latins and the Europe of Henry the
+Navigator and of the Renaissance. In geography it adopted in the main
+the results of Ptolemy and Strabo; and many of the Moslem travellers and
+writers gained some additional hints from Indian, Persian, and Chinese
+knowledge; but, however much of fact they added to Greek cartography,
+they did not venture to correct its postulates.
+
+And what were these postulates? In part, they were the assumptions of
+modern draughtsmen, but in some important details they differed. And
+first, as to agreement. Three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, an
+encircling ocean, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Caspian, the Red
+Sea and Persian Gulf, the South Asiatic, and North and West European
+coasts were indicated with more or less precision in the science of the
+Antonines and even of Hannibal's age. Similarly, the Nile and Danube,
+Euphrates and Tigris, Indus and Ganges, Jaxartes and Oxus, Rhine and
+Ebro, Don and Volga, with the chief mountain ranges of Europe and
+Western Asia, find themselves pretty much in their right places in
+Strabo's description, and are still better placed in the great chart of
+Ptolemy. The countries and nations from China to Spain are arranged in
+the order of modern knowledge. But the differences were fundamental
+also. Never was there a clearer outrunning of knowledge by theory,
+science by conjecture, than in Ptolemy's scheme of the world (_c._ A.D.
+130). His chief predecessors, Eratosthenes and Strabo, had left much
+blank space in their charts, and had made many mistakes in detail, but
+they had caught the main features of the Old World with fair accuracy.
+Ptolemy, in trying to fill up what he did not know from his inner
+consciousness, evolved a parody of those features. His map, from its
+intricate falsehood, backed as it was by the greatest name in
+geographical science, paralysed all real enlargement of knowledge till
+men began to question, not only his facts, but his theories. And as
+all modern science, in fact, followed the progress of world-knowledge,
+or "geography," we may see how important it was for this revolution to
+take place, for Ptolemy to be dethroned.
+
+[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+The Arabs, commanding most of the centres of ancient learning (Ptolemy's
+own Alexandria above all), riveted the pseudo-science of their
+predecessors on the learned world, along with the genuine knowledge
+which they handed down from the Greeks. In many details they corrected
+and amplified the Greek results. But most of their geographical theories
+were mere reproductions of Ptolemy's, and to his mistakes they added
+wilder though less important confusions or inventions of their own. The
+result of all this, by the tenth century A.D., was a geography, based
+not on knowledge, but on ideas of symmetry. It was a scheme fit for the
+_Arabian Nights_.
+
+And how did Ptolemy lend himself to this?
+
+His chief mistakes were only two;--but they were mistakes from which at
+any rate Strabo and most of the Greek geographers are free. He made the
+Indian Ocean an inland sea, and he filled up the Southern Hemisphere
+with Africa, or the unknown Antarctic land in which he extended
+Africa.[8] The Dark Continent, in his map, ran out on the one side to
+the south-east of China, and on the other to the indefinite west, though
+there was here no hint of America or an Atlantic continent. It was a
+triumph of learned imagination over humdrum research. Science under
+Hadrian was ambitious to have its world settled and known; it was not
+yet settled or fully known; and so a great student constructed a
+_mélange_ of fact and fancy mainly based on a guess-work of imaginary
+astronomical reckonings. On the far east, Ptolemy joined China and
+Africa; and on this imaginary western coast, fronting Malacca and
+Further India, he placed various gratuitous towns and rivers. Coming to
+smaller matters, he cut away the whole of the Indian peninsula proper,
+though preserving the Further or "Golden" Chersonesus of the Malays, and
+he enlarged Taprobane, or Ceylon, to double the size of Asia Minor. Thus
+the southern coast of Asia from Arabia to the Ganges ran almost due
+east, with a strait of sea coming through the modern Carnatic, between
+the continent and the Great Spice Island, which included most of the
+Deccan. The Persian Gulf, much greater on this map than the Black Sea,
+was made equal in length and breadth; the shape of the Caspian was, so
+to say, turned inside out and its length given as from east to west,
+instead of from north to south; while the coast line, even of the
+familiar Euxine, Ægean, and Southern Mediterranean, was anything but
+true. Scandinavia was an island smaller than Ireland; Scotland
+represented a great eastern bend of Britain, with the Shetlands and
+Färoes (Thule) lying a short distance to the north, but on the left-hand
+side of the great island. The Sea of Azov, hardly inferior to the
+Euxine, stretched north half way across Russia. All Central Africa and
+the great Southern or Antarctic continent was described as pathless
+desert--"a land uninhabitable from the heat"; and the sources of the
+Nile were accounted for by the marshes and Mountains of the Moon.
+
+[Footnote 8: Rejecting the old idea of an encircling ocean as the girdle
+or limit of the known world, and replacing it with a new fancy of
+unbounded continent (on all sides except the north-west)--a fancy which
+the vast extension of Roman Dominion under the Empire may have
+fostered.]
+
+Thus all the problems of ancient geography were explained: where
+Ptolemy's knowledge failed him altogether, no Western of that time had
+ever been, or was likely to go. The whole realised and unrealised world
+was described with such clearness and consistency, men thought, that
+what was lacking in Aristotle was now supplied.
+
+Yet it is worth while observing how, centuries before Ptolemy, in the
+ages nearer to Aristotle himself, the geography of Eratosthenes and
+Strabo, by a more balanced use of knowledge and by a greater restraint
+of fancy, had composed a far more reliable chart.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: In using the expressions "Chart," or "Map" of Strabo's
+description (_c._ A.D. 20), it is not meant to imply that Strabo himself
+left more than a written description from which a plan was afterwards
+prepared: "The world according to Strabo." The same applies to
+Eratosthenes (_c._ B.C. 200) and all pre-Ptolemaic Greek geographers.
+Ptolemy's Atlas, probably, and the Peutinger Table, more certainly, are
+maps really drawn by ancient designers; but these are the only ones that
+have survived from a much larger number.]
+
+This earlier and discredited map avoided all the more serious
+perversions of Ptolemy. Africa was cut off at the limit of actual
+knowledge, about Cape Non on the west and Cape Guardafui on the east;
+and the "Cinnamon-bearing Coast," between these points, was fringed by
+the Mountains of Æthiopia, where the Nile rose. This was the theory
+which revived on the decline of the Ptolemaic, and which encouraged the
+Portuguese sailors with hopes of a quick approach to India round Africa,
+as the great eastern bend of the Guinea coast seemed to suggest.
+Further, on this pre-Ptolemaic map the Southern Ocean was left untouched
+by a supposed Southern Continent, and except for an undue shrinkage of
+the Old World in general as an island in the midst of the vast
+surrounding ocean, a reliable description of Western Asia and Central
+Europe and North Africa was in the hands of the learned world two
+hundred years before Christ.
+
+It is true that Strabo's China is cramped and cut short; that his Ceylon
+(Taprobane) is even larger than Ptolemy's; that Ireland (Ierne) appears
+to the _north_ of Britain; and that the Caspian joins the North Sea by a
+long and narrow channel; but the true shape of India, of the Persian
+Gulf and the Euxine, of the Sea of Azov and the Mediterranean, is marked
+rightly enough in general outline. This earlier chart has not the
+elaborate completeness of Ptolemy's, but it is free from his enormous
+errors, and it has all the advantage of science, however imperfect, over
+brilliant guessing.
+
+Of course, even in Ptolemy, this guess-work pure and simple only comes
+in at intervals and does not so much affect the central and, for his
+day, far more important tracts of the Old World, but we have yet to see
+how, in the mediæval period and under Arabic imagination, all geography
+seemed likely to become an exercise of fancy.
+
+The chief Greek descriptions of the world, we must clearly remember,
+were before the mediæval workers, Christian and Moslem, from the first;
+these men took their choice, and the point is that they, and specially
+the Arabs, chose with rare exceptions the last of these, the Ptolemaic
+system, because it was the more ambitious, symmetrical, and pretty.
+
+Let us trace for a moment the gradual development of this geographical
+mythology.
+
+Starting with the notion of the world as a disc, or a ball, the centre
+of the universe, round which moved six celestial circles, of the
+Meridian, the Equator, the Ecliptic, the two Tropics, and the Horizon,
+the Arab philosophers on the side of the earth's surface worked out a
+doctrine of a Cupola or Summit of the world, and on the side of the
+heavens a pseudo-science of the Anoua or Settings of the Constellations,
+connected with the twelve Pillars of the Zodiac and the twenty-eight
+Mansions of the Moon.
+
+With Arabic astrology we are not here concerned; it is only worth noting
+in this connection as the possible source of early Christian knowledge
+of the Southern Cross and other stars famous in the story of
+exploration, such as Dante shows in the first canto of his _Purgatorio_.
+But the geographical doctrines of Islam, compounded from the Hebrew
+Pentateuch and the theoretical parts of Ptolemy, had a more immediate
+and reactionary effect on knowledge. The symmetrical Greek divisions of
+land into seven zones or climates; and of the world's surface,[10] into
+three parts water and one part _terra firma_; the Indian fourfold
+arrangement of "Romeland" and the East; the similar fourfold Chinese
+partition of China, India, Persia, and Tartary: all these reappeared
+confusedly in Arabic geography. From India and the Sanscrit "Lanka,"
+they seem to have got their first start on the myth of Odjein, Aryn, or
+Arim, "the World's Summit"; from Ptolemy the sacred number of 360
+degrees of longitude was certainly derived, beautifully corresponding to
+the days of the year, and neatly divided into 180 of land or habitable
+earth and 180 of sea, or unharvested desert. With the seven climates
+they made correspond the great Empires of the world--chief among which
+they reckoned the Caliphate (or Bagdad), China, Rome, Turkestan, and
+India.
+
+[Footnote 10: In which the habitable quarter of the world, situated
+mainly in the Northern Hemisphere, was just about twice as long as it
+was broad.]
+
+The sacred city of Odjein had been the centre of most of the earlier
+Oriental systems; in the Arabic form of Arim ("The Cupola of the
+Earth"), it became the fixed point round which circled mediæval theories
+of the world's shape. "Somewhere in the Indian Ocean between Comorin and
+Madagascar," became the compromise when the mountain could not be found
+off any of the known coast-lines; it was mixed up with notions of the
+Roc, and the Moon Mountains in Africa, of the Magnet Island and of the
+Eastern Kingdom made out of one vast pearl; and even in Roger Bacon it
+serves as an algebraic sign for a mathematical centre of the world.
+
+The enlargement of knowledge, though forcing upon Arabic science a
+conviction of Ptolemy's mistake in over-extending the limits of the
+world known to him, only led to the invention of a scholastic
+distinction between the real and the traditional East and West, while
+the confusion was made perfect by the travestied history always so
+popular among Orientals. The "Gades of Alexander and Hercules," the
+farthest points east and west, were named after the mythical conquests
+of the real Iskander and the mythical hero of Greeks and Phoenicians.
+Arim in the middle, with the pillars of Hercules and Alexander, and the
+north and south poles at equal distance from it--the centre and the four
+corners of the world as neatly fixed as geometry could define--this was
+the map, first of the Arabs, and then of their Christian scholars.
+
+To form any idea of the complete spell thus cast over thought both in
+Islam and Christendom, we may look at the words of European scholars of
+the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, living far from Islam, long after
+its intellectual glory had begun to decay, and at a time when Christian
+scholastic philosophy had reached an independent position. Gerard of
+Cremona and Adelard of Bath (the translator of the great Arabic
+geographer, Mohammed Al-Kharizmy) in the twelfth century, Roger Bacon
+and Albertus Magnus in the later thirteenth, are all as clear about
+their geographical postulates as about their theological or ethical
+rules. And what concerns us here is that they exactly reflect the mind
+of the Arabic science or pseudo-science of the time just preceding, so
+that their words may represent to us the state of Mohammedan thought
+between the eighth and twelfth centuries, between the writers at the
+Court of Caliph Almamoun (813-833) and Edrisi at the Court of King Roger
+of Sicily (1150).
+
+(1.) _Adelard_, summarising Mohammed Al-Kharizmy with the results of his
+Paris education, tells us of the Arabic "Examination of planets and of
+time, starting from the centre of the world, called _Arim_, from which
+place to the four ends of the earth the distance is equal, viz., ninety
+degrees, answering to the fourth part of the world's circumference. It
+is tedious and unending to attempt to place all the countries of the
+world and to fix all the marks of time. So the meridian is taken as the
+measure of the latter and _Arim_ of the former, and from this
+starting-point it is not hard to fix other countries." "Arim," he
+concludes, "is under the equator, at the point where there is no
+latitude," and he plainly implies that there were then existing among
+the Arabs tables calculating all the chief places of every country from
+the meridian of _Arim_.
+
+(2.) _Gerard_ of Cremona, who, though for some time a resident at
+Toledo, is essentially an Italian, tells us about the "Middle of the
+World," from which longitudes were calculated, "called Arim," and "said
+to be in India," whose longitude from west to east or from east to west
+is ninety degrees.
+
+In his _Theory of the Planets_ Gerard tells us still more wonderful
+things. Arim was a geographical centre known and used by Hermes
+Trismegistus and by Ptolemy, as well as by the great Arab geographers;
+Alexander of Macedon marched just as far to the east of Arim as Hercules
+to the west; both reached the encircling ocean, and accordingly "Arim
+is equidistant from both the Gades, 90 degrees; likewise from each pole,
+north and south, the same, 90 degrees." This all recurs in the tables of
+Alphonso the Wise of Castille about A.D. 1260, and two of the greatest
+of mediæval thinkers, Albert and Roger Bacon, reproduced the essential
+points of this doctrine, its false symmetry, and its balance of the true
+and the traditional, with variations of their own.
+
+(3.) _Albert the Great_, Albertus Magnus, second only to Aquinas among
+the Continental Schoolmen, in his _View of Astronomy_, repeats Adelard
+upon the question of Arim, "where there is no latitude," while (4)
+_Roger Bacon_ discusses not only the true and the traditional East and
+West, but even a twofold Arim, one "under the solstice, the other under
+the equinoctial zone." Arim he finds not to be in the centre of the real
+world, but only of the traditional. In another passage of the _Opus
+Majus_, Bacon, our first English worker in the exact sciences, allows
+the world-summit not to be exactly 90 degrees from the east, although so
+placed by mathematicians. Yet there is no contradiction, he urges,
+because the men of theory are "speaking of the habitable world known to
+them, according to the true understanding of latitude and longitude,"
+and this "true understanding" is "not as great as has been realised in
+travel by Pliny and others." "The longitude of the habitable world is
+more than half of the whole circuit." This, reproduced in the _Imago
+Mundi_ of Cardinal Peter Ailly (1410), fell into the hands of Columbus
+and helped to fix his doctrines of the shape of the world ("in the form
+of a pear") of the terrestrial paradise, and of the earth's
+circumference,--so enormously contracted as practically to abolish the
+Pacific.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: In Columbus' letters to Queen Isabella in 1498, we catch,
+as it were, the last echo of the Arabic _mélange_ of Moses and Greek
+geography, along with the results of Roger Bacon's corrections of
+Ptolemy. "The Old Hemisphere," he writes "which has for its centre the
+isle of Arim, is spherical, but the other (new) Hemisphere has the form
+of the lower half of a pear. Just one hundred leagues west of the Azores
+the earth rises at the Equator and the temperature grows keener. The
+summit is over against the mouth of the Orinoco."]
+
+To return to the Arabs: We have seen how they not merely followed Greek
+theories, which their own experience as conquerors in the Further East
+went to discredit, but, in the great outlines of geography, added to
+earlier errors, put prejudice in the place of knowledge, and handed on
+to Christendom a half-fanciful map of the world. It only remains for us
+to illustrate their leading fault, of a too vivid fancy, with a few
+details on minor points.
+
+(1.) Ptolemy's "Habitable Quarter" of the world, amounting to just half
+the longitude of the globe, was literally accepted by the Moslem world,
+as it accepted the Pentateuch from the moment when it began its study of
+science at the Court of Almamoun (813-833). But, as the conquests of the
+Caliphs disclosed districts in the east far beyond Ptolemy's limits, it
+was necessary, in case of keeping his data for the whole, to compress
+the part which alone was to be found fully described in his chart: "On
+the west, unhappily, there were no countries newly discovered to
+compensate for this abridgment." By Massoudy's time,--by the tenth
+century,--fact and theory were thus hopelessly at variance.
+
+(2.) On the shape of Africa, the mass of Arabic opinion confirmed
+Ptolemy, but among the more enlightened there is traceable from
+Massoudy's time a tendency either to react towards Strabo's partly
+agnostic position, or to invent some new theory rather more in harmony
+with the known facts. That is, either their later map-makers cut off
+Africa at Cape Non or Bojador and Cape Guardafui, and gave away the rest
+to the "Green Sea of Darkness," or, like Massoudy, they sketched a great
+Southern Continent, divided from Africa by a narrow channel, which
+connected the Western Ocean with the Sea of Habasch--of Abyssinia or
+India. In either case Africa was left an island.
+
+(3.) The words "Gog and Magog" from Jeremiah, describing the nomades of
+Central Asia, appear in the Koran as Yadjoudj and Madjoudj. The complete
+story, in the tenth century and in Edrisi's day, connects them with
+Alexander the Great, who is also found in the Koran as Doul-Carnain, and
+with the Wall of China. "When the Conqueror," said the Arabs, "reached
+the place near where the sun rose, he was implored to build a wall to
+shut off the marauders of Yadjoudj and Madjoudj from the rich countries
+of the South." So he built a rampart of iron across the pass by which
+alone Touran joined Iran, and henceforth Turks and Tartars were kept
+outside. Till the Arabs reached the Caucasus, they generally supposed
+this to answer to Alexander's wall; when facts dispelled this theory,
+the unknown Ural or Altai Mountains served instead; finally, as the
+Moslems became masters of Central Asia, the Wall of China, beyond the
+Gobi desert, alone satisfied the conditions of shadowy but historic
+grandeur, beyond all practical danger of verification.
+
+(4.) In striking contrast with the steady advance of Arabic exploration
+and trade in the Eastern Sea is the Moslem horror of the Western Ocean
+beyond Europe and Africa, the "Green Sea of Darkness" or the Atlantic.
+And what we have to note is that they imparted much of this paralysing
+cowardice to the Christian nations. Only the Northmen of Scandinavia,
+living a life apart, and forced to make their way over the wild North
+Sea, were untouched by this southern superstition, and ventured across
+the ocean by the Färoes, Iceland, and Greenland, to the coast of
+Labrador.
+
+The doctors of the Koran indeed thought that a man mad enough to embark
+for the unknown, even on a coasting voyage, should be deprived of civil
+rights. Ibn Said goes further, and says no one has ever done this:
+"whirlpools always destroy any adventurer." As late as the generation
+immediately before Henry the Navigator, about A.D. 1390, another light
+of Moslem science declared the Atlantic to be "boundless, so that ships
+dare not venture out of sight of land, for even if the sailors knew the
+direction of the winds, they would not know whither those winds would
+carry them, and as there is no inhabited country beyond, they would run
+a risk of being lost in mist, fog, and vapour. The limit of the West is
+the Atlantic Ocean."
+
+This was the final judgment of the Arabic race and its subject allies
+upon the western limits of the world, and in two ways they helped to fix
+this belief, derived from the timid coasting-traders of the Roman Empire
+on Greek and Latin Christendom. First, the Spanish Caliphate cut off all
+access to the Western Sea beyond the Bay of Biscay, from the eighth to
+the twelfth centuries. Not till the capture of Lisbon in 1147, could
+Christian enterprise on this side gain any basis, or starting-point. Not
+till the conquest of the Algarve in the extreme south-west of the
+peninsula, at the end of the twelfth century, was this enterprise free
+to develop itself. Secondly, in the darkest ages of Christian
+depression, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth centuries,
+when only the brief age of Charlemagne offered any chance of an
+independent and progressive Catholic Empire in the west, the Arabs
+became recognised along with the Byzantines as the main successors of
+Greek culture. The science, the metaphysic, the abstract ideas of these
+centuries came into Germany, France, and Italy from Cordova and from
+Bagdad, as much as from Byzantium. And on questions like the South
+Atlantic or Indian Ocean, or the shape of Africa,--where Islam had all
+the field to itself, and there was no positive and earlier discovery
+which might contradict a natural reluctance to test tradition by
+experiment--Christendom accepted the Arabic verdict with deference.
+
+In the same way, on still more difficult points, such as the theory of
+a canal from the Caspian to the Black Sea, or from the Caspian to the
+Arctic circle, or from the Black Sea to the Baltic, Paris and Rome and
+Bologna and Oxford accepted the Arabic descriptions.
+
+It has been necessary for us to attend to the defects of Arabic
+geography, in order to understand how in the long Saracen control of the
+world's trade routes and of geographical tradition, science and
+seamanship were so little advanced. Between Ptolemy and Henry of
+Portugal, between the second and the fifteenth centuries, the only great
+extension of men's knowledge of the world was: (1) in the extreme north,
+where the semi-Christian, semi-Pagan Vikings reached perhaps as far as
+the present site of New York and founded, on another side, the Mediæval
+Kingdom of Russia; (2) on the south-east coast of Africa, from Cape
+Guardafui to Madagascar, which was opened up by the trading interest of
+the Emosaid family (800-1300); (3) in the far east, in Central and
+Further Asia, by the discoveries of Marco Polo and the Friar preachers
+following on the tracks of the earlier Moslem travellers. The first of
+these was a Northern secret, soon forgotten, or an abortive development,
+cut short by the Tartars; the second was an Arabic secret, jealously
+guarded as a commercial right; the third alone added much direct new
+knowledge to the main part of the civilised world.
+
+But throughout their period of commercial rule from the eighth to the
+twelfth centuries, the Arabs took a keen interest in land traffic,
+conquest, and exploration. They were of small account at sea; it took
+them some time to turn to their own purposes Hippalus' discovery (in the
+second century A.D.) of the monsoon in the Indian Ocean; but, on land,
+Moslem travellers and writers--generally following in the wake of their
+armies, but sometimes pressing on ahead of them--did not a little to
+enlarge the horizon of the Mohammedan world, though it was not till
+Marco Polo and the Franciscan missionaries of the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries, that Christian Europe shared in this gain.
+
+As the early Caliphs conquered, they made surveys of their new
+dominions. Thus after Tarik and Mousa had overrun Spain, Walid at
+Damascus required from them an account of the land and its resources.
+The universal obligation of the Mecca pilgrimage compelled every Moslem
+to travel once in his life; and many an Arab, after the Caliphate was
+settled in power from the Oxus to the Pyrenees, journeyed to and fro
+with the joy of a master going over vast estates, shewing his dreaded
+turban to subjects of every nation.
+
+This, however, was not geographical science, or even pseudo-science.
+Before Mohammed the Arabs had possessed some knowledge of the stars and
+used it for astrology; but it was at the Court of Almamoun (813-833)
+that their inquiring spirits first set themselves to answer the great
+question of geography--Where? Through the ninth and tenth centuries
+there arose a succession of travellers and thinkers who, with all their
+wild dreamings, preserved the best results of Greek maps and would have
+made much greater advances but for their helplessness in original work.
+As they could not recast Aristotle in philosophy, so they could not with
+all their new knowledge of the Further East recast the geography of
+Ptolemy and Strabo.
+
+A few great ages, the age for instance of Almamoun in Bagdad (A.D. 830),
+of Mahmoud in Ghazneh (A.D. 1000), of Abderrahman III. in Cordova (A.D.
+950), give us the history of Arabic geography.
+
+Beginning in the latter years of the eighth century, Moslem science was
+reformed and organised, in the New Empire, by the patronage of the
+Caliphs of the ninth. Itineraries of victorious generals, plans and
+tables prepared by governors of provinces, and a freshly acquired
+knowledge of Greek and Indian and Persian thought, made up the
+subject-matter of study. The barbarism of the first believers was
+passing away, and Mohammed's words were recalled: "Seek knowledge, even
+in China." By the end of the eighth century Ptolemy's Geography and the
+now lost work of Marinus of Tyre had already been translated. Almamoun
+drew to his Court all the chief "mathematicians" or philosophers of
+Islam, such as Mohammed Al-Kharizmy, Alfergany, and Solyman the
+merchant. Further he built two observatories, one at Bagdad, one at
+Damascus, and procured a chart fixing the latitude and longitude of
+every place known to him or his savants. Al-Kharizmy interpolated the
+new Arabic Ptolemy with additions from the Sanscrit, and made some use
+of Indian trigonometry. Alfergany wrote the first Arab treatise on the
+Astrolabe and adopted the Greek division of the seven Climates to the
+new learning. Solyman, at the time of closest intercourse between
+China, India, and the Caliphate, travelled in every country of the
+Further East, sailed in the "Sea of Pitchy Darkness" on the east coast
+of Asia, and by his voyages became the prototype of Sinbad the Sailor.
+
+The impulse given by Almamoun did not die with him. About 850 Alkendy
+made a fresh version of Ptolemy; as early as 840 the Caliph Vatek-Billah
+sent to explore the countries of Central Asia, and his results have been
+preserved by Edrisi. A few years later (_c._ 890) Ibn-Khordadbeh, "Son
+of the Magi," described the principal trade-routes, the Indian by the
+Red Sea from Djeddah to Scinde, the Russian by the Volga and North
+Caspian, the Persian by way of Balkh to China. It was by this last that
+some have thought the envoys of the English King Alfred went in 883,
+till they turned south to seek India and the Christians of San Thomé.
+
+The early scientific movement in Islam reached its height in Albateny
+and Massoudy at the beginning of the tenth century. The former
+determined, more exactly than before, various problems of astronomical
+geography.[12] The latter visited every country from Further India to
+Spain;--even China and Madagascar seem to have been within the compass
+of his later travels; and his voyages in the Indian Ocean bring us to
+the real Sinbad Saga of the tenth century.
+
+[Footnote 12: "The Obliquity of the Ecliptic, the Eccentricity of the
+Sun, the Precession of the Equinoxes."]
+
+Sinbad, as his story appears in the _Arabian Nights_, has been traced to
+an original in the Indian tales of _The Seven Sages_, in the voyages of
+the age of Chosroes Nushirvan or of Haroun-Al-Rashid, but the tale
+appears to be an Arabic original, the real account, with a little more
+of mystery and exaggeration than usual, of the ninth-and tenth-century
+travellers, from Solyman to Massoudy, reproduced in form of a series of
+novels.[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: "With the Sinbad story is connected the historical
+extension of the Arab settlements in the East African coast through the
+enterprise of the Emosaid family."]
+
+With Massoudy begins also the formal discussion of geographical problems
+affecting Islam. Was the Caspian a land-locked sea? Did it connect with
+the Euxine? Did either or both of these join the Arctic Ocean? Was
+Africa an island? If so, was there also an unknown Southern Continent?
+What was the shape of South-Eastern Asia? Was Ptolemy's longitude to be
+wholly accepted, and if not, how was it to be bettered? By a use of
+Strabo and of Albateny rather than of Ptolemy, Massoudy arrived at
+fairly accurate and very plausible results. His chief novelties were the
+long river channel from the Sea of Azov to the North Sea, and the strait
+between South Africa and the shadowy Southern Continent. On his scheme
+the Indian Ocean, or Sea of Habasch, contains most of the water surface
+of the world, and the Sea of Aral appears for the first time in Moslem
+geography. Lastly his account of the Arab coasting voyages from the
+Persian Gulf to Socotra and Madagascar proves, implicitly, that as yet
+there was no use of the compass.
+
+Massoudy cut down the girth of the world even more than Ptolemy. The
+latter had left an ocean to the west of Africa: the former made the
+Canaries or Fortunate Islands, the limit of the known Western world,
+abut upon India, the limit of the Eastern.
+
+The first age of Arabic geography ends with Massoudy, its greatest name,
+in the middle of the tenth century. The second age is summed up in the
+work of the Eastern sage Albyrouny and of Edrisi, the Arabic Ptolemy
+(A.D. 1099-1154), who found a home at the Christian Court of Roger of
+Sicily. In the far East and West alike, in Spain and Morocco, in
+Khorassan and India, Moslem science was now driven to take refuge among
+strangers on the decay of the Caliphates of Bagdad and Cordova. The
+Ghaznevides Mahmoud and Massoud in the first half of the eleventh
+century, attracted to their Court not only Firdusi and Avicenna, but
+Albyrouny, whose "Canon" became a text-book of Mohammedan science, and
+who, for the range of his knowledge and the trained subtlety of his
+mind, stands without a rival for his time.[14] The Spanish school, as
+resulting directly in Edrisi, half Moslem, half Christian, like his
+teachers, is of still more interest. One of its first traces may be
+found in the Latin translation of the Arab _Almanack_ made by Bishop
+Harib of Cordova in 961. It was dedicated and presented to Caliph
+Hakem--one of our clearest proofs of the conscious interworking of
+Catholic and Mahometan philosophy in the age of Pope Sylvester II. and
+of our own St. Dunstan. A century later, on the recapture of Toledo by
+Alfonso VI. (1084), an observatory was built, served by Jews and
+Moslems, who had been steadily producing, through the whole of the
+eleventh century, astronomical and geographical tables and dictionaries.
+A whole tribe of commentators on place-names, on the climates and
+constellations, and on geographical instruments was at work in this last
+age of the Spanish Caliphate, and their results are brought together by
+Abou Hamid of Granada and by Edrisi.
+
+[Footnote 14: The school of Persian mathematicians who produced the maps
+of Alestakliry-Ibn-Hankal, the book of latitudes and longitudes,
+ascribed by Abulfeda to Alfaraby the Turk, was the immediate descendant
+of Albyrouny.]
+
+Born at Ceuta in 1099, this great geographer travelled through Spain,
+France, the Western Mediterranean, and North Africa before settling at
+the Norman Court of Palermo. Roger, the most civilised prince in
+Christendom, the final product of the great race of Robert Guiscard and
+William the Conqueror, valued Edrisi at his proper worth, refused to
+part with him, and employed men in every part of the world to collect
+materials for his study. Thus the Moor gained, not only for the Moslem
+world but for Southern Europe as well, an approximate knowledge even of
+Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the coasts of the White Sea. His work,
+dedicated to Roger and called after him, _Al-Rojary_, was rewarded with
+a peerage, and it was as a Sicilian Count that he finished his Celestial
+Sphere and Terrestrial Disc of silver, on which "was inscribed all the
+circuit of the known world and all the rivers thereof."
+
+Each of his great Arabic predecessors, along with Eratosthenes, Ptolemy,
+and Strabo, was welded into his system--the result of fifteen years of
+abstract study, following some thirty of practical activity in
+travel.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: The world he divided by climates in the Greek manner,
+taking no account of political divisions, or of those resting on
+language or religion. Each climate was further subdivided into ten
+sections. In the shape of Africa he followed Ptolemy.]
+
+A special note may be made on Edrisi's account of the voyage of the
+Lisbon "Wanderers" ("Maghrurins") some time before 1147, the date of the
+final Christian capture of the Portuguese capital. For this is the
+earliest recorded voyage, since the rise of Islam, definitely undertaken
+on the Western Ocean to learn what was on it and what were its limits.
+The Wanderers, Edrisi tells us, were eight in number, all related to one
+another. They built a transport boat, took on board water and provisions
+for many months, and started with the first east wind. After eleven
+days, they reached a sea whose thick waters exhaled a fetid odour,
+concealed numerous reefs, and were but faintly lighted. Fearing for
+their lives, they changed their course, steered southwards twelve days,
+and so reached an island, possibly Madeira,--which they called El Ghanam
+from the sheep found there, without shepherd or anyone to tend them. On
+landing, they found a spring of running water and some wild figs. They
+killed some sheep, but found the flesh so bitter that they could not eat
+it, and only took the skins. Sailing south twelve more days, they found
+an island with houses and cultivated fields, but as they neared it they
+were surrounded, made prisoners, and carried in their own boats to a
+city on the sea-shore, to a house where were men of tall stature and
+women of great beauty. Here they stayed three days, and on the fourth
+came a man, the King's interpreter, who spoke Arabic, and asked them who
+they were and what they wanted. They replied they were seeking out the
+wonders of the ocean and its limits. At this the King laughed heartily,
+and said to the interpreter: "Tell them my father once ordered some of
+his slaves to venture out on that sea and after sailing across the
+breadth of it for a month, they found themselves deprived of the light
+of the sun and returned without having learnt anything." Then the
+Wanderers were sent back to their prison till a west wind arose, when
+they were blindfolded and put on board a boat, and after three days
+reached the mainland of Africa. Here they were put ashore, with their
+hands tied, and so left. They were released by the Berbers, and after
+their reappearance in Spain, a "street at the foot of the hot bath in
+Lisbon," concludes Edrisi, "took the name of Street of the Wanderers."
+
+On the other extremity of the Moslem world, on the south-east coast of
+Africa, there was more real progress. By Edrisi's day that important
+addition of Arabic travellers and merchants to the geographical
+knowledge of the world, by the remarkable trade-ventures of the
+Emosaids, had been already made.
+
+It had taken long in the making.
+
+[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO EDRISI. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+About A.D. 742, ten years after the battle of Tours, the Emosaid family,
+descended from Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Mahomet, tried to make
+Said, their clan-chieftain, Ali's great-grandson, Caliph at Damascus.
+The attempt was foiled, and the whole tribe fled, sailed down the Red
+Sea and African coast, and established themselves as traders in the Sea
+of India. First of all, Socotra seems to have been their mart and
+capital, but before the end of the tenth century they had founded
+merchant colonies at Melinda, Mombasa, and Mozambique, which, in their
+turn, led to settlements on the opposite coasts of Asia. Thus the trade
+of the Indian Ocean was secured for Islam, the first Moslem settlements
+arose in Malabar, and when the Portuguese broke into this _mare
+clausum_, in 1497-8, they found a belt of "Moorish" coast towns, from
+Magadoxo to Quiloa, controlling both the Indian and the inland African
+trades, as Ibn Batuta had found in 1330.
+
+By Edrisi's day, moreover, the steady persistence and self-evident
+results of Arabic overland exploration had become recognised by a sort
+of "Traveller's Doctorate." It was not enough for the highest knowledge
+to study the Koran, and the Sunna, and the Greek philosophers at home;
+for a perfect education, a man must have travelled at least through the
+length and breadth of Islam. All the successors of Edrisi, in the
+twelfth and thirteenth centuries, shew this mingling of science and
+religion, of practical and speculative energy.
+
+Tradition still governed Moslem thought, but there had come into being a
+sort of half-acknowledged appendix to tradition, made up of real
+observations on men and things. And in these observations, geographical
+interest was the main factor.
+
+The Life of Al Heravy of Herat (1173-1215), the "Doctor Ubiquitus" of
+Islam in the age of the Crusades, gives us a picture of another
+Massoudy. The friend of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, the "first man
+among Christians," Heravy seems able in his own person to break down the
+partition wall of religious feud by the common interest of science. In
+1192 he was offered the patronage of the Crusading princes, and Richard
+Coeur de Lion begged for the favour of an interview, and begged in
+vain. Heravy, who had been on one of his exploring journeys, angrily
+refused to see the King whose men had broken his quiet and wasted his
+time. Before his death, he had run over the world (men said) from China
+to the Pyrenees and from Abyssinia to the Danube, "scribbling his name
+on every wall," and his survey of the Eastern Empire was the single
+matter in which Turks and "Romans" made common cause,--for Greeks and
+Latins at Byzantium alike read Heravy, like a Christian doctor. Another
+example of the same catholic spirit is "Yacout the Roman,"[16] whose
+_Dictionary_, finished in the earlier half of the thirteenth century,
+was a summary of geographical advance since Edrisi, like the similar
+work of Ibn Said, of the same period.
+
+[Footnote 16: Yacout "the ruby," originally a Greek slave, who made a
+brave but fruitless attempt to change his name into Yacoub or Jacob,
+became one of the greatest of Arab encyclopædists, was checked by the
+hordes of Genghiz-Khan in his exploration of Central Asia, and died
+1229.]
+
+But as a matter of fact, the balance both of knowledge and power was now
+shifting from Islam to Christendom. The most daring and successful
+travellers after the rise of the Mongols were the Venetian Marco Polo
+and the Friar Preachers who revived Chinese Christianity (1270-1350);
+Madeira and the Canaries (off Moslem Africa) were finally rediscovered
+not by Arabic enterprise, but by the Italian Malocello in 1270, by the
+English Macham in the reign of our Edward III., and by Portuguese ships
+under Genoese captains in 1341; in 1291 the Vivaldi ventured beyond Cape
+Bojador, where no Moor had ever been, except by force of storm, as in
+the doubtful story of Ibn Fatimah, who "first saw the White Headland,"
+Cape Blanco, between Cape Bojador and Cape Verde.
+
+In the fourteenth century the map of Edrisi was superseded by the new
+Italian plans and coast-charts, or Portolani. As the Moslem world fell
+into political disorder, its science declined. "Judicial astrology"
+seemed gaining a stronger and stronger hold over Islam, and the
+irruption of the Turks gradually resulted in the ruin of all the higher
+Moslem culture. Superstition and barbarism shared the honour and the
+spoils of this victory.
+
+But two great names close the five hundred years of Arab learning.
+
+1. Ibn Batuta (_c._ 1330), who made himself as much at home in China as
+in his native Morocco, is the last of Mohammedan travellers of real
+importance. Though we have only abridgments of his work left to us,
+Colonel Yule is well within his rights in his deliberate judgment, "that
+it must rank at least as one of the four chief guide books of the
+Middle Ages," along with the _Book of Ser Marco Polo_ and the journals
+of the two Friar-travellers, Friar Odoric and Friar William de
+Rubruquis.
+
+2. With _Abulfeda_ the Eastern school of Moslem geography comes to an
+end, as the Western does with Ibn Batuta. In the early years of the
+fourteenth century he rewrote the "story and description of the Land of
+Islam," with a completeness quite encyclopædic. But his work has all the
+failings of a compilation, however careful, in that, or any, age. It is
+based upon information, not upon inspection; it is in no sense original.
+As it began in imitation, so it ended. If it rejects Ptolemy, it is only
+to follow Strabo or someone else; on all the mathematical and
+astronomical data its doctrine is according to the Alexandrians of
+twelve hundred years before, and this last _précis_ of the science of a
+great race and a great religion can only be understood in the light of
+its model--in Greek geography.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+EARLY CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS.
+
+CIRCA 333-867.
+
+
+The special interest of the life and work of Henry the Navigator
+(1394-1460) lies in the relation it bears to the general expansion
+of Europe and Christendom--an expansion that had been slowly gathering
+strength since the eleventh century. But even before the tide had
+turned in the age of Hildebrand and the First Crusade, even from the
+time that Constantine founded the Christian Empire of Rome, the Christian
+Capital on the Bosphorus, and the State Church of the Western
+World,--pilgrimage, trade, conquest, and colonisation had been
+successively calling out the energies of the moving races, "the motor
+muscles" of Europe. It is through the "generous Henry, Prince of
+Portugal," that this activity is brought to its third and triumphant
+stage--to the time of Columbus and Da Gama and Magellan,--but it is only
+by tracing the earlier progress of that outward movement, which has made
+Europe the ruling civilisation of the world, that we can fairly grasp
+the import of that transition in which Henry is the hero.
+
+More than any other single man he is the author of the discovering
+movement of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries,--and by
+this movement India has been conquered, America repeopled, the world
+made clear, and the civilisation which the Roman Empire left behind has
+conquered or utterly overshadowed every one of its old rivals and
+superiors--Islam, India, China, Tartary.
+
+But before the fifteenth century, before the birth of Prince Henry,
+Christendom, Greek and Latin, was at best only one of the greater
+civilising and conquering forces struggling for mastery; before the age
+of the Crusades, before the eleventh century, it was plainly weaker than
+the Moslem powers; it seemed unable to fight against Slav or
+Scandinavian Heathendom; it was only saved by distance from becoming a
+province of China; India, the world's great prize, was cut off from it
+by the Arabs. Even before the rise of Islam, under Constantine or
+Theodosius or Justinian, the Church-State of the Byzantine Cæsars,
+though then ruling in almost every province of Trajan's empire, was in a
+splendid but sure decline from the exhaustion of the southern races. Our
+story then begins naturally with the worst time and climbs up for a
+thousand years, from the Heathen and Mohammedan conquests of the fifth
+and seventh centuries, to the reversal of that judgment, of those
+conquests, in the fifteenth. The expansion of Europe is going on all
+this time, but at our beginning, in the years before and after Pope
+Gregory the Great, even the legacy of Greece and Rome, in wide knowledge
+of the world and practical exploring energy, seemed to have passed from
+sight.
+
+And in the decline of the old Empire, while Constantine and Justinian
+are said to receive and exchange embassies with the Court of China,
+there is no real extension of geographical knowledge or outlook.
+Christian enterprise in this field is mainly one of pilgrimage, and the
+pilgrims only cease to be important when the Northmen, first Heathen,
+then Christian, begin to lead, in a very different manner, the expansion
+of Europe. Into this folk-wandering of the Vikings, the first great
+outward movement of our Europe in the Middle Ages, is absorbed the
+reviving energy of trade, as well as the ever-growing impulse of
+pilgrimage. The Vikings are the highest type of explorers; they do not
+merely find out new lands and trade with them, but conquer and colonise
+them. They extend not merely the knowledge, but the whole state and
+being of Europe, to a New World.
+
+Lastly, the partial activity of commerce and religion made universal and
+"political" by the leading western race--for itself only--is taken up by
+all Christendom in the Crusades, borrowed in idea from Spain, but
+borrowed with the spirit of the Norse rovers, and made universal for the
+Latin world, for the whole federation of Rome. In the eleventh, twelfth,
+and thirteenth centuries we have the preparation for the discovery and
+colonisation of the outside world by Europeans in the fifteenth,
+sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries of the Christian era.
+
+From the conversion of Constantine to the Reformation the story of
+Christendom is unbroken; the later Roman Empire is the Church-State of a
+Christian Prince, as modern Europe is the Church-State of a nominally
+Christian society. Mediæval Europe thought of itself as nothing but the
+old world-state under religion; from Spain to Russia men were living
+under a Holy Roman Empire of an Italian, or Teutonic, or Byzantine, or
+independent type. England and Russia were not parts of the Germanic
+revival of Charlemagne, but they had just the same two elements dominant
+in their life: the classical tradition and the Christian Church.
+
+And so throughout this time, the expansion of this society--by whatever
+name we may call it, discovery, exploration, geographical knowledge--has
+a continuous history. But before the rise of Islam, in the seventh
+century, throws Christendom into its proper mediæval life, before the
+new religion begins the really new age, at the end of which lived Henry
+himself, we are too far from our subject to feel, for instance in the
+fourth and fifth-century pilgrims and in Cosmas Indicopleustes, anything
+but a remote preparation for Henry's work. It is only with the seventh
+century, and with the time of our own Bede and Wilfrid, that the
+necessary introduction to our subject really begins.
+
+Yet as an illustration of the general idea, that discovery is an early
+and natural outlet of any vigorous society and is in proportion to the
+universal activity of the State, it is not without interest to note that
+Christian Pilgrimage begins with Constantine. This, the first
+department of exploring energy, at once evidences the new settlement of
+religion and politics. Helena, the Emperor's mother, helped, by her
+visit to Palestine, her church at Bethlehem, and her discoveries of
+relics in Jerusalem, to make a ruling fashion out of the custom of a few
+devotees; and eight years after the council of Nicæa, in 333, appeared
+the first Christian geography, as a guide-book or itinerary, from
+Bordeaux to the Holy Places of Syria, modelled upon the imperial survey
+of the Antonines. The route followed in this runs by North Italy,
+Aquileia, Sirmium, Constantinople, and Asia Minor, and upon the same
+course thousands of nameless pilgrims journeyed in the next three
+hundred years, besides some eight or nine who have left an account
+mainly religious in form, but containing in substance the widest view of
+the globe then possible among Westerns.
+
+Most of the pilgrims, like Jerome's friend Paula, Bishop Eucherius, and
+Melania, tread the same path and stop at the same points, but three or
+four of them distinctly add some fresh knowledge to the ordinary
+results.
+
+St. Silvia, of Aquitaine (_c._ 385), not only travels through Syria, she
+visits Lower Egypt and Stony or Sinaitic Arabia, and even Edessa in
+Northern Mesopotamia, on the very borders of hostile and heathen Persia.
+"To see the monks" she wanders through Osrhöene, comes to Haran, near
+which was "the home of Abraham and the farm of Laban and the well of
+Rachel," to the environs of Nisibis and Ur of the Chaldees, lost to the
+Roman Empire since Julian's defeat; thence by "Padan-aram" back to
+Antioch. When crossing the Euphrates the pilgrims saw the river "rush
+down in a torrent like the Rhone, but greater," and on the way home by
+the great military road, then untravelled by Saracens, between Tarsus
+and the Bosphorus, Silvia makes a passing note on the strength and
+brigand habits of the Isaurian mountaineers, who in the end saved
+Christendom from the very Arabs with whom our pilgrim couples them.
+
+Again, Cosmas Indicopleustes, in the time of Justinian, is at the end,
+as Silvia is at the beginning, of a definite period, the period of the
+Christian empire of Rome, while still "Cæsarean" and not merely
+Byzantine, "patrician" and not papal, "consular" and not Carolingian.
+
+And contemporary with Cosmas are two of the chief among the earlier or
+primitive pilgrims, Theodosius and Antoninus the Martyr. The first-named
+indulges in a few excursions--in fancy--beyond his known ground of
+Palestine, going as far east as Susa and Babylon, "where no one can live
+for the serpents and hippo-centaurs," and south to the Red Sea and its
+two arms, "of which the eastern is called the Persian Gulf," and the
+western or Arabian runs up to the "thirteen cities of Arabia destroyed
+by Joshua,"--but, for the rest, his knowledge is not extensive or
+peculiar. Antoninus of Placentia, on the other hand, is very
+interesting, a sort of older Mandeville, who mixes truth and its
+opposite in fairly even proportions and with a sort of resolute
+partiality to favourite legends.
+
+He tells us how Tripolis has been ruined by the late earthquake (July 9,
+551); how silk and various woven stuffs are sold at Tyre; how the
+pilgrims scratched their names on the relics shewn in Cana of
+Galilee--"and here I, sinner that I am, did inscribe the names of my
+parents"; how Bethshan, the metropolis of Galilee, "is placed on a
+hill," though really in the plain; how the Samaritans hate Christians
+and will hardly speak to them; "and beware of spitting in their country,
+for they will never forgive it"; how "the dew comes down upon Hermon the
+Little, as David says, 'The dew of Hermon that fell upon the hill of
+Zion'"; how nothing can live or even float in the Dead Sea, "but is
+instantly swallowed up"--as exact an untruth as was ever told by
+traveller; how the Jordan opens a way for pilgrims "and stands up in a
+heap every year at the Epiphany during the baptism of Catechumens, as
+David told, 'The sea saw that and fled, Jordan was driven back'"; how at
+Jericho there is a Holy Field "sown by the Lord with his own hand." A
+report had been spread that the salt pillar of Lot's wife had been
+"lessened by licking"; "it was false," said Antoninus, the statue was
+just the same as it had always been.
+
+In Jerusalem the pilgrims first went up the Tower of David, "where he
+sang the Psalter," and into the Basilica of Sion, where among other
+marvels they saw the "Corner-stone that the builders rejected," which
+gave out a "sound like the murmuring of a crowd."
+
+We come back again to fact with rather a start when told in the next
+section of the Hospitals for 3000 sick folk near the Church of St. Mary,
+close to Sion; then with the footprints and relics of Christ, and the
+miraculous flight of the Column of Scourging--"carried away by a cloud
+to Cæsarea," we are taken through a fresh set of "impressions."
+
+The same wild notions of place and time and nature follow the Martyr
+through Galilee to Gilboa, "where David slew Goliath and Saul died,
+where no dew or rain ever falls, and where devils appear nightly,
+whirled about like fleeces of wool or the waves of the sea"--to
+Nazareth, where was the "Beam of Christ the Carpenter"--to Elua, where
+fifteen consecrated virgins had tamed a lion and trained it to live with
+them in a cell--to Egypt, where the Pyramids become for him the
+"_twelve_ Barns of Joseph," for the legend had not yet insisted that the
+actual number should be made to fit the text of the seven years of
+plenty.
+
+But with all this Antoninus now and then gives us glimpses of a larger
+world. In Jerusalem he meets Æthiopians "with nostrils slit and rings
+about their fingers and their feet." They were so marked, they told him,
+by the Emperor Trajan "for a sign."
+
+In the Sinai desert he tells us of "Saracen" beggars and idolaters; in
+the Red Sea ports he sees "ships from India" laden with aromatics; he
+travels up the Nile to the Cataracts and describes the Nilometer at
+Assouan, and the crocodiles in the river; Alexandria he finds "splendid
+but frivolous, a lover of pilgrims but swarming with heresies."
+
+But far more wonderful than the practical jumble of Antoninus Martyr is
+the systematic nonsense of Cosmas, who invented or worked out a theory
+and scheme of the world, a "Christian topography," which required
+nothing more than a complete disuse of human reason. His assurance was
+equal to his science.
+
+It may have been his voyage to India, or his monastic profession, or his
+study of Scripture, or something unknown that made him take up the part
+of a Christian Aristotle; in any case he felt himself called into the
+field to support the cause of St. Augustine against infidelity, and to
+refute the "anile fable" of the Antipodes. Cosmas referred men back to
+Revelation on such matters, and his system was "demonstrated from
+Scripture, concerning which a Christian is not allowed to doubt." Man by
+himself could not understand the world, but in the Bible it was all
+clear enough. And from the Bible this much was beyond dispute.
+
+The universe is a flat parallelogram; and its length is exactly double
+of its breadth. In the centre of the universe is our world surrounded by
+the ocean, and by an outer world or ring where men lived before the
+Flood. Noah and his Ark came over sea from this to the present earth.
+
+To the north of our world is a great hill, like the later Moslem and
+older Hindu "Cupola of the Earth," which perhaps was Cosmas' own
+original. Round this the sun and moon revolve, making day and night as
+they appear or disappear behind it.
+
+The sky consists of four walls meeting in the "dome of heaven" over the
+floor on which we live, and this sky is "glued" to the edges of the
+outer world, the world of the Patriarchs.
+
+But this heaven is also cut in two by the firmament, lying between our
+atmosphere and that "New Heaven and New Earth wherein dwelleth
+Righteousness"; and the floor of this upper world is covered by the
+"waters that be above the firmament"; above this is Paradise, and below
+the firmament live the angels, as "ministers" and "flaming fires" and
+"servants of God to men."
+
+The proofs of this are simple, mainly resting on some five texts from
+the Old Testament and two passages of St. Paul.
+
+First the Book of Genesis declared itself to be the "Book of the
+Generation of the Heaven and the Earth"--that is, of everything in the
+heavens, and the earth. But the "old wives' fable of the Antipodes"
+would make the heaven surround and contain the earth, and God's word
+would have to be changed "These are the generations of the sky." For the
+same truth--the twofold and independent being of heaven and
+earth--Cosmas quotes the additional testimony of Abraham, David, Hosea,
+Isaiah, Zachariah, and Melchisedek, who clenched the case against the
+Antipodes. "For how indeed could even rain be said to 'fall' or to
+'descend,' as in the Psalms and the Gospels, in those regions where it
+could only be said to 'come up'?"
+
+Again, the world cannot be a globe, or sphere, or be suspended in
+mid-air, or in any sort of motion, for what say the Scriptures? "Earth
+is fixed on its foundations"; "Thou hast laid the foundations of the
+earth and it abideth"; "Thou hast made the round world so sure, that it
+cannot be moved"; "Thou hast made all men to dwell upon the face of the
+whole earth"--not "upon every face," or upon any more than one
+face--"upon _the_ face," not the back or the side, but the broad flat
+face we know. "Who then with these passages before him, ought even to
+speak of Antipodes?"
+
+So much against false doctrine; to establish the truth is simpler still.
+For the same St. Paul, who disposes of science falsely so called, does
+not he speak, like David, like St. Peter and St. John, of our world as a
+tabernacle? "If our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved," "We
+that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened," which points to
+the natural conclusion of enlightened faith, that Moses' tabernacle was
+an exact copy of the universe. "See thou make all things according to
+the pattern shewn thee in the Mount." So the four walls, the covered
+roof, the floor, the proportions of the Tent of the Wilderness, shewed
+us in small compass all that was in nature.
+
+If any further guidance were needed, it was ready to hand in the Prophet
+Isaiah and the Patriarch Job. "That stretcheth out the heavens as a
+curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in"; "Also can any
+understand the spreadings of the clouds or the noise of his tabernacle?"
+
+The whole reasoning is like the theological arguments on the effects of
+man's fall upon the stars and the vegetable world, or the atmospheric
+changes due to angels.
+
+But though Cosmas states his system with the claims of an article of
+faith, there were not wanting men, and even saints, who stood out on the
+side of reason in geography in the most traditional of times. Isidore of
+Seville, and Vergil, the Irish missionary of the eighth century, both
+maintained the old belief of Basil and Ambrose, that the question of the
+Antipodes was not closed by the Church, and that error in this point was
+venial and not mortal. For the positive tabernacle-system of "the man
+who sailed to India" there was never much support; his work was soon
+forgotten, though it has been called by some paradox-makers "the great
+authority of the Middle Ages"--in the face of the known facts, that this
+was the real position of Ptolemy and Strabo, that no one can speak of
+the "Middle Ages" in this unqualified way any more than of the Modern or
+Ancient worlds; and that Cosmas is almost unnoticed in the great age of
+mediæval science, from the twelfth century.
+
+And whatever we may think of Cosmas and his _Christian System of the
+Whole World, Evolved out of Holy Scripture_, he is of interest to us as
+the last of the old Christian geographers, closing one age which,
+however senile, had once been in the truest sense civilised, and
+preparing us to enter one that in comparison is literally dark. From the
+age of Justinian, and from the rise of Islam in the early years of the
+seventh century, the geographical knowledge of Christendom is on a par
+with its practical contraction and apparent decline. There are
+travellers; but for the next five hundred years there are no more
+theorists, cosmographers, or map-makers of the Universe or Habitable
+Globe.
+
+From the time that Islam, after a century of world-conquest, began to
+form itself into an organised state, or federation of states, in the
+later eighth and earlier ninth centuries A.D.,--thus making itself until
+the thirteenth century the principal heir of the older Eastern
+culture,--Christendom was content to take its geography, its ideas of
+the world in general, from the Arabs, who in their turn depended upon
+the pre-Christian Greeks.
+
+The relation of Ptolemy and Strabo to modern knowledge is best seen
+through the work of the Arabic geographers, but the Saracens did much to
+destroy before they began to build up once more. As the northern
+barbarians of the fifth century interrupted the hope of a Christian
+revival of Pagan literature and science, so the Moslems of the seventh
+and eighth cut short the Catholic and Roman revival of Justinian and
+Heraclius, in which the new faith and the old state had found a working
+agreement.
+
+Between Cosmas and the Viking-Age, "Christian," "Roman," "Western"
+exploration falls within very narrow limits: the few pilgrims whose
+recollections represent to us the whole literature of travel in the
+seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, add nothing fresh even of
+practical discovery; theory and theoretical work has ceased altogether,
+and the first stirrings of the new life in the commerce and voyages of
+Amalphi, and in the sudden and splendid outburst of Norse life in its
+age of piracy, are not yet, are not really before the world until the
+time of Alfred of England, of Charles the Bald, of Pope Nicholas I. "the
+Great." Yet such as it is, this pilgrim stage of European development
+stands for something. Religion, as it is the first agent in forming our
+modern nations, is the first impulse towards their expansion. And to us
+there is a special interest.
+
+For the best known of western travellers in this darkest of the
+Christian ages (600-870 A.D.), Arculf and Willibald, are both connected
+with England and the beginnings of English science in the age of Bede.
+
+Arculf, a Frank or Gallican Bishop, who about 690 visited, first of
+"Latin" writers since the Mohammedan conquest, Jerusalem, the Jordan
+valley, Nazareth, and the other holy places of Syria, was driven by
+storms on his return to the great Irish monastery of Iona. There he
+described his wonders to the Abbot Adamnan, who then sat in the seat of
+the Irish Apostles Patrick and Columba, and by Adamnan this narrative
+was presented and dedicated to Aldfrith the Wise, last of the great
+Northumbrian Kings, in his Court at York (_c._ A.D. 701). Not only does
+the original remain to us, but we have also two summaries of it, one
+longer, another shorter, made by Baeda, the Venerable Bede, as a useful
+manual for Englishmen, _Concerning the Holy Sites_. We are again
+reminded by this how constantly fresh life is growing up under an
+appearance of death. The conversion of England, which Gregory the Great,
+Theodore, and the Irish monks had carried through in the seventh, that
+darkest of Christian centuries, was now bearing its fruit in the work
+of Bede, who was really the sign of a far more permanent intellectual
+movement than his own, and in that of Boniface, Wilbrord, and Willibald,
+who began to win for Christendom in Germany more than a counterpoise for
+her losses in the South and East, from Armenia to Spain.
+
+Arculf is full of the mystical unscientific spirit of the time. He notes
+in Jerusalem "a lofty column, which at mid-day casts no shadow, thus
+proving itself to be the centre of the earth for as David says, 'God is
+my king of old, working salvation _in the midst of the_ earth.'"
+
+"At the roots of Lebanon" he comes to the place "where the Jordan has
+its rise from two fountains Jor and Dan, whose waters unite in the
+single river Jordan." In the Dead Sea a lighted lamp would float safely,
+and no man could sink if he tried; the bitumen of this place was almost
+indissoluble; the only fruit here about were the apples of Sodom, which
+crumbled to dust in the mouth.
+
+The three churches on the top of Tabor were "according to the three
+tabernacles described by Peter."
+
+From Damascus Arculf made for the port of Tyre, and so came by Jaffa to
+Egypt. Alexandria he found so great that he was one entire day in merely
+passing through. Its port he thought "difficult of access and something
+like the human body in shape, with a narrow mouth and neck, then
+stretching out far and wide."
+
+The great Pharos tower was still lit up every night with torches. Here
+was the "Emporium of the whole world"; "countless merchants from all
+parts": the "country rainless and very fertile."
+
+The Nile was navigable to the Town of Elephants; beyond this, at the
+Cataracts, the river "runs in a wild ruin down a cliff." Its
+embankments, its canals, and even its crocodiles, "not so large as
+ravenous," are all described, and Arculf, returning home by
+Constantinople, concludes with an account of the capital of Christendom,
+"beyond doubt the metropolis of the Roman Empire, and by far the
+greatest city therein"; lastly, as the pilgrim sails by Sicily he sees
+the "isle of Vulcan vomiting smoke by day and flame by night, with a
+noise like thunder, which is always fiercer on Fridays and Saturdays."
+
+Willibald, a nephew of St. Boniface and related through his mother to
+King Ina of Wessex, started for the East about 721, passed ten years in
+travel, and on his return followed his countrymen to mission work and to
+death among the heathen of Upper Germany. He went out by Southampton and
+Rouen, by Lucca and the Alps, to Naples and Catania, "where is Mount
+Etna; and when this volcano casts itself out they take St. Agatha's veil
+and hold it towards the fire, which ceases at once." Thence by Samos and
+Cyprus to Antaradus and Emesda, "in the region of the Saracens," where
+the whole party, who had escaped the Moslem brigands of Southern Gaul,
+were thrown into prison on suspicion of being spies. A Spaniard made
+intercession for them and got their release; but Willibald went up
+country one hundred miles, and cleared himself of all suspicion before
+the Caliph at Damascus. "We have come from the West, where the sun has
+his setting, and we know of no land beyond--nothing but water." This was
+too far for spies, he pleaded, and the Caliph agreed, and gave him a
+pass for all the sites of Palestine, with which he traversed the length
+and breadth of the Holy Land four times, finding the same trouble in
+leaving as he had found in entering. Like Arculf, he saw the fountains
+of Jor-Dan, the "glorious church" of Helena at Bethlehem, the tombs of
+the Patriarchs at Hebron, the wonders of Jerusalem. Especially was he
+moved at the sight of the columns in the Church of the Ascension on
+Olivet, "for that man who can creep between those columns and the wall
+is freed from all his sins." Tyre and Sidon he passed again and again
+"on the coast of the Adriatic Sea (as he calls the Levant), _six_ miles
+from one another"; at last he got away to Constantinople, with some
+safely smuggled trophies of pilgrimage, and some "balsam in a calabash,
+covered with petroleum," but the customs officers would have killed all
+of them if the fraud had been found out--so Willibald believed. After
+two years of close intercourse with the Greek Christians of New Rome,
+living in a "cell hollowed out of the side of a church" (possibly Saint
+Sophia), the first of English-born travellers returned to Old Rome, as
+Arculf had done, by sea, noticing, like him, "Theodoric's Hell" in the
+Liparis. He could not get up the mountain, though curious to see "what
+sort of a hell it was" where the Gothic "Tyrant" was damned for the
+murder of Böethius and Symmachus, and for his own impenitent Arianism.
+But though he could not be seen or heard, all the pilgrims remarked how
+the "pumice that writers use was thrown up by the flame from the hell,
+and fell into the sea, and so was cast upon the shore and gathered up."
+
+Such was the philosophy of Catholicism about the countries of the known
+world in the eighth century, for Willibald's account was published with
+the imprimatur of Gregory III., and, with Arculf's, took rank as a
+satisfactory comment on the old Bordeaux Itinerary of four hundred years
+ago.
+
+Again, the impression given by our two chief Guide-Books, Arculf and
+Willibald, is confirmed by the monk Fidelis, who travelled in Egypt
+about 750, and by Bernard the Wise of Mont St. Michel, who went over all
+the pilgrim ground a century later (867). Fidelis, sailing up the Nile,
+was astonished at the sight of the "Seven Barns of Joseph, (the
+Pyramids) looking like mountains, but all of stone, square at the base,
+rounded in the upper part and twisted at the summit like a spire. On
+measuring a side of one of them, it was found to be four hundred feet."
+From the Nile Fidelis sailed by the freshwater canal of Necho, Hadrian,
+and Amrou, not finally blocked up till 767, direct to the Red Sea, "near
+where Moses crossed with the Israelites." The pilgrim wanted to go and
+look for Pharaoh's chariot-wheels, but the sailors were obstinate, and
+took him round the Peninsula of Sinai, down one arm of the sea and up
+another, to Eziongeber and Edom.
+
+Bernard, "the French Monk" of Mont St. Michel, took the straight route
+overland by Rome to Bari, then a Saracen city, whose Emir forwarded the
+pilgrims in a fleet of transports carrying some nine thousand Christian
+slaves to Alexandria. Here, like Willibald, Bernard found himself
+"suspect"--thrown into prison till Backsheesh had been paid, then only
+allowed to move stage by stage as fees were prompt and sufficient, for a
+traveller must pay, as an infidel, not only the ordinary tribute of the
+subject Christians of Egypt, but the "money of the road" as well. Islam
+has always made of strangers a fair mark for extortion.
+
+Safe at last in Jerusalem, the party (Bernard himself and two friends,
+one a Spaniard, the other a monk of Beneventum) were lodged "in the
+Hostel of the glorious Emperor Charles, founded for all the pilgrims who
+speak the Roman tongue," and after making the ordinary visits of
+devotion, and giving us their account of the Easter Miracle of the Holy
+Fire at the Church of the Sepulchre, they took ship for Italy, and
+landed at Rome after sixty days of misery at sea.
+
+Bernard's account closes with the Roman churches--the Lateran, where the
+"keys of the whole city are given every night into the hands of the
+Apostolic Pope," and St. Peter's on the "West side of Rome, that for
+size has no rival in the world."
+
+At the same time, or a little earlier than the Breton traveller (_c._
+808-850), another Latin had written a short tract _On the Houses of God
+in Jerusalem_, which, with Bernard's note-book, is our last geographical
+record before the age of the Northmen.
+
+A new time was coming--a time not of timid creeping pilgrims only, but
+of sea-kings and seamen, who made the ocean their home, and, for the
+North of Europe at least, broke the tradition of land journeys and
+coasting voyages.
+
+But the early pilgrims after all have their place. It is of no use
+insisting that the mental outlook of these men is infantile;--that is
+best proved by their own words, their own scale of things; but it is
+necessary to insist that in these travellers we have comparatively
+enlarged experience and knowledge; and as comparison is the only test of
+any age, or of any man therein, the very blunders and limitations of the
+past, as we see them to be, have a constant, as well as an historical,
+value to us. That is, we are always being reminded, first, how we have
+come to the present mastery over nature, over ourselves, over all being;
+and, secondly, how imperfect, how futile, our work is still, and seems
+always doomed to be, if judged from a really final standpoint, or rather
+from our own dreams of the ultimately possible.
+
+So if in the case of our mediæval travellers their interests are the
+very reverse of ours; if they take delight in brooding over thoughts
+which to us do not seem worth the thinking; if their minds seem to rest
+as much on fable implicitly accepted as on the little amount of
+experienced fact necessary for a working life, it will not be for us to
+judge, or to pity, or to despise the men who were making our world for
+us, and through whose work we live.
+
+[Illustration: THE MAPPE-MONDE OF ST. SEVER. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+Especially we cannot afford to forget this as we reach the lowest point
+of the fortunes, the mental and material work and position and
+outlook, of Europe and Christendom. A half-barbarised world had entered
+upon the inheritance of a splendid past, but it took centuries before
+that inheritance was realised by the so altered present. In this time of
+change we have men writing in the language of Cæsar and Augustine, of
+Alexander and Plato and Aristotle, who had been themselves, or whose
+fathers had been, pirates, brigands, nomades,--"wolves of the land or of
+the sea"--to Greeks or Romans of the South; who had been even to the
+Romanised provincials of the North, as in Britain, mere "dogs," "whelps
+from the kennel of barbarism," the destroyers of the order of the world.
+The boundless credulity and servile terror, the superstition and feudal
+tyranny of the earlier Middle Ages, mark the first stage of the
+reconstruction of society, when savage strong men who had conquered were
+set down beside the overworked and outworn masters of the Western world,
+to learn of them, and to make of them a more enduring race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+VIKINGS OR NORTHMEN.
+
+CIRCA 787-1066.
+
+
+The discoveries and conquests and colonies of the Norse Vikings, from
+the White Sea to North America, are the first glimpses of light on the
+sea of darkness round the little island of the known world that made up
+Christendom. And from the needs of the time these were the natural, the
+only natural beginnings of European expansion. From the rise of Islam,
+Saracens controlled the great trade-routes of the South and East. It was
+only on the West and North that the coast was clear--of all but natural
+dangers.
+
+In the Moslem Caliphate men were now busy in following up the old lines
+of trade, the immemorial traditions of the East, or as in southern
+Africa, extending the sphere of commercial activity and so of
+civilisation; men of science were commenting on the ancient texts of
+Greeks and Latins, or adapting them to enlarged knowledge.
+
+But in Christendom, in the atrophy both of mental and physical
+activity, broken for short periods and in certain lands by the revivals
+of Charles the Great, of the Isaurian Emperors, of Otto I., of Alfred
+and his House, the practical energy of Heathen enemies,--for the
+Northmen were not seriously touched by Christianity till about the end
+of the first millennium,--was the first sign of lasting resurrection.
+After the material came the spiritual revival; the whole life of the
+Middle Ages awoke on the conversion of the Northern nations and of
+Hungary; but in the abundant and brilliant energy of the eleventh, the
+twelfth, the thirteenth centuries, we must recognise the offspring of
+the irrepressible Norsemen as well as of the Irish and Frank and English
+missionaries, who in the Dark Ages of Christendom were working out the
+empire of Innocent III.
+
+In exploration, especially, it was true that theory followed
+achievement. Flavio Gioja, of Amalphi, did not apply the magnet to
+navigation--did not "give sailors the use of the magnet"--till
+navigation itself had begun to venture into the unknown Atlantic. The
+history of geographical advance in the earlier Middle Ages is thus
+rather a chronicle of adventure than of science.
+
+But the Norse discoveries are not only the first, they are the leading
+achievements of Western travel and enterprise in the true Unknown,
+between the time of Constantine and the Crusades. The central fact of
+European expansion in the Dark Ages (from the seventh to the eleventh
+century) is the advance of the Vikings to the Arctic Continent and to
+America about the year 1000. All that precedes this on the same line is
+doubtful and unimportant. For, of the other voyages to the West in the
+sixth, the eighth, the tenth centuries, which, on Columbus' success,
+turned into prior claims to the finding of the New World, there is not
+one that deserves notice.
+
+St. Brandon in 565, the Seven Spanish Bishops in 734, the Basques in 990
+may or may not have sighted their islands of "Antillia," of "Atlantis,"
+of the "Seven Cities." They cannot be verified or valued, any more than
+the journeys of the Enchanted Horse or the Third Calendar. We only know
+for certain a few unimportant, half-accidental facts, such as the visits
+of Irish hermits to Iceland and the Färoes during the eighth century,
+and the traces of their cells and chapels--in bells and ruins and
+crosses--found by the Northmen in the ninth.
+
+It was in 787 that the Vikings first landed in England; by the opening
+of the next century they were threatening the whole coast line of
+Christendom, from Gallicia to the Elbe; in 874 they began to colonise
+Iceland; in 877 they sighted Greenland; in 922 Rolf the Ganger won his
+"Normandy" from Charles the Simple, by the Treaty of Clair-sur-Epte; as
+early as 840 was founded the first Norse or Ostman kingdom in Ireland,
+and in 878 the Norse earldom of the Orkneys, while about the same time
+the first Vikings seem to have reached the White Sea and the extreme
+North of Europe.
+
+This advance is almost as rapid as that of the early Saracens; within a
+hundred years from the first disturbance of Danes and Northmen by the
+growing, all-including power of the new national kingdoms,--within three
+generations from Halfdan the Black,--first the flying rebels, and then
+the royalists in pursuit of them, had reached the farthest western and
+northern limits of the known world, from Finisterre in "Spanland" to
+Cape Farewell in Greenland, from the North Cape in Finland to the
+Northwest Capes of "Irland," from Novgorod or "Holmgard" in Russia to
+"Valland," between the Garonne and the Loire.
+
+The chief lines of Northern advance were three--by the north-west,
+south-west, and north-east, but each of these divided, after a time,
+with important results.
+
+The first sea-path, running by Caithness, Orkneys, Shetlands, and
+Färoes, reached Iceland, Greenland, and at last Vinland on the North
+American Continent; but from the settlements on the coasts and islands
+of northern Scotland, a fresh wave of pirate colonists swept down
+south-west into the narrow seas of St. George's Channel and beat upon
+the east and north and south of Ireland and the western coasts of
+England and of "Bretland."
+
+The second invasion ran along the North German coast, and on reaching
+the Straits of Dover, fell upon both sides of the English Channel,
+according as the resistance was stronger or weaker in Wessex or in
+Frankland. The advanced guard reunited with Ostmen and Orkneyers in the
+Scilly Isles, and in Cornwall, and pressed on to the plunder of the Bay
+of Biscay and its coasts. The most restless of all were not long in
+finding out the wealth of the Moslem Caliphate of Cordova, and trying to
+force their way up the Douro and the Tagus.
+
+The expansion on this side was not to stop till it had founded, from the
+Norman colony on the Seine, a Norman kingdom of England, and a dominion
+in the Two Sicilies, but this was the work of the eleventh century, the
+time of organisation and settled empire.
+
+On the third side of northern expansion, to east and north-east, there
+were two separate roads from the first; one taking the Baltic for its
+track, and dividing northwards to Finland, up the Gulf of Bothnia,
+eastwards to Russia and Novgorod ("Gardariki" and "Holmgard"), the other
+coasting along "Halogaland" to Biarmaland, along Lapland to Perm and the
+Archangel of later time.
+
+Of these three lines of movement by far the most vital to our subject is
+the first, which is also the earliest; the second, to south and
+south-west, hardly gives any direct results for our story; and the
+third, to east and north, is mainly concerned with Russian history.
+While King Alfred was yet unborn, Norse settlements had been permanently
+founded in the outlying points, coasts, and islands of Scotland and
+Ireland, and in the years of his boyhood, about 860, Nadodd the Fäeroe
+Jarl sighted Iceland, which had been touched at by the Irish monks in
+795 but was now to be first added as a lasting gain to Europe, as a new
+country, "Snowland"--something more than a hermitage for religious
+exiles from the world. Four years later (in 864) Gardar the Swede
+reached this new Ultima Thule, and re-named it from himself "Gardar's
+Holm." Yet another Viking, Raven Floke, followed the track of the first
+explorer in 867, before Iceland got its final name and earliest
+colonisation from the Norsemen Ingolf and Leif and the sheep-farmers of
+the Färoes in 874, the third year of Alfred's reign in Wessex.
+
+[Illustration: THE ANGLO-SAXON MAP. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+Three years later, 877-8, at the very time of the farthest Danish
+advance in England, when Guthrum had driven the English King into the
+Isle of Athelney, the Norsemen reached their farthest point of northern
+advance in Europe; Gunnbiorn sighted a new land to the north-west, which
+he called "White Shirt," from its snow-fields, and which Red Eric a
+century later re-named Greenland--"for there is nothing like a good name
+to attract settlers." By this the Old World had come nearer than ever
+before to the discovery of a new one.
+
+Geographically, this side of the Arctic Continent falls to the share of
+North America, and once its fiords had been made in their turn centres
+of colonisation and of further progress, the actual reaching of
+Newfoundland and Cape Cod was natural enough. The real voyage lay
+between Cape Farewell and the European mainland; it was a stormy and
+dangerous passage from the Greenland Bays to Labrador, but not a long
+one, and, as far as can be judged from scanty records, neither so cold
+nor so icebound as at present.
+
+But exploration had outrun settlement. It was not till 986, more than
+one hundred years after Gunnbiorn's discovery, that Eric the Red, one of
+the chiefs of the Iceland colonists, led a band of followers and
+friends into a permanent exile in the unknown land. The beginnings of
+several villages were made in the next few years, and the first American
+discoveries followed at once. About 989 one Bjarni Herjulfson, following
+his father from Iceland to Eric's Fiord in Greenland, was driven west by
+storms first to a flat, well-wooded country, then to a mountainous
+island, covered with glaciers. He bore away with a fresh breeze and
+reached his home in Eric's Fiord in four days.
+
+But his report aroused great interest; the time had come, and the men,
+and Norse rovers, who after so much in the past were ready to dare
+anything in the future, eagerly volunteered to follow up the new route;
+Bjarni himself visiting Norway and telling his story, was blamed for his
+slackness, and when he went back to Greenland there was "much talk of
+finding unknown lands." In the year 1000 Leif, a son of Red Eric,
+started with a definite purpose of discovery. He bought Bjarni's ship,
+manned it with five and twenty men and put out. First they came to the
+land Bjarni had sighted last, and went on shore. There was no grass to
+be seen, but great snowy ridges far inland, "and all the way from the
+coast to these mountains was one field of snow, and it seemed to them a
+land of no profit,"--so they left, calling it Helluland, or Slate-land,
+perhaps the Labrador of the sixteenth century.
+
+They put to sea again and found another land, flat and wooded, with a
+white sand shore, low-lying towards the sea. This, said Leif, we will
+call after its nature, Markland (Woodland). Thence driving for two days
+before a north-east wind, they came to an island, where they landed to
+wait for good weather. They tasted the dew on the grass and thought they
+had never known anything so sweet. Sailing on again into a sound between
+the island and a ness, they reached a place where a river came out of a
+lake; into this they towed the ship and anchored, carrying their beds
+out on the shore and setting up their tents, with a large hut in the
+middle, and made all ready for wintering there.
+
+There was no want of fish food--"the largest salmon in the lake they had
+ever seen"--and the country seemed to them so good that they would need
+no fodder for cattle in the winter. There was no frost; the grass seemed
+fresh enough all the year round, and day and night were more equal than
+in Iceland or in Greenland. The crew were divided in two parts: one
+worked at the huts and the other explored the country, returning every
+night to the camp. From the wild vines found by the foragers, the whole
+district was called Vinland, and samples of these, enough to fill the
+stern boat, and of the trees and "self-sown wheat" found in the fields
+were taken back to Eric's Fiord. Thereafter Leif was called the Lucky,
+and got much wealth and fame, but Thorwald Ericson, his brother, thought
+he had not explored enough, and "determined to be talked about" even
+more than the first settler of Vinland.
+
+He put to sea with thirty men and came straight to Leif's Booths in
+Vinland, where he stayed the winter. On the first signs of spring
+Thorwald ordered his vessel to be rigged, and sent his longboat on
+ahead to explore.
+
+All alike thought the land beautiful and well-wooded; they noticed that
+the distance was small between the forest and the sea, that the beach
+was all of white sand, and that there were many islands off the shore
+and very shallow water; but they saw no trace of man or beast, except a
+wooden corn-barn on an island far to the west. After coasting all the
+summer they came back in the autumn to the booths.
+
+The next spring Thorwald went eastwards, and "towards the north along
+the land they drove upon a cape and broke their keel and stayed long to
+repair, and called the place Keel-Ness (Kjalarness) from this." Then
+they sailed away eastwards along the country, everywhere thickly wooded,
+till at one place Thorwald drew up his ships to the land and laid out
+gangways to the shore, saying, "I would gladly set up my farm here."
+
+But now they came upon the first traces of other men; far off upon the
+white sandy beach three specks were sighted--three skin boats of the
+Skrælings or Esquimaux, with three men hiding under each. Thorwald's men
+captured and killed eight of them, but one escaped "to where within the
+fiord were several dwellings like little lumps on the ground." A heavy
+drowsiness now fell upon the Norsemen, in the Saga, till a "sudden
+scream came to them, and a countless host from up the fiord came in skin
+boats and laid themselves alongside."
+
+The Vikings put up their shield-wall along the gunwale and kept off the
+arrows of the Esquimaux till they had shot them all away, and "fled off
+as fast as they could," leaving Thorwald with a mortal wound under the
+arm. He had time just to bid his men "carry him to the point he had
+wished to dwell at, for it was true that he would stay there awhile, but
+with a cross at head and feet; and so died and was buried as he had
+said." The place was called Crossness from the dead chief, but the crew
+stayed all the winter and loaded the ship with vines and grapes, and in
+the spring came back to Eric in Greenland.
+
+And now, after the first mishap, discovery became more serious--not to
+be undertaken but by strong and well-armed fleets. It was this that
+checked the expansion of these Arctic colonies; at their best they were
+too small to do more than hold their own against nature and the Skræling
+savages in their tiny settlements along the coast, where the ice-fields
+have long since pushed man slowly but surely into the sea, with his
+painfully won patches of hay and corn and pasturage.
+
+But the colonists would never say die till they were utterly worn out;
+now they only roused themselves to conquer the new lands they had found,
+and found disputed.
+
+First a third son of Red Eric, Thorstein, bethought him to go to Vinland
+for his brother Thorwald's body. He put to sea and lost all sight of
+land, beating about in the ocean the whole summer, till he came back to
+Greenland in the first week of winter. (1004-6.)
+
+He was followed by the greatest of the Vinland sailors, Thorfinn
+Karlsefne, who really took in hand the founding of a new settlement over
+the Western Sea. He came from Norway to Iceland soon after Thorwald's
+death in 1004, passed on to Greenland about 1005, "when, as before, much
+was talked about a Vinland voyage," and in 1006 made ready to start with
+one hundred and sixty men and five women, in three ships. They had with
+them all kinds of cattle, meaning to settle in the land if they could,
+and they made an agreement, Karlsefne and his people, that each should
+have an equal share in the gain. Leif lent them his houses in Vinland,
+"for he would not give them outright," and they sailed first to
+Helluland (Labrador), where they found a quantity of foxes, then to
+Markland, well-stocked with forest animals, then to an island at the
+mouth of a fiord, unknown before, covered with eyder ducks. They called
+the new discoveries Stream Island and Stream Fiord, from the current
+that here ran out into the sea, and sent off a party of eight men, in
+search of Vinland, in a stern boat. This was driven by westerly gales
+back to Iceland, but Thorfinn, with the rest, sailed south till he came
+to Leif Ericson's "river that fell into the sea from a lake, with
+islands lying off the mouth of the stream, low grounds covered with
+wheat growing wild, and rising grounds clad with vines."
+
+Here they settled, re-named the country "Hope, from the good hope they
+had of it," and began to fell the wood, to pasture their cattle in the
+upland, and to gather the grapes.
+
+After the first winter the Skrælings came upon them, at first to traffic
+with furs and sables against milk and dairy produce, and then to fight;
+for as neither understood the other, and the natives tried to force
+their way into Thorfinn's houses, and to get hold of his men's weapons,
+a quarrel was bound to come.
+
+Fearing this, Karlsefne put a fence round the settlement and made all
+ready for battle, "and at this very time was a child born to him in the
+village, called Snorre, of Gudrid his wife, the widow of Thorstein
+Eric-son, whom he had brought with him." Then the Esquimaux came down
+upon them, "many more than before, and there was a battle, and
+Thorfinn's men won the day and saved the cattle," and their enemies fled
+into the forest.
+
+Thorfinn stayed all the winter, but towards spring he grew tired of his
+enterprise, and returned to Greenland, "taking much goods," vines, wood
+for timber, and skin-wares, and so came back to Eric's Fiord in the
+summer of 1008.
+
+Thus ends the story of the last serious effort to colonise Vinland, and
+the Saga, while giving no definite cause for this failure upon failure,
+seems to show that even the trifling annoyance of the Skrælings was
+enough to turn the scale. Natural difficulties were so immense, men were
+so few, that a pigmy enemy had all the power of the last straw in a
+load, the odd man in a council. The actual resistance of American
+natives to European colonists was never very serious in any part of the
+continent, but the distance from the starting-point and the
+difficulties of life in the new country were able, even in the time of
+Raleigh and De Soto, to keep in check men who far more readily founded
+and kept up European empires in the Indian seas.
+
+So now, though on Thorfinn's return the "talk began to turn again upon a
+Vinland voyage, as both gainful and honourable," and a daughter of Red
+Eric, named Freydis, talked men over--especially two brothers, Helge and
+Finnboge--to a fresh attempt in the country where all the House of Eric
+had tried and failed; though Leif lent his booths as before, and sixty
+able-bodied men, besides women, were found willing to go, the colony
+could never be firmly planted. Freydis and her allies sailed in 1011,
+reached the settlement, which was now for the third time recolonised,
+and wintered there;--but jealousies soon broke up the camp, Helge and
+Finnboge were murdered with all their followers, and the rest came back
+in 1013 to Greenland, "where Thorfinn Karlsefne was just ready for
+sailing back to Norway, and it was common talk that never did a richer
+ship leave Eric's Fiord than that which he steered." It was that same
+Karlsefne who gave the fullest account of all his travels, concludes the
+Saga, but whether Thorfinn ever returned to Vinland, whether there were
+any more attempts to settle at Leif's Booths or elsewhere, whether the
+account we have of these voyages is really an Eric Saga, only telling
+the deeds of Red Eric and his House--for after Bjarni, almost every
+Vinland leader is of this family--we cannot tell. We can only fancy that
+all these suggestions are probable, by the side of the few additional
+facts known to the Norse Skalds or Bards. The first of these is, that in
+983-4, Are Marson of Reykianes in Iceland was driven by storms far West
+to White Man's Land, where he was followed by Bjarni Asbrandson in 999,
+and by Gudleif Gudlangson in 1029. This was the tale of his friend Rafn,
+"the Limerick trader," and of Are Frode, his great-great-grandson, who
+called the unknown land Great Ireland.[17] True or untrue, in whatever
+way, this would be a later discovery than those of Eric and his sons, if
+the news of it did not come into Iceland or Norway till after Thorfinn
+Karlsefne's voyage, as is generally supposed. Again, the length of the
+voyage is a difficulty, and the whole matter has a doubtful look--an
+attempt to start a rival to the Eric Saga, by a far more brilliant
+success a few years earlier.
+
+[Footnote 17: By some supposed to be S. Carolina, by others the
+Canaries.]
+
+We seem to be on more certain ground in our next and last chapter of
+Viking exploration in the north-west, in the fragmentary notices of
+Greenland and Vinland voyages to the middle of the fourteenth century,
+and in the fairly clear and continuous account of the two Greenland
+settlements of the western and the eastern Bays.
+
+We hear, for instance, of Bishop Eric going over from Eric's Fiord to
+Vinland in 1121; of clergy from the Eastern Bay diocese of Gardar
+sailing to lands in the West, far north of Vinland, in 1266; of the two
+Helgasons discovering a country west of Iceland in 1285; of a voyage
+from Greenland to Markland in 1347 by a crew of seventeen men, recorded
+in 1354.
+
+Unless these are pure fabrications, they would seem to prove something
+of constant intercourse between the mother and daughter colonies of
+north-west Europe and north-east America, and something of a permanent
+Christian settlement of Northmen in the New Continent is made probable
+by assuming such intercourse. Between 981-1000, both Iceland and
+Greenland had become "Catholic in name and Christian in surname"; in
+1126 the line of Bishops of Gardar begins with Arnold, and the clergy
+would hardly have ventured on the Vinland voyage to convert Skrælings in
+an almost deserted country.
+
+The later story of the Greenland colonies, interesting as it is, and
+traceable to the year 1418, is not part of the expansion but of the
+contraction of Europe and Christendom. And the voyages of the Zeni in
+1380-95 to Greenland and the Western islands Estotiland and Drogeo,
+belong to another part; they are the last achievements of mediæval
+discovery before Henry of Portugal begins his work, and form the natural
+end of an introduction to that work.
+
+But it is curious to notice that just as the ice and the Esquimaux
+between them were bringing to an end the last traces of Norse settlement
+in the Arctic Continent, and just as all intercourse between Vinland,
+Greenland, Iceland, and Norway entirely ceases--at any rate to record
+itself--the Portuguese sailors, taking up the work of Eric and Leif and
+Thorfinn, on another side, were rounding Cape Verde and nearing the
+southern point of Africa, and so providing for the mind of Columbus
+suggestions which resulted in the lasting discovery of the world that
+the Vikings had sighted and colonised, but were not able to hold.
+
+The Venetian, Welsh, and Arabic claims to have followed the Norsemen in
+visits to America earlier than the voyage of 1492, belong rather to the
+minute history of geographical controversy. It is a fairly certain fact
+that the north-west line of Scandinavian migration reached about A.D.
+1000 to Cape Cod and the coasts of Labrador. It is equally certain that
+on this side the Norsemen never made any further advance, lasting or
+recorded. Against all other mediæval discoveries of a Western Continent,
+one only verdict can stand:--Not Proven.
+
+The other lines of Northern advance, though marked by equal daring and
+far greater military exploits, have less of original discovery. There
+was fighting in plenty, the giving and taking of hard knocks with every
+nation from Archangel to Cordova and from Limerick to Constantinople;
+and the Vikings, as they reached fresh ground, re-named most of the
+capes and coasts, the rivers and islands and countries of Europe, of
+North Africa, of Western Asia. Iberia became "Spanland"; Gallicia,
+"Jacobsland"[18]; Gallia, "Frankland"; Britannia, "England," "Scotland,"
+"Bretland"; Hibernia, "Irland"; Islam, outside "Spanland," passed into
+"Serkland" or Saracenland. Greece was "Grikland"; Russia, "Gardariki";
+the Pillars of Hercules, the Straits of Gibraltar, were "Norva's Sound,"
+which later days derived from the first Northman who passed through
+them. The city of Constantine was the Great Town--"Miklagard"; Novgorod
+was "Holmgard," the town of all others that most touched and influenced
+the earlier, the Viking age, of Northern expansion. For was it not their
+own proudest and strongest city-state, and "Who can stand before God, or
+the Great Novgorod?" except the men who had built it, and would rush to
+sack it if it turned against them?
+
+[Footnote 18: From St. James of Compostella.]
+
+But all this was only the passing of a more active race over ground
+which had once been well known to Rome and to Christendom, even if much
+of this was now being forgotten. It was only in upland Russia and in the
+farthest North that the Norsemen sensibly enlarged the Western world to
+east or north-east, as they did through their Iceland settlements on the
+north-west.
+
+On the south and south-west no Vikings or Royalist followers of Vikings,
+like Sigurd the Crusader, sailed the seas beyond Norva's Sound and
+Serkland,[19] and as pilgrims, traders, travellers, and conquerors in
+the Mediterranean, their work was of course not one of exploration. They
+bore a foremost share in breaking down the Moslem incubus on southern
+Europe; they visited the Holy sites
+
+    "When sacred Hierosolyma they'd relievèd
+    And fed their eyes on Jordan's holy flood
+    Which the dear body of Lord God had lavèd";[20]
+
+they fought as Varangian body-guards in the armies of the great
+Byzantines, Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes, Basil II. or Maniakes;
+but in all this they discovered for themselves rather than for Europe.
+
+[Footnote 19: Unless White Man's Land and Great Ireland are the
+Canaries. See above, p. 63.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Camoëns, _Lusiads_, (Barton's trans.).]
+
+But Russia, that is, Old Russia round Novgorod and Kiev, the White Sea,
+the North Cape and Finland coasts, as well as the more outlying parts of
+Scotland and Ireland, were first clearly known to Europe through the
+Northmen. The same race did much to open up the modern Lithuania and
+Prussia, and the conversion of the whole of Scandinavia, mother country
+and colonies alike, in the tenth and eleventh centuries added our
+Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, with all the Viking settlements, to the
+civilised world and church of Rome.
+
+First, on the eastern side, it was in 862 that the Russians invited help
+from their less dreaded neighbours around Upsala against their more
+vexatious neighbours around Kiev, and in September of the same year
+Ruric arrived at Novgorod and founded the Mediæval Kingdom of Russia,
+which in the tenth century under Oleg, Igor, and Vladimir was first the
+plunderer, then the open enemy, and finally the ally in faith and in
+arms of the Byzantine Empire.
+
+All through this time and afterwards, till the time of the Tartar
+deluge, the intercourse of Swedes, Danes, and Northmen with Gardariki
+was constant and close, and not least in the time of the Vinland
+voyages, when Vladimir and Jaroslav reigned at Novgorod, and the two
+Olafs, the son of Trygve and the Saint, found refuge at their court
+before and after their hard rule in Norway.
+
+Olaf Trygveson's uncle had grown old in exile at Novgorod when young
+Olaf and his mother fled from Norway to join him there and were captured
+by Vikings in the Baltic and kept six years in the Gulf of Riga before
+they got to Holmgard (972).
+
+In 1019 Ingigerd of Sweden was married to Jaroslav; ten years later St.
+Olaf was driven from Norway by revolt, and flying into Russia, was
+offered a Kingdom called Volgaria--the modern Casan, whose old
+metropolis of Vulghar was known to the Arab travellers of the ninth
+century, and whose ruins can still be seen. Olaf hesitated between this
+and a pilgrim's death in Jerusalem and at last preferred to fight his
+way back to Norway.
+
+The next King of the Norsemen, Magnus the Good, came from Novgorod by
+Ladoga to Trondhjem, when Olaf's son Harold Hardrada fled back to his
+father's refuge, to the court of Jaroslav; while Magnus had been in
+exile, men had asked news of him from all the merchants that traded to
+Novgorod.
+
+Last of these earlier kings, Harold Hardrada, during all the time of his
+wild romance in East and South, before he went to Miklagard, and after
+his flight, and all the time of his service in the Varangian Guard of
+the Empress Zoe, made Novgorod his home. His pilgrim relics from Holy
+Land and his war spoils from Serkland--Africa and Sicily--were all sent
+back to Jaroslav's care till their master could come and claim them, and
+when he came at last, flying from Byzantine vengeance across the Black
+Sea into the Sea of Azov and "all round the Eastern Realm" of Kiev, he
+found his wealth untouched and Princess Elizabeth ready to be his wife
+and to help him with Russian men and money to win back Norway and to die
+at Stamford Bridge for the Crown of England (1066).
+
+Harold is the type of all Vikings, of the Norse race in its greatest,
+most restless energy. William the Conqueror, or Cnut the Great, or
+Robert Guiscard, or Roger of Sicily, are all greater and stronger men,
+but there is no "ganger," no rover, like the man who in fifty years,
+after fighting in well-nigh every land of Christians or of the
+neighbours and enemies of Christendom, yet hoped for time to sail off to
+the new-found countries and so fulfil his oath and promise to perfect a
+life of unmatched adventure by unmatched discovery. He had fought with
+wild beasts in the Arena of Constantinople; he had bathed in the Jordan
+and cleared the Syrian roads of robbers; he had stormed eighty castles
+in Africa; he had succoured the Icelanders in famine and lived as a
+prince in Russia and Northumberland; by his own songs he boasts that he
+had sailed all round Europe; but he fell, the prototype of sea-kings
+like Drake or Magellan, without one discovery. Men of his own nation and
+time had been before him everywhere, but he united in himself the work
+and adventures, the conquests and discoveries of many. He was the
+incarnation of Northern spirit, and it was through the lives and records
+of such as he that Europe became filled with that new energy of thought
+and action, that new life and knowledge, which was the ground and
+impulse of the movement led by Henry the Navigator, by Columbus, and the
+Cabots.
+
+Harold's wars kept him from becoming a great explorer, but Norse
+captains who took service under peaceful kings did something of what he
+aimed at doing.
+
+We must retrace our steps to the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan under
+King Alfred about the year 890, about the time when a Norse King, Harold
+Fair-hair, was first seen in the Scotch and Irish seas. Their discovery
+of the White Sea, the North Cape, and the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland
+was followed up by many Norsemen, such as Thorer Hund under St. Olaf, in
+the next one hundred and fifty years,[21] but Ohthere's voyage was the
+first and chief of these adventures both in motive and result.
+
+[Footnote 21: And a certain number of Viking sailors seem to have
+preceded Ohthere on his voyage to the Dwina.]
+
+"He told his lord King Alfred that he dwelt northmost of all Northmen on
+the land by the Western Sea and he wished to find how far the land lay
+right north, or whether any man dwelt north of the waste. So he went
+right north near the land;--for three days he left the waste land on the
+right and the wide sea on the left, as far as the whale hunters ever
+go"; and still he kept north three days more (to the North Cape of
+Europe).
+
+"Then the land bent right east, and with a west wind he sailed four days
+till the land bent south, and he sailed by it five days more to a great
+river--the Dwina--that lay up into the land, and where beyond the river
+it was all inhabited"--the modern country of Perm and Archangel.
+
+Here he trafficked with the people, the first he had met, except the
+Finn hunters, since leaving his fiord. Besides his wish to see the
+country, he was looking for walrus-ivory and hides.
+
+The Finns and Biarma-men (men of Archangel), it seemed to him, spoke
+nearly the same language, but between his home and this Biarmaland no
+human being lived in any fixed dwelling, and all the Northman's land was
+long and narrow and thinly peopled, decreasing in breadth as it
+stretched northward, from sixty to three days' journey.
+
+Again Alfred told how Ohthere, sailing south for a month from his house,
+having _Ireland_ on his right and coasting Norway all the time on his
+left, came to Jutland, "where a great sea runs up into the land, so vast
+that no man can see across it," whence in five days more he reached the
+coast, "from which the English came to Britain."
+
+Wulfstan, in the service of the same king, told him how he sailed in
+seven days from Sleswick to Truso and the Vistula, having Wendland (or
+Pomerania and Prussia) on his right all the way. He described "Witland
+near the Vistula and Estland and Wendland and Estmere and the Ilfing
+running from the Truso lake into Eastmere," but neither the king nor his
+captains knew enough to contradict the old idea, found in Ptolemy and
+Strabo, of Scandinavia as one vast island.
+
+Thus it was for the satisfaction of their Saxon Lord that Wulfstan and
+Ohthere, by their voyages along the coasts of Norway and Lapland, of
+Pomerania and Prussia, round the White Sea and the Gulf of Riga and
+southern Finland, added a more coherent view of north-east Europe, and
+specially of the Baltic Gulf, to Western geography; but these Norse
+discoveries, though in the service of an English king, were scarcely
+used save by Norsemen, and they must partly go to the credit of Vikings,
+as well as of Alfred the Great. Thus in 965 King Harold Grayskin of
+Norway "went and fought with the folk on the banks of the Dwina," and
+plundered them, and in 1026 Thorer Hund joined himself to a fleet sent
+by St. Olaf to the White Sea, pillaged the temple of the idol Jomala,
+and destroyed his countrymen by treachery on their way home. Where two
+expeditions are recorded they may well stand for twenty unknown and
+uneventful ones, and the same must be equally granted as to the gradual
+advance of knowledge through the unceasing attacks of the Norse kings
+and pirates on the lands to the south of the Baltic, where lived the
+Wends.
+
+Thus on the west and east, north-west and north-east, the Northmen could
+and did make a definite advance into the unknown; even the south-west
+lines of Northern invasion and settlement, though they hardly yield any
+general results to discovery, certainly led to a more thorough inclusion
+of every part of the British isles in the civilised West, through the
+Viking earldoms in Caithness, in the Orkneys and the Shetlands, in Man
+and the Hebrides, and on the coast of Ireland, where the Ostman colonies
+grew into kingdoms. From about 840, when the first of these settlements
+was fairly and permanently started, to the eleventh century, when a
+series of great defeats,--by Brian Boru at Clontarf in 1014, by Godwine
+and Harold in England from 1042 to 1066, and by the Norman and Scottish
+kings in the next generation,--practically destroyed the Norse dominion
+outside the Orkneys,--for those two hundred years, Danes and Northmen
+not only pillaged and colonised, but ruled and reorganised a good half
+of the British isles.
+
+By the time of Alfred the Viking principalities were scattered up and
+down the northern and western coasts of the greater of our two islands,
+and were fringing three sides of the lesser. About A.D. 900 the pioneer
+of the Norse kings, Harold Fair-hair, pursued his traitors, first to
+Shetlands and Orkneys, then to Caithness, the Hebrides, and Man. His son
+Eric, who followed him, ranged the Northern seas from Archangel to
+Bordeaux, and so Hakon the Good in 936 and other Norse princes in 946,
+961, 965, above all, the two great Kings Olaf in 985-9 and 1009-14,
+fought and triumphed through most of the world as known to the Northmen.
+Thus, Frankland, England, Ireland, Scotland were brought into a closer
+unity through the common danger, while as the sea-kings founded settled
+states, and these grew by alliance, first with one another and then with
+their older Christian victims, as the Norse kingdoms themselves became
+parts of Latin Christendom, after Latin Christendom had itself been
+revived and re-awakened by their attacks, the full value of the time of
+trial came out on both sides, to conquered and to conquerors.
+
+For the effects--formative, invigorative, provocative,--of the Northern
+invasions had a most direct bearing on the expansion that was to come in
+the next age even for those staid and sober Western countries, England
+and France and Italy, which had long passed through their time of
+migration, and where the Vikings could not, as in the far north-east and
+north-west, extend the area of civilisation or geographical knowledge.
+
+Lastly, the new start made by England in exploration, and trade, and
+even in pilgrimage, is plainly the result--in action and reaction--of
+the Norse and Danish attacks, waking up the old spirit of a kindred
+race, of elder cousins that had sunk into lethargy and forgotten their
+seamanship.
+
+But from the Peace of Wedmore (878) Alfred first of all began to build
+an English navy able to meet and chase and run down the Viking keels;
+then established a yearly pilgrimage and alms-giving at the Threshold of
+the Apostles in Rome; then sent out various captains in his service to
+explore as much of the world as was practicable for his new description
+of Europe. His crowning effort in religious extension was in 883, when
+Sigehelm and Athelstan bore Alfred's gifts and letters to Jerusalem and
+to India, to the Christians of San Thomé; the corresponding triumph of
+the King's scientific exploration, the discoveries in the White Sea and
+the Baltic, seem to have happened nearer the end of the reign, somewhere
+before 895.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE CRUSADES AND LAND TRAVEL.
+
+CIRCA 1100-1300.
+
+
+The pilgrims were the pioneers of the growth of Europe and of
+Christendom until Charlemagne, in one sense, in another and a broader
+sense until the Crusades.
+
+Their original work, as far as it can be called original at all, was
+entirely overshadowed by the Vikings, who made real discoveries of the
+first importance in hunting for new worlds to conquer; but when first
+the Viking rovers themselves, and then the Northmen, settled in the
+colonies and the old home, took up Christianity as the Arabs had taken
+up Islam, the pilgrim spirit was translated, as it were, into new and
+more powerful forms. Through the conversion of Hungary and of
+Scandinavia,[22]--Europe, Christian Europe, was compacted together in a
+stronger Empire than that of Constantine or of Charlemagne--a spiritual
+federation, not a political unity--one and undivided not in visible
+subordination, but in a common zeal for a common faith. This was the
+state of the Latin world, and in a measure of the Greek and Russian
+world as well, by the middle of the eleventh century, when the Byzantine
+Emperors had broken the strength of the Eastern Caliphate, and recovered
+most of the realm of Heraclius; when the Roman Papacy under Leo IX.,
+Hildebrand, and Urban began its political stage, aiming, and in great
+part successfully aiming, at an Imperial Federation of Europe under
+religion; when on every side, in Spain, in France, in England, in
+Germany, and in Italy, the nations that had been slowly built into that
+_Domus Dei_ were filled with fresh life and purpose from the Norsemen,
+who, as pirates, or conquerors, or brothers, had settled among them. The
+long crusade that had gone on for four hundred years in Spain and in
+southern Italy and in the Levant, which had raged round the islands of
+the Mediterranean, or the passes of the Alps and Pyrenees, or the banks
+of the Loire and the Tiber,--was now, on the eve of the first Syrian
+Crusade of 1096, rapidly tending to decisive victory. Toledo was won
+back in 1084; the Norman dominion in the Two Sicilies had already taken
+the place of a weak and halting Christian defence against Arab emirs;
+pilgrims were going in thousands where there had been tens or units by
+the reopened land route through Hungary; only in the far East the first
+appearance of the Turks as Moslem champions,[23] threatened an ebb of
+the tide. Christendom had seen a wonderful expansion of the Heathen
+North; now that it had won the Northmen to itself, it was ready to
+imitate their example. The deliberate purpose of the Popes only gave
+direction to the universal feeling of restless and abundant energy
+longing for wider action. But it was not the crusading movement itself
+which brought so much new light, so much new knowledge of the world, to
+Europe, as the _results_ of that impulse in trade, in travel, and in
+colonisation.
+
+[Footnote 22: As completed about A.D. 1000-1040.]
+
+[Footnote 23: As in 1071, when they crushed Romans and the Byzantines in
+the battle of Manzikert.]
+
+[Illustration: THE TURIN MAP OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+(1) From the eleventh century, from the beginning of this period, all
+the greater pilgrims, Sæwulf the English-merchant, King Sigurd of
+Norway, Abbot Daniel of Kiev, and their followers, have something more
+in view than piety; they have a general interest in travel; some of them
+a special interest in trade; most of them go to fight as well as to
+pray.
+
+(2) But as the warlike spirit of the Church Militant seems to grow
+tired, and its efforts at founding new kingdoms--in Antioch, in
+Jerusalem, in Cyprus, in Byzantium--more and more fruitless, the direct
+expansion of European knowledge, begins in scientific travel. Vinland
+and Greenland and the White Sea and the other Norse discoveries were
+discoveries made by a great race for itself; unconnected as they were
+with the main lines of trade or with religious sentiment, they were
+unrealised by the general consciousness of the West. A full account of
+the Norse voyages to America was lying at the Vatican when Columbus was
+searching for proofs of land within reach,--of India, as he expected, in
+the place where he found an unknown continent and a new world. But no
+one knew of these; even the Greenland colony had been lost and
+forgotten in the fifteenth century; in 1553 the English sailors reached
+the land of Archangel without a suspicion that Ohthere or Thorer Hund
+had been there six hundred years before; Russia from the thirteenth to
+the sixteenth centuries was almost out of sight and mind under the
+Tartar and Moslem rule; but the missionaries and merchants and
+travellers who followed the crusading armies to the Euphrates, and crept
+along the caravan routes to Ceylon and the China Sea, added Further and
+Central Asia--"Thesauri Arabum et divitis Indiæ"--to the knowledge of
+Christendom.
+
+And as this knowledge was bound up with gain; as the Polos and their
+companions had really opened to the knowledge of the West those great
+prizes of material wealth which even the Rome of Trajan had never fully
+grasped, and which had been shared between Arabs and natives without a
+rival for so long; it was not likely to be easily forgotten. From that
+time, at the end of the thirteenth century, to the success of the
+Portuguese on another road, at the end of the fifteenth, European
+interest was fairly engaged in pressing in upon the old land-routes and
+getting an ever larger share of their profits.
+
+(3) There was another side of the same problem, a still brighter hope
+for men who could dare to try it. By finding a sea-path to the Indian
+store-house, mariners like the Venetians and Genoese, or their Spanish
+pupils, might cut into the treasuries of the world at their very source,
+found a trade-empire for their country, and gain the sole command of
+heaven on earth, of the true terrestrial paradise.
+
+Then masters of the wealth of the East and of the fighting power of the
+West, the Christian nations might crush their old enemy, Islam, between
+two weights, hammer and anvil; might fairly strike for the rule of the
+entire habitable globe.
+
+It was with thoughts of this kind, vaguely inspired by the Crusades and
+their legacy of discovery from Bagdad to Cathay, that the Vivaldi left
+Genoa to find an ocean way round Africa in 1281-91, "with the hope of
+going to the parts of the Indies"; that Malocello reached the Canary
+Islands about 1270; and that volunteers went on the same quest nearly
+twenty times in the next four generations before their spasmodic efforts
+were organised and pressed on to achievement by Henry and his Portuguese
+(1412-1497).
+
+(4) Lastly, the renaissance of Europe in the crusading age was not only
+practical but spiritual. Science was at last touched and changed by the
+new life scarcely less than the art of war, or the social state of the
+towns, or the trade of the commercial republics. And geography and its
+kindred were not long in feeling some change, though it was very slowly
+realised and made useful. The first notice of the magnet in the West is
+of about 1180; the use of this by sailors is perhaps rightly dated from
+the thirteenth century and the discoveries of Amalphi.
+
+But to return. We must trace more definitely the preparation which has
+been generally described for the work of Prince Henry first in the
+pilgrim-warriors, and the travellers of the New Age, merchants or
+preachers or sight-seers, who follow out the Eastern land-routes; next
+in the seamen who begin to break the spell of the Western Ocean and to
+open up the high seas, the true high-roads of the world; lastly in the
+students who most of all, in their maps and globes and instruments and
+theories, are the trainers and masters and spiritual ancestors of the
+Hero of Discovery.
+
+The first of these classes supplied the matter, the attractions and
+rewards of the exploring movement; the others may be said to provide the
+form by which success was reached, genius in seamanship.
+
+And the one was as much needed as the other.
+
+Human reason did its work so well because of a reasonable hope; men
+crept round Africa in face of the Atlantic storms because of the golden
+East beyond.
+
+It was as we have seen the land travellers of the twelfth and thirteenth
+and fourteenth centuries who laid open that golden East to Europe, and
+added inspiring knowledge to a dream and a tradition. And of these land
+travellers the first worth notice are Sæwulf of Worcester, Adelard of
+Bath, and Daniel of Kiev, three of that host of peaceful pilgrims who
+followed the conquerors of the First Crusade (1096-9). All of these left
+their recollections and all of them are of the new time, in sharp
+contrast with the hordes of earlier pilgrims, even the most recent, like
+Bishop Ealdred of Worcester and York, who crowned William the Conqueror,
+or Sweyn Godwineson or Thorer Hund, whose visits are all mere visits of
+penitence. Every fresh conversion of the Northern nations brought a
+fresh stream of devotees to Italy and to Syria, a fresh revival of the
+fourth century habit of pilgrimage; but when mediæval Christendom had
+been formed, and religious passion was more steady and less unworldly,
+the discoverer and observer blends with the pilgrim in all the records
+left to us.
+
+Sæwulf was a layman and a trader, who went on a pilgrimage (1102), and
+became a monk at the instance of his confessor, Wulfstan, Bishop of
+Worcester. But though his narrative has been called an immense advance
+on all earlier guide-books, it ends with the Holy Land and does not
+touch even the outlying pilgrim sites, in Mesopotamia or Egypt, visited
+and described by Silvia or Fidelis.
+
+Starting some three years after the Latin capture of Jerusalem in 1099,
+the English traveller takes us up six different routes from Italy to
+Syria, evidence of the vast development of Mediterranean intercourse and
+of practical security against pirates, gained very largely since the
+second millennium began.
+
+His own way, by Monopoli, Corfu, Corinth, and Athens, took him to Rhodes
+"which once had the Idol called Colossus, one of the Seven Wonders of
+the World, but destroyed by the Persians, with nearly all the land of
+Roumania, on their way to Spain. These were the Colossians to whom St.
+Paul wrote."
+
+Thence to Myra in Lycia, "the port of the Adriatic as Constantinople is
+of the Ægean."
+
+Landing at Jaffa, after a sail of thirteen weeks, Sæwulf was soon among
+the wonders of Jerusalem, that had not grown less since Arculf's day. At
+the head of the Sepulchre Church was the famous Navel of the Earth,
+"now called Compas, which Christ measured with his own hands, working
+salvation in the midst, as say the Psalms." For the same legends were
+backed by the same texts as in the sixth or seventh century.
+
+Going down to the Jordan, "four leagues east of Jericho," Arabia was
+seen beyond "hateful to all who worship God, but having the Mount whence
+Elias was carried into Heaven in a chariot of fire."
+
+Eighteen days journey from the Jordan is Mount Sinai, by way of Hebron,
+where "Abraham's Holm Oak" was still standing, and where, as pilgrims
+said, he "sat and ate with God," but Sæwulf himself did not go outside
+Palestine, on this side. After travelling through Galilee and noting the
+House of Saint Archi-Triclin (Saint "Ruler-of-the-Feast"), at Cana, he
+made his way to Byzantium by sea, escaping the Saracen cruisers and
+weathering the storms that wrecked in the roads of Jaffa before his eyes
+some twenty of the pilgrim and merchant fleet then lying at anchor. But
+not only can we see from this how the religious and commercial traffic
+of the Mediterranean had been increased by the Crusades; the main lines
+of that traffic had been changed. Since the Moslem conquest, visitors
+had mostly come to Palestine through Egypt; the Christian conquest of
+Syria re-opened the direct sea route as the conversion of Hungary and
+north-east Europe had re-opened the direct land route one hundred years
+before (_c._ 1000-1100). The lines of the Danube valley and of the
+"Roman Sea" were both cleared, and the West again poured itself into the
+East as it had not done since Alexander's conquest, since the Oriental
+reaction had set in about the time of the Christian era, rising higher
+and higher into the full tide of the Persian and Arabian revivals of
+Asiatic Empire.
+
+Among the varied classes of pilgrim-crusaders in Sæwulf's day were
+student-devotees like Adelard and Daniel from the two extremes of
+Christendom, England and Russia, Bath and Kiev; northern sea-kings like
+Sigurd, or Robert of Normandy; even Jewish travellers, rabbis, or
+merchants like Benjamin of Tudela. All these, as following in the wake
+of the First Crusade, and for the most part stopping at the high-water
+mark of its advance, belong to the same group and time and impulse as
+Sæwulf himself, and are clearly marked off from the great thirteenth
+century travellers, who acted as pioneers of the Western Faith and
+Empire rather than as camp-followers of its armies.
+
+But except Abbot Daniel (_c._ 1106) and Rabbi Benjamin (_c._ 1160-73)
+who stand apart, none of our other pilgrim examples of twelfth century
+exploration have anything original or remarkable about them.
+
+Adelard or Athelard, the countryman of Sæwulf and Willibald, is still
+more the herald of Roger Bacon and of Neckam. He is a theorist far more
+than a traveller, and his journey through Egypt and Arabia (_c._
+1110-14) appears mainly as one of scientific interest. "He sought the
+causes of all things and the mysteries of Nature," and it was with "a
+rich spoil of letters," especially of Greek and Arab manuscripts, that
+he returned to England to translate into Latin one of the chief works of
+Saracen astronomy, the Kharizmian tables. We have already met with him
+in trying to follow the transmission of Greek and Indian geography or
+world-science through the Arabs to Europe and to Christendom.
+
+[Illustration: THE SPANISH-ARABIC MAP OF 1109. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+Abbot Daniel of Kiev in himself is a very ordinary and rather mendacious
+traveller, a harmless, devout pilgrim, as careless in all matters of
+fact as Antonine the Martyr. But, as representing the beginnings of
+Russian expansion, he is of almost unique interest and value. His tract
+upon the Holy Road is one of the first proofs of his people's interest
+in the world beyond their steppes, and of that nation's readiness and
+purpose to expand Christian civilisation in the East as the Franks,
+after breaking through the Western Moslems, were now doing. Mediæval
+Russia, Russia before the Tartars, after the Northmen, was now a very
+different thing from the "people fouler than dogs" of the Arab
+explorers. The House of Ruric had guided and organised a nation second
+to none in Europe, till it had fallen into the general lines of
+Christian development. Jury trial and justices in assize it had taken
+from the West; its church and faith and architecture, its manners and
+morals came to it from the court of the Roman Empire on the Bosphorus.
+Daniel and the other Russians, who passed through that Empire in the age
+of Nestor for trade or for religion, were the vanguard of a great
+national and race expansion that is now just beginning to "bestride the
+world."
+
+In 1022 and 1062 two monks of Kiev are recorded, out of a crowd of the
+unknown, as visitors to Syria, and about 1106, probably through the news
+of the Frankish conquest, Daniel left his native river, the Snow, in
+Little Russia, and passed through Byzantium and by way of the
+Archipelago and Cyprus to Jaffa and Jerusalem, describing roughly in
+versts or half-miles the whole distance and that of every stage.
+
+His tone is much like Sæwulf's and his mistakes are quite as bad, though
+he tells of "nothing but what was seen with these self-same eyes." The
+"Sea of Sodom exhales a burning and fetid breath that lays waste all the
+country, as with burning sulphur, for the torments of Hell lie under
+it." This, however, he did not see; Saracen brigands prevented him, and
+he learnt that "the very smell of the place would make one ill."
+
+His measurements of distance are all his own. Capernaum is "in the
+desert, not far from the Great Sea (Levant) and eight versts (four
+miles) from Cæsarea," half the distance given in the next chapter as
+between Acre and Haifa, and less than half the breadth of the Sea of
+Tiberias. The Jordan reminds Daniel of his own river, the Snow,
+especially in its sheets of stagnant water.
+
+Samaria, or "Sebastopol," he confuses with Nablous; Bethshan with
+Bashan; Lydda with Ramleh; Cæsarea Philippi with the greater Cæsarea on
+the coast. Not far from Capernaum and the Jordan is "another large river
+that comes out of the Lake of Gennesaret, and falls into the Sea of
+Tiberias, passing by a large _town_ called Decapolis." From Mt. Lebanon
+"six rivers flow east into the Lake of Gennesaret and six west towards
+great Antioch, so that this is called Mesopotamia, or the land between
+the rivers, and Abraham's Haran is between these rivers that feed the
+Lake of Gennesaret."
+
+Daniel has left us also an account of his visits to Mar Saba Convent in
+the Kedron gorge near the Dead Sea, to Damascus in the train of Prince
+Baldwin, and to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, to
+witness the miracle of the Holy Fire, noticed by Bernard the Wise, as a
+sort of counterpart to the wonder of Beth-Horon, also retold by Daniel
+"when the sun stood still while Joshua conquered King Og of Bashan."
+
+It is not in outlook nor in knowledge nor even in the actual ground
+traversed that these later pilgrims shew any advance on the chief of the
+earlier travellers; it is in the new life and movement, in the new hope
+they give us of greater things than these. This is the interest--to
+us--in King Sigurd of Norway (1107-11), a Crusader-Norseman in the new
+age that owed so much of its very life to the Northmen, but who is only
+to be noticed here as a possible type of the explorer-chief--possible,
+not actual--for his voyage added nothing definite to the knowledge or
+expansion of Christendom. His campaign in Jacob's Land or Gallicia, and
+his attack on Moslem Lisbon, some forty years before it became the head
+and heart of Portugal, like his exploits in the Balearics, shew us a
+point in the steady decline of western Islam, and so far may be called a
+preparation for Prince Henry's work, but properly as a chapter of
+Portuguese, not of general European, growth.
+
+There were many others like Sigurd,--Robert of Normandy, Godric the
+English pirate, who fought his way through the Saracen fleets with a
+spear-shaft for his banner, Edgar the Ætheling, grandson of Edmund
+Ironside, the Dartmouth fleet of 1147 which retook Lisbon,--but the
+Latin conquest of Syria has now brought us past the Crusades, in the
+narrower sense, to their results, in the exploration of the Further
+East.
+
+The first great name of this time, of our next main chapter of
+Preparation, is Benjamin of Tudela, but standing as he does well within
+the earlier age, when the primary interest was the Holy War itself, he
+is also the last of the Palestine travellers--of those Westerns whose
+real horizon was the sacred East of Syria. He is a little before the
+awakening of universal interest in the unknown world, for the Christian
+Northmen lost with the new definiteness of the new faith much of their
+old infinite unrest and fierce inquisitive love of wandering, and their
+spirit, though related to the whole Catholic West by the crusading
+movement, was not fully realised till the world had been explored and
+made known, till the men of Europe were at home in every country and on
+every sea.
+
+Benjamin, as a Jew and a rabbi, has the interest of a sectary, and his
+work was not of a kind that would readily win the attention of the
+Christian world. So the value of his travels was hidden till religious
+divisions had ceased to govern the direction of progress. He visited the
+Jewish communities from Navarre to Bagdad, and described those beyond
+from Bagdad to China, but he wrote for his own people and none but they
+seem to have cared about him. What he discovered (_c._ 1160-73) was for
+himself and for Judaism, and only his actual place in the twelfth
+century makes him a fore-runner of the Polos or of Prince Henry. We may
+see this from his hopeless strangeness and confusion in Rome, like a
+Frank in Pekin or Delhi. "The Church of St. Peter is on the site of the
+great palace of Julius Cæsar, near which are eighty Halls of the eighty
+Kings called Emperors from Tarquin to Pepin the father of Charles, who
+first took Spain from the Saracens.... In the outskirts of the city is
+the palace of Titus, who was deposed by three hundred senators for
+wasting three years over the siege of Jerusalem which he should have
+finished in two."
+
+And so on--with the "Hall of Galba, three miles round and having a
+window for each day in the year," with St. John Lateran and its Hebrew
+trophies, "two copper pillars from the temple of Solomon, that sweat at
+the anniversary of the burning of the Temple," and the "statues of
+Samson and of Absalom" in the same place. So with Sorrento, "built by
+Hadarezer when he fled before King David," with the old Roman tunnel
+between Naples and Pozzuoli, "built by Romulus who feared David and
+Joab," with Apulia, "which is from King Pul of Assyria"--in all this we
+have as it were Catholic mythology turned inside out, David put into
+Italy when the West put Trajan at the sources of the Nile. It was not
+likely that writing of this sort would be read in the society of the
+Popes and the Schoolmen, the friars and the crusaders, any more than the
+Buddhist records of missionary travel from China one thousand years
+before. The religious passion which had set the crusaders in motion,
+would keep Catholics as long as it might from the Jews, Turks, infidels,
+and heretics they conquered and among whom they settled.
+
+But with the final loss of Jerusalem by the Latins, and the overthrow of
+the Bagdad Caliphate by the Mongol Tartars (1258), the barrier of
+fanatic hatred was weakened, and Central Asia became an attraction to
+Christendom instead of a dim horror, without form and void, except for
+Huns and Turks and demons. The Papal court sent mission after mission to
+convert the Tartars, who were wavering, as men supposed, between Islam
+and the Church, and with the first missionaries to the House of Ghenghiz
+went the first Italian merchants who opened the court of the Great Khan
+to Venice and to Genoa.
+
+As early as 1243 an Englishman is noticed as living among the Western
+Horde, the conquerors of Russia; but official intercourse begins in 1246
+with John de Plano Carpini. This man, a Franciscan of Naples, started in
+1245 as the Legate of Pope Innocent IV. to the Tartars, took the
+northern overland route through Germany and Poland, reached Kiev, "the
+metropolis of Russia," through help of the Duke of Cracow, and at last
+appeared in the camp of Batou, on the Volga. Hence by the Sea of Aral,
+"of moderate size with many islands," to the court of Batou's brother,
+the Great Khan "Cuyuc" himself, where the Christian stranger found
+himself one of a crowd of four thousand envoys from every part of Asia
+(1246).
+
+After sixteen months Carpini made his way back by the same route, "over
+the plains" and through Kiev, to give at Rome the first genuine account
+of Tartary, in its widest sense, from the Dnieper to China (1247).
+
+The great rivers and lakes and mountains of Russia and Turkestan, the
+position and distribution of the land and its peoples, "even from the
+Caspian to the Northern Ocean, where men are said to have dogs' faces,"
+are now first described by an honest and clear-headed and keen-eyed
+observer, neither timid nor credulous.
+
+Carpini really begins the reliable western map of Further Asia. His
+personal knowledge did not reach China or India, but in his _Book of the
+Tartars_, Europe was told nearly the whole truth, and almost nothing but
+the truth, about the vast tract and the great races between the
+Carpathians and the Gobi Desert. In the same was included the first fair
+account of the manners and history of the "Mongols whom we call
+Tartars," and the simple truthfulness of the Friar stands out in all the
+allusions that make his work so human;--his interviews with the Tartar
+Chiefs and with brother-travellers, his dangers and difficulties from
+Lettish robbers and abandoned or guarded ferries, his passage of the
+Dnieper on the ice, his last three weeks on "trotting"[24] hacks over
+the steppes.
+
+[Footnote 24: "_Tartari fecerunt equos nostros trotare._"]
+
+We have gone a good way from Abbot Daniel, for in John de Plano Carpini
+Christian Europe has at last a real explorer, a real historian, a
+genuine man of science, in the service of the Church and of discovery.
+
+Carpini was followed after six years by William de Rubruquis, a Fleming
+sent by St. Louis of France on the same errand of conversion and
+discovery (1253), but by a different route, through the Black Sea, and
+Cherson, over the Don "at the Head of Azov, that divides Europe and
+Asia, as the Nile divides Asia and Africa," to the great camp on the
+Volga, "the greatest river I had ever seen, which comes from Great
+Bulgaria in the north and falls into a lake (the Caspian Sea), that
+would take four months to journey round." Higher in their course the Don
+and the Volga "are not more than ten days' journey apart, but diverge as
+they run south." The Caspian is "made out of the Volga and the rivers
+that flow into it from Persia." Thence through the Iron Gates of
+Derbend, between the Caspian and the Caucasus, "which Alexander made to
+shut the barbarians out of Persia." Helped by a Nestorian, who possessed
+influence at the Tartar Court, like so many of his Church, Rubruquis
+reached the "Alps" of the Altai country, where he found a small
+Nestorian lordship, governed like the Papal States, by a priest, who was
+at least one original of the great mediæval phantom--Prester John.
+
+Crossing the great steppes of eastern "Tartary," "like the rolling sea
+to look at," Rubruquis at last reached the Mongol headquarters at
+Caracorum, satisfied on the way that the Caspian had no northern
+outlet, as Strabo and Isidore had imagined. Thence he made his way home
+without much fresh result.
+
+[Illustration: THE PSALTER MAP OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. (SEE LIST
+OF MAPS)]
+
+Though Rubruquis is well called the most brilliant and literary of the
+mediæval travellers, his mission was fruitless, and the interest of his
+work lay rather in recording custom and myth--in sociology--than in
+adding anything definite to the geographical knowledge of the West. John
+de Plano had already been over the ground to Caracorum, and recorded all
+the main characteristics of the lands west of the Gobi Desert. The
+further advance, east to China, south to India, was yet to come.
+
+But while Rubruquis was still among the Tartars, Nicolo and Matteo Polo,
+the uncles of the more famous Marco, were trading (1255-65) to the
+Crimea and the districts of southern Russia that were now under the
+Western Horde,--and soon after, following the caravans to Bokhara, they
+were drawn on to the court of Kublai Khan, then somewhere near the wall
+of China. After a most friendly reception they were sent back to Europe
+with presents and a letter to Pope Clement IV., offering a welcome and
+maintenance to Christian teachers. Kublai "had often questioned the
+Polos of the Western lands," and now he asked for one hundred "Latins,
+to shew him the Christian faith, for Christ he held to be the only God."
+Furnished with the imperial passport of the Golden Tablet, our merchants
+made their way back to Acre in April, 1269.
+
+They found the old pope dead, Gregory X. in his place, and he shewed a
+coolness in answering the Khan's requests, but in 1271 they set out on
+their second journey to the furthest East, taking with them two friar
+preachers and their nephew Marco, now nineteen years of age.
+
+In Armenia the friars took alarm at the troubled state of the nearer
+East and turned back, just as Augustine of Canterbury tried to find a
+way out of the mission to the English that Pope Gregory I. laid upon him
+in 597. For the Church it was perhaps as momentous a time now as then;
+the thirteenth century, if it had ended in the Christianising of the
+Mongol Empire, would have turned the Catholic victory of the fourth and
+sixth centuries in the West, the victory that had been worked out in the
+next seven hundred years to fuller and fuller realisation, into a world
+empire,--which did come at last for European civilisation, but not for
+Christendom.
+
+The Polos however kept on their way north-east for more than "one
+thousand days," three years and a half, till they stood in the presence
+of Kublai Khan; beyond Gobi and the Great Wall and the mountain barriers
+of China, in Cambaluc or Pekin, "princess encrowned of cities capital."
+
+Their journey was first through Armenia Lesser and Greater, then through
+Mosul (Nineveh) to Bagdad, where the last "Caliph and Pope of the
+Saracens" had been butchered by Holgalu and his Tartars, sewn in a sack
+and thrown into the Tigris by one account, walled up alive by another,
+in 1258. But though the stories in Marco's journal are a main interest
+of his work, as a summary and reflection of the science and history and
+general culture of the Christian world of his time, we must not here
+look outside his geography. And his first place-note of value is on the
+Caspian, "which containeth in circuit twenty-eight hundred miles and is
+like a lake, having no union with other seas and in which are many
+islands, cities, and castles." The extent of the Nestorian missions,
+"through all parts of India and to Cairo and Bagdad, and wherever
+Christians dwell," strikes him even now at the beginning of his
+travels--much more when he finds their churches on the Hoang Ho and the
+Yang-Tse-Kiang--declining indeed, but still living to witness to the
+part which that great heresy had played as an intermediary between the
+further and the nearer East--a part which history has never yet worked
+out. Entering Persia as traders, the Polos went naturally to Ormuz,
+already the great mart of Islam for the Indian trade, where Europeans
+really entered the third, and, to them, unknown belt of the world, after
+passing from a zone of known home-land through one of enemies' country,
+known and only known as such. Failing to take the sea route at Ormuz for
+China, as they had hoped, our Italians were obliged to strike back
+north-east, through Persia and the Pamir, the Kashgar district and the
+Gobi steppes, to Cathay and the pleasure domes of Kublai, visiting
+Caracorum and the Altai country on the way, by a turn due north. In 1275
+they were in Shang-tu, the Xanadu[25] of Coleridge--the summer capital
+of Kublai Khan--and not till 1292 did they get leave to turn their faces
+to the West once more.
+
+[Footnote 25:
+
+    In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
+    A stately pleasure-dome decree,
+    Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
+    Through caverns measureless to man,
+    Down to a sacred sea.
+
+COLERIDGE: _Kublai Khan_.]
+
+Here the Polos became what may be called consulting engineers to the
+Mongol Court; Marco was even made in 1277 a commissioner of the Imperial
+Council, and soon after sent upon government missions to Yunnan in
+extreme south-west China and to Yangchow city.
+
+The greater part of Marco's own memoirs is taken up with his account of
+the thirty-four provinces of the Tartar Empire that centred round the
+"six parts of Cathay and the nine parts of Mangi," the districts of
+northern and southern China as we know them,--an account of the roads,
+rivers, and towns, the trade, the Court and the Imperial Ports, the
+customs and manner of life among the subject peoples in that Empire,
+perhaps the largest ever known. Especially do the travellers dwell on
+the public roads from Pekin or Cambaluc through all the provinces, the
+ten thousand Royal inns upon the highways, the two hundred thousand
+horses kept for the public service, the wonderful speed of transit in
+the Great Khan's embassages, "so that they could go from Pekin to the
+wall of China in two days."
+
+But scarcely less is said about the great rivers--the arteries of
+Chinese commerce, even more than the caravan routes,--above all, the
+Yang-Tse-Kiang, "the greatest stream in the world, like an arm of the
+sea, flowing above one hundred days' journey from its source into the
+ocean, and into which flow countless others, making it so great that
+incredible quantities of merchandise are brought by this river. It
+flows," exclaims Marco, "through sixteen provinces, past the quays of
+two hundred cities, at one of which I saw at one time five thousand
+vessels, and there are other marts that have more."
+
+The breadth and depth and length and merchandise of the Pulisangan and
+the Caramaran are only less than the Kiang's; from the point where Marco
+crossed the second of these, there was not another bridge till it
+reached the ocean, hundreds of miles away, "by reason of its exceeding
+greatness."
+
+Lastly Pekin, the capital of the Empire, with Quinsai and the other
+provincial capitals of Mangi and Cathay, call out the unbounded
+admiration of the Polos as of every other Western traveller, from the
+Moslem Ibn Batuta to the Christian friars of the fourteenth century.
+
+Pekin, two days' journey from the ocean, the residence of the Court in
+December, January, and February, in the extreme north-east of Cathay,
+had been lately rebuilt in a "central square of twenty-four miles in
+compass, and twelve suburbs, three or four miles long, adjoining each of
+the twelve gates," where merchants and strangers lived, each nation with
+separate "burses" or store-houses, where they lodged. From this centre
+to the land of Gog and Magog and the champaign-land of Bargu, the Great
+Khan travelled every year in midsummer for the fresh air of the plateau
+country of central Asia, as well as for a better view of the great
+Russian and Bactrian sub-kingdoms of his House. The six months of spring
+and autumn were spent in slow progresses through central and southern
+China to Thibet on one side, and to Tonquin on the other. But greater
+even than Pekin, Quinsai, or Kansay, the City of Heaven, in southern
+China, though no longer the capital even of a separate Kingdom of Mangi,
+was the crowning work of Chinese civilisation. It surpassed the other
+cities of Kublai, as much as these overshadowed the Rome or Venice of
+the thirteenth century.
+
+"In the world there is not its like, for by common report it is one
+hundred miles in circuit, with a lake on one side and a river on the
+other, divided in many channels and upon these and the canals adjoining
+twelve thousand bridges of stone; there are ten market places, each half
+a mile square; great store-houses of stone, where the Indian merchants
+lay by their goods; palaces and gardens on both sides of the main
+street, which, like all the highways in Mangi, is paved with stone on
+each side, and in the midst full of gravel, with passages for the water,
+which keeps it always clean." Salt, silk, fruit, precious stones, and
+cloth of gold are the chief commodities; the paper money of the Great
+Khan is used everywhere; all the people, except a few Nestorians and
+Moslems, are "idolaters, so luxurious and so happy that a man would
+think himself in Paradise."
+
+It was only in recent years that Kublai, or his general, Baian, had
+captured Quinsai and driven out the King of Mangi with his seraglio and
+his friends. The exile till then had only thought of pleasure, of wine,
+women, and song, the "sweet meat which cost him the sour sauce ye have
+heard," on the approach of danger, had fled on board the ships he had
+prepared to "certain impregnable isles in the ocean," and if these
+impregnable islands may be identified with Zipangu or Japan, the
+conquerors pursued him even here. There is nothing more interesting in
+Polo's book than his story of the Mongol failure in the Eastern islands,
+fifteen hundred miles from the coast of Mangi, now first discovered to
+Christian knowledge.
+
+This country of Japan, "very great, the people white, of gentle manners,
+idolaters in religion, under a King of their own," was attacked by
+Kublai's fleet in 1264 for the gold they had, and had in such plenty
+that "the King's house, windows, and floors were covered with it, as
+churches here with lead, as was reported by merchants--but these were
+few and the King allowed no exportation of the gold."
+
+The expedition was as disastrous a failure as the old Athenian attack
+upon Sicily, and was not repeated, although fleets were sent by the
+Great Khan after this into the Southern Seas, which were supposed to
+have made a discovery of Papua, if not of the Australian Continent. "In
+this Sea of China, over against Mangi," Marco reported, from hearsay "of
+mariners and expert pilots, are 7440 islands, most of them inhabited,
+whereon grows no tree that yields not a pleasant smell--spices,
+lignum-aloes, and pepper, black and white." The ships of Zaitum (the
+great Chinese mart for Indian trade) knew this sea and its islands, "for
+they go every winter and return every summer, taking a year on the
+voyage, and all this though it is far from India and not subject to the
+Great Khan."
+
+But not only did Polo in these sections of his Guide Book or Memories of
+Travel, record the main features of a coast and ocean scarcely guessed
+at by Europeans, and flatly denied by Ptolemy and the main traditional
+school of Western geography. In his service under Kublai, and in his
+return by sea to Aden and Suez, he opened up the eight provinces of
+Thibet, the whole of south-east Asia from Canton to Bengal, and the
+great archipelago of further India.
+
+Four days' journey beyond the Yang-Tse-Kiang, Marco entered "the wide
+country of Thibet, vanquished and wasted by the Khan for the space of
+twenty days' journey, and become a wilderness wanting inhabitants, where
+wild beasts are excessively increased." Here he tells us of the Yak-oxen
+and great Thibetan dogs as great as asses, of the musk deer, and spices,
+"and salt lakes having beds of pearls," and of the cruel and bestial
+idolatry and social customs of the people.
+
+Still farther to the south-west, Commissioner Polo came to the Cinnamon
+river, called Brius, on the borders of the province of Caindu, to the
+porcelain-making districts of Carazan, governed by Kublai's son, and so
+to Bengal, "which borders upon India," and where Marco laughs at the
+tattoo customs of "flesh embroidery for the dyeing of fools' skins."
+
+Thence back to China, the richest and most famous country of all the
+East, where was "peace so absolute that shops could be left open full of
+wares all night and travellers and strangers could walk day and night
+through every part, untouched and fearing none."
+
+But the Polos wearied even of the Court favours and their celestial
+home; they longed to come back to earth, to Frankland and Christendom,
+where life was so rough, and poor, and struggling, but for whose sake
+they had come so far and braved so much. But the Khan was hurt at the
+least hint of their wishes, and it was only a fortunate chance that
+restored them to Europe. Twenty years after their outward start, they
+were dismissed for a time and under solemn promise of return, as the
+guides of an embassy in charge of a Mongol bride for a Persian Khan,
+living at Tabrez and related to Kublai himself. So, in 1292, they
+embarked for India at Zaitum, "one of the fairest ports in the world,
+where is so much pepper that what comes by Alexandria to the West is
+little to it, and, as it were, one of a hundred." Then striking across
+the Gulf of Cheinan, for fifteen hundred miles, and passing "infinite
+islands, with gold and much trade,"--a gulf "seeming in all like another
+world"--they reached Ziambar and, after another run of the same
+distance, Java, then supposed by mariners to be the greatest island in
+the world, "above three thousand miles round and under a king who pays
+tribute to none, the Khan himself not offering to subject it, because of
+the length and danger of the voyage."
+
+One hundred miles south-east the fleet touched at Java the Less "in
+compass about two thousand miles, with abundance of treasure and spices,
+ebony, and brazil, and so far to the south that the North Star cannot be
+seen, and none of the stars of the Great Bear." Here they were in great
+fear of "those brutish man eaters," with whom they traded for victuals
+and camphire and spices and precious stones, being forced to stay for
+five months by stress of weather--till they got away into the Bay of
+Bengal, the extreme point of European knowledge until this time, "where
+there are savages living in the deep sea islands with dogs' heads and
+teeth, as I was told, all naked, both men and women, and living the life
+of beasts (Andamans)."[26]
+
+[Footnote 26: Probably the Andamans.]
+
+Sailing hence a thousand miles to the west, adds Marco, is Ceylon, "the
+finest island in the world, 2400 miles in circuit, and once 3600, as is
+seen in old maps, but the north winds have made great part of it sea."
+
+Again west for sixty miles, to Malabar, "which is firm continent in
+India the Greater," and where the Polos re-entered as it were the
+horizon of Western knowledge, at the shrine of St. Thomas, the Apostle
+of India.
+
+Here we must leave the Venetians, with only a bare mention of their
+homeward route from Malabar by Murfili and the Valley of Diamonds, by
+Camari, where they had a glimpse of the Pole-Star once more, and by
+Guzerat and Cambay to Socotra, where Marco, in his stay, heard and wrote
+down the first news ever brought to Europe of the "great isle Magaster,"
+or Madagascar, and of Zensibar or Zanzibar.[27]
+
+[Footnote 27: This new knowledge had been really gained from the gradual
+spread of the Arab settlements down the south-east coast of Africa,
+during four centuries, from Guardafui, the Cape of spices, to the
+Channel of Mozambique.]
+
+Of Polo's account of Hindu customs,--self-immolation and especially
+Suttee, of Caste, of the Brahminical "thread with one hundred and four
+beads by which to pray"; of their etiquette in eating, drinking, birth,
+marriage, and death--only the simple fact can be noticed here, that the
+first serious and direct Christian account of India, as of China, is
+also among the most accurate and well judged, and that both in what he
+says and what he leaves unsaid, Messer Marco is a true Herodotus of the
+Middle Ages.
+
+But not only does his account discover for Europe the extreme east and
+south of Asia; in his last chapter he returns to the Tartars, and after
+adding a few words on the nomades of the central plains, gives us our
+first "Latin" account of Siberia, "where are found great white bears,
+black foxes, and sables; and where are great lakes, frozen except for a
+few months in the year, and crossed in sledges by the fur-traders."
+
+Beyond this the Obscure Land reaches to the furthest North, "near which
+is Russia, where for the most of winter the sun appears not, and the air
+is thick and dark as betimes in the morning with us, where the men are
+pale and squat and live like the beasts, and where on the East men come
+again to the Ocean Sea and the islands of the Falcons."
+
+The work of Marco Polo is the high-water mark of mediæval land travel;
+the extension of Christendom after him was mainly by the paths of the
+sea; the Roman missions to the Tartars and to Malabar, vigorously and
+stubbornly pressed as they were, ended in unrelieved collapse; only by
+the revolt and resurrection of the Russian kingdom did the European
+world permanently and markedly expand on the side of Asia. But a crowd
+of missionaries followed the first traders to Cathay and to Mangi--Friar
+Odoric, John de Monte Corvino, John de Cora; statesmen like Marignolli
+the Papal Legate, sight-seers like Mandeville followed these; Bishop
+Jordanus of Capua worked for years in Coulam near Cape Comorin (_c._
+1325-35); the martyrdom of four friars on April 1, 1322, at Tana, in
+India, became one of the great commemorations of the Latin Church; there
+seemed no cause why Christian missions which had won north and
+north-east Europe should not win central and eastern Asia, whose peoples
+seemed as indifferent, as agnostic, as our own Norse or English pagans.
+
+"The fame of the Latins," says Jordanus, about 1330--and he is borne out
+by Marino Sanuto--"is greater in India than among ourselves. Here our
+arrival is always looked for, and said to be predicted in their books.
+Once gain Egypt and launch a fleet even of two galleys on this sea and
+the battle is won." As Egypt could not be gained by arms, it was turned
+by seamanship. Before Polo returned from China, the coasting of Africa
+had begun, and Italian mariners were already in search of the longer way
+to the East.
+
+But there is no work of land travel after that of Messer Marco which
+really adds anything decisive to European knowledge before the fifteenth
+century; the advance of trade intercourse between India and the Italian
+Republics, the gradual liberation of Russia the use made of the caravan
+routes by some of the most active of the Western clergy, are the chief
+notes of the time between the Polos and Prince Henry; and the flimsy
+fabrications of Mandeville--"of all liars that type of the first
+magnitude"--would be fairly left without a word even in a minute history
+of discovery, if he had not, like Ktesias with Herodotus, won a hearing
+for himself and drawn men's minds away from the truth-telling original
+that he travestied, by the sheer force of impudence.
+
+The Indian travels of the Italian Nicolo Conti and the Russian merchant
+Athanasius Nikitin belong to a later time, to the age of the Portuguese
+voyages; they are not part of the preparation for our central subject,
+they are only a somewhat obscure parallel to that subject.
+
+For in the later Middle Ages the chief interest lies elsewhere. The
+expansion of Christendom in the fourteenth century, and still more in
+the fifteenth (Prince Henry's own), is the story of the ventures and the
+successes, not so much of landsmen, as of mariners.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MARITIME EXPLORATION.
+
+CIRCA 1250-1410.
+
+
+Italian, Catalan, French, and English sailors were the forerunners of
+the Portuguese in the fourteenth century, and the latter years of the
+thirteenth. And as in land travel, so in maritime, the republics of
+Italy, Amalphi, Pisa, Venice, and Genoa, were the leaders and examples
+of Europe. Just as the Italian Dante is the first great name in the new
+literatures of the West, so the Italian Dorias and Vivaldi and Malocelli
+are the first to take up again the old Greek and Phoenician enterprise
+in the ocean. Since Hanno of Carthage and Pharaoh Necho's Tyrians, there
+had been nothing in the nature of a serious trial to find a way round
+Africa, and even the knowledge of the Western or Fortunate Islands, so
+clear to Ptolemy and Strabo, had become dim. The Vikings and their
+crusader-followers had done nothing south of Gibraltar Straits.
+
+[Illustration: THE S.W., OR AFRICAN SECTION OF THE HEREFORD MAP. C.
+1275-1300. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+But while the Crusades were still dragging along a weary and hopeless
+warfare under St. Louis of France and Prince Edward of England,
+discovery began again in the Atlantic. In 1270 Lancelot Malocello found
+the Canaries; in 1281 or 1291 the Genoese galleys of Tedisio Doria and
+the Vivaldi, trying to "go by sea to the ports of India to trade there,"
+reached Gozora or Cape Non in Barbary, the southern Ultima Thule, and
+according to a later story "sailed the Sea of Ghinoia (Guinea) to a city
+of Æthiopia," where even legend lost sight of them, for in 1312 nothing
+more had been heard. From the frequent and emphatic references to this
+attempt in the literature of the later Middle Ages, it is clear that the
+daring Genoese drew upon themselves the attention of the learned and
+mercantile worlds, as much as one would naturally expect. For these men
+are the pioneers of Christian explorations in the southern world--the
+precursors of all the ocean voyages that led to the discoveries of
+Prince Henry, Da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan,--the first who directly
+challenged the disheartening theories of geographers, such as Ptolemy,
+the inaction and traditionalism of the Arabs, and the elaborate
+falsities of story tellers, who, in the absence of real knowledge, had a
+grand opening for terrible fairy tales.
+
+The first age, if so it may be called, of South Atlantic and African
+voyages was purely Italian; the second was chiefly marked by the efforts
+of the Spanish States to equip fleets and send out explorers under
+Genoese captains. In 1317 the Genoese Emmanuel Pessanha became Admiral
+of Portugal; in 1341 three ships manned by Portuguese and "other
+Spaniards" with some Italians put out from Lisbon in search of
+Malocello's "Rediscovered" islands, granted by the Pope to Don Luis of
+Spain in a Bull of November 15, 1334, and now described, from the
+original letters of Florentine merchants and partners in the venture of
+1341, by Boccaccio. "Land was found on the fifth day after leaving the
+Tagus" (July 1); the fleet stayed till November, and then brought back
+four natives and products of the islands. The chief pilot thought these
+were near nine hundred miles from Seville, and we may fully suppose that
+the archipelago of thirteen, now first explored and described,
+represents the Fortunate Islands of Greek geography, the Canaries of
+modern maps, and that the five chief islands with their naked but not
+quite savage people, with excellent wood houses, and flocks of goats,
+palms, and figs, gardens and corn patches, rocky mountains and pine
+forests, were our Ferro, Palma, Gomera, Grand Canary, and Teneriffe. The
+last they took to be thirty thousand feet high, with its white scarped
+sides looking like a fortress, but terrified at signs of enchantment
+they did not dare to land, and returned to Spain, leaving the Islands of
+the Rediscovered to be visited as a convenient slave depot by merchants
+and pirates from the Peninsula till the Norman Conquest of Béthencourt
+in 1402.
+
+The voyage of 1341 gained much by attempting little; the Catalan voyage
+of 1346, which followed close upon it, was something of a return to the
+wilder and larger schemes of the first Genoese. On August 10, 1346,
+Jayme Ferrer left Majorca "to go to the River of Gold," but of the said
+galley, says the Catalan map of 1375, no news has since been heard. On
+the same map, however, the explorers' boat is sketched off the "Cape
+Finisterre of west Africa," and there is, after all, some ground for
+supposing this to be nothing more than a mercantile venture to the Gold
+Coast of Guinea, which was becoming known to the traders of Nismes,
+Marseilles, and the Christian Mediterranean by the caravan traffic
+across the Sahara. Even Prince Henry began in the same way; Guinea was
+his half-way house for India.
+
+About the same date (_c._ 1350) as the Catalan voyage is the Book of the
+Spanish Friar, "of the voyage south to the River of Gold," which gives a
+more than half fabulous story of travel, first by sea beyond Capes Non
+and Bojador, then by land across the heart of Africa to the Mountains of
+the Moon, the city of Melli, where dwelt Prester John, and "the
+Euphrates, which comes from the terrestrial Paradise," where behind some
+real notes of Barbary coasting, perhaps gained from the Catalans of
+1346, there is little but a confused transcript of Edrisi's geography.
+Yet this was one of the books which helped to fix the notion of a double
+Nile, Northern and Western, a Nile of Egypt and a Nile of the Blacks,
+with a common source in the Mountains of the Moon, upon the Christian
+science of the time, as the Arab geographers had fixed it upon Islam.
+
+The next piece of Atlantic exploration was a romantic accident. In the
+reign of Edward III., an Englishman named Robert Machin eloped with Anne
+d'Arfet from Bristol (_c._ 1370), was driven from the coast of France by
+a north-east wind, and after thirteen days sighted an island, Madeira,
+where he landed. His ship was swept away by the storm, his mistress died
+of terror and exhaustion, and five days after Machin was laid beside her
+by his men, who had saved the ship's boat and now ran her upon the
+African coast. They were enslaved, like other Christian captives of the
+Barbary corsairs, but in 1416 a fellow-prisoner, one Morales of Seville,
+an old pilot, was ransomed with others and sent back to Spain. On his
+way Morales was captured by a Portuguese captain, Zarco, the servant of
+Prince Henry, the rediscoverer of Madeira, and through this the full
+story of Machin and his island, came to be known in the court of the
+Navigator Prince, who promptly made his gain of the new knowledge a
+lasting one, by the voyage of Zarco in 1420.
+
+Last among the immediate predecessors of Prince Henry's seamen come the
+French. In the seventeenth century it was claimed, on newly found
+evidence, that between 1364 and 1410 the men of Dieppe and Rouen opened
+a regular trade in gold, ivory, and malaguette pepper with the coast of
+Guinea, and built stations at Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, and La Mine,
+which they named from the precious metal found there. But all this is
+more than doubtful, and the genuine Norman voyage of De Béthencourt in
+1402 shows us nothing but the Canaries and the north-west coast of
+Morocco. Cape Non, or Cape Bojador, was still the European Furthest on
+the African coast.
+
+The French Seigneur was stirred up to attack the Fortunate Islands by
+two events. First in 1382 one Lopez, a captain of Seville sailing to
+Gallicia, was driven by a tempest to Grand Canary, and lived among the
+natives seven years till he and his men were denounced for writing home
+and inviting rescue. To stop this intrigue they, the "thirteen Christian
+brothers" whose testament reached Béthencourt twelve years later, were
+all massacred. News of this and of the voyage of a Spaniard named
+Becarra to the same islands at the same time, reached Rochelle about
+1400, and found several French adventurers ready for a trial. The chief
+of these, Jean de Béthencourt, Lord of Grainville, and Gadifer de la
+Salle, a needy knight, started in July, 1402, to conquer in the sea a
+new kingdom for themselves. Though the leaders quarrelled and Grand
+Canary beat off all attacks, the enterprise was successful in the main,
+and several of the islands became Christian colonies,--a first step
+towards the colonial empires of the great European expansion, as the
+record of Béthencourt's chaplains is the first chapter of modern
+colonial history.
+
+But nothing is clearer in this tract than its limitations. The French
+colonists as late as 1425 seem to know nothing of the African coast
+beyond Cape Bojador; they look upon the Canaries rather as an extension
+of Spain and of Europe than as the beginning of a new world. They are
+anxious to get to the River of Gold and traffic there, but they do not
+know the way, save by report. De Béthencourt had been to Bojador
+himself, and "if things in that country are such as they are described
+in the Book of the Spanish Friar," he meant to open a way to the River
+of Gold, for, the Friar says, "it is only one hundred and fifty leagues
+from Cape Bojador, and the map proves the same--which is only a three
+days' voyage for sailing boats--whereby access would be gained to the
+land of Prester John, whence come so many riches." But as yet our
+Normans are only "eager to know the state of the neighbouring countries,
+both islands and _terra firma_:" they do not know the coast beyond the
+"Utmost Cape" of Bojador, which had taken the place of the first Arab
+Finisterre, Cape Non,[28] Nun, or Nam, as the limit of navigation.
+
+[Footnote 28: Cape Non = Fish Cape. But Latini took it as = Not, "from
+the fact that beyond it there is _no_ return possible." And so the rhyme
+"Who pass Cape Non--Must turn again, _or else begone_" (lit. "_or not_,"
+_i.e._, will not be able to return).]
+
+We are now at the very time of Prince Henry himself; his first voyage
+was in 1412. De Béthencourt died in 1425, and it is quite needless to
+follow out at length the stories, however interesting, of sporadic
+navigation in other parts of the European Seas. Between 1380-95 the
+Venetian Zeni sailed in the service of Henry Sinclair, Earl of the
+Orkneys, to Greenland, and brought back fisher stories, which read like
+those of Central America, of its man-eating Caribs and splendid
+barbarism. Somewhat earlier, about 1349, Ivar Bardsen of Norway paid one
+of the last of Christian visits to the Arctic colonies of Greenland, the
+legacy of the eleventh century, now sinking into ruin; but neither of
+these voyages gives us any new knowledge of the Unknown which was now
+being pierced, not from the North and East, but from the South and West.
+
+Both in land travel and sea voyages we have traced the progress of
+Western exploration and discovery up to its Hero, the real central
+figure both in the history of Portugal and of the European expansion. A
+little remains to be said on the other lines of preparation for his work
+in scientific theory and national development from the Age of the
+Crusades.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE IN CHRISTENDOM FROM THE FIRST CRUSADES.
+
+CIRCA 1100-1460.
+
+
+Before the Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
+scientific geography of Christendom, as we have seen, was mainly a
+borrowed thing. From the ninth century to the time of the Mediæval and
+Christian Renaissance, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
+centuries, the Arabs were the recognised heirs of Greek science, and
+what Franks or Latins knew of Ptolemy or Strabo was either learnt or
+corrected in the schools of Cordova and Bagdad.
+
+But when the Northmen and the Holy War with Islam had once thoroughly
+aroused the practical energies of Christendom, it began to expand in
+mind as well as in empire, and in the time of Prince Henry, in the
+fifteenth century, a Portuguese could say: "Our discoveries of coasts
+and islands and mainland were not made without foresight and knowledge.
+For our sailors went out very well taught, and furnished with
+instruments and rules of _astrology_ and geometry, things which all
+mariners and map-makers must know."
+
+[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MARINO SANUTO. C. 1306.
+(SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+In fact, compass, astrolabe, timepiece, and charts, were all in use on
+the Mediterranean about 1400, just as they were to be found among the
+Arab traders of the Indian Ocean.
+
+In this section it will be enough to glance hastily at the later and
+growingly independent science of Christendom, from the time that it
+ceased merely to follow the lead of Islam, and thought and even invented
+for itself. In another chapter we have seen something of the lasting and
+penetrating influence of Greek and Moslem and Hindu tradition upon the
+Western thought, which has conquered by absorbing all its rivals; we
+must not forget that some original self-reliant work in geographical
+theory not less than in practical exploration is absolutely needed to
+explain the very fact of Prince Henry and his life--a student's life,
+far more even than a statesman's. And after all, the invention of
+instruments, the drawing of maps and globes, the reckoning of distances,
+is not less practical than the most daring and successful travel. For
+navigation, the first and prime demand is a means of safety, some power
+of knowing where you stand and where to go, such as was given to sailors
+by the use of the magnet.
+
+"Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis," says Beccadelli of Palermo,
+but the earliest mention of the "Black ugly stone" in the West is traced
+to an Englishman. Alexander Neckam, a monk of St. Albans, writing about
+1180 on "The Natures Of Things," tells us of it as commonly used by
+sailors, not merely as the secret of the learned. "When they cannot see
+the sun clearly in cloudy weather, or at night, and cannot tell which
+way their prow is tending, they put a Needle above a Magnet which
+revolves till its point looks North and then stops." So the satirist,
+Guyot de Provins, in his _Bible_ of about 1210, wishes the Pope were as
+safe a point to steer by in Faith as the North Star in sailing, "which
+mariners can keep ahead of them, without sight of it, only by the
+pointing of a needle floating on a straw in water, once touched by the
+Magnet."
+
+It might be supposed from this not merely that the magnet was in use at
+the end of the twelfth century, but that it had been known to a few
+_savants_ much earlier; yet when Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini, visits
+Roger Bacon at Oxford about 1258, and is shown the black stone, he
+speaks of it as new and wonderful, but certain, if used, to awake
+suspicion of magic. "It has the power of drawing iron to it, and if a
+needle be rubbed upon it and fastened to a straw so as to swim upon
+water, the needle will instantly turn towards the Pole-Star. But no
+master mariner could use this, nor would the sailors venture themselves
+to sea under his command if he took an instrument so like one of
+infernal make."
+
+[Illustration: SKETCH-MAP OF DULCERT'S PORTOLANO OF 1339. (SEE
+LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+It was possibly after this that the share of Amalphi came in; it may
+have been Flavio Gioja, or some other citizen of that earliest
+commercial republic of the Middle Ages, which filled up so large a
+part of the gap between two great ages of progress, who fitted the
+magnet into a box, and by connecting it with the compass-card, made it
+generally and easily available. This it certainly was before Prince
+Henry's earliest voyages, where he takes its use for granted even by
+merchant coasters, "who, beyond hugging the shore, know nothing of chart
+or needle." In any case it would seem that prejudice was broken down,
+and the mariner's compass taken into favour, at least by Italian seamen
+and their Spanish apprentices, in the early years of the fourteenth
+century, or the last years of the thirteenth, and that when the Dorias
+set out for India by the ocean way in 1291, and the Lisbon fleet sailed
+for the western islands in 1341, they had some sort of natural guide
+with them, besides the stories of travellers and their own imaginings.
+About the same time (_c._ 1350) mathematics and astronomy began to be
+studied in Portugal, and two of Henry's brothers, King Edward and the
+Great Regent Pedro, left a name for observations and scientific
+research. Thus Pedro, in his travels through most of Christendom,
+collected invaluable materials for discovery, especially an original of
+Marco Polo and a map given him at Venice, "which had all the parts of
+the earth described, whereby Prince Henry was much furthered."
+
+Good maps indeed were almost as valuable to him as good instruments, and
+they are far clearer landmarks of geographical knowledge. There are at
+least seven famous charts (either left to us or described for us) of
+the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, which give a pretty clear
+idea of what Henry's own age and his father's thought and knew of the
+world--some of which we believe to have been used by the Prince himself,
+and each of which follows some advance in actual exploration.
+
+First of all comes the Venetian map of Marino Sanuto, drawn about 1306,
+and putting into map-form the ideas that inspired the first Italian
+voyages in the Atlantic. On this the south of Africa is washed by the
+sea as the Vivaldi had hoped to find it, but the old story of a central
+zone "uninhabitable from the heat" still finds a place, helping to keep
+up the notion of the Tropical Seas, "always kept boiling by the sun,"
+that held its own so long. Besides this, in Sanuto's map there is no
+evidence that anyone had really been coasting Africa; Henry is not
+anticipated and can hardly have been much helped by this very
+hypothetical leap in the dark.
+
+But the Florentine map of 1351, called the Laurentian Portolano, is to
+all appearance a record of the actual discoveries of 1341 and 1346, and
+a wonderful triumph of guess-work if it is nothing better. For Africa is
+not only made an island, but the main outline of its coast is fairly
+drawn; in its western corner the headlands, bays, and rivers are laid
+down as far as Bojador, and the three groups of Atlantic islands,
+Azores, Canaries, and Madeira, appear together for the first time.
+Beyond this names grow scarce, and on the great indent of the Gulf of
+Guinea, enormously exaggerated as it is, there is nothing to show for
+certain any past discovery, which suggests that this map was made for
+two purposes. First, to record the results of recent travel; secondly,
+and chiefly, to put forward geographical theories based upon tradition
+and inference, what men of old had told and what men of the present
+could fancy.
+
+Long after the Italian leadership in exploration had passed westward,
+Italian science kept control of geographical theory; the Venetian maps
+of the brothers Pizzigani in 1367, and of the Camaldolese convent at
+Murano in 1380 and 1459, and the work of Andrea Bianco in 1436 and 1448,
+are the most important of mediæval charts, after the Laurentian, and
+along with these must be reckoned that mentioned above as given in
+1425-8 to Henry's brother, Don Pedro, on his visit to Venice. This
+treasure has disappeared, but it was said by men of Henry's day and
+aftertime, who saw it in the monastery of Alçobaça, to show "as much or
+more discovered in time past than now." If their account is even an
+approach to the truth, it was in itself proof sufficient of the
+supremacy and almost monopoly of Italians in geographical theory.
+
+With 1375 and the Catalan map of that year, which specially refers to
+the Catalan voyage of 1346 and may be taken as one result of the same,
+we come to Spanish parallels; but until the death of Henry in 1460,
+Italian draughtsmen were in possession, and Fra Mauro's great map of
+1459, the evidence and result, in great measure, of the Navigator's
+work, could only be drawn by Venetians for the men whose discoveries it
+recorded.
+
+But there is one other point in Italian map-science which is worth
+remembering. At a time when most schemes of the world were covered with
+monsters and legends, when cartography was half mythical and half
+miscalculated, the coasting voyagers of the Mediterranean had brought
+their _Portolani_ or sea charts to a very different result. And how was
+this? Did they get right, as it were, by chance? "They never had for
+their object," says the great Swedish explorer and draughtsman, Baron
+Nordenskjold, "to illustrate the ideas of some classical author, of some
+learned prelate, or the legends and dreams of feats of Chivalry within
+the Court circle of some more or less lettered feudal lord." They were
+simply guides to mariners and merchants in the Mediterranean seaports;
+they were seldom drawn by learned men, and small enough, in return, was
+the attention given them by the learned geographers, the men of theory,
+in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+
+But these plans of practical seamen are a wonderful contrast in their
+almost present-day accuracy to the results of theory let loose, as we
+see them in Ptolemy and the Arabian geographers, and in such fantastics
+as the Hereford Mappa Mundi, so well known in England. Map-sketches of
+this sort, were unknown to Greeks and Romans, as far as we can tell. The
+old Peripli were sailing directions, not drawn but written, and the only
+Arabian coast-chart known to us was copied from an Italian one. But from
+the opening of the twelfth century, if not before, the western
+Mediterranean was known to Christian seamen--to those at least concerned
+in the trade and intercourse of the great inland sea,--by the help of
+these practical guides.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+From the middle of the thirteenth century, when the use of the compass
+began on the coasts of southern Europe, the Portolani began to be drawn
+with its aid, and by the end of the same century, by the time of our
+Hereford map (_c._ 1300), these charts had reached the finish that we
+see and admire in those left to us from the fourteenth century. For, of
+the 498 specimens of this kind of practical map now left to us, there is
+not one of earlier date than the year 1311. Among these specimens not
+merely the mass of materials, but the most important examples, not
+merely 413 out of 498, but all the more famous and perfect of the 498
+are Italian. The course begins with Vesconte's chart, of the year 1311,
+and with Dulcert's of 1339, and the outlines of these two are faithfully
+reproduced, for instance, in the great Dutch map of the Barentszoons
+(_c._ 1594), for the type once fixed in the fourteenth century, recurs
+steadily throughout the fifteenth, and sixteenth. The type was so
+permanent because it was so reliable; every part of the Mediterranean
+coast was sketched without serious mistake or disproportion, even from a
+modern point of view, while the fulness and detail of the work gave
+everything that was wanted by practical seamen. Of course this detail
+was in the coast lines, river mouths, and promontories; it only touched
+the land features as they touched the seas. For the Portolani were never
+meant to be more than mariners' charts, and became less and less
+trustworthy if they tried to fill up the inland spaces usually left
+blank. For this, we must look to the highest class of mediæval
+theoretical maps, those founded on Portolani, but taking into their view
+land as well as water and coast line. And such were the celebrated
+examples[29] we have noticed already.
+
+[Footnote 29: _Of_ 1306, 1351, 1367, 1375, 1380, 1436, 1448, 1459.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE.--It was a man of theory, Raymond Lulli (1235-1315), of Majorca,
+the famous Alchemist, who is credited with the first suggestion of the
+idea of seeking a way to India by rounding Africa on the West and South.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PORTUGAL TO 1400.
+
+1095-1400.
+
+
+Henry the Navigator is the Hero of Portugal, as well as of discovery,
+the chief figure in his country's history, as well as the first leader
+of the great European expansion; and the national growth of three
+hundred years is quite as much a part of his life, quite as much a cause
+of his forward movement, as the growth of Christendom towards a living
+interest in the unknown or half-known world around.
+
+The chief points of interest in the story of Portugal are first the
+stubborn restless independence of the people, always rising into fresh
+vigour after a seeming overthrow, and secondly their instinct for
+seamanship, which Henry was able to train into exploring and colonising
+genius. There was no physical justice in the separate nationality of the
+Western Kingdom of Lisbon any more than of the Eastern Kingdom of
+Barcelona. Portugal[30] was essentially part of Spain, as the United
+Provinces of William of Orange were essentially part of the
+Netherlands; in both cases it was only the spirit and endurance of the
+race that gave to some provincials the right to become a people, while
+that right was denied to others.
+
+[Footnote 30: See Note 1, page 137.]
+
+And Portugal gained that right by a struggle of three hundred years,
+which was first a crusade against Islam; then a war of independence
+against brother Christians of Castille; last of all a civil strife
+against rebels and anarchists within.
+
+In the twelfth century the five kingdoms of Spain were clearly marked
+off from the Moslem States and from one another; by the end of the
+fifteenth there is only the great central Realm of Ferdinand and
+Isabella, and the little western coast-kingdom of Emanuel the Fortunate,
+the heir of Prince Henry. Nations are among our best examples of the
+survival of the fittest, and by the side of Poland and Aragon we may
+well see a meaning in the bare and tiresome story of the mediæval
+kingdom of Portugal. The very fact of separate existence means something
+for a people which has kept on ruling itself for ten generations. Though
+its territory was never more than one fourth of the peninsula, nor its
+numbers more than one third of the Spanish race--from the middle of the
+twelfth century, Portugal has stood alone, with less right to such
+independence from any distinction of place or blood, than Ireland or
+Navarre, fighting incessantly against foes without, from north, east,
+and south, and keeping down the still worse foes of its own household.
+
+[Illustration: N.W. SECTION OF THE CATALAN MAP OF 1375-6. (SEE LIST
+OF MAPS)]
+
+But the meaning of the growth of the Portuguese power is not in its
+isolation, its stubbornly defended national distinction from all other
+powers, but in its central and as it were unifying position in modern
+history--as the guide of Europe and Christendom into that larger world
+which marks the real difference between the Middle Ages and our own day.
+
+For Henry the Navigator breathed into his countrymen the spirit of the
+old Norse rovers, that boundless appetite for new knowledge, new
+pleasures, new sights and sounds, which underlay the exploration of the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--the exploration of one half of the
+world's surface, the finding of a new continent in the south and in the
+west, and the opening of the great sea-routes round the globe. The
+scientific effects of this, starting from the new proof of a round world
+won by a Portuguese seaman, Magellan; and the political effects, also
+beginning with the first of modern colonial empires, founded by Da Gama,
+Cabral, and Albuquerque, are too widespread for more than a passing
+reference in this place, but this reference must be connected with the
+true author of the movement. For if the industrial element rules modern
+development; if the philosophy of utility, as expressing this element,
+is now our guide in war and peace; and if the substitution of this for
+the military spirit[31] is to be dated from that dominion in the Indian
+seas which realised the designs of Henry--if this be so, the Portuguese
+become to us, through him, something like the founders of our commercial
+civilisation, and of the European empire in Asia.
+
+[Footnote 31: W.H. Lecky, _Rationalism_.]
+
+By the opening years of the fifteenth century, Portugal--in a Catholic
+rather than a Classical Renaissance--had already entered upon its modern
+life, some three generations before the rest of Christendom. But its
+mediæval history is very much like that of any other of the Five Spanish
+Kingdoms. Like the rest, Portugal had joined in driving the Moors from
+the Asturias to Andalusia, in the two hundred years of successful
+Western Crusade (1001-1212). In the same time, between the death of the
+great vizier Almanzor, the last support of the old Western Caliphate
+(1001), and the overthrow of the African Moors, who had supplanted that
+Western Caliphate,--between those two points of Moslem triumph and
+Christian reaction, the Portuguese kingdom had been formed out of the
+County granted in 1095 by Alfonso VI. of Leon to the free-lance Henry of
+Burgundy.
+
+For the next three hundred years (1095-1383), under his descendants who
+reigned as kings in Guimaraëns or Lisbon, we may trace a gradual but
+chequered national rise, to the Revolution of 1383 with two prominent
+movements of expansion and two relapses of contraction and decline.
+
+First comes the formation of a national spirit by Count Henry's widow
+Donna Theresa and her son Affonso Henriquez, who from a Lord of Coimbra
+and Oporto, dependent on the Kingdom of Gallicia or of Leon, becomes the
+first free King of Portugal. His victories over the Moors in taking
+Lisbon (1147) and winning the day of Ourique (1139), are followed by the
+first wars with Castille and by the time of quiet organisation in his
+last years under the regency of his son Sancho, the City Builder. The
+building and planting of Sancho is again followed by the first relapse,
+into the weakness of Affonso II., and the turbulent minority of Sancho
+II. Constitutional troubles begin with the First Sancho's quarrel with
+Innocent III. and with the appearance of the first national Cortés under
+Chancellor Julian.
+
+The second forward movement starts with Affonso III., "of Boulogne," who
+saves the kingdom from anarchy and conquers the Algarves, on the south
+coast, from Islam; who first organises the alliance of Crown and people
+against nobles and clergy, and, in the strength of this, defies the
+interdict of Urban IV.
+
+Diniz, his bastard son, for whose legitimation he had made this same
+struggle with Rome, follows Affonso III., in 1279, and with him begins
+the wider life of Portugal, her navy and her literature, her
+agriculture, justice, and commerce.
+
+The second relapse may be dated from the Black Death (1348), which
+threatened the very life of the nation, and left behind a sort of
+chronic weakness. National spirit seemed worn out; Court intrigue and
+political disaster the order of the day; the Church and Cortés alike
+effete and useful only against themselves.
+
+But in the revival under a new leader, John, the father of Prince Henry,
+and a new dynasty--the House of Aviz--and its "Royal Race of Famous
+Infants," in the years that follow the Revolution of 1383, the older
+religious and crusading fervour is joined with the new spirit of
+enterprise, of fierce activity, and the Portugal thus called into being
+is a great State because the whole nation shares in the life and energy
+of a more than recovered liberty.
+
+Before the age of King Diniz, before the fourteenth century, there is
+little enough in the national story to suggest the first
+state-profession of discovery and exploration in Christian history. But
+we must bring together a few of the suggestive and prophetic incidents
+of the earlier time, if we are to be fully prepared for the later.
+
+(1.) Oporto, the "port" of Gallicia, from the formation of the county or
+"march" of Henry of Burgundy, seems to have given the district its name
+of "Portugallia," at one time as a military frontier against Islam, then
+as an independent State, lastly as an imperial Kingdom. Also, as the
+earliest centre of Portugal was a harbour, and its earliest border a
+river, there was a sort of natural, though slumbering, fitness for
+seamanship in the people.
+
+(2.) Again, in the alliance of the Crown with the towns, first formed by
+Count Henry's wife Theresa in her regency after his death, 1114-28, and
+renewed by her grandson Sancho, the City Builder, and by Affonso III.,
+the "Saviour of the Kingdom," we have an early example of the power of
+that class, which was the backbone of the great movement of expansion,
+when the meaning of this was fairly brought home to them.
+
+(3.) In the capture of Lisbon, in 1147, by Affonso Henriquez, Theresa's
+son, at the head of the allied forces of native militia and northern
+Crusaders--Flemish, French, German, and English--we have brought
+clearly before us, not merely the facts of the gain of a really great
+city by a rising Christian State, not merely the result of this in the
+formation of a kingdom out of a county, but the more general connection
+of the crusading spirit with the new nations of Europe. Portugal is the
+most lasting monument of crusading energy; it was this that strengthened
+the "Lusitanians" to make good their stand both against the Moors and
+against Castille; and it was this which brought out the maritime bent of
+the little western kingdom, and drew out its interest on the one and
+only side where that could be of great and general usefulness. The
+Crusades without and the policy of statesmen within, we may fairly say,
+made the Portuguese ready to lead the expansion of Christendom, made
+possible the work of Henry the Navigator. The foreign help given at
+Lisbon in 1147 was only a repetition on a grand scale of what had long
+been done on a smaller, and it was offered again and again till the
+final conquest of the southern districts, between Cape St. Vincent and
+the Guadiana (_c._ 1250), left the European kingdom fully formed, and
+the recovery of Western Spain from the Moslem had been achieved.
+
+[Illustration: Chart of the Mediterranean Sea by WILLEM BARENTSZOON.
+Engraved in copper 1595. Almost unaltered copy of a Portolano from the
+14th century. (Orig. size 418 x 855 m.m.). (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+(4.) And when the Crusading Age passed away, it left behind an
+intercourse of Portugal with England, Flanders, and the North Sea
+coasts, which was taken up and developed by Diniz and the kings of the
+fourteenth century, till under the new Royal House of Aviz, in the
+boyhood of Henry the Navigator, this maritime and commercial element
+had clearly become the most important in the State, the main interest
+even of Government.
+
+So, from the first mercantile treaty of 1294, between the traders of
+Lisbon and London, we feel ourselves beyond the mere fighting period,
+and before the death of Diniz (1325), there is a good deal more progress
+in the same direction. The English treaty of exchange is followed by
+similar ones with France and with Flanders, while for the protection of
+this commerce, as well as to prove his fellowship or his rivalry with
+the maritime republics of Italy, Diniz,[32] the "Labourer King," built
+the first Portuguese navy, founded a new office of state for its
+command, and gave the post to a great Genoese sailor, Emanuel Pessanha,
+1317. With the new Lord High Admiral begins the Spanish-Italian age of
+ocean voyages, and the rediscovery of the Canaries in 1341 is the first
+result of the alliance. In 1353 the old treaty of 1294 is enlarged and
+safeguarded by fresh clauses signed in London, as if to guard against
+future trouble in the dark days then hanging over Portugal.
+
+[Footnote 32: See Note 2, page 137.]
+
+For the next generation (1350-1380), the national politics are bound up
+with Spanish intrigues and lose nearly all reference to that larger
+world, to which the kingdom was recalled by the Revolution of 1383, the
+overthrow of Castille on the battle-field of Aljubarrota, and the
+accession of John of Aviz. Once more intensely, narrowly national, one
+might almost say provincial, in peninsular matters, Portugal then
+returned to its older ambition of being, not a make weight in Spanish
+politics, but a part of the greater whole of commercial and maritime
+Europe. Almost ceasing to be Spanish, she was, by that very transfer of
+interest from land to sea, fitted for her special part,--
+
+    "to open up those wastes of tide
+    No generation openèd before."
+
+It was through a love affair that the crisis came about. Ferdinand the
+Handsome, the last of the House of Burgundy to reign in Lisbon, became
+the slave of the worst of his subjects, the evil genius of himself and
+his kingdom, Leonora Telles. For her sake he broke his marriage treaty
+with Castille (1372), and brought down the vengeance of Henry of
+Trastamara, whom the Black Prince of England had fought and seemed to
+conquer at Navarette, but who in the end had foiled all his
+enemies--Pedro the Cruel, Ferdinand of Portugal, and Prince Edward of
+Creçy and Poictiers.
+
+For Leonor's sake Ferdinand braved the great riot of the Lisbon mob,
+when Fernan Vasquez the Tailor led his followers to the palace, burst in
+the gates, and forced from the King an oath to stand by the Castilian
+marriage he had contracted. For her sake he broke his word to his
+artisans, as he had broken it to his nobles and his brother monarch.
+
+Leonor herself the people hunted for in vain through the rooms and
+corridors of the palace; she escaped from their lynch law to Santarem.
+The same night Ferdinand joined her. Safe in his strongest fortress, he
+gathered an army and forced his way back into the capital. The mob was
+scattered; Vasquez and the other leaders beheaded on the spot. Then at
+Oporto, without more delay, the King of Portugal married his paramour,
+in the face of her husband, of Castille, and of his own people.
+
+"Laws are nil," said the rhyme, "when kings will," but though nobles and
+people submitted in the lifetime of Ferdinand, the storm broke out again
+on his death in October, 1383. During the last ten years the Queen had
+practically governed, and the kingdom seemed to be sinking back into a
+province of Spain. Ferdinand's bastard brother, John, Master of the
+Knights of Aviz, and father of Henry the Navigator, was the leader of
+the national party, and Leonor had in vain tried to get rid of him,
+silent and dangerous as he was. She forged some treasonable letters in
+his name, and procured his arrest; then as the King would not order him
+to execution without trial, she forged the warrant, too, and sent it
+promptly to the Governor of Evora Castle, where the Master lay in
+prison. But he refused to obey without further proof, and John escaped
+to lead the national restoration.
+
+On the death of Ferdinand his widow took the regency in the name of her
+daughter Beatrice, just married to the King of Castille. It was only a
+question of time, this coming subjection of Portugal, unless the whole
+people rose and made monarchy and government national once more. And in
+December, 1383, they did so. Under John of Aviz the patriots cut to
+pieces the Queen's friends, and made ready to meet her allies from
+Castille. On the battle field of Aljubarrota (August 14, 1385), the
+struggle was decided. Castille was finally driven back, and the new
+age, of the new dynasty, was fairly started. The Portuguese people under
+King John I. and his sons Edward, Pedro, Henry, and Ferdinand, passed
+out of the darkness of their slavery into the light and life of their
+heroic age.
+
+[Illustration: WEST FRONT OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH OF BATALHA WHERE
+PRINCE HENRY LIES BURIED.]
+
+The founder of the House of Aviz, John, the King of Good Memory, is the
+great transition figure in his country's history, for in his reign the
+age of the merely European kingdom is over, and that of discovery and
+empire begins. That is, the limits of territory and of population, as
+well as the type of government and of policy, both home and foreign,
+secured by his victory and his reign, are permanent in themselves, and
+as the conditions of success they lie at the root of the development of
+the next hundred years.
+
+Even the drift of Portuguese interests, seawards and southwards, is
+decided by his action, his alliance with England, his encouragement of
+trade, his wars against the Moors. For, by the middle of his reign, by
+the time of the Ceuta conquest (1415), his third son, Prince Henry, had
+grown to manhood.
+
+Yet, King John's personal work (1383-1433) is rather one of settlement
+and the providing of resources for future action than the taking of any
+great share in that action. His mind was practical rather than
+prophetic, common-sense rather than creative; but in his regeneration of
+the Court and trade and society and public service of the kingdom, he
+fitted his people to play their part, to be for a time the "very
+foremost men of all this world."
+
+First of all, he founded a strong centralised monarchy, like those which
+marked the fifteenth century in France and England and Russia. The
+spirit, the aim of Louis XI., of the Tudors, of Ivan III., was the same
+as that of John I. of Portugal--to rule as well as govern in every
+department, "over all persons, in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as
+civil, within their dominions supreme." The Master of Aviz had been the
+people's choice; the Lisbon populace and their leaders had been among
+the first who dared to fight for him; but he would not be a simple King
+of Parliaments. He preferred to reign with the help of his nobles. For
+though he distrusted feudalism, he dreaded Cortés still more. So, while
+in most of the new monarchies of Europe the subjection or humiliation of
+the baronage was a primary article of policy, John tried to win his way
+by lavish gifts of land, while resolutely checking feudalism in
+government, curtailing local immunities, and guarding the liberties of
+the towns against noble usurpers.
+
+We shall see the results of this in the life of Prince Henry; at present
+there is only space to notice the general fact. The other lines of
+John's home government--his reform of criminal procedure, his sanction
+of the vernacular in legal and official business in place of Latin, his
+attempt to publish the first collection of Portuguese laws, his
+settlement of the Court in the true national capital of Lisbon--are only
+to be linked with the life of his son, as helping one and all of them
+towards that conscious political unity on which Henry's work was
+grounded.
+
+The same was the result of his foreign policy, which was nothing more
+than the old state-rules of Diniz. Systematic neutrality in Spain and a
+commercial alliance with England and the northern nations, were but the
+common-sense securities of the restored kingdom; but they played another
+part than one of mere defence, in drawing out the seamanship and worldly
+knowledge, and even the greed of Portuguese traders. In the marts of
+Bruges and London, "the Schoolmasters of Husbandry to Europe," Henry's
+countrymen met the travellers and merchants of Italy and Flanders and
+England and the Hanse Towns, and gained some inkling of the course and
+profits of the overland trade from India and the further East, first as
+in Nismes and Montpellier they saw the Malaguette pepper and other
+merchandise of the Sahara and Guinea caravans.
+
+The Windsor and Paris treaties of 1386 and 1389; the marriage of John
+himself with Philippa, daughter of old "John of Gaunt, time-honoured"
+and time-serving "Lancaster," and the consequent alliance between the
+House of Aviz and the House of our own Henry IV., are proofs of an
+unwritten but well understood Triple Alliance of England, Flanders, and
+Portugal, which had been fostered by the Crusades and by trade and
+family politics. And through this friendship had come into being what
+was now the chief outward activity of Portuguese life, an interest in
+commerce, which was the beginning of a career of discovery and
+colonisation. Lastly, besides good government, besides saving the
+kingdom and keeping it safely in the most prosperous path, Portugal owed
+to King John and his English wife the training of their five sons,
+Edward the Eloquent, Pedro the Great Regent, Henry the Navigator, John
+the Constable, Ferdinand the Saint--the cousins of our own Henry V.,
+Henry of Azincourt.
+
+Edward, the heir of John the Great and his unfortunate successor
+(1433-8), unlucky as most literary princes, but deserving whatever
+courage and honesty and the best gifts can deserve, was a good ruler, a
+good son, a good brother, a good lawyer, and one of the earliest writers
+in his own Portuguese. As a pupil of his father's great Chancellor, John
+of the Rules, he has left a tract on the _Ordering of Justice_; as a
+king, two others, on _Pity_ and _A Loyal Councillor_; as a cavalier, _A
+Book of Good Riding_. Still more to our purpose, he was always at the
+side of his brother Henry, helped him in his schemes and brought his
+movement into fashion at a critical time, when enterprise seemed likely
+to slacken in the face of unending difficulties.
+
+But the Navigator's right-hand man was his next brother Pedro the
+Traveller, who, after visiting all the countries of Western Europe and
+fighting with the Teutonic knights against the heathen Prussians,
+brought back to Portugal for the use of discovery that great mass of
+suggestive material, oral and written, in maps and plans and books,
+which was used for the first ocean voyages of Henry's sailors.
+
+On his judgment and advice, more than of any other man, Henry relied,
+and after Edward's death it was due to him as Regent that the generous
+support of the past was more than kept up, that so many ships and men
+were found for the rounding of Cape Verde, and that Edward's son and
+heir Affonso V., was trained in the mind of his father and his uncle, to
+be their successor in leading the expansion of Portugal and of
+Christendom.
+
+[Illustration: AISLE IN BATALHA CHURCH CONTAINING THE TOMBS OF HENRY AND
+HIS BROTHERS.]
+
+John and Ferdinand, Henry's two younger brothers, are not of much
+importance in his work, though they were both of the same rare quality
+as the elder Infantes, and the worst disaster of Henry's life, the
+Tangier campaign, is closely bound up with the fate of "Fernand the
+Constant Prince," but as we pass from the earlier story of Portugal to
+the age of its great achievements, it would be hard to doubt or to
+forget that the mother of the Navigator was also of some account in the
+shaping of the heroes of her house. Through her at least the Lusitanian
+Prince of Thomson's line is half an Englishman:
+
+    "The Lusitanian prince, who, Heaven-inspired,
+    To love of useful glory roused mankind,
+    And in unbounded commerce mixed the world."
+
+[NOTE 1.--The Old Roman Lusitania, but with a wider stretch on the
+North, and a narrower stretch on the East. So the Portuguese are
+"Lusians," "Lusitanians," etc., in poetry. _Cf._ Camoëns, _Lusiads_.]
+
+[NOTE 2.--
+
+    What Diniz willèd
+    He ever fulfillèd
+
+--said the popular rhyme.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HENRY'S POSITION AND DESIGNS AT THE TIME OF THE FIRST VOYAGES, 1410-15.
+
+
+    Then from ancient gloom emerged
+    The rising world of trade: the genius then,
+    Of Navigation, held in hopeless sloth,
+    Had slumbered on the vast Atlantic deep
+    For idle ages, starting, heard at last
+    The Lusitanian Prince, who, Heaven-inspired,
+    To love of useful glory roused mankind,
+    And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.
+
+THOMSON, _Seasons, Summer, 1005-1012_.
+
+
+The third son of John the Great and of Philippa was the Infant Henry,
+Duke of Viseu, Master of the Order of Christ, Governor of the Algarves,
+born March 4, 1394, who might have travelled from Court to Court like
+his brother Pedro, but who refused all offers from England, Italy, and
+Germany, and chose the life of a student and a seaman,--retiring more
+and more from the known world that he might open up the unknown.
+
+After the capture of Ceuta, in 1415, he planted himself in his Naval
+Arsenal at Sagres, close to Lagos town and Cape St. Vincent, and for
+more than forty years, till his death in 1460, he kept his mind upon the
+ocean that stretched out from that rocky headland to the unknown West
+and South. Twice only for any length of time did he come back into
+political life; for the rest, though respected as the referee of
+national disputes and the leader and teacher of the people, his time was
+mainly spent in thinking out his plans of discovery--drawing his maps,
+adjusting his instruments, sending out his ships, receiving the reports
+of his captains. His aims were three: to discover, to add to the
+greatness and wealth of Portugal, and to spread the Christian Faith.
+
+(1.) First of all, he was trying to find a way round Africa to India for
+the sake of the new knowledge itself and for the power which that
+knowledge would give. As his mind was above all things interested in the
+scientific question, it was this side which was foremost in his plans.
+He was really trying to find out the shape of the world, and to make men
+feel more at home in it, that the dread of the great unknown round the
+little island of civilised and habitable world might be lightened. He
+was working in the mist that so long had hung round Christendom,
+chilling every enterprise.
+
+Thus the whole question of the world and its shape, its countries and
+climates, its seas and continents, on every side of practical
+exploration, was bound to be before Prince Henry as a theorist; the
+practical question which he helped to solve was only a part of this
+wider whole. Did this Africa stretching opposite to him in his retreat
+at Sagres never end till it reached the Southern pole, or was it
+possible to get round into the Eastern ocean? Since Ptolemy's map had
+held the field, it had been heresy to suppose this; but in the age of
+Greek and Phoenician voyages it had been guessed by some, and perhaps
+even proved by others.
+
+The Tyrians whom Pharaoh Necho sent down the Red Sea more than six
+hundred years before Christ, brought back after three years a story of
+their finding Africa an island, and so returning by the west and north
+through the Straits of Gibraltar.
+
+The same tradition, after a long time of discredit, was now reviving
+upon the maps of the fourteenth century, and, in spite of the terrible
+stories of the Arabs, Henry was able in the first years of the fifteenth
+to find men who would try the forlorn hope of a direct sea-route from
+Europe to the Indies. We have seen how far the charts and guide-books of
+the time just before this had advanced Christian knowledge of the world;
+how the southern coastline of Asia is traced by Marco Polo, and how even
+Madagascar is named, though not visited, by the same traveller; the
+Florentine map of 1351 proves that a fairly true guess of the shape of
+Africa could be made even before persistent exploration began with Henry
+of Portugal; the Arab settlements on the east coast of Africa and their
+trade with the Malabar coast, though still kept as a close monopoly for
+Islam, had thoroughly opened up a line of navigation, that was ready, as
+it were, for the first Europeans who could strike into it and press the
+Moorish pilots into a new service. Discovery was thus anticipated when
+the coasts of West and South had once been rounded.
+
+Beyond this, the vague knowledge of the Guinea coast already gained
+through the Sahara Caravan Trade was improved by the Prince himself,
+during his stay at Ceuta, into the certainty that if the great western
+hump of Africa beyond Bojador could be passed, his caravels would come
+into an eastern current, passing the gold and ivory coast, which might
+lead straight to India, and at any rate would be connected by an
+overland traffic with the Mediterranean.
+
+(2.) Again, Henry was founding upon his work of exploration an empire
+for his country. At first perhaps only thinking of the straight
+sea-passage as the possible key of the Indian trade, it became clearer
+with every fresh discovery that the European kingdom might and must be
+connected by a chain of forts and factories with the rich countries for
+whose sake all these barren coasts were passed. In any case, and in the
+eyes of ordinary men, the riches of the East were the plain and primary
+reason of the explorations. Science had its own aims, but to gain an
+income for its work it must promise some definite gain. And the chief
+hope of Henry's captains was that the wealth now flowing by the overland
+routes to the Levant would in time, as the prize of Portuguese daring,
+go by the water way, without delay or fear of plunder or Arab middlemen,
+to Lisbon and Oporto. This would repay all the trouble and all the cost,
+and silence all who murmured. For this Indian trade was the prize of the
+world, and for the sake of this Rome had destroyed Palmyra, and
+attacked Arabia and held Egypt, and struggled for the mastery of the
+Tigris. For the same thing half the wars of the Levant had been waged,
+and by this the Italian republics, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, had grown to
+greatness.
+
+(3.) Lastly, Henry was a Crusader with Islam and a missionary with the
+heathen. Of him fully as much as of Columbus, it may be said, that if he
+aimed at an empire, it was a Christian one, and from the time of the
+first voyages his captains had orders not merely to discover and to
+trade, but to convert. Till his death he hoped to find the land of
+Prester John, the half-true, half-fabulous Christian Priest-King of the
+outer world, so long cut off from Christendom by the Mohammedan states.
+
+At this time many things were drawing western Europe towards the East
+and towards discovery. The progress of science and historic knowledge,
+the records and suggestions of travellers, the development of the
+Christian nations, the position of Portugal and the spirit of her
+people,--all these lines met, as it were, in Henry's time and nation and
+person, and from that meeting came the results of Columbus and Da Gama
+and Magellan.
+
+In the earlier chapters we have tried to trace the preparation along
+these slowly converging paths, for the discoveries of the fifteenth
+century. We started with that body of knowledge and theory about the
+world which the Roman Empire bequeathed to Christendom, and which in the
+earlier Middle Ages was worked upon by the Arabs, and we gained some
+idea, from the sayings of Moslem geographers and from the doings of
+Moslem warriors, of the hindrance as well as of the help that Islam gave
+to European expansion. We saw that during the great struggle of
+Christianity and of the old Order with barbarism, the chief energy of
+our Western world in discovery or extension of any sort took the shape
+of pilgrimage. Then, as time went on, it was possible to see that the
+Saracens, who had begun as destroyers in the South, were acting as
+teachers and civilisers upon Europe, and that the Vikings, who as
+pirates in the North seemed raised up to complete the ruin of Latin
+civilisation, were really waking it into a new activity.
+
+In the Crusades this activity, which had already founded the kingdom of
+Russia on one side and touched America on the other, seemed to pass from
+the Northern seamen into every Christian nation and every class of
+society, and with the conversion of the Northmen their place as the
+discoverers and leaders of the Christian world fitted in with the other
+movements of Mediterranean commerce and war and devotion. Even the
+pilgrims of the Crusading Age were now no longer distinctive: they were
+often, as individuals, members of other classes, traders, fighters, or
+travellers who, after gaining a firm foothold in Syria, began the
+exploration of the further East.
+
+The three great discovering energies of the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries--in land-travel, navigation, and science--were all seen to be
+results, in whole or in part, of the Crusades themselves, and in
+following the more important steps of European travel and trade and
+proselytism from the Holy Land to China, it became more and more evident
+that this practical finding out of the treasures of Cathay and the
+Indies was the necessary preparation for the attempts of Genoese and
+Portuguese to open up the sea route as another and a safer way to the
+source of the same treasures.
+
+Lastly, the intermittent and uncertain ventures of the
+fourteenth-century seamen, Italian, Spanish, French, or English, to
+coast round Africa or to find the Indies by the Southern route--to reach
+a definite end without any clear plan of means to that end--and the
+revival in theoretical geography, which was trying at the same time to
+fill up the gaps of knowledge by tradition or by probability--seemed to
+offer a clear contrast and a clear foreshadowing also of Prince Henry's
+method. Even his nearest forerunners, in seamanship or in map-making[33]
+were strikingly different from himself. They were too much in the spirit
+of Ptolemy and of ancient science; they neglected fact for hypothesis,
+for clever guessing, and so their work was spasmodic and unfruitful, or
+at least disappointing.
+
+[Footnote 33: Except the draughtsmen of the Portolani.]
+
+It was true enough that each generation of Christian thought was less in
+fault than the one before it; but it was not till the fifteenth century,
+till Henry had set the example, that exploration became systematic and
+continuous. To Marco Polo and men like him we owe the beginnings of the
+art and science of discovery among the learned; to the Portuguese is
+due at least the credit of making it a thing of national interest, and
+of freeing it from a false philosophy. To find out by incessant and
+unwearying search what the world really was, and not to make known facts
+fit in with the ideas of some thinker on what the world ought to be,
+this we found to be the main difference between Cosmas or even Ptolemy
+and any true leader of discovery. For a real advance of knowledge, fancy
+must follow experiment, and no merely hypothetical system or Universe as
+shewn in Holy Scripture, would do any longer. We have come to the time
+when explorers were not Ptolemaics or Strabonians or Scripturists, but
+Naturalists--men who examined things afresh, for themselves.
+
+These various objects are all involved in the one central aim of
+discovery, but they are not lost in it. To know this world we live in
+and to teach men the new knowledge was the first thing, which makes
+Henry what he is in universal history; his other aims are those of his
+time and his nation, but they are not less a part of his life.
+
+And he succeeded in them all; if in part his work was for all time and
+in part seemed to pass away after a hundred years, that was due to the
+exhaustion of his people. What he did for his countrymen was realised by
+others, but the start, the inspiration, was his own. He persevered for
+fifty years (1412-60) till within sight of the goal, and though he died
+before the full result of his work was seen, it was none the less his
+due when it came.
+
+We find these results put down to the credit of others, but if Columbus
+gave Castille and Leon a new world in 1492, if Da Gama reached India in
+1498, if Diaz rounded the Cape of Tempests or of Good Hope in 1486, if
+Magellan made the circuit of the globe in 1520-2, their teacher and
+master was none the less Henry the Navigator.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+PRINCE HENRY AND THE CAPTURE OF CEUTA.
+
+1415.
+
+
+We have seen how the kingdom of Portugal itself was almost an offspring
+of the Crusades. They had left behind them a thirst for wealth and for a
+wider life on one side, and a broken Moslem power on the other, which
+opened the way and stirred the enterprise of every maritime state. We
+know that Lisbon had long been an active centre of trade with the Hanse
+Towns, Flanders, and England. And now the projected conquest of Ceuta
+and the appeal of the conqueror of Aljubarrota for a great national
+effort found the people prepared. A royal prince could do what a private
+man could not; and Portugal, more fully developed than any other of the
+Christian kingdoms, was ready to expand abroad without fear at home.
+
+Even before the conquest of Ceuta, in 1410 or 1412, Henry had begun to
+send out his caravels past Cape Non, which had so long been with C.
+Bojador the Finisterre of Africa. The first object of these ships was
+to reach the Guinea coast by outflanking the great western shoulder of
+the continent. Once there, the gold and ivory and slave trade would pass
+away from the desert caravans to the European coasters. Then the eastern
+bend of Africa, along the bights of Benin and Biafra, might be followed
+to the Indies, if this were possible, as some had thought; if not, the
+first stage of the work would have to be taken up again till men had
+found and had rounded the Southern Cape. The outflanking of Guinea
+proved to be only a part of the outflanking of Africa, but it was far
+more than half the battle; just as India was the final prize of full
+success, so the Gold Coast was the reward of the first chapter in that
+success.
+
+But of these earlier expeditions nothing is known in detail; the history
+of the African voyages begins with the war of 1415, and the new
+knowledge it brought to Henry of the Sahara and the Guinea Coast and of
+the tribes of tawny Moors and negroes on the Niger and the Gambia.
+
+In 1414, when Edward was twenty-three, Pedro twenty-two, and Henry
+twenty, King John planned an attack on Ceuta, the great Moorish port on
+the African side of the Straits of Gibraltar. The three princes had all
+asked for knighthood; their father at first proposed to celebrate a year
+of tournaments, but at the suggestion of the Treasurer of Portugal, John
+Affonso de Alemquer, he decided on this African crusade instead. For the
+same strength and money might as well be spent in conquests from the
+Moslem as in sham-fights between Christians. So after reconnoitring the
+place, and lulling the suspicions of Aragon and Granada by a pretence
+of declaring war against the Count of Holland, King John gained the
+formal consent of his nobles at Torres Vedras, and set sail from Lisbon
+on St. James' Day, July 25, 1415, as foretold by the dying Queen
+Philippa, twelve days before.
+
+[Illustration: KING JOHN THE GREAT AND QUEEN PHILIPPA.
+FROM THEIR TOMB AT BATALHA.]
+
+That splendid woman, who had shared the throne for eight and twenty
+years, and who had trained her sons to be fit successors of her husband
+as the leaders of Portugal and the "Examples of all Christians," was now
+cut off by death from a sight of their first victories. Her last thought
+was for their success. She spoke to Edward of a king's true vocation, to
+Pedro of his knightly duties in the help of widows and orphans, to Henry
+of a general's care for his men. On the 13th, the last day of her
+illness, she roused herself to ask "What wind was blowing so strong
+against the house?" and hearing it was the north, sank back and died,
+exclaiming, "It is the wind for your voyage, that must be about St.
+James' Day." It would have been false respect to delay. The spirit of
+the Queen, the crusaders felt, was with them, urging them on.
+
+By the night of the 25th of July the fleet had left the Tagus; on the
+27th the crusaders anchored in the bay of Lagos and mustered all their
+forces: "33 galleys, 27 triremes, 32 biremes, and 120 pinnaces and
+transports," carrying 50,000 soldiers and 30,000 mariners. Some nobles
+and merchant adventurers from England, France, and Germany took part. It
+was something like the conquest of Lisbon over again; a greater Armada
+for a much smaller prey.
+
+On the 10th of August they were off Algeziras, still in Moorish hands,
+as part of the kingdom of Granada, and on the 12th the lighter craft
+were over on the African coast; a strong wind nearly carried the heavier
+into Malaga.
+
+Ceuta, the ancient Septa,[34] once repaired by Justinian, was the chief
+port of Morocco and a centre of commerce for the trade routes of the
+South and East, as well as a centre of piracy for the Barbary corsairs.
+It had long been an outpost of Moslem attack on Christendom; now that
+Europe was taking the offensive, it would be an outpost of the Spanish
+crusade against Islam.
+
+[Footnote 34: City of "Seven" Hills, as some have derived it.]
+
+The city was built on the ordinary model, in two parts: a citadel and a
+port-town, which together covered the neck of a long peninsula running
+out some three miles eastward from the African mainland, and broadening
+again beyond the eastern wall of Ceuta into a hilly square of country.
+
+It was here, just where the land began to spread and form a natural
+harbour, that the Portuguese had planned their landing, and to this
+point Prince Henry, with great trouble, brought up the heavier craft.
+The strong currents that turned them off to the Spanish coast, proved
+good allies of the Europeans after all. For the Moors, who had been
+greatly startled at the first signs of attack, and had hurried to get
+all the help they could from Fez and the upland, now fancied the
+Christian fleet to be scattered once for all, and dismissed all but
+their own garrison; while the Portuguese had been roused afresh to
+action by the fiery energy of King John, Prince Henry, and his brothers.
+On the night of the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, the
+whole armada was at last brought up to the roads of Ceuta; Henry
+anchored off the lower town with his ships from Oporto, and his father,
+though badly wounded in the leg, rowed through the fleet in a shallop,
+preparing all his men for the assault that was to be given at daybreak.
+Henry himself was to have the right of first setting foot on shore,
+where it was hoped the quays would be almost bared of defenders. For the
+main force was brought up against the castle, and every Moor would rush
+to the fight where the King of Portugal was leading.
+
+While these movements were being settled in the armada, all through that
+night Ceuta was brilliantly lighted up, as if _en fête_. The Governor in
+his terror could think of nothing better than to frighten the enemy with
+the show of an immensely populous city, and he had ordered a light to be
+kept burning in every window of every house. As the morning cleared and
+the Christian host saw the beach and harbour lined with Moors, shouting
+defiance, the attack was begun by some volunteers who forgot the
+Prince's claim. One Ruy Gonsalvez was the first to land and clear a
+passage for the rest. The Infantes, Henry and Edward, were not far
+behind, and after a fierce struggle the Moslems were driven through the
+gate of the landing-place back to the wall of the city. Here they
+rallied, under a "negro giant, who fought naked, but with the strength
+of many men, hurling the Christians to the earth with stones." At last
+he was brought down by a lance-thrust, and the crusaders forced their
+way into Ceuta. But Henry, as chief captain on this side, would not
+allow his men to rush on plundering into the heart of the town, but kept
+them by the gates, and sent back to the ships for fresh troops, who soon
+came up under Fernandez d'Ataide, who cheered on the Princes. "This is
+the sort of tournament for you; here you are getting a worthier
+knighthood than you could win at Lisbon."
+
+Meantime the King, with Don Pedro, had heard of Henry's first success
+while still on shipboard, and ordered an instant advance on his side.
+After a still closer struggle than that on the lower ground, the Moors
+were routed, and Pedro pressed on through the narrow streets, just
+escaping death from the showers of heavy stones off the house tops, till
+he met his brothers in a mosque, or square adjoining, in the centre of
+Ceuta.
+
+Then the conquerors scattered for plunder, and came very near losing the
+city altogether. But for the dogged courage of Henry, who twice broke up
+the Moslem rally with a handful of men, at last holding a gate on the
+inner wall between the lower town and the citadel, "with seventeen,
+himself the eighteenth," Ceuta would have been lost after it had been
+gained. Both Henry and Pedro were reported dead. "Such is the end a
+soldier must not fear," was all their father said, as he stayed by the
+ships under the lee of the fortress, waiting, like Edward III. at Creçy,
+for what his sons would do. But towards evening it was known throughout
+the army that the Princes were safe, that the port-town had been gained,
+and that the Moors were slipping away from the citadel.
+
+Henry, Edward, and Pedro held a council, and settled to storm the castle
+next morning; but after sunset a few scouts, sent out to reconnoitre,
+reported that all the garrison had fled.
+
+It was true. The Governor, who had despaired all along of holding out,
+was no sooner beaten out of the lower city than he set the example of a
+strategic movement up the country, and when the Portuguese appeared at
+the fortress gate with axes and began to hew it down, only two Moors
+were left inside. They shouted out that the Christians might save
+themselves that trouble, for they would open it themselves, and the
+standard of St. Vincent, Patron of Lisbon, was planted, before dark
+came, upon the highest tower of Ceuta.
+
+King John offered Henry, for his gallant leadership, the honours of the
+day and the right to be knighted before his brothers, but the Prince,
+who had offered at the beginning of the storm to resign his command to
+Edward, as the eldest, begged that "those who were before him in age
+might have their right, to be first in dignity as well," and the three
+Infantes received their knighthood in order of birth, each holding in
+his hands the bare sword that the Queen had given him on her deathbed.
+
+It was the first Christian rite held in the great Mosque of Ceuta, now
+purified as the Cathedral, and after it the town was thoroughly and
+carefully sacked from end to end. The plunder, of gold and silver and
+gems, stuffs and drugs, was great enough to make the common soldiers
+reckless of other things. The "great jars of oil and honey and spices
+and all provisions" were flung out into the streets, and a heavy rain
+swept away what would have kept a large garrison in plenty.
+
+The great nobles and the royal Princes took back to Portugal some
+princely spoils. Henry's half-brother, now Count of Barcellos,
+afterwards more famous and more troublesome as Duke of Braganza, chose
+for his share some six hundred columns of marble and alabaster from the
+Governor's palace. Henry himself gained in Ceuta a knowledge of inland
+Africa, of its trade routes and of the Gold Coast, that encouraged him
+to begin from this time the habit of coasting voyages. His earlier
+essays in exploration had been attempts, like the unconnected and
+occasional efforts of Spanish and Italian daredevils. It is from this
+year that continuous ocean sailing begins; from the time of his stay in
+Ceuta, Henry works steadily and with foresight towards a nearer goal
+well foreseen, a first stage in his wider scheme which had been
+traversed by men he had known and talked with. They had come into Ceuta
+from Guinea over the sea of the desert; he would send his sailors to
+_their_ starting-point by the longer way, over the desert of the sea.
+
+Thus the victory at Ceuta is not without a very direct influence on our
+subject; and for the same reason, it was important that the conquerors,
+instead of razing the place, decided to hold it. When most of the
+council of war were for a safe and quick return to Portugal, one
+noble, Pedro de Menezes, a trusted friend of Henry's, struck upon the
+ground impatiently a stick of orange-wood he had in his hands. "By my
+faith, with this stick I would defend Ceuta from every Morisco of them
+all." He was left in command, and thus kept open, as it were, to Europe
+and to the Prince's view, one end of a great avenue of commerce and
+intercourse, which Henry aimed at winning for his country. When his
+ships could once reach Guinea, the other end of that same line was in
+his hands as well.
+
+[Illustration: GATEWAY OF THE CHURCH OF THE ORDER OF CHRIST AT THOMAR.]
+
+The King and the Princes left Ceuta in September of the same year (Sept.
+2, 1415), but Henry's connection with his first battle-field was not yet
+over. Menezes found after three years' sole command, that the Moors were
+pressing him very hard. The King of Granada had sent seventy-four ships
+to blockade the city from the sea, and the troops of Fez were forcing
+their way into the lower town. Henry was hurriedly sent from Lisbon to
+its relief, while Edward and Pedro got themselves ready to follow him,
+if needed, from Lagos and the Algarve coast. But Ceuta had already saved
+itself. As the first succours were sailing through the Straits of
+Gibraltar, Menezes contrived to send them word of his danger; the
+Berbers on the land side had mastered Almina, or the eastern part of the
+merchant town, while the Granada galleys had closed in upon the port
+itself. At this news Henry made the best speed he could, but he was only
+in time to see the rout of the Moors. Menezes and the garrison made a
+desperate sally directly they sighted the relief coming through the
+straits; the same appearance struck a panic into the enemy's fleet, and
+only one galley stayed on the African coast to help their landsmen, who
+were thus left alone and without hope of succour on the eastern hills of
+the Ceuta peninsula, cut off by the city from their Berber allies. When
+Henry landed, Almina had been won back and the last of the Granada
+Moslems cut to pieces. From that day Ceuta was safe in Christian hands.
+
+But the Prince, after spending two months in the hope that he might find
+some more work to do in Africa, planned a daring stroke in Europe. Islam
+still owned in Spain the kingdom of Granada, too weak to reconquer the
+old Western Caliphate, but too strong, as the last refuge of a conquered
+and once imperial race, to be an easy prey of the Spanish kingdoms. And
+in that kingdom, Gibraltar, the rock of Tarik, was the most troublesome
+of Moorish strongholds. The Mediterranean itself was not fully secured
+for Christian trade and intercourse while the European Pillar of the
+Western straits was a Saracen fort. If Portugal was to conquer or
+explore in northern Africa, Gibraltar was as much to be aimed at as
+Ceuta. Both sides of the straits, Calpe and Abyla, must be in her hands
+before Christendom could expand safely along the Atlantic coasts.
+
+So Henry, in the face of all his council, determined to make the trial
+on his voyage back to Lisbon. But a storm broke up the fleet, and when
+it could be refitted and re-formed, the time had gone by, and the Prince
+obeyed his father's repeated orders and returned at once to Court. For
+his gallantry and skill in the storm of Ceuta, he had been made Duke of
+Viseu and Lord of Covilham, when King John first touched his own
+kingdom--after the African campaign--at Tavira, on the Algarve coast.
+With his brother Pedro, who shared his honours as Duke of Coimbra and
+Lord of the lands henceforward known as the Infantado or Principality,
+Henry thus begins the line of Dukes in Portugal, and among the other
+details of the war, his name is specially joined with that of an English
+fleet which he had enrolled as a contingent of his armada while
+recruiting for ships and men in the spring of 1415. In the same way as
+English crusaders had passed Lisbon just in time to aid in its conquest
+by Affonso Henriquez, the "great first King" of Portugal in 1147, so now
+twenty-seven English ships on their way to Syria were just in time to
+help the Portuguese make their first conquest abroad.
+
+Lastly, the results of the Ceuta campaign in giving positive knowledge
+of western and inland Africa to a mind like Henry's already set on the
+finding of a sea-route to India, have been noticed by all contemporaries
+and followers, who took any interest in his plans, but it was not merely
+caravan news that he gained in these two visits of 1415 and 1418. Both
+Azurara, the chronicler of his voyages and Diego Gomez, his lieutenant,
+the explorer of the Cape Verde Islands and of the Upper Gambia, are
+quite clear about the new knowledge of the coast now gained from Moorish
+prisoners.
+
+Not only did the Prince get "news of the passage of merchants from the
+coasts of Tunis to Timbuctoo and to Cantor on the Gambia, which
+inspired him to seek the lands by the way of the sea," but also "the
+Tawny Moors (or Azanegues) his prisoners told him of certain tall palms
+growing at the mouth of the Senegal or western Nile, by which he was
+able to guide the caravels he sent out to find that river." By the time
+Henry was ready to return from Ceuta to Portugal for good and all, in
+1418, there were clearly before his mind the five reasons for exploring
+Guinea given by his faithful Azurara:
+
+First of all was his desire to know the country beyond Cape Bojador,
+which till that time was quite unknown either by books or by the talk of
+sailors.
+
+Second was his wish that if any Christian people or good ports should be
+discovered beyond that cape, he might begin a trade with them that would
+profit both the natives and the Portuguese, for he knew of no other
+nation in Europe who trafficked in those parts.
+
+Thirdly, he believed the Moors were more powerful on that side of Africa
+than had been thought, and he feared there were no Christians there at
+all. So he was fain to find out how many and how strong his enemies
+really were.
+
+Fourthly, in all his fighting with the Moors he had never found a
+Christian prince to help him from that side (of further Africa) for the
+love of Christ, therefore he wished, if he could, to meet with such.
+
+Last was his great desire for the spread of the Christian Faith and for
+the redemption of the vast tribes of men lying under the wrath of God.
+
+Behind all these reasons Azurara also believed in a sixth and deeper
+one, which he proceeds to state with all gravity, as the ultimate and
+celestial cause of the Prince's work.
+
+"For as his ascendant was Aries, that is in the House of Mars and the
+Exaltation of the Sun, and as the said Mars is in Aquarius, which is the
+House of Saturn, it was clear that my lord should be a great conqueror,
+and a searcher out of things hidden from other men, according to the
+craft of Saturn, in whose House he was."[35]
+
+[Footnote 35: The attempts of Henry and his family to conquer a
+land-empire in northern Africa are not to be separated from the maritime
+and coasting explorations. They were two aspects of one idea, two faces
+of the same enterprise.
+
+In the same way the new bishopric of Ceuta, now founded, was a first
+step towards the organised conversion of the Heathen of the South. The
+Franciscans had founded the See of Fez and Morocco in 1233, but it had
+not till now been followed up.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+HENRY'S SETTLEMENT AT SAGRES AND FIRST DISCOVERIES.
+
+1418-28.
+
+
+Whatever the Prince owed to his stay at Ceuta beyond the general
+suggestion and encouragement to take up a life-profession of discovery,
+it was at any rate put into practice on his second and last return
+(1418). From that time to the end of his life he became a recluse from
+the Court life of Lisbon, though he soon gathered round himself a rival
+Court, of science and seamanship.
+
+The old "Sacred Cape" of the Romans, then called Sagres, now the "Cape
+St. Vincent" of Nelson and modern maps, was his chosen home for the next
+forty years, though he seems to have passed a good deal of his time in
+his port of Lagos, close by.
+
+In 1419 King John made him Governor for life of the Algarves (the
+southern province of Portugal) and the new governor at once began to
+rebuild and enlarge the old naval arsenal, in the neck of the Cape, into
+a settlement that soon became the "Prince's Town." In Lagos, his ships
+were built and manned; and there, and in Sagres itself, all the schemes
+of discovery were thought out, the maps and instruments corrected, and
+the accounts of past and present travellers compared by the Prince
+himself. His results then passed into the instructions of his captains
+and the equipment of his caravels. The Sacred Cape, which he now
+colonised, was at any rate a good centre for his work of ocean voyaging.
+Here, with the Atlantic washing the land on three sides, he was well on
+the scene of action. There were buildings on Sagres headland as old as
+the eleventh century; Greek geography had made this the starting-point
+of its shorter and continental measurements for the length of the
+habitable world, and the Genoese, whose policy was to buy up points of
+vantage on every coast, were eager to plant a colony there, but Portugal
+was not ready to become like the Byzantine Empire, a depot for Italian
+commerce, and Henry had his own reasons for securing a desolate
+promontory.
+
+On this he now built himself a palace, a chapel, a study, an
+observatory--the earliest in Portugal--and a village for his helpers and
+attendants. "In his wish to gain a prosperous result for his efforts,
+the Prince devoted great industry and thought to the matter, and at
+great expense procured the aid of one Master Jacome from Majorca, a man
+skilled in the art of navigation and in the making of maps and
+instruments, and who was sent for, with certain of the Arab and Jewish
+mathematicians, to instruct the Portuguese in that science." So at
+least, says De Barros, the "Livy of Portugal." At Sagres was thus
+founded anew the systematic study of applied science in Christendom; it
+was better than the work of the old Greek "University" at Alexandria
+with which it has been compared, because it was essentially practical.
+From it "our sailors," says Pedro Nunes, "went out well taught and
+provided with instruments and rules which all map-makers should know."
+We would gladly know more of Henry's scientific work; a good many
+legends have grown up about it, and even his foundation of the Chair of
+Mathematics in the University of Lisbon or Coimbra, our best evidence of
+the unrecorded work of his school, has been doubted by some modern
+critics, even by the national historian, Alexander Herculano. But to
+Prince Henry's study and science two great improvements on this side may
+be traced: first in the art of map-making, secondly in the building of
+caravels and ocean craft.
+
+The great Venetian map of Fra Mauro of the Camaldolese convent of
+Murano, finished in 1459, one year before the Navigator's death, is
+evidence for the one; Cadamosto's words, as a practical seaman, of
+Italian birth, in Henry's service, that the "caravels of Portugal were
+the best sailing ships afloat," may be proof sufficient of the other.
+
+On both these lines, Henry took up the results of Italians and worked
+towards success with their aid. As Columbus and the Cabots and Verazzano
+in later times represented the intellectual leadership of Italy to other
+nations--Spain, England, and France; but had to find their career and
+resources not in their own commercial republics, but at the Courts of
+the new centralised kingdoms of the West, where a paternal despotism
+gave the best hope of guiding any popular movement, social or religious
+or political or scientific,--so in the earlier fifteenth century,
+mariners like Cadamosto and De Nolli, scientific draughtsmen like Fra
+Mauro and Andrea Bianco, looked from Venice and Genoa to the Court of
+Sagres and to the service of Prince Henry as their proper sphere, where
+they would find the encouragement and reward they sought for at home and
+often sought in vain.
+
+Henry's settlement on Cape St. Vincent was not long without results. The
+voyage of his captain, John de Trasto, to the "fruitful" district of
+Grand Canary in 1415 was not in any sense a discovery, as the conquest
+of John de Béthencourt in 1402 had made these "Fortunate" islands
+perfectly well known, but the finding of Porto Santo and Madeira in
+1418-20 was a real gain. For the Machin story of the English landing in
+Madeira was a close secret, which by good fortune passed into the
+Prince's keeping, but not beyond, so that as far as general knowledge
+went, the Portuguese were now fairly embarked upon the Sea of Darkness.
+
+First came the sighting of the "Holy Haven" in 1418. In this year, says
+Azurara, two squires of the Prince's household, named John Gonsalvez
+Zarco and Tristam Vaz, eager for renown and anxious to serve their lord,
+had set out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea, but they were
+caught by a storm near Lagos and driven to the island of Porto Santo.
+This name they gave themselves "at this very time in their joy at thus
+escaping the perils of the tempest."
+
+Zarco and Vaz returned in triumph to Sagres and reported the new-found
+island to be well worth a permanent settlement. Henry, always
+"generous," took up the idea with great interest and sent out Zarco and
+Vaz with another of his equerries, one Bartholomew Perestrello, to
+colonise, with two ships and products for a new country; corn, honey,
+the sugar cane from Sicily, the Malvoisie grape from Crete, even the
+rabbit from Portugal.
+
+On his first return voyage Zarco had captured the pilot Morales of
+Seville, and from him the Prince had gained certain news of the English
+landing in Madeira. So it was with a definite purpose of further
+discovery that his captains returned to Porto Santo in 1420, with
+Morales as their guide. Now, as before, Zarco appears as chief in
+command; he had won himself a name at Ceuta, and if the tradition be
+true, had just brought in the first use of ship-artillery; the finding
+of Porto Santo was mainly credited to him.
+
+Sailing from Lagos in June, 1420, he had no sooner reached once again
+the "Fair Haven" of his first success, than he was called to note a dark
+line, like a mark of distant land, upon the south-west horizon. The
+colonists he had left on his earlier visit had watched this day by day
+till they had made certain of its being something more than a passing
+appearance of sea or sky, and Morales was ready with his suggestion that
+this was Machin's island. The fog that hung over this part of the ocean
+would be natural to a thick and dank woodland like that on the island
+of his old adventure.
+
+Zarco resolved to try: After eight days' rest in Porto Santo he set
+sail, and, observing that the fog grew less toward the east of the cloud
+bank, made for that point and came upon a low marshy cape, which he
+called St. Lawrence Head. Then, creeping round the south coast, he came
+to the high lands and the forests of Madeira,--so named here and now,
+either as De Barros says, "from the thick woods they found there," or,
+in the form of Machico, from the first discoverer, luckless Robert
+Machin. For on landing the Portuguese, guided by Morales, soon found the
+wooden cross and grave of the Englishman and his mistress, and it was
+there that Zarco, with no human being to dispute his title, "took
+seizin" of the island in the name of King John, Prince Henry, and the
+Order of Christ.
+
+Embarking once more, he then coasted slowly round from the "River of the
+Flint" to "Jackdaw Point," and the "Chamber of the Wolves," where his
+men started a herd of sea-calves. So he came to the vast plain overgrown
+with fennel or "Funchal," where the chief town of after days grew up. A
+party sent inland to explore, reported that on every side the ocean
+could be seen from the hills; and Zarco, after taking in some specimens
+of the native wood and plants and birds at Funchal, put back in the last
+days of August to Portugal.
+
+He was splendidly received at Court, made a count--"Count of the Chamber
+of the Wolves,"--and granted the command of the island for his own
+life. A little later, the commandership was made hereditary in his
+family. Tristam Vaz, the second in the Prince's commission, was rewarded
+too: the northern half of Madeira was given him as a captaincy, and in
+1425 Henry began to colonise in form. Zarco, as early as May, 1421, had
+returned with wife and children and attendants, and begun to build the
+"port of Machico," and the "city of Funchal," but this did not become a
+state affair until four years more had gone by.
+
+But from the first, the island, by its export of wood and dragon's blood
+and wheat, began to reward the trouble of discovery and settlement.
+Sugar and wine were brought to perfection in later years, after the
+great "Seven years' fire" had burnt down the forests and enriched the
+soil of Madeira. It was soon after Zarco's return to Funchal that he
+first set fire to the woods behind the fennel fields of the coast, to
+clear himself a way through the undergrowth into the heart of the
+island; the fire blazed and smouldered till it had taken well hold of
+the entire mass of timber that covered the upper country, nothing in the
+feeble resources of the first settlers could stop it, and Madeira
+lighted the ships of Henry on their way to the south, like a volcano,
+till 1428. This was at least the common story as told in Portugal, and
+it was often joined with another--of the rabbit plague, which ate up all
+the green stuff of the island in the first struggling years of Zarco's
+settlement, and so prevented the export of anything but timber. So much
+of this was brought into Portugal that Henry's lifetime is a landmark in
+the domestic architecture of Spain, and from the trade of the "Wood
+Island" is derived the lofty style of building that now began to replace
+the more modest fashion of the Arabs.
+
+A charter of Henry's, dated 1430, ten years after the rediscovery of
+Madeira, and reciting the names of some of the first settlers, and his
+bequest of the island, or rather of its "spiritualties," to the Order of
+Christ on September 18, 1460, just before his death, are the chief links
+between this colony and the home country in the next generation--but in
+the history of institutions there are few more curious facts than the
+insistence of the Prince on a census for his little "Nation." From the
+first, the family registers of the colonists were carefully kept, and
+from these we see something of the wonder of men who were beginning
+human life, as it were, in a new land. The first children born in
+Madeira--a son and daughter of Ayres Ferreira, one of Zarco's
+comrades--were christened Adam and Eve.[36]
+
+[Footnote 36: In 1418 and 1424-5 Henry purchased and tried to secure
+certain rights of possession in the Canaries, conceded by De
+Béthencourt; and these attempts were repeated in 1445 and 1446.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CAPE BOJADOR AND THE AZORES.
+
+1428-1441.
+
+
+But in spite of Zarco's success, Cape Bojador had not yet been passed,
+though every year, from 1418, caravels had left Sagres, "to find the
+coasts of Guinea."
+
+In 1428, Don Pedro, Henry's elder brother, had come home from his
+travels, with all the books and charts he had collected to help the
+explorers--and it is practically certain that the Mappa Mundi given him
+in Venice acted as a direct suggestion to the next attempts on west and
+south--westward to the Azores, southward towards Guinea.
+
+Kept in the royal monastery of Alçobaça till late in the sixteenth
+century, though now irrecoverably lost, this treasure of Don Pedro's,
+like his "manuscripts of travel," would seem to have been used at the
+Sagres school till Prince Henry's death, and at least as early as 1431
+its effect was seen in the first Portuguese recovery of the Azores. All
+the West African islands, plainly enough described in the map of 1428,
+were half within, half without the knowledge of Christendom, ever and
+anon being brought back or rediscovered by some accident or enterprise,
+and then being lost to sight and memory through the want of systematic
+exploration. This was exactly what the Portuguese supplied. The Azores,
+marked on the Laurentian Portulano of 1351, were practically unknown to
+seamen when, after eighty years had passed, Gonzalo Cabral was sent out
+from Sagres to find them (1431). He reached the Formiga group--the Ant
+islands,--and next year (1432) returned to make further discoveries,
+chiefly of the island Santa Maria. But the more important advances on
+this side were made between 1444-50, after the first colony had been
+planted twelve or fourteen years, and were the result of the Prince's
+theoretical correction of his captains' practical oversight. From a
+comparison of old maps and descriptions with their accounts, he was able
+to correct their line of sail and so to direct them to the very islands
+they had searched for in vain.
+
+But as yet these results were far distant, and the slow and sure
+progress of African coasting towards Cape Bojador was the chief outcome
+of Pedro's help. In 1430, 1431, and 1432, the Infant urged upon his
+captains the paramount importance of rounding the Cape, which had
+baffled all his caravels by its strong ocean currents and dangerous
+rocks. At last this became the Prince's one command: Pass the Cape if
+you do nothing beyond; yet the years went by, King John of good memory
+died in 1433, and Gil Eannes, sent out in the same year with strong
+hopes of success, turned aside at the Canaries and only brought a few
+slaves back to Portugal. A large party at Court, in the Army, and among
+the nobles and merchant classes, complained bitterly of the utter want
+of profit from Henry's schemes, and there was at this time a danger of
+the collapse of his movement. For though as yet he paid his own
+expenses, his treasury could not long have stood the drain without any
+incoming.
+
+Bojador, the "paunch" or "bulging Cape," 180 miles beyond Cape Non, had
+been, since the days of the Laurentian Portulano (1351), and the Catalan
+and Portuguese voyages of 1341 and 1346, the southmost point of
+Christian knowledge. A long circuit was needed here, as at the Cape of
+Good Hope, to round a promontory that stretched, men said, fully one
+hundred miles into the ocean, where tides and shoals formed a current
+twenty miles across. It was the sight or the fancy of this furious surge
+which frightened Henry's crews, for it plainly forbade all coasting and
+compelled the seamen to strike into the open sea out of sight of land.
+And though the discovery of Porto Santo had proved the feasibility and
+the gain of venturing boldly into the Sea of Darkness, and though since
+that time (1418) the Prince had sent out his captains due west to the
+Azores and south-west to Madeira, both hundreds of miles from the
+continent, yet in rounding Bojador there were not only the real terrors
+of the Atlantic, but the legends of the tropics to frighten back the
+boldest.
+
+Most mariners had heard it said that any Christian who passed Bojador
+would infallibly be changed into a black, and would carry to his end
+this mark of God's vengeance on his insolent prying. The Arab tradition
+of the Green Sea of Night had too strongly taken hold of Christian
+thought to be easily shaken off. And it was beyond the Cape which
+bounded their knowledge that the Saracen geographers had fringed the
+coast of Africa with sea-monsters and serpent rocks and water unicorns,
+instead of place names, and had drawn the horrible giant hand of Satan
+raised above the waves to seize the first of his human prey that would
+venture into his den. If God made the firm earth, the Devil made the
+unknown and treacherous ocean--this was the real lesson of most of the
+mediæval maps, and it was this ingrained superstition that Henry found
+his worst enemy, appearing as it did sometimes even in his most trusted
+and daring captains.
+
+And then again, the legends of Tropical Africa, of the mainland beyond
+Bojador, were hardly less terrible than those of the Tropical Ocean. The
+Dark Continent, with its surrounding Sea of Darkness, was the home of
+mystery and legend. We have seen how ready the Arabs were to write
+Uninhabitable over any unknown country--dark seas and lands were simply
+those that were dark to them, like the Dark Ages to others, but nowhere
+did their imagination revel in genies and fairies and magicians and all
+the horrors of hell, with more enthusiastic and genial interest than in
+Africa. Here only the northern parts could be lived in by man. In the
+south and central deserts, as we have heard from the Moslem doctors
+themselves, the sun poured down sheets of liquid flame upon the ground
+and kept the sea and the rivers boiling day and night with the fiery
+heat. So any sailors would of course be boiled alive as soon as they got
+near to the Torrid Zone.
+
+It was this kind of learning, discredited but not forgotten, that was
+still in the minds of Gil Eannes and his friends when they came home in
+1433, with lame excuses, to Henry's Court. The currents and south winds
+had stopped them, they said. It was impossible to get round Bojador.
+
+The Prince was roused. He ordered the same captain to return next year
+and try the Cape again. His men ought to have learned something better
+than the childish fables of past time. "And if," said he, "there were
+even any truth in these stories that they tell, I would not blame you,
+but you come to me with the tales of four seamen who perhaps know the
+voyage to the Low Countries or some other coasting route, but, except
+for this, don't know how to use needle or sailing chart. Go out again
+and heed them not, for by God's help, fame and profit must come from
+your voyage, if you will but persevere."
+
+The Prince was backed by the warm encouragement of the new King, Edward,
+his eldest brother, who had only been one month upon the throne when he
+bestirred himself to shew his favour to a national movement of
+discovery. King John had died on August 14, 1433 (the anniversary of
+Aljubarrota), and on September 26th, of the same year, by a charter
+given from Cintra, King Edward granted the islands of Madeira and Porto
+Santo, with the Desertas, to Henry as Grand Master of the Order of
+Christ.
+
+With this encouragement the Infant sent out Gil Eannes in 1434 under the
+strongest charge not to return without a good account of the Cape and
+the seas beyond. Running far out into the open, his caravel doubled
+Bojador, and coming back to the coast found the sea "as easy to sail in
+as the waters at home," and the land very rich and pleasant. They landed
+and discovered no trace of men or houses, but gathered plants, "such as
+were called in Portugal St. Mary's roses," to present to Don Henry. Not
+even the southern Cape of Tempests or Good Hope was so long and
+obstinate a barrier as Bojador had been, and the passing of this
+difficulty proved the salvation of the Prince's schemes. Though again
+and again interrupted by political troubles between 1437 and 1449, the
+advance at sea went on, and never again was there a serious danger of
+the failure of the whole movement through general opposition and
+discontent.
+
+In 1435 Gil Eannes was sent out again to follow up his success with
+Affonso Baldaya, the Prince's cupbearer, in a larger vessel than had yet
+been risked in exploration, called a varinel, or oared galley. The two
+captains passed fifty leagues--one hundred and fifty miles--beyond the
+Cape, and found traces of caravans, reached as far as an inlet they
+named Gurnet Bay, from its shoals of fish, and again put back to Lagos,
+early in the year.
+
+There were still several months left for ocean sailing in 1435, and
+Henry at once despatched Baldaya again in his varinel, with orders to go
+as far as he could along the coast, at least till he could find some
+natives. One of these he was to bring home with him. Baldaya accordingly
+sailed 130 leagues--390 miles--beyond Cape Bojador, till he reached an
+estuary running some twenty miles up the country and promising to lead
+to a great river. This might prove to be the western Nile of the
+Negroes, or the famous River of Gold, Baldaya thought, and though it
+proved to be only an inlet of the sea, the name of Rio d'Ouro, then
+given by the first hopes of the Portuguese, has outlasted the
+disappointment that found only a sandy reach instead of a waterway to
+the Mountains of the Moon and the kingdom of Prester John.
+
+Baldaya anchored here, landed a couple of horses which the Infant had
+given him to scour the country, and set "two young noble gentlemen" upon
+them to ride up country, to look for signs of natives, and if possible
+to bring back one captive to the ship. Taking no body-armour, but only
+lance and sword, the boys followed the "river" to its source, seven
+leagues up the country, and here came suddenly upon nineteen savages,
+armed with assegais. They rode up to them and drove them out of the open
+up to a loose mound of stones; then as evening was coming on and they
+could not secure a prisoner, they rode back to the sea and reached the
+ship about the dawn of day. "And of these boys," says the chronicler, "I
+myself knew one, when he was a noble gentleman of good renown in arms.
+His name was Hector Homen, and you will find him in our history well
+proved in brave deeds. The other, named Lopez d'Almeida, was a nobleman
+of good presence, as I have heard from those who knew him."
+
+This first landing of Europeans on the coasts of unknown Africa, since
+the days of Carthaginian colonies, is one of the great moments in the
+story of Western expansion and discovery. For it means that Christendom
+on her Western side has at last got beyond the first circle of her
+enemies, the belt of settled Moslem ground, and has begun to touch the
+wider world outside, on the shore of the ocean as well as along the
+Eastern trade routes. And it almost seemed to be of little practical
+value that Marco Polo and the friars and traders who followed him had
+passed Islam in Asia, and reached even furthest Tartary, for it only
+made more clear that Asia was not Christian, and that there would have
+to be a deadly struggle before European influence could be restored on
+this side to what it had been under Alexander; but on the west, by the
+Atlantic coasts, once Morocco had been passed, there were only scattered
+savage tribes to be dealt with. Baldaya had now reached the pagans
+beyond Islam; the rival civilisation of the Arabs and their converts had
+been almost outflanked by Don Henry's ships; and the boys who rode up
+the Rio d'Ouro beach in 1435 were the first pickets of a great army.
+Their charge upon a body of grown men ten times their number, was a
+prophecy of the coming conquests of Christian Europe in the new worlds
+it was now in search of, in south and east and west.
+
+Now Baldaya instantly followed up his pioneers. He took a party in his
+ship's boat and rode up the stream to the scene of the fight, with the
+boys on horseback riding by the bank and shewing him the stone-heap
+where the natives had rallied on the day before. But in the night they
+had all fled farther up country, leaving most of their miserable goods
+behind. All these were carried off, and the Portuguese left the Bay of
+the Horses, as they called this farthest reach of the Rio d'Ouro, and
+pulled back to the varinel, without any further success than a wholesome
+disappointment. They must go farther southward if they were to find the
+western Nile and the way round Africa.
+
+Still Baldaya was not content. He wished to carry back a prisoner, as
+Henry had charged him, and so he coasted along fifty leagues more, from
+the Rio d'Ouro to the Port of Gallee, a rock that looked like a galley,
+where there was a more prominent headland than he had passed since
+Bojador. Here he landed once again, and found some native nets, made of
+the bark of trees, but none of the natives who made them.
+
+In the early months of 1436 he and his varinel were again in Portuguese
+waters; but the land had now been touched that lay three hundred miles
+beyond the old African Finisterre, and in two years (1434-6) Portugal
+and all the Christian nations, through Henry's work, had entered on a
+new chapter of history. The narrower world of the Roman Empire and the
+Mediæval Church was already growing into the modern globe in the break
+up of that old terror of the sea which had so long fixed for men the
+bounds that they must not pass. The land routes had been cleared to
+Western knowledge, though not mastered, by the Crusades; now the far
+more dreaded and unknown water-way was fairly entered. For up to this
+time there is no fair evidence that either Christian or Moorish
+enterprise had ever rounded Bojador, and the theoretical marking of it
+upon maps was a very different thing from the experience that it was
+just like any other cape, and no more an end of the world than Cape St.
+Vincent itself. Neither Genoese, nor Catalans, nor Normans of Dieppe,
+nor the Arab wanderers of Edrisi and Ibn Said were before Don Henry now.
+His discoveries of the Atlantic islands were findings, rediscoveries;
+his coast voyages from the year 1433 are all ventures in the true
+unknown.
+
+But from 1436 to 1441, from Baldaya's second return to the start of Nuno
+Tristam and Antam Gonsalvez for Cape Blanco, exploration was not
+successful or energetic. The simple cause of this was the Infant's other
+business. In these years took place the fatal attempt on Tangier, the
+death of King Edward, and the troubles of the minority of his child,
+Affonso V.--Affonso the African conqueror of later years.
+
+True it is, we read in our _Chronicle of the Discovery of Guinea_, that
+in these years there went to those parts two ships, one at a time, but
+the first turned back in the face of bad weather, and the other only
+went to the Rio d'Ouro for the skins and oil of sea wolves, and after
+taking in a cargo of these, went back to Portugal. And true it is, too,
+that in the year 1440 there were armed and sent out two caravels to go
+to that same land, but in that they met with contrary fortune, we do not
+tell any more of their voyage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+HENRY'S POLITICAL LIFE. 1433-1441.
+
+
+The Prince's exile from politics in his hermitage at Sagres could not be
+absolutely unbroken. He was ready to come back to Court and to the
+battle field when he was needed. So he appeared at the deathbed of his
+father in 1433 and of his brother in 1438, at the siege of Tangier in
+1437, and during the first years of the Regency (1438-40) he helped to
+govern for his nephew, Edward's son Affonso. From 1436 till 1441 he did
+not seriously turn his attention back to discovery.
+
+What is chiefly interesting in the story of these years is the
+half-religious reverence paid to Henry by his brothers, by Cortés, and
+the whole people. He was above and beyond his age, but not so much as to
+be beyond its understanding. He was not a leader where there are no
+followers; he was one of the fortunate beings who are most valued by
+those who have lived on the closest terms with them, by father and by
+brothers.
+
+It was believed throughout the kingdom that King John's last words were
+"an encouragement to the Infant to persevere in his right laudable
+purpose of spreading the Christian faith in the lands of darkness";
+whether true or not, at any rate it was felt to fit the place and the
+man, and Henry's brothers, Pedro and Edward, took up loyally their
+father's commission to keep peace at home and sailing ships on the sea.
+
+But the new reign was short and full of trouble. King Edward had
+scarcely been crowned when the scheme of an African war was revived by
+Don Ferdinand, the fourth of the "Famous Infants" of the House of Aviz
+(1433). Ferdinand, always a Crusader at heart, had refused a Cardinal's
+hat, that he might keep his strength for killing the enemies of Christ,
+and in Henry he found a ready listener. It was the Navigator, in fact,
+who planned and organised the scheme of campaign now pressed upon the
+King and the country. It was perfectly natural that he should do so. The
+war of Ceuta had been of the first importance to his work of discovery;
+it had been largely his own achievement, and his wish to conquer
+Heathens and Saracens and to make good Christians of them was hardly
+less strong than his natural bent for discovery and exploring
+settlement. He now took up Ferdinand's suggestion, made of it a definite
+project--for a storm of Tangier--and wrung a reluctant consent from
+Edward and from Cortés. The chief hindrance was lack of money; even the
+popularity of the Government could not prevent "sore grudging and
+murmuring among the people." Don Pedro himself was against the whole
+plan, and from respect to his wishes the question was referred to the
+Pope. Are we to make war on the infidels or no?
+
+If the infidels in question, answered the Curia, were in Christian land
+and used Christian churches as mosques of Mohammed, or if they made
+incursions upon Christians, though always returning to their own land,
+or if doing none of these things they were idolaters or sinned against
+nature, the Princes of Portugal would do right to levy war upon them.
+But this should be done with prudence and piety, lest the people of
+Christ should suffer loss. Further, it was only just to tax a Christian
+people for support of an infidel war, when the said war was of necessity
+in defence of the kingdom. If the war was voluntary, for the conquering
+of fresh lands from the Heathen, it could only be waged at the King's
+own cost.
+
+But before this answer arrived, the armament had been made ready, and
+things had gone too far to draw back; the Queen was eager for the war,
+and had brought King Edward to a more willing consent. So in the face of
+bad omens, an illness of Prince Ferdinand's, and the warning words of
+Don Pedro, the troops were put on board ship, August 17, 1437. On August
+22d they set sail, and on the 26th landed at Ceuta, where Menezes still
+commanded. The European triumphs of 1415 and 1418 were still fresh in
+the memories of the Moors, and Don Henry was remembered as their hero.
+So it was to him that the tribes of the Beni Hamed sent offers of
+submission and tribute on the first news of the invasion. The Prince
+accepted their presents of gold and silver, cattle and wood, and left
+them in peace during the war, for the forces he had with him were barely
+sufficient for the siege of Tangier. Out of fourteen thousand men levied
+in Portugal, only six thousand answered the roll-call in Ceuta. A great
+number had shirked the dangers of Africa; and the room on shipboard had
+in itself been absurdly insufficient. The transports provided were just
+enough for the battalions that actually crossed, and for a fresh supply
+they must be sent back to Lisbon. In the council of war most were agreed
+upon this as the best thing on paper, but the practical difficulties
+were so great that Henry decided not to wait for reinforcements, but to
+push forward with the troops in hand.
+
+The direct road to Tangier by way of Ximera was now found impassable,
+and it was determined to march the army round by Tetuan, while the fleet
+was brought up along the coast. Ferdinand, who was still suffering and
+unequal to the land journey, was to go by sea, while his elder brother,
+as chief captain of the whole armament, undertook to force his way along
+the inland routes. In this he was successful. In three days he came
+before Tetuan, which opened its gates at once, and on September 23d,
+without losing a single man, he appeared before Old Tangier, where
+Ferdinand was already waiting his arrival.
+
+A rumour was now spread that the Moors were flying from Tangier as they
+had fled from Ceuta castle two and twenty years before, but Zala ben
+Zala, who commanded here as he had done there, now knew better how to
+defend a town, with the desperate courage of his Spanish foes. The
+attack instantly ordered by Henry on the gates of Tangier was roughly
+repulsed, and for the next fortnight the losses of the crusaders were so
+heavy that the siege was turned into a blockade. On September 30th,
+10,000 horse and 90,000 foot came down from the upland to the coast for
+the relief of Tangier. Henry promptly led his little army into the open
+and ordered an attack, and the vast Moorish host which had taken up its
+station on a hill within sight of the camp, not daring to accept the
+challenge, wavered, broke, and rushed headlong to the mountains. But
+after three days they reappeared in greater numbers and even ventured
+down into the plain. Again Henry drove them back; again--next day--they
+returned; at last, after their force had been swollen to 130,000 men,
+and by overwhelming numbers had compelled the Christians to keep within
+their trenches, they threw themselves upon the Portuguese outposts.
+After a desperate struggle they were repulsed and a sally from the town
+was beaten back at the same time; the Europeans seemed ready to meet any
+odds. With these victories, Henry was confident that Tangier must soon
+fall; he ordered another escalade, but all his scaling ladders were
+burnt or broken and many of his men crushed beneath the overhanging
+parts of the wall, that were pushed down bodily upon the storming
+parties. In this final assault of the 5th of October, two Moors were
+taken who told Henry of immense succours now coming up under the Kings
+of Fez, of Morocco, and of Tafilet. They had with them, said the
+captives, at least 100,000 horse; their infantry was beyond count. Sure
+enough; on the 9th of October, the hills round Tangier seemed covered
+with the native armies, and it became clear that the siege must be
+raised. All that was left for Henry was to bring off his soldiers in
+safety. He tried his best. With quiet energy he issued his orders for
+all contingents; the marines and seamen were to embark at once; the
+artillery was given in charge of the Marshal of the Kingdom; Almada, the
+Hercules of Portugal, was to draw up the foot in line of battle; the
+Infant himself took his station with the cavalry on a small piece of
+rising ground.
+
+When the Moors charged, they were well received. In spite of all their
+strength, one army being held ready to take another's place, as men grew
+tired, the Portuguese held their own. Henry had a horse killed under
+him; Cabral, his Master of Horse, fell at his side with five and twenty
+of his men; the cowardice of one regiment, who fled to the ships, almost
+ruined the defence; but when night fell, the Moorish columns fell
+sullenly back and left the Infant one more chance of flight and safety.
+It was the only hope, and even this was lost through the desertion of a
+traitor. Martin Vieyra, the apostate priest, once Henry's chaplain, now
+gave up to the enemy's generals the whole plan of escape.
+
+After a long debate, it was determined, not to massacre the Christian
+army, but to take sureties from them that Ceuta should be restored with
+all the Moorish captives in the Prince's hands. These terms were
+accepted, for it was soon known that escape was hopeless.
+
+But next morning a large party of Moors, with more than the ordinary
+Moslem treachery, made a last fierce attempt to surprise the camp. For
+eight hours, eight separate attacks went on; when all had failed, the
+retreating Berbers tried to set fire to the woodwork of the
+entrenchments. With the greatest trouble, Henry saved his timbers, and
+under cover of night fortified a new and smaller camp close to the
+shore. Food and water had both run short, and the besiegers, who were
+now become the besieged, had to kill their horses and cook them, with
+saddles for fuel. They were saved from a fatal drought by a lucky shower
+of rain, but their ruin was only a matter of time, for it was hopeless
+to try an embarkation under the walls of the city with all the hosts of
+Morocco waiting for the first chance of a successful storm; but the
+losses of the native kings and chiefs had been so great that they were
+ready to sign a written truce and to keep their cut-throats to the terms
+of it.
+
+On the 15th of October, Don Henry, for the Portuguese, agreed that
+Ceuta, with all the Moorish prisoners kept in guard by Menezes, should
+be given up and that no further attack should be made by the King of
+Portugal on any side of Barbary for one hundred years. The arms and
+baggage of the crusaders were to be surrendered at once: directly this
+was done they were to embark, with none of the honours of war, and to
+sail back at once to Europe. Don Ferdinand was left with twelve nobles
+as hostages for the treaty till Ceuta was restored; on the other side
+Zala ben Zala's eldest son was all the security given. Even after this,
+a plot was laid to massacre the "Christian dogs" as they passed through
+the streets of Tangier, on their free passage to the harbour which the
+treaty secured them. Henry got wind of this just in time, and instantly
+embarked his men by boats from the shore outside the walls, but his
+rearguard was set upon just as they were leaving the land and about
+sixty were killed.
+
+It was a terrible disaster. Although his losses were but some five
+hundred killed and disabled, Henry was overcome with the disgrace. As he
+thought of his brother among the Moors, he refused to show his face in
+Portugal and shut himself up in Ceuta. Here, as he worried himself to
+find some means of saving Ferdinand, he fell dangerously ill, till fresh
+hope came to him with the arrival of Don John, whom Edward had sent to
+the help of his brothers with some reserves from Algarve. Henry and John
+consulted about Ferdinand's ransom and at last offered their chief
+hostage, Zala ben Zala's boy, as an exchange for the Infant. It was the
+only ransom, they told the Moors, that would ever be thought of; Ceuta
+would never be surrendered.
+
+Don John's mission was a failure, as might have been expected, and both
+the Princes were now recalled to Portugal, where Henry steadily refused
+to go to Court, staying at Sagres in an almost complete retirement from
+his usual interests, till King Edward's death forced him again into
+action. It was the unavoidable shame of the only choice given to
+himself and the kingdom that paralysed his energy, and made him moody
+and helpless through this time of inaction and disgrace.
+
+    "Captive he saw his brother, bright Fernand
+    The Saint, aspiring high with purpose brave,
+    Who as a hostage in the Saracen's hand
+    Betrayed himself his 'leagured host to save.
+    Lest bought with price of Ceita's potent town
+    To public welfare be preferred his own."[37]
+
+[Footnote 37: Camoëns' _Lusiads_, iv., 52.]
+
+The mere failure to storm Tangier was brilliantly atoned for by the
+bravery of the army and the repeated victories over immensely superior
+force. But now either Ceuta must be exchanged for Ferdinand, or the
+youngest and favourite brother of the House of Aviz must be left to die
+among the Berbers. Many, if not most of the Cortés, summoned in 1438 to
+Leiria to discuss the ransom, were in favour of letting Ceuta go; but
+all the chiefs of the Government, except the King himself, "thought it
+not just to deliver a whole people to the fury of the infidels for the
+liberty of one man." Even Henry at last agreed in this with Don Pedro
+and Don John.
+
+Edward was in despair; he was willing to pay almost any price to recover
+Ferdinand, and in hope of finding support he now appealed from his own
+royal house and his nobles to the Pope, the cardinals, and the crowned
+heads of Europe. All agreed that a Christian city must not be bartered
+even for a Christian Prince; Edward's offers of money and "perpetual
+peace" were scornfully rejected by the Moors, who held to their bond
+"Ceuta or nothing"--and their wretched captive, treated to all the
+filthy horrors of Mussulman imprisonment and slavery and torture, died
+under his agony in the sixth year of his living death and the
+forty-first of his age, 5th June, 1443.
+
+Before this his loss had dragged down to the same fate his eldest
+brother, King Edward, and but for the inspiration of a great purpose,
+which again put meaning into his life, Henry might have died of the same
+"illness of soul." Every Portuguese burned to revenge the Constant
+Prince; the Pope was called upon to approve a new crusade, levies were
+made and vessels built, when the plague broke out with terrible
+violence, and ravaged every class and every district as it had not since
+the days of the Black Death. The King, seized by it in his misery and
+weakness and bitter disappointment, fell a victim. The wreck of all his
+hopes left him with hardly a wish to live, and on September 9, 1438, at
+the age of forty-seven, and after a reign of five years, he died at
+Thomar, in the act of breaking open a letter, but not before Henry had
+come to his side.
+
+To the last he kept on working for his people, and it was in the fatigue
+of travelling from one plague-stricken town to another that he caught
+the pest. Among all the kings of Christendom there was never a better,
+or nobler, or more luckless, an Alfred with the fortune of "Unready"
+Ethelred.
+
+By his last will there was fresh trouble provided for Don Henry and Don
+Pedro and the Cortés. His successor--the child Affonso V., now six years
+of age--was strictly charged to rescue Ferdinand even at the price of
+Ceuta; this was nothing to practical politics; but in naming his wife,
+Leonor of Aragon, along with Don Pedro and Don Henry, as guardian of his
+children and regent of the kingdom, he put power in the wrong place.
+
+The Portuguese were always intensely suspicious of foreign government,
+and after the age of Leonora Telles they might well refuse a female
+Regent. On the other side King Edward's Queen, who had won his absolute
+trust as a wife and a mother, was not willing to stand aside for Pedro
+or for Henry. She began to organise a party, and she worked on her side,
+the nobles and the patriots counterworked on theirs. Don John was the
+first of her husband's brothers to take his natural place as a leader of
+the national opposition; Henry for a time seemed to waver between
+friendship and loyalty; all who knew the Queen loved her, but the people
+hated the very notion of a foreign female reign. Like John Knox they
+could not be fair to the Monstrous Regiment of Women, and their voices
+grew clearer and clearer for Don Pedro and his rights, real or supposed.
+The eldest of the young King's uncles, the right-hand man of the State
+since his return from travel in 1428, he was the proper guardian of the
+kingdom; Henry was a willing exile from most of Court life, though his
+support was the greatest moral strength of any government; John had
+begun the movement of discontent, but no one thought of him before his
+brothers; while they lived his only part was in helping them on their
+way.
+
+Donna Leonor recognised her chief danger in Don Pedro, and tried to win
+him over. When she summoned Cortés, she pressed him to sign the royal
+writs; then she offered to betroth his daughter Isabel to her son; Pedro
+secured a written promise, and waited for the opening of the National
+Assembly in 1439. Here a fierce outcry was raised by a party of the
+nobles against the marriage-settlement of their King, but Don Pedro was
+too strong to be put down. He moved on by slow and steady intrigue
+towards the Regency he claimed. Henry had now appeared as peacemaker,
+and in his brother's interests arranged a compromise. The Queen was to
+keep the actual charge of her children, and to train the little King for
+his duties; Pedro was to govern the state as "Defender of the Kingdom
+and of the King"; the Count of Barcellos, soon to be Duke of Braganza,
+the leader of the factious and fractious party, was to be bought off
+with the Administration of the Justice of the Interior.
+
+The Queen at first struggled on against this dethronement; fortified
+herself in Alemquer, and sent for help from her old home in Aragon. At
+this the mob rose in fury and only Henry was able to prevent a massacre
+and a war that would have stopped the expansion of Portugal abroad for
+many a day. He went straight to Alemquer (1439), talked Queen Leonor
+into reason, and brought her back with him to Lisbon, where she
+introduced Affonso to his people and his Parliament. For another year
+Henry stayed at Court, completing his work of settlement and
+reconciliation, and towards the end of 1440 that work seemed fairly
+safe. The fear of civil war was over; Don Pedro's government was well
+started; Henry could now go back to Sagres to his other work of
+discovery.
+
+It was time to do something on this side. For in the past five years
+scarcely any progress had been made to Guinea and the Indies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+FROM BOJADOR TO CAPE VERDE.
+
+1441-5.
+
+
+But with the year 1441 discovery begins again in earnest, and the
+original narratives of Henry's captains, which old Azurara has preserved
+in his chronicle, become full of life and interest. From this point to
+the year 1448, where ends the _Chronica_, its tale is exceedingly
+picturesque, as it was written down from the remembrance of
+eye-witnesses and actors in the discoveries and conquests it records.
+And though the detail may be wearisome to a modern reader as a wordy and
+emotional and unscientific history, yet the story told is delightfully
+fresh and vivid, and it is told with a simple naïveté and truth that
+seems now almost lost in the self-consciousness of modern literature.
+
+"It seems to me, says our author" (Azurara's favourite way of alluding
+to himself), "that the recital of this history should give as much
+pleasure as any other matter by which we satisfy the wish of our Prince;
+and the said wish became all the greater, as the things for which he
+had toiled so long, were more within his view. Wherefore I will now try
+to tell of something new," of some progress "in his wearisome seedtime
+of preparation."
+
+"Now it was so that in this year 1441, as the affairs of the kingdom had
+now some repose, though it was not to be a long one, the Infant caused
+them to arm a little ship, which he gave to Antam Gonsalvez, his
+chamberlain, a young captain, only charging him to load a cargo of skins
+and oil. For because his age was so unformed, and his authority of needs
+so slight, he laid all the lighter his commands upon him and looked for
+all the less in performance."
+
+But when Antam Gonsalvez had performed the voyage that had been ordered
+him, he called Affonso Goterres, another stripling of the Infant's
+household and the men of his ship, who were in all twenty-one, and said
+to them, Brothers and friends, it seems to me to be shame to turn back
+to our Lord's presence, with so little service done; just as we have
+received the lest strict orders to do more than this, so much more ought
+we to try it with the greater zeal. And how noble an action would it be,
+if we who came here only to take a cargo of such wretched merchandise as
+these sea wolves, should be the first to bring a native prisoner before
+the presence of our Lord. In reason we ought to find some hereabout, for
+it is certain there are people, and that they traffic with camels and
+other beasts, who bear their merchandise; and the traffic of these men
+must be chiefly towards the sea and back again; and since they have yet
+no knowledge of us, they will be scattered and off their guard, so that
+we can seize them; with all which our Lord the Infant will be not a
+little content, as he will thus have knowledge of who and what sort of
+people are the dwellers in this land. Then what shall be our reward, you
+know well enough from the great expense and trouble our Prince has been
+at, in past years, only to this one end.
+
+The crew shouted a hearty "Do as you please; we will follow," and in the
+night following Antam Gonsalvez set aside nine men, who seemed to him
+most fit, and went up from the shore about three miles, till they came
+on a path, which they followed, thinking that by this they might come up
+with some man or woman, whom they might catch. And going on nine miles
+farther they came upon a track of some forty or fifty men and boys, as
+they thought, who had been coming the opposite way to that our men were
+going. Now the heat was very great and by reason of that, as well as of
+the trouble they had been at, the long tramp they had on foot and the
+failure of water, Antam Gonsalvez saw the weariness of his men, that it
+was very great. So let us turn back and follow after these men, said he,
+and turning back toward the sea, they came upon a man stark naked,
+walking after and driving a camel, with two spears in his hand, and of
+our men, as they rushed on after him, there was not one who kept any
+remembrance of his great weariness. As for the native, though he was
+quite alone, and saw so many coming down upon him, he stood on his
+defence, as if wishing to show that he could use those weapons of his,
+and making his face by far more fierce than his courage was warrant
+for. Affonso Goterres struck him with a dart and the Moor, frightened by
+his wounds, threw down his arms like a conquered thing and so was taken,
+not without great joy of our men. And going on a little farther they saw
+upon a hill the people whose track they followed. And they did not want
+the will to make for these also, but the sun was now very low and they
+very weary, and thinking that to risk more might bring them rather
+damage than profit, they determined to go back to their ship.
+
+But as they were going, they came upon a blackamoor woman, a slave of
+the people on the hill, and some were minded to let her alone, for fear
+of raising a fresh skirmish, which was not convenient in the face of the
+people on the hill, who were still in sight and more than twice their
+number. But the others were not so poor-spirited as to leave the matter
+thus, Antam Gonsalvez crying out vehemently that they should seize her.
+So the woman was taken and those "on the hill made a show of coming down
+to her rescue; but seeing our men quite ready to receive them, they
+first retraced their steps and then made off in the opposite direction."
+And so Antam Gonsalvez took the first captives.
+
+And for that the philosopher saith, resumes the next chapter of the
+chronicle, "that the beginning is two parts of the whole matter," great
+praise should be given to this noble squire, who now received his
+knighthood, as we shall tell. For now we have to see how Nuno Tristam, a
+noble knight, valiant and zealous, who had been brought up from boyhood
+at the Infant's Court, came to that place where was Antam Gonsalvez,
+bringing with him an armed caravel with the express order of his lord
+that he was to go to the port of Gallee and as far beyond as he could,
+and that he should try and make some prisoners by every means in his
+power. And you may imagine what was the joy of the two captains, both
+natives of one and the self-same realm and brought up in one and the
+self-same household, thus to meet so far from home. And now Nuno Tristam
+said that an Arab he had brought with him, a servant of the Infant,
+should speak with Gonsalvez' prisoners, and see if he understood their
+tongue, and that if he understood it, it would profit them much thus to
+know all the state and conditions of the people of that land. But the
+tongue of the Arab was very different from that of the captives, so that
+they could not understand each other.
+
+And when Nuno Tristam perceived that he could not learn any more of the
+manner of that land, he would fain be gone, but envy made him wish to do
+something before the eyes of his fellows that should be good for all.
+
+You know, he said to Antam Gonsalvez, that for fifteen years the Infant
+has been seeking in vain for certain news of this land and its people,
+in what law or lordship they do live. Now let us take twenty men, ten
+from each of the crews, and go up country in search of those that you
+found. Not so, said the other, for those whom we saw will have warned
+all the others, and peradventure when we are looking out to capture
+them, we may in our turn become their prisoners. But where we have
+gained a victory let us not return to suffer loss. Nuno Tristam said
+this counsel was good, but there were two squires whose longing to do
+well outran all besides. Gonsalo de Cintra was the first of these, whose
+valour we shall know more of in the progress of this history, and he
+counselled that as soon as it was night they should set out in search of
+the natives, and so it was determined. And such was their good fortune
+that they came early in the night to where the people lay scattered in
+two dwellings; now the place between the two was but small, and our men
+divided themselves in three parties and began to shout at the top of
+their voice "Portugal," "St. James for Portugal," the noise of which
+threw the enemy into such confusion, that they began to run without any
+order, as ours fell upon them. The men only made some show of defending
+themselves with assegais, especially two who fought with Nuno Tristam
+till they received their death. Three others were killed and ten were
+taken, of men, women, and children. But without question, many more
+would have been killed or taken if all our men had rushed in together at
+the first. And among those who were taken was one of their chiefs, named
+Adahu, who shewed full well in his face that he was nobler than the
+rest.
+
+Then, when the matter was well over, all came to Antam Gonsalvez and
+begged him to be made a Knight, while he said it was against reason that
+for so small a service he should have so great an honour, and that his
+age would not allow it, and that he would not take it without doing
+greater things than these, and much more of that sort. But at last, by
+the instant demand of all others, Nuno Tristam knighted Antam Gonsalvez,
+and the place was called from that time "Port of the Cavalier."
+
+When the party got back to the ships, Nuno Tristam's Arab was set to
+work again, with no better success, "for the language of the captives
+was not Moorish but Azaneguy of Sahara," the tongue of the great desert
+zone of West Africa, between the end of the northern strip of fertile
+country round Fez and Morocco, and the beginning of the rich tropical
+region at the Senegal, where the first real blacks were found. The
+Portuguese were in despair of finding a prisoner who could "tell the
+lord Infant what he wanted to know," but now the chief, "even as he
+shewed that he was more noble than the other captives, so now it
+appeared that he had seen more than they, and had been to other lands
+where he had learnt the Moorish tongue so that he understood our Arab
+and answered to whatever was asked of him."
+
+And so to make trial of the people of the land and to have of them more
+certain knowledge, they put that Arab on shore and one of the Moorish
+women their captives with him, who were to speak to the natives if they
+could, about the ransom of those they had taken and about exchange of
+merchandise.
+
+And at the end of two days there came down to the shore quite one
+hundred and fifty Moors on foot, and thirty-five mounted on camels and
+horses, and though they seemed to be a race both barbarous and bestial,
+there was not wanting in them a certain sharpness, with which they
+could cheat their enemies, for at first there only appeared three of
+them on the beach, and the rest lay in ambush till our men should land
+and they could rush out and master them, which thing they could easily
+have done, so many were they, if our men had been a whit less sharp than
+themselves. But when the Moors saw that our boats did not land, but
+turned back again to the ship, they discovered their treachery, and all
+came down in a body upon the beach, hurling stones and making gestures
+of defiance, shewing us the Arab we had sent to them as a captive in
+their hands.
+
+So our men came back to the ship and made their division of the
+prisoners, according to the lot of each. And Antam Gonsalvez turned back
+because he had now loaded his caravel with the cargo that the Infant had
+ordered him, but Nuno Tristam went on, as he for his part had in charge.
+But as his vessel was in need of repair, he put to shore and careened
+and refitted it as well as he could, keeping his tides as if he were
+before the port of Lisbon, at which boldness of his many wondered
+greatly. And sailing on again, he passed the port of "Gallee," and came
+to a cape which he called "The White" (Cape Blanco), where the crew
+landed to see if they could make any captures. But after finding only
+the tracks of men and some nets, they turned back, seeing that for that
+time they could not do any more than they had already done.
+
+Antam Gonsalvez came home first with his part of the booty and then
+arrived Nuno Tristam, "whose present reception and future reward were
+answerable to the trouble he had borne, like a fertile land that with
+but little sowing answers the husbandman."
+
+The chief, or "cavalier" as he is called, whom Antam Gonsalvez brought
+home was able to "make the Infant understand a great deal of the state
+of that land where he had been," though as for the rest, they were
+pretty well useless, except as slaves, "for their tongue could not be
+understood by any other Moors who had been in that land." But the Prince
+was so encouraged by the sight of the first captives that he at once
+began to think "how it would be necessary to send to those parts many a
+time his ships and crews well armed, where they would have to fight with
+the infidels. So he determined to send at once to the Holy Father and
+ask of him that he should give him of the treasures of Holy Church, for
+the salvation of the souls of those who in this conquest should meet
+their end."
+
+Pope Eugenius IV., then reigning, if not governing, in the great
+Apostolic See of the West, answered this appeal "with great joy" and
+with all the rhetoric of the Papal Register. "As it hath now been
+notified to us by our beloved son Henry, Duke of Viseu, Master of the
+Order of Christ, that trusting firmly in the aid of God, for the
+confusion of the Moors and enemies of Christ in those lands that they
+have desolated, and for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith,--and
+because that the Knights and Brethren of the said Order of Christ
+against the said Moors and other enemies of the Faith have waged war
+with the Grace of God, under the banner of the said Order,--and to the
+intent that they may bestir themselves to the said war with yet greater
+fervour, we do to each and all of those engaged in the said war, by
+Apostolic authority and by these letters, grant full remission of all
+those sins of which they shall be truly penitent at heart and of which
+they have made confession by their mouth. And whoever breaks,
+contradicts, or acts against the letter of this mandate, let him lie
+under the curse of the All-Mighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter
+and Paul."
+
+And besides, adds the chronicle, rather quaintly, of more temporal and
+material benefits, the Infant D. Pedro, then Regent of the kingdom, gave
+to his brother Henry a charter, granting him the whole of the fifth of
+the profits which appertained to the King, and, considering that it was
+by him alone that the whole matter of the discovery was carried out at
+infinite trouble and expense, he ordered further that no one should go
+to those parts without D. Henry's licence and express command.
+
+The chronicle, which has told us how Antam Gonsalvez made the first
+captives, now goes on to say how the same one of the Prince's captains
+made the first ransom. For the captive chief, "that cavalier of whom we
+spoke," Henry's first prize from the lands beyond Bojador, pined away in
+Europe, "and many times begged of Antam Gonsalvez that he would take him
+back to his own land, where, as he said, they would give for him five or
+six blackamoors, and he said, too, that there were two boys among the
+other captives for whom they would get a like ransom." So the Infant
+sent him back with Gonsalvez to his own people, "as it was better to
+save ten souls than three, for though they were black, yet had they
+souls like others, all the more as they were not of Moorish race, but
+Heathen and so all the easier to lead into the way of salvation. From
+the negroes too it would be possible to get news of the land beyond
+them. For not only of the Negro land did the Infant wish to know more
+certainly, but also of the Indies and of the land of Prester John."
+
+So Gonsalvez sailed with his ransom, and in his ship went a noble
+stranger, like Vallarte the Dane, whom we shall meet later on, one of a
+kind which was always being drawn to Henry's Court. This was Balthasar
+the Austrian, a gentleman of the Emperor's Household, who had entered
+the Infant's service to try his fortune at Ceuta, where he had got his
+knighthood, and who now "was often heard to say that his great wish was
+to see a storm, before he left that land of Portugal, that he might tell
+those who had never seen one what it was like.
+
+"And certainly his fortune favoured him. For at the first start, they met
+with such a storm that it was by a marvel they escaped destruction."
+
+Again they put out to sea, and this time reached the Rio d'Ouro in
+safety, where they landed their chief prisoner, "very well vested in the
+robes that the Infant had ordered to be given him," under promise that
+he would soon come back and bring his tribe with him.
+
+"But as soon as he got safely off, he very soon forgot his promises,
+which Antam Gonsalvez had trusted, thinking that his nobility would
+hold him fast and not let him break his word, but by this deceit all our
+men got warning that they could not trust any of the natives save under
+the most certain security."
+
+The ships now went twelve miles up the Rio d'Ouro, cast anchor, and
+waited seven days without a sign of anybody, but on the eighth there
+came a Moor, on top of a white camel, with fully one hundred others who
+had all joined to ransom the two boys. Ten of the tribe were given in
+exchange for the young chiefs, "and the man who managed this barter was
+one Martin Fernandez, the Infant's own Ransomer of Captives, who shewed
+well that he had knowledge of the Moorish tongue, for he was understood
+by those people whom Nuno Tristam's Arab, Moor though he was by nation,
+could not possibly get speech with, except only the one chief, who had
+now escaped."
+
+With the "Blackamoors," Antam Gonsalvez got as ransom what was even more
+precious, a little gold dust, the first ever brought by Europeans direct
+from the Guinea Coast, which more thoroughly won the Prince's cause at
+home and brought over more enemies and scoffers and indifferentists to
+his side than all the discoveries in the world.
+
+"Many ostrich eggs, too," were included in the native ransom, "such that
+one day men saw at the Infant's table three dishes of the same, as fresh
+and as good as those of any other domestic fowls." Did the Court of
+Sagres suppose the ostrich to be some large kind of hen?
+
+What was still more to the Prince's mind, "those same Moors related,
+that in those parts there were merchants who trafficked in that gold
+that was found there among them"--the same merchants, in fact, whose
+caravels Henry had already known on the Mediterranean coast, and whose
+starting-point he had now begun to touch. Ever since the days of the
+first Caliphs, this Sahara commerce had gone on under the control of
+Islam; for centuries these caravans had crossed the valleys and plains
+to the south of Morocco and sold their goods--pepper, slaves, and gold
+dust--in Moslem Ceuta and Moslem Andalusia; now, after seven hundred
+years of monopoly, this Moslem trade was broken in upon by the
+Europeans, who, in fifty years' time, broke into the greater monopoly of
+the Indian Seas, when Da Gama sailed from Lisbon to Malabar (1497-9).
+
+Next year (1443) came Nuno Tristam's turn once more. People were now
+eager to sail in the Infant's service, after the slaves, and still more
+the gold dust, had been really seen and handled in Portugal, and "that
+noble cavalier," for each and all of the three reasons of his
+fellows--"to serve his lord," "to gain honour," "to increase his
+profit,"--was eager to follow up his first successes.
+
+Commanding a caravel manned in great part from the Prince's household,
+he went out straight to Cape Blanco, the white headland, which he had
+been the first to reach in 1441. Passing twenty-five leagues,
+seventy-five miles beyond, into the bank or bight of Arguin, he saw a
+little island, from which twenty-five canoes came off to meet him, all
+hollowed out of logs of wood, with a host of native savages, "naked not
+for swimming in the water, but for their ancient custom." The natives
+hung their legs over the sides of their boats, and paddled with them
+like oars, so that "our men, looking at them from a distance and quite
+unused to the sight, thought they were birds that were skimming so over
+the water." As for their size, the sailors expected much greater marvels
+in those parts of the world, where every map and traveller's tale made
+the sea swarm with monsters as big as a continent.
+
+"But as soon as they saw they were men, then were their hearts full of a
+new pleasure, for that they saw the chance of a capture." They launched
+the ship's boat at once, chased them to the shore, and captured
+fourteen; if the boat had been stronger, the tale would have been
+longer, for with a crew of seven they could not hold any more prisoners,
+and so the rest escaped.
+
+With this booty they sailed on to another island, "where they found an
+infinite number of herons, of which they made good cheer, and so
+returned Nuno Tristam very joyfully to the Prince."
+
+This last piece of discovery was of much more value than Nuno thought.
+He saw in it a first-rate slave hunting-ground, but it became the
+starting-point for trade and intercourse with the Negro States of the
+Senegal and the Gambia, to the south and east. It was here, in the bay
+of Arguin, where the long desert coast of the Sahara makes its last bend
+towards the rich country of the south,--that Henry built in 1448 that
+fort which Cadamosto found, in the next ten years, had become the centre
+of a great European commerce, which was also among the first permanent
+settlements of the new Christian exploration, one of the first steps of
+modern colonisation.
+
+And now the volunteer movement had fairly begun. Where in the beginning,
+says Azurara, people had murmured very loudly against the Prince's
+enterprise, each one grumbling as if the Infant was spending some part
+of _his_ property, now when the way had been fairly opened and the
+fruits of those lands began to be seen in Portugal in much greater
+abundance, men began, softly enough, to praise what they had so loudly
+decried. Great and small alike had declared that no profit would ever
+come of these ventures, but when the cargoes of slaves and gold began to
+arrive, all were forced to turn their blame into flattery, and to say
+that the Infant was another Alexander the Great, and as they saw the
+houses of others full of new servants from the new discovered lands and
+their property always increasing, there were few who did not long to try
+their fortune in the same adventures.
+
+The first great movement of the sort came after Nuno's return at the end
+of 1443. The men of Lagos took advantage of Henry's settlement so near
+them in his town of Sagres, to ask for leave to sail at their own cost
+to the Prince's coast of Guinea. For no one could go without his
+licence.
+
+One Lançarote, a "squire, brought up in the Infant's household, an
+officer of the royal customs in the town of Lagos, and a man of great
+good sense," was the spokesman of these merchant adventurers. He won his
+grant very easily, "the Infant was very glad of his request, and bade
+him sail under the banner of the Order of Christ," so that six caravels
+started in the spring of 1444 on the first exploring voyage that we can
+call national since the Prince had begun his work.
+
+So, as the beginning of general interest in the Crusade of Discovery
+which Henry had now preached to his countrymen for thirty years, as the
+beginning of the career of Henry's chief captain, the head of his
+merchant allies, as the beginning, in fact, of a new and bright period,
+this first voyage of Lançarote's, this first Armada sent out to find and
+to conquer the Moors and Blacks of the unknown or half-known South, is
+worth more than a passing notice.
+
+And this is not for its interest or importance in the story of discovery
+pure and simple, but as a proof that the cause of discovery itself had
+become popular, and as evidence that the cause of trade and of political
+ambition had become thoroughly identified with that of exploration. The
+expansion of the European _nations_, which had languished since the
+Crusades, had begun again. What was more unfortunate, from a modern
+standpoint, the African slave trade, as a part of European commerce,
+begins here too. It is useless to try to explain it away.
+
+Henry's own motives were not those of the slave-driver; it seems true
+enough that the captives, when once brought home to Spain, were treated,
+under his orders, with all kindness; his own wish seems to have been to
+use this man-hunting traffic as a means to Christianise and civilise the
+native tribes, to win over the whole by the education of a few
+prisoners. But his captains did not always aim so high. The actual
+seizure of the captives--Moors and Negroes--along the coast of Guinea,
+was as barbarous and as ruthless as most slave-drivings. There was
+hardly a capture made without violence and bloodshed; a raid on a
+village, a fire and sack and butchery, was the usual course of
+things--the order of the day. And the natives, whatever they might gain
+when fairly landed in Europe, did not give themselves up very readily to
+be taught; as a rule, they fought desperately, and killed the men who
+had come to do them good, whenever they had a chance.
+
+The kidnapping, which some of the Spanish patriot writers seem to think
+of as simply an act of Christian charity, "a corporal work of mercy,"
+was at the time a matter of profit and money returns. Negro bodies would
+sell well, Negro villages would yield plunder, and, like the killing of
+wild Irish in the sixteenth century, the Prince's men took a Black-Moor
+hunt as the best of sport. It was hardly wonderful, then, that the later
+sailors of Cadamosto's day (1450-60) found all the coast up in arms
+against them, and that so many fell victims to the deadly poisoned
+arrows of the Senegal and the Gambia. Every native believed, as they
+told one of the Portuguese captains in a parley, that the explorers
+carried off their people to cook and eat them.
+
+In most of the speeches that are given us in the chronicle of the time,
+the masters encourage their men to these slave-raids by saying, first,
+what glory they will get by a victory; next, what a profit can be made
+sure by a good haul of captives; last, what a generous reward the
+Prince will give for people who can tell him about these lands.
+Sometimes, after reprisals had begun, the whole thing is an affair of
+vengeance, and thus Lançarote, in the great voyage of 1445, coolly
+proposes to turn back at Cape Blanco, without an attempt at discovery of
+any sort, "because the purpose of the voyage was now accomplished." A
+village had been burnt, a score of natives had been killed, and twice as
+many taken. Revenge was satisfied.
+
+It was only here and there that much was said about the Prince's purpose
+of exploration, of finding the western Nile or, Prester John, or the way
+round Africa to India; most of the sailors, both men and officers, seem
+to know that this, or something towards this, is the "will of their
+Lord," but it is very few who start for discovery only, and still fewer
+who go straight on, turning neither to right hand nor left, till they
+have got well beyond the farthest of previous years, and added some
+piece of new knowledge to the map of the known world out of the blank of
+the unknown.
+
+What terrified ignorance had done before, greed did now, and the last
+hindrance was almost worse than the first. So one might say,
+impatiently, looking at the great expense, the energy, and time and life
+spent on the voyages of this time, and especially of the years 1444-8.
+More than forty ships sail out, more than nine hundred captives are
+brought home, and the new lands found are all discovered by three or
+four explorers. National interest seems awakened to very little purpose.
+But what explains the slow progress of discovery, explains also the
+fact that any progress, however slow, was made at all, apart from the
+personal action of Henry himself. Without the mercantile interest, the
+Prince's death would have been the end and ruin of his schemes for many
+a year.
+
+But for the hope of adventure and of profitable plunder, and the
+certainty of reward; but for the assurance, so to say, of such and such
+a revenue on the ventures of the time, Portuguese "public opinion" would
+not probably have been much ahead of other varieties of the same organ.
+In deciding the abstract question to which the Prince had given his
+life, the mob of Lisbon or of Lagos would hardly have been quicker than
+modern mobs to rise to a notion above that of personal gain. If the
+cause of discovery and an empire to come had been left to them, the
+labour leaders might have said then in Spain, as some of them have said
+to-day in England, "What is all this talk about the Empire? What is it
+to us working men? We don't want the Empire, we want more wages." And so
+when the great leader was dead, and the people were left to carry out
+his will, his spiritual foresight of great scientific discoveries, his
+ideas of conversion and civilisation, were not the things for the sake
+of which ordinary men were reconciled to his scheme and ready to finish
+his work. If they thought or spoke or toiled for the finding of the way
+to India, it was to find the gold and spices and jewels of an earthly
+paradise.
+
+This is not fancy. It is simply impossible to draw any other conclusion
+from the original accounts of these voyages in Azurara's chronicle, for
+Azurara himself, though one of Henry's first converts, a man who
+realised something of the grandeur of his master's schemes and their
+reach beyond a merely commercial ideal through discovery to empire, yet
+preserves in the speeches and actions of captains and seamen alike,
+proof enough of the thoroughly commonplace aims of most of the first
+discoverers.
+
+On the other hand, the strength of the movement lay of course in the few
+exceptions. As long as all or nearly all the instruments employed were
+simply buccaneers, with a single eye to trade profits, discovery could
+not advance very fast or very far. Till the real meaning of the Prince's
+life had impressed his nearest followers with something of his own
+spirit, there could be no exploration, except by accident, though
+without this background of material gain no national interest could have
+been enlisted in exploration at all.
+
+Real progress in this case was by the slow increase of that inner circle
+which really shared Henry's own ambition, of that group of men who went
+out, not to make bargains or do a little killing, but to carry the flag
+of Portugal and of Christ farther than it had ever been planted before,
+"according to the will of the Lord Infant." And as these men were called
+to the front, and only as they were there at all, was there any rapid
+advance. If two sailors, Diego Cam and Bartholomew Diaz, could within
+four years, in two voyages, explore the whole south-west coast of Africa
+from the Equator to the Cape of Tempests or of Good Hope, was it not
+absurd that the earlier caravels, after Bojador was once passed should
+hang so many years round the north-west shores of the Sahara?
+
+Even some of the more genuine discoverers, the most trusted of the
+Prince's household, men like Gil Eannes, the first who saw the coasts
+beyond the terrible Bojador, or Diniz Diaz, or Antam Gonsalvez, or Nuno
+Tristam, as they come before us in Azurara's chronicle, are more like
+their men than their master.
+
+He thought of the slaves they brought home "with unspeakable pleasure,
+as to the saving of their souls, which but for him, would have been for
+ever lost." They thought a good deal more, like the crowd that gathered
+at the slave market in Lagos, of the "distribution of the captives," and
+of the money they would get for each. At those sales, which Azurara
+describes so vividly, Henry had the bearing of one who cared little for
+amassing plunder, and was known, once and again, to give away his fifth
+of the spoil, "for his spoil was chiefly in the success of his great
+wishes." But his suite seems to have been as keenly on the look-out for
+such favours as their lord was easy in bestowing them.
+
+To return to Lançarote's voyage:
+
+"For that the Infant knew, by certain Moors that Nuno Tristam had
+carried off, that in the Isle of Naar, in the Bay of Arguin, and in the
+parts thereabout, were more than two hundred souls," the six caravels
+began with a descent on that island. Five boats were launched and thirty
+men in them, and they set off from the ships about sunset. And rowing
+all that night, we are told, they came about the time of dawn to the
+island that they sought. And as day was breaking they got up to a
+Moorish village close to the shore, where were living all the people in
+the island. At sight of this the boats' crews drew up, and the leaders
+consulted whether to go on or turn back. It was decided to attack.
+Thirty "Portugals" ought to be a match for five or six times as many
+natives; the sailors landed and rushed upon the villagers and "saw the
+Moors with their women and children coming out of their huts as fast as
+they could, when they caught sight of their enemy; and our men, crying
+out 'St. James, St. George, Portugal,' fell upon them, killing and
+taking all they could. There you might have seen mothers catch up their
+children, husbands their wives, each one trying to fly as best he could.
+Some plunged into the sea, others thought to hide themselves in the
+corners of their hovels, others hid their children underneath the shrubs
+that grew about there, where our men found them.
+
+"And at last our Lord God, who gives to all a due reward, to our men
+gave that day a victory over their enemies, in recompence for all their
+toil in His service, for they took, what of men, women, and children,
+one hundred and sixty-five, without counting the slain."
+
+Then finding from the captives that there were other well-peopled
+islands near at hand, they raided these for more prisoners. In their
+next descent they could not catch any men, but of women and little
+boys, not yet able to run, they seized seventeen or eighteen; soon after
+this they did meet the "Moormen bold," who were drawing together on all
+sides to defend themselves; a great power of three hundred savages
+chased another raiding party to their boats.
+
+That the whole expedition had no thought of discovery was plain enough
+from the fact that Lançarote did not try to go beyond the White Cape
+(Blanco), which had been already passed several times, but turned back
+directly he found the hunting grounds becoming deserted, and a descent
+producing no prize, except one girl, who had chosen to go to sleep when
+the rest of the people fled up country at the first sight of the
+Christian boats.
+
+The voyage was a slave chase from first to last, and two hundred and
+thirty-five Blacks were the result. Their landing and their sale at
+Lagos was a day of great excitement, a long remembered 8th of August.
+"Very early in the morning, because of the heat (of the later day) the
+sailors began to land their captives, who as they were placed all
+together in the field by the landing-place, were indeed a wonderful
+sight; for among them there were some that were almost white, of
+beautiful form and face; others were darker; and others again as black
+as moles and so hideous, alike in face and body, that they looked, to
+any one who saw them, the very images of a Lower Hemisphere."
+
+But what heart so stern, exclaims the chronicler, as not to be pierced
+with pity to see that company. For some held down their heads, crying
+piteously, others looked mournfully upon one another, others stood
+moaning very wretchedly, sometimes looking up to the height of Heaven,
+calling out with shrieks of agony, as if invoking the Father of Nature;
+others grovelled upon the ground, beating their foreheads with their
+hands, while others again made their moan in a sort of dirge, in their
+own way, for though one could not understand the words, the sense of all
+was plain in the agony of those who uttered it.
+
+But most terrible was that agony when came the partition and each
+possessor took away his lot. Wives were divided from husbands, fathers
+from sons, brothers from brothers, each being forced to go where his lot
+might send him. Parents and children who had been ranged opposite one
+another, now rushed forward to embrace, if it were for the last time;
+mothers, holding their little children in their arms, threw themselves
+down, covering their babes with their own bodies.
+
+And yet these slaves were treated with kindness, and no difference was
+made between them and other and freeborn servants. The younger captives
+were taught trades, and those who showed that they could manage property
+were set free and married. Widow ladies treated the girls they bought
+like their own daughters, and often left them dowries by will, that they
+might marry as entirely free. Never have I known one of these captives,
+says Azurara, put in irons like other slaves, or one who did not become
+a Christian. Often have I been present at the baptisms or marriages of
+these slaves, when their masters made as much and as solemn a matter of
+it as if it had been a child or a parent of their own.
+
+During Henry's life the action of buccaneers on the African coast was a
+good deal kept in check by the spirit and example and positive commands
+of the Infant, who sent out his men to explore, and could not prevent
+some outrages in the course of exploration. Again and again he ordered
+his captains to act fairly to the natives, to trade with them
+honourably, and to persuade them by gentler means than kidnapping to
+come to Europe for a time. In the last years of his life he did succeed
+in bettering things; by establishing a regular Government trade in the
+bay of Arguin he brought a good deal more under control the unchained
+deviltry of the Portuguese freebooters; Cadamosto and Diego Gomez, his
+most trusted lieutenants of this later time, were real discoverers, who
+tried to make friends of the natives rather than slaves.
+
+In the early days of Portuguese exploration, it may also be said,
+information, first-hand news of the new countries and their dangers, was
+absolutely needed, and if the Negroes and the Azaneguy Moors could not
+or would not speak some Christian tongue and guide the caravels to
+Guinea, they must be carried off and made fit and proper instruments for
+the work.
+
+It would be out of place here to justify or condemn this excuse or to
+enter on the wider question of the right or wrong of the slave-trade in
+general. It is enough to see how brutally the work of "saving the
+Heathen," was carried out by the average explorer, when discovery was
+used as a plea for traffic.
+
+No one then questioned the right of Christians to make slaves of Heathen
+Blacks; Henry certainly did not, for he used slavery as an education, he
+made captives of "Gentiles" for the highest ends, as he believed, to
+save their souls, and to help him in the way of doing great things for
+his country and for Christendom. He knew more of the results than of the
+incidental cruelty, more of the hundreds taken than of the hundreds more
+killed and maimed and made homeless in the taking. For centuries past
+Moors had brought back slaves from the south across the Sahara to sell
+on the coast of Tunis and Morocco; no Christian doubted the right
+and--more than the right--the merit of the Prince in bringing black
+slaves by sea from Guinea to Lisbon, where they might be fairly saved
+from the grasp of "Foul Mahumet."
+
+So if it is said that Henry started the African slave-trade of European
+nations, that must not be understood as the full-blooded atrocity of the
+West Indian planters, for the use he made of his prisoners was utterly
+different, though his action was the cause of incessant abuse of the
+best end by the worst of means.
+
+At the time the gold question was much more important than the
+slave-trade, and most Portuguese, most Europeans--nobles, merchants,
+burghers, farmers, labourers--were much more excited by the news and the
+sight of the first native gold dust than by anything else whatever. It
+was the first few handfuls of this dust, brought home by Gonsalvez in
+1442, that had such a magical effect on public opinion, that spread the
+exploring interest from a small circle out into every class, and that
+brought forward volunteers on every side. For a Guinea voyage was now
+the favourite plan of every adventurer.
+
+But however they may be explained, however natural and even necessary
+they may seem to be, as things stood in Portugal and in Latin
+Christendom, the slave-trade and the gold hunger hindered the Prince's
+work quite as much as they helped it. If further discovery depended upon
+trade profits, native interpreters, and the attractions of material
+interest, there was at least a danger that the discoverers who were not
+disposed to risk anything, and only went out to line their own pockets,
+would hang about the well known coasts till they had loaded all the
+plunder they could hold, and would then simply reappear at Sagres with
+so many more souls for the good Prince to save, but without a word or a
+thought of "finding of new lands." And this, after all, was the end.
+Buccaneering on the north-west coast of Africa was not what Henry aimed
+at.
+
+So he gave a caravel to one of his household, Gonsalo de Cintra, "who
+had been his stirrup-boy," and "bade him go straight to the Land of
+Guinea, and that for no cause whatever should he do otherwise." But when
+De Cintra got to the White Cape (Blanco) it struck him that "with very
+little danger he could make some prisoners there."
+
+So with a cheerful impudence, in the face of the Infant's express
+commands, he put his ship about and landed in that bay of Arguin, where
+so many captures had been made, but he was cut off from the rest of the
+men, and killed with seven others by a host of more than two hundred
+Moors, and the chronicle which tells of all such details at the greatest
+length, stops to give seven reasons for this, the first serious loss of
+life the Europeans had suffered in their new African piracies. And for
+the rest, "May God receive the soul that He created and the nature that
+came forth from Him, as it is His very own. _Habeat Deus animam quam
+creavit et naturam, quod suum est._" (_Azurara_, ch. 27).
+
+Three other caravels, which quickly followed De Cintra, sailed with
+special orders to Christianise and civilise the natives wherever and
+however they could, and the result of this was seen in the daring
+venture of Joan Fernandez. This man, the pattern of all the Crusoes of
+after time, offered to stay on shore among the Blacks "to learn what he
+could of the manners and speech and customs of the people," and so was
+left along with that "bestial and barbarous" nation for seven months, on
+the shores of the Bank of Arguin, while in exchange for him an old Moor
+went back to Portugal.
+
+Yet a third voyage was made in this spring of 1445 by Nuno Tristam. And
+of this, says Azurara, I know nothing very exact or at first hand,
+because Nuno Tristam was dead before the time that King Affonso (D.
+Henry's nephew) commanded me to write this history. But this much we do
+know, that he sailed straight to the Isle of Herons in Arguin, that he
+passed the sandy wilderness and landed in the parts beyond, in a land
+fertile and full of palm trees; and having landed he took a score of
+prisoners. And so Nuno Tristam was the first to see the country of the
+real Blacks. In other words, Nuno reached Cape Palmar, far beyond Cape
+Blanco, where he saw the palms and got the all-important certainty that
+the desert did end somewhere, and that beyond, instead of a country
+unapproachable from the heat, where the very seas were perpetually
+boiling as if in a cauldron, there was a land richer than any northern
+climate, through which men could pass to the south.
+
+Still further was this proved by the next voyage, which reached the end
+of the great western trend of the African coast, and found that instead
+of the continent stretching out farther and farther to an infinite
+breadth, there was an immense contraction of the coast.
+
+Diniz Diaz, the eldest of that family which gave to Portugal some of her
+greatest men and makers, now begged a caravel from the Prince with the
+promise of "doing more with it than any had done before." He had done
+well under old King John, and now he kept his word.
+
+Passing Arguin and Cape Blanco and Cape Palmar, he entered the mouth of
+the Senegal, the western Nile, which was now fixed as the northern limit
+of Guinea, or Blackman's Land. "Nor was this a little honour for our
+Prince, whose mighty power was thus brought to bear upon the peoples so
+far distant from our land and so near to that of Egypt." For Azurara
+like Diaz, like Henry himself, thought not only that the Senegal was the
+Niger, the western Nile of the Blacks, but that the caravels of
+Portugal were far nearer to India than was the fact,--were getting close
+to the Mountains of the Moon and the sources of the Nile.
+
+But Diaz was not content with this. He had reached and passed, as he
+thought, the great western stream up which men might sail, in the belief
+of the time, to the mysterious sources of the world's greatest river,
+and so down by the eastern and northern course of the same to Cairo and
+the Christian seas. He now sailed on "to a great cape, which he named
+Cape Verde," a green and beautiful headland covered with grass and trees
+and dotted with native villages, running out into the Western Ocean far
+beyond any other land, and beyond which, in turn, there was no more
+western coast, but only southern and eastern. From this point Diaz
+returned to Portugal.
+
+"But great was the wonder of the people of the coast in seeing his
+caravel, for never had they seen or heard tell of the like, but some
+thought it was a fish, others were sure it was a phantom, others again
+said it might be a bird that had that way of skimming along the surface
+of the sea." Four of them picked up courage to venture out in a canoe
+and try to settle this doubt. Out they went in their little boat, all
+made from one hollow tree, but when they saw that there were men on
+board the caravel they fled to the shore and "the wind falling our men
+could not overtake.
+
+"And though the booty of Diniz Diaz was far less than what others had
+brought home before him, the Prince made very much of his getting to
+that land of Negroes and Cape Verde and the Senegal," and with reason,
+for these discoveries assured the success of his work, and from this
+time all trouble and opposition were at an end. Mariners now went out to
+sail to the golden country that had been found or to the spice land that
+was now so near; men passed at once from extreme apathy or extreme
+terror to an equally extreme confidence. They seemed to think the fruit
+was within reach for them to gather, before the tree had been half
+climbed. Long before Fernando Po had been reached, while the caravels
+were still off the coasts of Sierra Leone, men at home, from King
+Affonso to the common seamen of the ports, "thought the line of Tunis
+and even of Alexandria had been long passed." The difficult first steps
+seemed all.
+
+Now three volunteers, Antam Gonsalvez, and two others who had already
+sailed in the Prince's service, applied for the command of ships for the
+discovery and conquest of the lands of Guinea, and to bring back Joan
+Fernandez from his exile. Sailing past Cape Blanco they set up there a
+great wooden cross and "much would it have amazed any one of another
+nation that should have chanced to pass that way, not knowing of our
+voyages along that coast," says Azurara gleefully, giving us proof
+enough in every casual expression of this sort, often dropped with
+perfect simplicity and natural truthfulness, that to his knowledge and
+that of his countrymen, to the Europe of 1450, the Portuguese had had no
+forerunners along the Guinea Coast.
+
+A little south of the Bight of Arguin the caravels sighted a man on the
+shore making signals to the ships, and coming closer they saw Fernandez
+who had much to tell. He had completely won over the natives of that
+part during his seven months' stay, and now he was able to bring the
+caravels to a market where trinkets were exchanged for slaves and gold
+with a Moorish chief--"a cavalier called Ahude Meymam." Then he was
+taken home to tell his story to the Prince, the fleet wasting some time
+in descents on the tribes of the bay of Arguin.
+
+When he was first put on shore, Joan Fernandez told Don Henry, the
+natives came up to him, took his clothes off him and made him put on
+others of their own make. Then they took him up the country, which was
+very scantily clothed with grass, with a sandy and stony soil, growing
+hardly any trees. A few thorns and palms were the only relief to the
+barren monotony of this African prairie, over which wandered a few
+nomade shepherds in search of pasture for their flocks. There were no
+flowers, no running streams to light up the waste, so Fernandez thought
+at first, till he found one or two exceptions that proved the rule. The
+natives got their water from wells, spoke a tongue and wrote a writing
+that was different from that of the other Moors, though all these
+people, in the upland, were Moslems, like the Berbers nearer home. For
+they themselves were a tribe, the Azaneguy tribe, of the great Berber
+family, who had four times--in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and
+fourteenth centuries--come over to help the Moslem power in Spain.
+
+Yet, said Fernandez, these Moors of the west are quite barbarous: they
+have neither law nor lordship; their food is milk and the seeds of wild
+mountain herbs and roots; meat and bread are both rare luxuries; and so
+is fish for those on the upland, but the Moors of the coast eat nothing
+else, and for months together I have seen those I lived among, their
+horses and their dogs, eating and drinking only milk, like infants. 'T
+is no wonder they are weaker than the negroes of the south with whom
+they are ever at war, fighting with treachery and not with strength.
+They dress in leather--leather breeches and jackets, but some of the
+richer wear a native mantle over their shoulders--such rich men as keep
+good swift horses and brood mares. It was about the trade and religion
+of the country that Fernandez was specially questioned, and his answers
+were not encouraging on either point. The people were bigoted, ignorant
+worshippers of the abominations of Mahumet, he said, and their traffic
+in slaves and gold was a small matter after all. The only gold he saw in
+their country was in ankle rings on the women of the chiefs; the gold
+dust and black bodies they got from the negroes they took to Tunis and
+the Mediterranean coast on camels. Their salt, on which they set great
+store, was from the Tagazza salt quarries, far inland. The chief, Ahude
+Meymam, who had been so kind to Fernandez, lived in the upland; the
+Christian stranger had been induced to ride up from the coast, and had
+reached the Court only after tortures of thirst. The water failed them
+on the way, and for three days they had nothing to drink.
+
+Altogether, Fernandez' report discouraged any further attempts to
+explore by land, where all the country as far as could be reached seemed
+to yield nothing but desert with a few slender oases. It was not indeed
+till the European explorers reached the Congo on their coasting voyages
+to the south that they found a natural and inviting pathway into the
+heart of Africa. The desert of the north and west, the fever-haunted
+swamps and jungle of the Guinea Coast only left narrow inlets of more
+healthy and passable country, and these the Portuguese did their best to
+close by occasional acts of savage cruelty and impudent fraud in their
+dealings with the natives.
+
+Another expedition, and that an unlucky one, under Gonsalo Pacheco, a
+gentleman of Lisbon, followed this last of Antam Gonsalvez. Pacheco got
+leave to make the voyage, equipped a caravel that he had built for
+himself, and got two others to share the risk and profits with him. And
+so, says Azurara, hoisting the banners of the Order of Christ, they made
+their way to Cape Blanco. Here they found, one league from the Cape, a
+village, and by the shore a writing, that Antam Gonsalvez had set up, in
+which he counselled all who passed that way not to trouble to go up and
+sack the village, as it was quite empty of people. So they hung about
+the Bank of Arguin, making raids in various places, and capturing some
+one hundred and twenty natives, all of which is not of much interest to
+any one, though as Pacheco and his men had to pay themselves for their
+trouble, and make a profit on the voyage, these man-hunts were the
+chief thing they thought about and the main thing in their stories when
+they got home.
+
+Men like Pacheco and his friends were not explorers at all. They stopped
+far short of the mark that Diniz Diaz had made for the European
+Furthest, and their only discovery was of a new cape one hundred miles
+and more beyond the Bank of Arguin. Sailing south, because the natives
+fled at their approach and left the coast land all bare, "they came to a
+headland which they called Cape St. Anne, by which an arm of the sea ran
+four leagues up the country," where they hunted for more prisoners.
+
+Still in search of slaves and gold they sailed on two hundred and fifty
+miles--eighty leagues--to Negroland, where Diaz had been before, and
+where they saw a land, to the north of the Great Western Cape, all
+green, peopled with men and cattle, but when they tried to near the
+shore and land a storm drove them back. For three days they struggled
+against it, but at last they found themselves near Cape Blanco, more
+than three hundred miles to the north, where they gave up all thought of
+trying to push into the unknown south, and turned cheerfully to their
+easier work of slave-hunting. In one of these raids, a party of seven,
+in a boat away from all the rest, was overpowered and killed like De
+Cintra's men by a large body of natives, "whose souls may God in His
+mercy receive in the Habitation of the Saints." The Moors carried off
+the boat and broke it up for the sake of its nails, and Azurara was told
+by some that the bodies of the dead were eaten by their brutal
+conquerors. 'T is certain at least, he adds, that their custom is to eat
+the livers of their victims and to drink their blood, when they are
+avenging the death of parents or brothers or children, as they do it to
+have full vengeance on such as have so greatly injured them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE ARMADA OF 1445.
+
+
+While Gonsalo Pacheco had been wasting time and men and the good name of
+Europe and Christendom in his plunderings between C. Bojador and C.
+Blanco, the memory of the death of Gonsalo de Cintra was kept alive in
+Lagos, and the men of the town came in solemn deputation to the Prince,
+before the summer of this same year (1445) was out, to beg him for
+permission to take full, perfect, and sufficient vengeance. In other
+words, they offered to equip the largest fleet that had ever sailed on
+an ocean voyage--as it now began to be called, a Guinea voyage--since
+the Prince began his work. As far as we know, this was also one of the
+greatest armadas that had been sent out into the new-discovered or
+re-discovered or undiscovered seas and lands since the European nations
+had begun to look at all beyond their own narrow limits.
+
+Neither the fleet of 1341, which found the Canaries, and of which
+Boccaccio tells us, nor the Genoese expedition of 1291, nor the Catalan
+venture of 1346, nor De Béthencourt's armament of 1402, for the
+conquest of the Fortunate Isles, was anything like this armada of 1445.
+For this last was a real sign of national interest in a work which was
+not only discovery, but profit and a means to more; it proved that in
+Portugal, in however base and narrowly selfish a way, there was now a
+spirit of general enterprising activity, and till this had been once
+awakened, there was not much hope of great results from the efforts of
+individuals.
+
+The first contingent now equipped in Lagos--for the Prince at once
+approved of his men's idea--numbered fourteen caravels--fourteen of the
+best sailing ships afloat, as Cadamosto said a little later; but this
+was only the central fleet, under Lançarote as Admiral. Three more ships
+came from Madeira, one of them under Tristam Vaz, the coloniser of
+Funchal; Diniz Diaz headed another contingent from Lisbon; Zarco, the
+chief partner in the discovery and settlement of Madeira, sent his own
+caravel in command of his nephew; in all there were seven and twenty
+ships--caravels, galleys, and pinnaces. Since the Carthaginians sent out
+their colonists under Hanno beyond the Pillars of Hercules, a larger and
+braver fleet had not sailed down that desolate West of Africa.
+
+Gil Eannes, who had rounded Bojador, was there, with the Diaz, who had
+passed the Green Headland and come first to the land of the Negroes, and
+the list of captains was made up of the most daring and seasoned of
+Spanish seamen. Scarcely a man who had ventured on the ocean voyages of
+the last thirty years was still alive and able-bodied who did not sail
+on the 10th August, 1445.
+
+At the start Cape Blanco was appointed as the rendezvous; with favouring
+wind and tide the ships raced out as far as Arguin. Lawrence, a younger
+brother of the Diaz family, drew ahead, and was the first to fall in
+with Pacheco's three caravels, which were slowly crawling home after
+their losses. Now, hearing of the great fleet that was coming after to
+take vengeance, they turned about to wait for them, "as it was worth
+while to have revenge though one had to live on short rations." So, now,
+thirty European ships and their crews were included in the fleet. The
+pioneer, Lawrence Diaz, and the rest, lay to at the Isle of Herons in
+the Bank of Arguin; while waiting there they saw some wonderful things
+in birds, and Azurara tells us what they told him, though rather
+doubtfully. The great beaks of the Marabout, or Prophet Bird, struck
+them most,--"a cubit long and more, three fingers' breadth across, and
+the bill smooth and polished, like a Bashaw's scabbard, and looking as
+if artificially worked with fire and tools,"--the mouth and gullet so
+big that the leg of a man of the ordinary size would go into it. On
+these birds particularly, says Azurara, our men refreshed themselves
+during their three days' stay.
+
+Slowly but surely, two by two, three by three, nine caravels mustered at
+C. Blanco, and as the flagship of Lançarote was among them, an attack
+was made at once with two hundred and seventy-eight men picked from
+among the crews, the footmen and lancers in one boat and the archers in
+another, with Lançarote himself and the men-at-arms behind. They were
+steered by pilots who had been on the coast before and knew it, and it
+was hoped they would come upon the natives of Tider Island with the
+first light of dawn. But the way was longer than the pilots reckoned,
+the night was pitchy dark, without moon or stars, the tide was on the
+ebb, and at last the boats were aground. It was well on in the morning
+before they got off on the flood and rowed along the coast to find a
+landing-place. The shore was manned with natives, not at all taken by
+surprise, but dancing, yelling, spitting, and throwing missiles in
+insolent defiance. After a desperate struggle on the beach, they were
+put to flight with trifling loss--eight killed, four taken,--but when
+the raiders reached the village, they found it empty; the women and
+children had been sent away, and all their wretched little property had
+gone with them. The same was found true of all the villages on that
+coast; but in a second battle on the next day, fifty-seven Moors were
+captured, and the army went back on shipboard once more.
+
+And now the fleet divided. Lançarote, holding a council of his captains,
+declared the purpose of the voyage was accomplished. They had punished
+the natives and taken vengeance for Gonsalo de Cintra and the other
+martyrs; now it was for each crew and captain to settle whether they
+would go farther. All the prisoners having now been divided like
+prize-money between the ships, there was nothing more to stay for.
+
+Five caravels at once returned to Portugal after trying to explore the
+inlet of the sea at C. Blanco; but they only went up in their boats five
+leagues, and then turned back. One stayed in the Bay of Arguin to
+traffic in slaves, and lost one of the most valuable captives by sheer
+carelessness,--a woman, badly guarded, slipped out and swam ashore.
+
+But there was a braver spirit in some others of the fleet. The captain
+of the King's caravel, which had come from Lisbon in the service of the
+King's uncle, swore he would not turn back. He, Gomes Pires, would go on
+to the Nile; the Prince had ordered him to bring him certain word of it.
+He would not fail him. Lançarote for himself said the same, and another,
+one Alvaro de Freitas, capped the offers of all the rest. He would go on
+beyond the Negro-Nile to the Earthly Paradise, to the farthest East,
+where the four sacred rivers flowed from the tree of life. "Well do you
+all know how our Lord the Infant sets great store by us, that we should
+make him know clearly about the land of the Negroes, and especially the
+River of Nile. It will not be a small guerdon that he will give for such
+service."
+
+Six caravels in all formed the main body of the Perseverants, and these
+coasted steadily along till they came to Diaz's Cape of Palms, which
+they knew was near the Senegal and the land of the Negroes, "and so
+beautiful did the land now become, and so delicious was the scent from
+the shore, that it was as if they were by some gracious fruit garden,
+ordained to the sole end of their delights. And when the men in the
+caravels saw the first palms and towering woodland, they knew right well
+that they were close upon the River of Nile, which the men there call
+the Sanaga." For the Infant had told them how little more than twenty
+leagues beyond the sight of those trees they would see the river, as his
+prisoners of the Azanegue tribes had told him. And as they looked
+carefully for the signs of this, they saw at last, two leagues from
+land, "a colour of the water that was different from the rest, for that
+was of the colour of mud."
+
+And understanding this to mean that there were shoals, they put farther
+out to sea for safety, when one took some of the water in his hand and
+put it to his mouth, and found that it was sweet. And crying out to the
+others, "Of a surety," said they, "we are now at the River of Nile, for
+the water of the river comes with such force into the sea as to sweeten
+it." So they dropped their anchors in the river's mouth, and they of the
+caravel of Vincent Diaz (another brother of Diniz and Lawrence) let down
+a boat, into which jumped eight men who pulled ashore.
+
+Here they found some ivory and elephant hide, and had a fierce battle
+with a huge negro whose two little naked children they carried off,--but
+though the chronicle of the voyages stops here for several chapters of
+rapturous reflection on the greatness of the Nile, and the valour and
+spirit of the Prince who had thus found a way to its western mouth, we
+must follow the captains as they coast slowly along to Cape Verde, "for
+that the wind was fair for sailing." Landing on a couple of uninhabited
+islands off the Cape, they found first of all "fresh goat-skins and
+other things," and then the arms of the Infant and the words of his
+motto, _Talan de bien faire_, carved upon trees, and they doubted, like
+Azurara when writing down his history from their lips; "whether the
+great power of Alexander or of Cæsar could have planted traces of itself
+so far from home," as these islands were from Sagres. For though the
+distance looks small enough on a full map of all the world, on the chart
+of the Then Known it was indeed a lengthy stretch--some two thousand
+miles, fully as great a distance as the whole range of the Mediterranean
+from the coast of Palestine to the Straits of Gibraltar.
+
+Now by these signs, adds the chronicler, they understood right well that
+other caravels had been there already--and it was so; for it was the
+ship of John Gonsalvez Zarco, Captain of Madeira, which had passed this
+way, as they found for a fact on the day after. And wishing to land, but
+finding the number of the natives to be such that they could not land by
+day or night, they put on shore a ball and a mirror and a paper on which
+was drawn a cross.
+
+And when the natives came and found them in the morning, they broke the
+ball and threw away the pieces, and with their assegais broke up the
+mirror into little bits, and tore the paper, showing that they cared for
+none of these things.
+
+Since this is so, said Captain Gomes Pires to the archers, draw your
+bows upon these rascals, that they may know we are people who can do
+them a damage.
+
+But the negroes returned the fire with arrows and assegais--deadly
+weapons, the arrows unfeathered and without a string-notch, but tipped
+with deadly poison of herbs, made of reed or cane or charred wood with
+long iron heads, and the assegais poisoned in like manner and pricked
+with seven or eight harpoons of iron, so that it was no easy matter to
+draw it out of the flesh.
+
+So they lost heart for going farther, with all the coast-land up in arms
+against them, and turned back to Lagos, but before they left the Cape
+they noticed in the desert island, where they had found the Prince's
+arms, trees so large that they had never seen the like, for among them
+was one which was 108 palms round at the foot. Yet this tree, the famous
+baobab, was not much higher than a walnut; "of its fibre they make good
+thread for sewing, which burns like flax; its fruit is like a gourd and
+its kernels like chestnuts." And so, we are told, all the captains put
+back along the coast, in a mind to enter the aforesaid River of Nile,
+but one of the caravels getting separated from the rest and not liking
+to enter the Senegal alone, went straight to Lagos, and another put back
+to water in the Bay of Arguin and the Rio d'Ouro estuary, where there
+came to them at once the Moors on board the caravel, full of confidence
+because they had never had any dealings before with the merchants of
+Spain, and sold them a negro for five doubloons, and gave them meat and
+water from their camels, and came in and out on board the ship, so that
+there was great fear of treachery, but at last without any quarrel they
+were all put on shore, under promise that next July their friends would
+come again and trade with them in slaves and gold to their hearts'
+content. And so, taking in a good cargo of seal-skins, they made their
+way straight home.
+
+Meantime two of the other caravels and a pinnace, which had been
+separated early in the voyage from the main body, under the pilotage of
+the veteran Diniz Diaz, had also made their way to C. Verde, had fought
+with the natives in some desperate skirmishes--one knight had his
+"shield stuck as full with arrows as the porcupine with quills," and had
+turned back in the face of the same discouragements as the rest; and so
+would have ended the whole of this great enterprise but for the
+dauntless energy of one captain and his crew.
+
+Zarco of Madeira had given his caravel to his nephew with a special
+charge that, come what might, he was not to think of profit and trading,
+but of doing the will of the Prince his lord. He was not to land in the
+fatal Bay of Arguin, which had been the end of so many enterprises; he
+was to go as Diniz Diaz had first gone, straight to the land of the
+Negroes, and pass beyond the farthest of earlier sailors. Now the
+caravel, says Azurara proudly, was well equipped and was manned by a
+crew that was ready to bear hard ship, and the captain was full of
+energy and zeal, and so they went on steadily, sailing through the great
+Sea of Ocean till they came to the River of Nile, where they filled two
+pipes with water, of which they took back one to the city of Lisbon. And
+not even Alexander, though he was one of the monarchs of the world,
+ever drank of water that had been brought from so far as this.
+
+"But now, still going on, they passed C. Verde and landed upon the
+islands I have spoken of, to see if there were any people there, but
+they found only some tame goats without any one to tend them; and it was
+there that they made the signs that the others found on coming after,
+the arms of the Infant with his device and motto. And then drawing in
+close to the Cape, they waited to see if any canoes would come off to
+them, and anchored about a mile off the shore. But they had not waited
+long before two boats, with ten negroes in them, put off from the beach
+and made straight for the caravel, like men who came in peace and
+friendship. And being near, they began to make signs as if for a
+safe-conduct, which were answered in like manner, and then at once,
+without any other precaution, five of them came on board the caravel,
+where the captain made them all the entertainment that he could, bidding
+them eat and drink, and so they went away with signs of great
+contentment, but it appeared after, that in their hearts they meditated
+treachery. For as soon as they got to land they talked with the other
+natives on shore, and thinking that they could easily take the ship,
+with this intent there now set out six boats, with five and thirty or
+forty men, arrayed as those who come to fight, but when they came close
+they were afraid and stayed a little way off, without daring to make any
+attack. And seeing this, our men launched a boat on the other side of
+the caravel, where they could not be seen by the enemy, and manned it
+with eight rowers, who were to wait till the canoes came nearer to the
+ship. At last the negroes were tired of waiting and watching, and one of
+their canoes came up closer, in which were five strong warriors, and at
+once our boat rowed round the caravel and cut them off. And because of
+the great advantage that we had in our style of rowing, in a trice our
+men were upon them, and they having no hope of defence, threw themselves
+into the water, and the other boats made off for the shore. And our men
+had the greatest trouble in catching those that were swimming away, for
+they dived not a whit worse than cormorants, so that we could scarcely
+catch hold of them. One was taken, not very easily, on the spot, and
+another, who fought as desperately as two men, was wounded, and with
+these two the boat returned to the caravel.
+
+"And for that they saw that it would not profit them to stay longer in
+that place, they resolved to see if they could find any new lands of
+which they might bring news to the Infant their lord. And so, sailing on
+again, they came to a cape, where they saw 'groves of palm trees dry and
+without branches, which they called the Cape of Masts.'" Here, a little
+farther along the coast, a reconnoitring party of seven landed and found
+four negro hunters sitting on the beach, armed with bows and arrows, who
+fled on seeing the strangers. "And as they were naked and their hair cut
+very short, they could not catch them," and only brought away their
+arrows for a trophy.
+
+This Cape of Masts, or some point of the coast a little to the
+south-east, was the farthest now reached by Zarco's caravel. "From here
+they put back and sailed direct to Madeira, and thence to the city of
+Lisbon, where the Infant received them with reward enough. For this
+caravel, of all those who had sailed at this time (1445), had done most
+and reached farthest."
+
+There was one contingent of the great armada yet unaccounted for, but
+they were sad defaulters. Three of the ships on the outward voyage which
+had separated from the main body and Lançarote's flagship, had the
+cowardice or laziness to give up the purpose of the voyage altogether;
+"they agreed to make a descent on the Canary Islands instead of going to
+Guinea at all that year."
+
+Here they stayed some time, raiding and slave-hunting, but also making
+observations on the natives and the different natural features of the
+different islands, which, as we have them in the old chronicle, are not
+the least interesting part of the story of the Lagos Armada of 1445.[38]
+
+[Footnote 38: The date of this voyage is brought down as late as 1447 by
+Santarem Oliveiro Martins.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+VOYAGES OF 1446-8.
+
+
+And yet, but for the enterprise of Zarco's crew, this expedition of 1445
+that began with so much promise, and on which so much time and trouble
+had been spent, was almost fruitless of "novelties," of discoveries, of
+the main end and object of all the Prince's voyages.
+
+The next attempt, made by Nuno Tristam in 1446, ended in the most
+disastrous finish that had yet befallen the Christian seamen of Spain.
+Nuno, who had been brought up from boyhood at the Prince's court,
+"seeing how earnest he was that his caravels should explore the land of
+the Negroes, and knowing how some had already passed the River of Nile,
+thought that if he should not do something of right good service to the
+Infant in that land, he could in no wise gain the name of a brave
+knight.
+
+"So he armed a caravel and began sail, not stopping anywhere that he
+might come straight to the Black Man's land. And passing by Cape Verde
+he sailed on sixty leagues and found a river, where he judged there
+ought to be some people living. So he bade them lower two small boats
+and put ten men in the one and twelve in the other, which pulled
+straight towards some huts they sighted ahead of them. But before they
+could jump on shore, twelve canoes came out on the other side, and
+seventy or eighty Blackmoors in them, with bows in their hands, who
+began to shoot at our people." As the tide rose, one of the Guinea boats
+passed them and landed its crew, "so that our men were between a fire
+from the land and a fire from the boats." They pulled back as hard as
+they could, but before they could get on board, four of them were lying
+dead.
+
+"And so they began to make sail home again, leaving the boats in that
+they were not able to take charge of them. For of the twenty-two who
+went to land in them there did not escape more than two; nineteen were
+killed, for so deadly was the poison that with a tiny wound, a mere
+scratch that drew blood, it could bring a man to his last end. But above
+and beyond these was killed our noble knight, Nuno Tristam, earnestly
+desiring life, that he might die not a shameful death like this, but as
+a brave man should." Of seven who had been left in the caravel, two had
+been struck by the poisoned arrows as they tried to raise the anchors,
+and were long in danger of death, lying a good twenty days at the last
+gasp, without the power to raise a finger to help the others who were
+trying to get the caravel home, so that only five were left to work the
+ship.
+
+Nuno's men were saved by the energy and skill of one--a mere boy, a page
+of the Infant's House--who took charge of the ship, and steered its
+course due north, then north by east, so that in two months' time they
+were off the coast of Portugal. But they were absolutely helpless and
+hopeless, knowing nothing of their whereabouts, for in all those two
+months they had had no glimpse of land,--so that when at last they
+caught sight of an armed fusta, they were "much troubled," supposing it
+to be a Moorish cruiser. When it came near and shewed itself to be a
+Gallician pirate, the poor fellows were almost wild with delight, still
+more when they found they were not far from Lagos. They had had a
+terrible time; first they were almost poisoned by the dead bodies of
+Nuno Tristam and the victims of the savages' poisoned arrows; then, when
+at last they had "thrown their honour to the winds and those bodies to
+the fishes," shamefaced and utterly broken in spirit, the five
+wretchedly ignorant seamen, who were now left alone, drifted, with the
+boundless and terrible ocean on one side, and the still more dangerous
+and unknown coast of Africa on the other, for sixty days. A common
+sailor, "little enough skilled in the art of sailing"; a groom of the
+Prince's chamber, the young hero who saved the ship; a negro boy, who
+was taken with the first captives from Guinea; and two other "little
+lads small enough,"--this was the crew. As for the rest, Beati mortui
+qui in Domino moriuntur, Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord,
+cries the chronicler in that outburst of bewildered grief with which he
+ends his story. There were widows and orphans left for the Prince to
+care for, and "of these he took especial charge."
+
+But all people were not so unlucky as Nuno Tristam. The caravel of Zarco
+of Madeira, which under Zarco's nephew, Alvaro Fernandez, had already
+passed beyond every other in the year of the great armada, 1445, was
+sent back again on its errand "of doing service in the unknown lands of
+Guinea to the Lord Don Henry," in the black year, 1446. Its noble and
+valiant owner now "charged the aforesaid" Alvaro Fernandez, with the
+ship well armed, to go as far as he could, and to try and make some
+booty, that should be so new and so splendid that it would be a sign of
+his good-will to serve the Lord who had made him. So they sailed on
+straight to Cape Verde, and beyond that to the Cape of Masts (or Spindle
+Palms), their farthest of the year before, but they did not turn back
+here, in spite of unfriendly natives and unknown shores. Still coasting
+along, they found tracks of men, and a little farther on a village,
+"where the people came out as men who shewed that they meant to defend
+their homes; in front of them was a champion, with a good target on his
+arm and an assegai in his hand. This fellow our captain rushed upon, and
+with a blow of his lance struck him dead upon the ground. Then, running
+up, he seized his sword and spear, and kept them as trophies to be
+offered to the Lord Infant." The negroes fled, and the conquerors turned
+back to their ship and sailed on. Next day they came to a land where
+they saw certain of the women of those negroes, and seized one who was
+of age about thirty, with her child a baby of two, and another, a young
+girl of fourteen, "the which had a good enough presence and beauty for
+that country"; but the strength of the woman was so wonderful, that she
+gave the three men who held her trouble enough to lift her into the
+boat. And seeing how they were kept struggling on the beach, they feared
+that some of the people of the country might come down upon them. So one
+of them put the child into the boat, and love of it forced the mother to
+go likewise, without much more pushing.
+
+Thence they went on, pursues the story, till they came to a river, into
+which they made an entrance with a boat, and carried off a woman that
+they found in a house. But going up the river somewhat farther, with a
+mind to make some good booty, there came out upon them four or five
+canoes full of negroes, armed as men who would fight for their country,
+whose encounter our men in the boat did not wish to await in face of the
+advantage of the enemy, and fearing above all the great peril of
+poisoned arrows. So they began to pull down stream as hard as they could
+towards the caravel; but as one of the canoes distanced the others and
+came up close to them, they turned upon it and in the fight one of the
+negroes shot a dart, that wounded the captain, Alvaro Fernandez, in the
+foot. But he, as he had been already warned of the poison, drew out the
+arrow very quickly and bathed it with acid and oil, and then anointed it
+well with theriack, and it pleased God that he passed safely through a
+great trouble, though for some days he lay on the point of death. And so
+they got back to the caravel.
+
+But though the captain was so badly wounded, the crew did not stop in
+following the coast and went on (all this was over quite new ground)
+till they came to a certain sand-spit, directly in front of a great bay.
+Here they launched a boat, and rowed out to see the land they had come
+to, and at once there came out against them full 120 negroes, some with
+bows, others with shields and assegais, and when they reached the edge
+of the sea, they began to play and dance about, "like men clean wearied
+of all sadness, but our men in the boat wishing to be excused from
+sharing in that festival of theirs, turned and rowed back to the ship."
+
+Now all this was a good 110 leagues,--320 miles beyond Cape Verde,
+"mostly to the south of the aforesaid cape" (that is, about the place of
+Sierra Leone on our maps), and this caravel remained a longer time
+abroad and went farther than any other ship of that year, and but for
+the sickness of the wounded captain they would not have stopped there.
+But as it was they came straight back to the Bank of Arguin, "where they
+met that chief Ahude Meymam, of whom we have spoken before," in the
+story of Joan Fernandez. And though they had no interpreter, by whom
+they might do their business, by signs they managed so that they were
+able to buy a negress, in exchange for certain cloths that they had with
+them. And so they came safe home. There was not much trouble now in
+getting volunteers for the work of discovery, and a reward of 200
+doubloons--100 from Prince Henry, 100 more from the Regent Don Pedro--to
+the last bold explorers who had got fairly round Senegambia, added zest
+to enterprise.
+
+In this same year 1446-7, no fewer than nine caravels sailed to Guinea
+from Portugal in another armada, on the track of Zarco's successful
+crew. At Madeira they were joined by two more, and the whole fleet
+sailed through the Canary island group to Cape Verde. Eight of them
+passed sixty leagues, 180 miles, beyond, and found a river, the Rio
+Grande, "of good size enough," up which they sailed, except one ship,
+belonging to a Bishop--the Bishop of Algarve--"for that this happened to
+run upon a sand-bank, in such wise, that they were not able to get her
+off, though all the people on board were saved with the cargo. And while
+some of them were busy in this, others landed and found the country just
+deserted by its inhabitants, and going on to find them, they soon
+perceived that they had found a track, which they had chanced on near
+the place where they landed."
+
+They followed this track recklessly enough, and nearly met the fate of
+Nuno Tristam. "For as they went on by that road, they came to a country
+with great sown fields, with plantations of cotton trees and rice plots,
+in a land full of hills like loaves, after which they came to a great
+wood," and as they were going into the wood, the Guineas came out upon
+them in great numbers, with bows and assegais and saluted them with a
+shower of poisoned arrows. The first five Europeans fell dead at once,
+two others were desperately wounded, the rest escaped to the ships, and
+the ships went no farther that year.
+
+Still worse was the fate of Vallarte's venture in the early months of
+1448. Vallarte was a nobleman of the Court of King Christopher of
+Denmark, who had been drawn to the Court of Henry at Sagres by the
+growing fame of the Prince's explorations, and who came forward with the
+stock request, "Give me a caravel to go to the land of the negroes."
+
+A little beyond Cape Verde, Vallarte went on shore with a boat's crew
+and fell into the trap which had caught the exploring party of the year
+before. He and his men were surrounded by negroes and were shot down or
+captured to a man. But one escaped, swimming to the ship, and told how
+as he looked back over his shoulder to the shore, again and again, he
+saw Vallarte sitting a prisoner in the stern of the boat.
+
+"And when the chronicle of these voyages was in writing at the end of
+the self-same year, there were brought certain prisoners from Guinea to
+Prince Henry, who told him that in a city of the upland, in the heart of
+Africa, there were four Christian prisoners." One had died, three were
+living, and in these four, men in Europe believed they had news of
+Vallarte and his men.
+
+But between the last voyage of Zarco's caravel in 1446 and the first
+voyage of Cadamosto in 1455, there is no real advance in exploration.
+
+The "third armada," as it was called, that is the fleet of the nine
+caravels of 1446-7, the voyage of Gomes Pires to the Rio d'Ouro at the
+same time, the trading ventures of the Marocco coast which were the
+means of bringing the first lion to Portugal in 1447, the expeditions
+to the Rio d'Ouro and to Arguin in the course of the same year, are not
+part of the story of discovery, but of trade. There is hardly a
+suspicion of exploring interest about most of them. Even Vallarte's
+venture in 1448 has nothing of the novelty which so many went out to
+find "for the satisfaction of the Lord Henry." Guinea voyages are
+frequent, almost constant, during these years, and this frequency has at
+any rate the point of making Europeans thoroughly familiar with the
+coast already explored, if it did little or nothing to bring in new
+knowledge.
+
+But the value and meaning of Henry's life and work was not after all in
+commerce, except in a secondary sense; and these voyages of purely
+trading interest, with no design or at any rate no result of discovery,
+do not belong to our subject. Each one of them has its own picturesque
+beauty in the pages of the old chronicle of the Conquest of Guinea, but
+measured by its importance to the general story of the expansion of
+Europe, there is no lasting value in any one of the last chapters of
+Azurara's voyages,--his description of the Canaries, and of the
+"Inferno" of Teneriffe, "of how Madeira was peopled, and the other
+islands that are in that part, of how the caravel of Alvaro Dornellas
+took certain of the Canarians, of how Gomes Pires went to the Rio d'Ouro
+and of the Moors that he took, of the caravel that went to Meça (in
+Marocco) and of the Moors that were taken, of how Antam Gonsalvez
+received the island of Lançarote in the name of the Prince."
+
+Only the chronicler's summary of results, up to the year 1446, the year
+of Nuno Tristam's failure, is of wider interest. "Till then there had
+been fifty-one caravels to those parts, which had gone 450 leagues (1350
+miles) beyond the Cape (Boyador). And as it was found that the coast ran
+southward with many points, the Prince ordered these to be added to the
+sailing chart. And here it is to be noted, that what was clearly known
+before of the coast of the great sea was 200 leagues (600 miles), which
+have been increased by these 450. Also what had been laid down upon the
+Mappa Mundi was not true but was by guess work, but now 't is all from
+the survey by the eyes of our seamen. And now seeing that in this
+history we have given account sufficient of the first four reasons which
+brought our noble Prince to his attempt, it is time we said something of
+the accomplishment of his fifth object, the conversion of the Heathen,
+by the bringing of a number of infidel souls from their lands to this,
+the which by count were nine hundred and twenty-seven, of whom the
+greater part were turned into the true way of salvation. And what
+capture of town or city could be more glorious than this."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE AZORES.
+
+1431-1460.
+
+
+We have now come very nearly to the end of the voyages that are
+described in the old _Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of
+Guinea_, and setting aside the story of the famous Venetian Cadamosto,
+this is also the end of the African mainland-coasting of Henry's seamen.
+Though he did not die till 1460, and we have now only reached the year
+1448, for Azurara's solemn catalogue of negroes brought to Europe is
+reckoned only up to that year--"nine hundred and twenty-seven who had
+been turned into the true path of salvation,"--yet there is no more
+exploration in the last ten years of Henry's life worth noting, except
+what falls into this and two of the following chapters.
+
+The first of these is Cadamosto's own record of his two voyages along
+the Guinea coast, in which he is supposed to have reached Cape Palmar,
+some five hundred miles beyond Cape Verde, and certainly reached the
+Gambia, whose great mouth, "like an arm of the sea," is well described
+in his journal.
+
+The second is the "true account of the finding of the Cape Verde islands
+by Diego Gomez, servant of Don Henry," who writes the story of the
+Prince's death and was as faithful a servant as he had at his Court. But
+there is one other chapter of the exploration directed from Sagres and
+described by Azurara, which must find its place, and is best spoken of
+here and now, in the interval between the two most active periods of
+African coasting voyages. This is the story of the colonisation of the
+Azores, of the Western or Hawk islands, known to map-makers at least as
+early as 1351, for they figure clearly enough on the great Florentine
+chart of that year, though not reclaimed for Europe and Christendom till
+somewhere about 1430. These islands were found, says a legend, on the
+Catalan map of 1439, by Diego de Sevill, pilot of the King of Portugal,
+in 1427. But these islands were after all only two groups of the
+Archipelago, and the rediscovery or finding of the rest fell between the
+years 1432 and 1450.
+
+The voyage of Diego de Sevill and Gonzalo Velho Cabral to the Azores,
+that is to the island of St. Mary and the Formigas, has been alluded to
+as among the earliest of Prince Henry's successes. But as it was out of
+this first attempt that the discovery of the whole group resulted, it
+has been necessary to refer to it again. Cabral, rewarded by his lord
+with the gift of his discoveries and living in St. Mary's island as
+"Captain Donatory" or Lord of the Land, was in charge of the
+colonisation of the islands he had already found, and of as many others
+as might come to light. He spent three years (1433-6) collecting men
+and means in Portugal and then settled in the "Western Isles" with some
+of the best families in this country.
+
+With this, discovery seemed to have come to a standstill, but years
+after, somewhere about 1440-1 an odd chance started exploration westward
+once more. There was a hunt after a runaway slave, a negro, of course,
+from the continent, who had escaped to the top of the highest mountain
+in St. Mary. The weather was of the clearest, and he fancied that he saw
+far off on the horizon the outline of an unknown land. Was it another
+island? He knew his masters were there as explorers quite as much as
+colonisers, and he must often have heard their talk about the finding of
+new lands, and the will of their Lord the Prince that those new lands
+should at all costs be found, was no secret. That will had sent them
+there; that same will would secure their slave's pardon, if he came back
+from hiding with the news of a real discovery.
+
+So he reasoned to himself; and he was right. The Prince, hearing the
+news, instantly consulted his ancient maps and found that these hinted
+at lands in the same direction as the slave had pointed out. He ordered
+Cabral to start at once in search of them. Cabral tried and missed. Then
+came a wonderful test of Henry's knowledge; he who had never been within
+a thousand miles of the place, proved to his captain that he had passed
+between St. Mary and the unknown land, and correcting his course sent
+him out again, to seek and to find.
+
+On the 8th of May, 1444, the new island was found "on the day of the
+apparition of St. Michael," and named after the festival. It is our
+modern "St. Michael of the Oranges."
+
+As with the other islands so with this, colonisation followed discovery.
+On the 29th of September, 1445, Cabral returned with Europeans, having
+before left only a few Moors to open up the country. Now on his return
+he found these wretched men frightened almost to death by the
+earthquakes that had kept them trembling since they first landed. "And
+if they had been able to get a boat, even the lightest, they would
+certainly have escaped in it." Cabral's pilot also, who had been with
+him before to that same island, declared that of the two great mountain
+peaks which he had noticed at the two ends of the island, east and west,
+only the Eastern was now standing. The slang name of "Azores" or "Hawks"
+now began to take the place of the old term of "Western" islands, from
+the swarms of hawks or kites that were found in the new discovered St.
+Michael, and in the others which came to light soon after. For the Third
+Group, "Terceira," was sighted between 1444-50, and added to the
+Portugal that was thus creeping slowly out towards the unknown West, as
+if in anticipation of Columbus, throwing its outposts farther and
+farther into the ocean, as its pioneers grew more and more sure of their
+ground outside the Straits of Gibraltar. Some seamen of Prince Henry's,
+returning from "Guinea" to Spain, some adventurer trying to "win fame
+for himself with the Lord Infant," some merchants sent out to try their
+luck on the western side as so many had tried on the southern, some
+African coasters driven out of sight of land by contrary winds;--it may
+have been any of these, it must have been some one of them, who found
+the rest of the Azores, Terceira or the island of Jesus, St. George,
+Graciosa, Fayal, Flores, and Corvo.
+
+Who were the discoverers is absolutely unknown. At this day we have only
+a few traces of the first colonisation, but of two things we may be
+pretty certain. First, that the Azores were all found and colonised in
+Henry's lifetime, and for the most part between 1430 and 1450. Second,
+that no definite purpose was formed of pushing discovery beyond this
+group across the waste of waters to the west, and so of finding India
+from the "left" hand. Henry and all his school were quite satisfied,
+quite committed, to the south-east route. By coasting round the
+continent, not by venturing across the ocean, they hoped and meant to
+find their way to Malabar and Cathay. As to the settlement of these
+islands, a copy is still left of Henry's grant of the Captaincy of
+Terceira to the Fleming Jacques de Bruges.
+
+The facts of the case were these. Jacques came to the Prince one day
+with a little request about the Hawk islands--that "within the memory of
+man the aforesaid islands had been under the aggressive lordship of none
+other than the Prince, and as the third of these islands called the
+island of Jesu Christ, was lying waste, he the said Jacques de Bruges
+begged that he might colonise the same. Which was granted to him with
+the succession to his daughters, as he had no heirs male."
+
+For Jacques was a rich Fleming, who had come into the Prince's service,
+it would seem, with the introduction of the Duchess of Burgundy, Don
+Henry's niece. Since then he had married into a noble house of Portugal,
+and now he was offering to take upon himself all the charges of his
+venture. Such a man was not lightly to be passed over. His design was
+encouraged, and more than this his example was followed. An hidalgo
+named Sodré--Vincent Gil Sodré--took his family and adherents across to
+Terceira, the island of Jesu Christ, and from thence went on and settled
+in Graciosa, while another Fleming, Van der Haager, joining Van der
+Berge or De Bruges in Terceira with two ships "fitted out at his own
+cost and filled with his own people and artisans, whom he had brought to
+work as in a new land," tried though unsuccessfully to colonise the
+island of St. George.
+
+The first Captain Donatory of Fayal was another Fleming--Job van
+Heurter, Lord of Moerkerke--and there is a special interest in his name.
+For it is through him that we get in 1492 the long and interesting
+notice of the first settlement of the Azores on the globe of Martin
+Behaim, now at Nuremberg, the globe which was made to play such a
+curious part, as undesigned as it was ungenerous, in the Columbus
+controversy.
+
+"These islands," says the tablet attached to them on the map, "these
+Hawk islands, were colonised in 1466, when they were given by the King
+of Portugal to his sister Isabel, Duchess of Burgundy, who sent out
+many people of all classes, with priests and everything necessary for
+the maintenance of religion. So that in 1490 there were there some
+thousands of souls, who had come out with the noble knight, Job de
+Heurter, my dear father-in-law, to whom the islands were given in
+perpetuity by the Duchess.
+
+"Now in 1431, Prince Henry provisioned two ships for two years and sent
+them to the lands beyond Cape Finisterre, and they, sailing due west for
+some five hundred leagues, found these islands, ten in number, all
+desert without quadrupeds or men, only tenanted by birds, and these so
+tame that they could be caught by the hand. So they called these 'the
+Islands of the Hawks' (Azores).
+
+"And next year (1432), by the King's orders, sixteen vessels were sent
+out from Portugal with all kinds of tame animals, that they might breed
+there."
+
+Of the first settlement of Flores and Corvo, the two remaining islands
+of the group, still less is known, but in any case it seems not to have
+been fully carried out till the last years of the Prince's life,
+possibly it was the work of his successor in the Grand Mastership of the
+Order of Christ, which now took up a sort of charge to colonise outlying
+and new discovered lands. For among the Prince's last acts was his
+bequest of the islands, which had been granted to himself by his
+brother, King Edward, in 1433, to Prince Ferdinand, his nephew, whom he
+had adopted with a view of making him his successor in aims as well as
+in office, in leading the progress of discovery as well as in the
+headship of the Order of Christ.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE TROUBLES OF THE REGENCY AND THE FALL OF DON PEDRO.
+
+1440-9.
+
+
+Don Pedro had been nominated sole Regent of Portugal on November 1,
+1439, and by the end of the next year all the unsettlement consequent on
+the change at court seemed to be at an end. But a deep hatred continued
+between the various parties.
+
+First of all, the Count of Barcellos, natural son of John I., created
+Duke of Braganza by Affonso V., had taken up a definite policy of
+supplanting the Regent. The Queen Mother had not forgotten or forgiven
+Don Pedro's action at Edward's death, and the young King himself, though
+engaged to the Regent's daughter, was already distrustful, was fitting
+himself to lead the Barcellos party against the Prince.
+
+On February 18, 1445, died the Queen Leonor, with suspicions of poison,
+diligently fostered by the malcontents. Next year (1446) Affonso, now
+fourteen, came of age, and his uncle proposed at once to resign all
+actual power and retire to his estates as Duke of Coimbra. But the King
+was either not yet prepared to part with him, or still felt some
+gratitude to his guardian, "the wisest head in Spain."
+
+He begged him to keep the chief direction of affairs, thanked him for
+the past, and promised to help him in the future. More than this, he
+protested that he wished to be married to his cousin, Pedro's daughter
+Isabel. They had been formally betrothed four years; now Affonso called
+on his nobles and the deputies of Cortés to witness the marriage.
+
+In May, 1447, this royal wedding was celebrated, but coldly and poorly,
+as nephew and uncle had now drifted quite apart. The more the younger
+disliked and suspected the elder, the more vehement became his
+protestations of regard. But he bitterly resented the Duke's action in
+holding him to his promise, and he made up his mind before the marriage
+that he would henceforth govern as well as reign.
+
+The Regent just prevented his dismissal by laying down his offices; the
+King seemed almost to relent in parting from his guardian, who had kept
+the kingdom in such perfect peace and now resigned so well discharged a
+duty; but even his wife could not prevent the coming storm. She
+struggled hard to reconcile her father and her husband, but the
+mischief-makers were too hard for her. Persuaded that the Duke was a
+traitor, the King allowed himself to be used to goad him into revolt.
+"Your father wishes to be punished," he said fiercely to the Queen, "and
+he shall be punished."
+
+[Illustration: HENRY IN MORNING DRESS, WITH GREAT HAT.]
+
+If Henry, who in the last six years had only once left Sagres, to knight
+Don Pedro's eldest son at Coimbra in 1445, had now been able, in
+presence as well as writing, to stand by his brother in this crisis, the
+Regent might have been saved. As it was, Pedro had hardly settled down
+in his exile at Coimbra, when he found himself charged with the secret
+murders of King Edward, Queen Leonor, and Prince John. The more
+monstrous the slander, the more absurd and self-contradictory it might
+be, the more eagerly it was made.
+
+Persecution as petty and grinding as that which hunted Wolsey to death,
+at last drove Pedro to take arms. His son, knighted by Henry himself for
+the high place of Constable of the Realm, had been forced into flight,
+the arms of Coimbra Arsenal seized for the King's use, his letters to
+his nephew opened and answered, it was said by his enemies, who wrote
+back in the sovereign's name, as he would write to an open rebel. All
+this the Prince bore, but when he heard that his bastard brother of
+Braganza, who had betrayed and maligned and ruined him, was on the march
+to plunder his estates, like an outlaw's, he collected a few troops and
+barred his way. At this Affonso was persuaded to declare war.
+
+Only one great noble stood by the fallen Regent, but this was his friend
+Almada, the Spanish Hercules, his sworn brother in arms and in travels,
+one of the Heroes of Christendom, who had been made a Count in France
+and a Knight of the Garter in England. It was he who now escaped from
+honourable imprisonment at Cintra, joined Pedro in Coimbra, and proposed
+to him that they should go together to Court and demand justice and a
+fair trial, but sword in hand and with their men at their back. Was it
+not better to die as soldiers than as traitors without a hearing?
+
+So on May 5, 1449, the Duke left Coimbra with his little army of
+vassals, 1000 horse and 5000 foot and passed by Batalha, where he
+stopped to revisit the great church and the tombs of his father and his
+brothers. Thence he marched straight on Lisbon, which the King covered
+from Santarem with 30,000 men. At the rivulet of Alfarrobeira the armies
+met; a lance thrust or a cross-bow shot killed the Infant; a common
+soldier cut off his head and carried it to Affonso in the hope of
+knighthood. Almada, who fought till he could not stand from loss of
+blood, died with his friend. Hurling his sword from him, he threw
+himself on the ground, with a scornful, "Take your fill of me, Varlets,"
+and was cut to pieces.
+
+Though at first leave could hardly be got to bury Don Pedro's body, as
+time went on his name was cleared. His daughter bore a son to the King,
+and the proofs of his loyalty, the indignant warnings of foreign Courts,
+the entreaties of the Queen, at last brought Affonso to something like
+repentance and amendment. He buried the Regent at Batalha and pardoned
+his friends, those who were left from the butchery of Alfarrobeira.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+CADAMOSTO.
+
+1455-6.
+
+
+We have now come to the voyages of the Venetian Cadamosto, in the
+service of Prince Henry. And though these were far from being the most
+striking in their general effect, they are certainly the most famous,
+the best known, of all the enterprises of these fifty years (1415-1460).
+It is true that Cadamosto fairly reached Sierra Leone and, passing the
+farthest mark of the earlier Portuguese caravels, coasted along many
+miles of that great eastern bend of the West African coast which we call
+the Gulf of Guinea. But it is to his general fame as a seaman, his
+position in Italy, and the interest he aroused by his written and
+published story that he owed his greater share of attention.
+
+When I first set my mind, begins his narrative, on sailing the ocean
+between the Strait of Cadiz and the Fortunate Islands, the one man who
+had tried to enter the aforesaid ocean, since the days of our Father
+Adam, was the Infant Don Henry of Portugal, whose illustrious and
+almost countless deeds I pass over, excepting only his zeal for the
+Christian faith and his freedom from the bonds of matrimony. For his
+father, King John, had not given up the ghost before he had warned his
+son Henry with saving precepts, that the aforesaid Holy Faith he should
+foster with a dauntless mind and not fail in his vows of warring down
+the foes of Christ.
+
+Therefore every year did Don Henry, as it were, challenging and hurling
+defiance at the Moors, persist in sending out his caravels as far as the
+headland called the Cape of Non (Not), from the belief that beyond the
+said Cape there is "_No_" return possible. And as for a long time the
+ships of the Prince did not dare to pass that point, Henry roused
+himself to accomplish this feat, seeing that his caravels did much excel
+all other sailing ships afloat, and strictly enjoined his captains not
+to return before they had passed the said Cape. Who steadily pressing
+on, and never leaving sight of the shore, did in truth pass near one
+hundred miles beyond, finding nothing but desert land.
+
+Beyond this again, for the space of one hundred and fifty miles, the
+Prince then sent another fleet, which fared no better, and finding no
+trace of men or of tillage, returned home. And Don Henry, growing ever
+keener for discovery, and excited by the opposition as it were of
+nature, sent out again and again till his sailors had reached beyond the
+Desert Coast to the land of the Arabs and of those new races called
+Azaneguys, people of a tawny colour.
+
+And finally there appeared to these bold mariners the land of Æthiopia,
+which lies upon the shore of the Southern ocean, and here again from day
+to day the explorers discovered new races and new lands.
+
+"Now I, Luigi Ca da Mosto, who had sailed nearly all the Mediterranean
+coasts, once leaving Venice for 'Celtogallia' (France), but being caught
+by a storm off C. St. Vincent, had to take refuge in the Prince's town,
+near the said Cape, and was here told of the glorious and boundless
+conquests of the Prince, whence accrued such gain that from no traffic
+in the world could the like be had.
+
+"The which," continues the candid trader, "did exceedingly stir my soul,
+eager as it was for gain above all things else; and so I made suit to be
+brought before the Prince, if so be that I might gain leave to sail in
+his service, for since the profit of this voyage is subject to his
+pleasure, he doth guard his monopoly with no small care."
+
+With the Prince, at last, Cadamosto made terms: either that he, the
+adventurer, should furnish the ships at his own cost, and take the whole
+risk upon himself, and of the merchandise that he might gain a fourth
+part to go to his lord; or that the Prince should bear the cost of
+equipment and should have half the profits. But in any case, if there
+was no profit, the whole expense should fall upon the trader. The Prince
+added that he would heartily welcome any other volunteers from Venice,
+and on Cadamosto himself he urged an immediate start. "As for me,"
+repeats the sailor, "my age, my vigour, my skill equal to any toil,
+above all my passionate desire to see the world and explore the
+unknown, set me all on fire with eagerness. And especially the fact that
+no countryman of mine had ever tried the like, and my certainty of
+winning the highest honour and gain from such a venture, made me forward
+to offer myself. I only stayed to enquire from veteran Portuguese what
+merchandise was the most highly prized among the Æthiopians and people
+of the furthest South, and then went home to find the best light craft
+for the ocean coasting that I had in mind." Meantime the Prince ordered
+a caravel to be equipped, which he gave to one Vincent, a native of
+Lagos, as captain, and caused to be armed to the teeth, as was required,
+and on the 21st of March, 1455, Cadamosto sailed for Madeira. On the
+25th they were off Porto Santo, and the Venetian stops to give us a
+description of the island, which, he says in passing, had been found and
+colonised by the Prince's seamen twenty-seven years before. It was worth
+the settling. Every kind of grain and fruit was easily raised, and there
+was a great trade in dragon's blood, "which is made from the tears of a
+tree."
+
+On March 27th, Cadamosto sailed from Porto Santo to Madeira, forty miles
+distant, and easily seen from the first island when the weather was
+cloudy, and here the narrative stops some time to describe and admire
+sufficiently. Madeira had been colonised under the lead and action of
+the Prince four and twenty years before, and was now thickly peopled by
+the Portuguese settlers. Beyond Portugal its existence was hardly known.
+Its name was "from its woodland,"--here Cadamosto repeats the
+traditional falsehood about the place,--but the first settlers had
+destroyed most of this in trying to clear an open space by fire. The
+whole island had once been in flames, the colonists only saved their
+lives by plunging into the rivers, and even Zarco, the chief discoverer,
+with his wife and children had to stand in a torrent bed for two whole
+days and nights before they could venture on dry land again.
+
+The island was forty miles round; like Porto Santo, it was without a
+harbour, but not without convenient roads for ships to lie in; the soil
+was fertile, well watered by eight rivers that flowed through the
+island. "Various kinds of carved wood are exported, so that almost all
+Portugal is now adorned with tables and other furniture made from these
+woods."
+
+"Hearing of the great plenty of water in the island, the Prince ordered
+all the open country to be planted with sugar-cane and with vines
+imported from Crete, which do excellent well in a climate so well suited
+to the grape; the vine staves make good bows, and are exported to Europe
+like the wine, red and white alike, but especially the red. The grapes
+are ripe about Easter in each year," and this vintage, as early as
+Cadamosto's day, was evidently the main interest of the islanders, who
+had all the enthusiasm of a new venture in their experiment, "for no one
+had ever tried his hand upon the soil before."
+
+From Madeira the caravel sailed on 320 miles to the Canaries, of which
+says our Venetian, there are ten, seven cultivated and three still
+desert; and of the seven inhabited four are Christian, three Heathen,
+even now, fifty years after De Béthencourt's conquest. Neither wine nor
+grain can be produced on this soil, and hardly any fruit, only a kind of
+dye, used for clothes in Portugal; goat's flesh and cheese can also be
+exported, and something, Cadamosto fancies, might be made of the wild
+asses that swarm in the islands.
+
+Each of these Canary islands being some forty miles from the next, the
+people of one do not understand the speech of their neighbours. They
+have no walls, but open villages; watch towers are placed on the highest
+mountains to guard the people of one village from the attacks of the
+next, for a guerilla warfare, half marauding, half serious civil war, is
+the order of the day.
+
+Speaking of the three heathen islands, "which were also the most
+populous," Cadamosto stops a little over the mention of Teneriffe,
+"wonderful among the islands of the earth, and able to be seen in clear
+weather for a distance of seventy Spanish leagues, which is equal to two
+hundred and fifty miles. And what makes it to be seen from so far, is
+that on the top is a great rock of adamant, like a pyramid, which stone
+blazes like the mountain of Ætna, and is full fifteen miles from the
+plain, as the natives say."
+
+These natives have no iron weapons, but fight with stones and wooden
+daggers; they go naked except for a defensive armour of goat-skins,
+which they wear in front and behind. Houses they have none, not even the
+poorest huts, but live in mountain caves, without faith, without God.
+Some indeed worship the sun and moon, and others planets, reverence
+certain idols; in their marriage customs the chiefs have the first right
+by common consent, and at the graves of their dead chiefs are most of
+their religious sacrifices; the islanders have only one art, that of
+stone-slinging, unless one were to count their mountain-climbing and
+skill in running and in all bodily exercises, in which nature has
+created these Canarians to excel all other mortals.
+
+They paint their bodies with the juice of plants in all sorts of colours
+and think this the highest point of perfection, to be decked out on
+their skins like a garden bed.
+
+From the Canaries, Cadamosto sails to the White Cape, C. Blanco, on the
+mainland, some way beyond Bojador, "towards Æthiopia," passing the bay
+and isles of Arguin on the way, where the crews found such quantities of
+sea-birds that they brought home two ship-loads. And here it is to be
+noticed, says the narrative, that in sailing from the parts of Cadiz to
+that Æthiopia which faces to the south, you meet with nothing but desert
+lands till you come to Cape Cantin, from which it is a near course to C.
+Blanco. These parts towards the south do run along the borders of the
+negroes' land, and this great tract of white and arid land, full of
+sand, very low lying at a dead level, it would be a quick thing to cross
+in sixty days. At C. Blanco some hills begin to rise out of the plain,
+and this cape was first found by the Portuguese, and on it is nothing
+but sand, no trace of grass or trees; it is seen from far, being very
+sharply marked, three-sided, and having on its crest three pyramids, as
+they may be called, each one a mile from its neighbour. A little beyond
+this great desert tract is a vast sea and a wondrous concourse of
+rivers, where only explorers have reached. At C. Blanco there is a mart
+of Arab traders, a station for the camels and caravans of the interior,
+and those pass by the cape who are coming from Negro-land and going to
+the Barbary of North Africa. As one might expect on such a barren stony
+soil, no wine or grain can be raised; the natives have oxen and goats,
+but very few; milk of camels and others is their only drink; as for
+religion, the wretches worship Mahomet and hate Christians right
+bitterly. What is of more interest to the Venetian merchant, the traders
+of these parts have plenty of camels which carry loads of brass and
+silver, and even of gold, brought from the negroes to the people of our
+parts.
+
+The natives of C. Blanco are black as moles, but dress in white flowing
+robes, after the Moorish fashion, with a turban wound round the head;
+and indeed plenty of Arabs are always hovering off the cape and the bay
+of Arguin for the sake of trade with the Infant's ships, especially in
+silver, grain, and woven stuffs, and above all in slaves and gold. To
+protect this commerce, the Prince some time since (1448), built a fort
+in the bay, and every year the Portuguese caravels that come here lie
+under its protection and exchange the negro slaves that they have
+captured farther south for Arab horses, one horse against ten or fifteen
+slaves, or for silks and woven stuffs from Morocco and Granada, from
+Tunis and the whole land of Barbary. The Arabs on their side sell
+slaves, that they have driven from the upland, to the Portuguese at
+Arguin, in all nearly a thousand a year, so that the Europeans, who used
+to plunder all this coast as far as the Senegal, now find it more
+profitable to trade.
+
+The mention of the Senegal brings Cadamosto to the next stage of his
+voyage, to the great river, "which divides the Azaneguys, Tawny Moors,
+from the First Kingdom of the Negroes."
+
+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
+breasts 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 ships 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 shore, the natives changed their minds and thought they were
+fishes; some, who first saw the ships 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
+shore, 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 shore. 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
+shore 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 shore stretches between the two; up to the
+river the sailor sees from the shore only the wandering Azaneguys,
+tawny, squat, and miserable savages; across the stream to the south are
+the real Blacks, "well built noble-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 Æthiopia.
+
+Now the land of these negroes is at the entering in of Æthiopia, 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 assigned 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 shirts, 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. Bloody and remorseless are the wars the princes of these
+barbarians carry on against one another. They have no horsemen 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 ships 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 ships 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
+ships lay, and the captain had to send word to his crews by negro
+swimmers, who could pass 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 Gods"; 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 classes have any privileges:
+ministers of religion share with the greatest nobles the sole right of
+access to the person of the "Mortal God."
+
+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 pushing on beyond Cape Verde.
+To the last the ships 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 God 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 ship--masts, helm, anchors,
+sails, and oars. The eyes painted on the bow excited them: the ship 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 ships 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 grass 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 shell-fish (turtles),
+of twelve pounds' weight.
+
+Soon after passing 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 ships. 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 repetitions 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, worshipping 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
+shore, 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 shore 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 ashore than he
+was seized and cut to pieces by some armed savages, while the ships
+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 ship 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 shield 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 space, 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 ships 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 passed 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 shells of such size that they
+could make very good shields for an army."
+
+Here they stayed a couple of days, exploring in the country and fishing
+in the river, which was so broad and deep that it would easily bear a
+ship 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 ships 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
+worshipped "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.
+
+"No long time after, the Prince equipped at Lagos a caravel, called the
+_Wren_, and set over it Diego Gomez, with two other caravels, of which
+the same Gomez was captain-in-chief. Their orders were to go as far as
+they could.
+
+"But after passing a great river beyond the Rio Grande, we met such
+strong currents in the sea that no anchor could hold. The other captains
+and their men were much alarmed, thinking we were at the end of the
+ocean, and begged me to put back. In the mid-current the sea was very
+clear and the natives came off from the shore and brought us their
+merchandise, cotton cloth, ivory, and a quart measure of malaguette
+pepper, in grain and in its pods as it grows, which delighted us.
+
+"As the current prevented our going farther, and even grew stronger, we
+put back and came to a land where there were groves of palms near the
+shore with their branches broken, so tall that from a distance I thought
+they were the masts or spars of negroes' vessels.
+
+"So we went there and found a great plain covered with hay and more than
+five thousand animals like stags, but larger, who shewed no fear of us.
+Five elephants came out of a small river that was fringed by trees,
+three full grown, with two young ones, and on the shore we saw holes of
+crocodiles in plenty. We went back to the ships and next day made our
+way from Cape Verde and saw the broad mouth of a great river, three
+leagues in width, which we entered and guessed to be the Gambia. Here
+wind and tide were in our favour, so we came to a small island in
+mid-stream and rested there the night. In the morning we went farther
+in, and saw a crowd of canoes full of men, who fled at the sight of us,
+for it was they who had killed Nuno Tristam and his men. Next day we saw
+beyond the point of the river some natives on the right-hand bank, who
+welcomed us. Their chief was called Frangazick and he was the nephew of
+Farosangul, the great Prince of the Negroes. There they gave us one
+hundred and eighty pounds worth of gold, in exchange for our goods. The
+lord of the country had a negro with him named Buka, who knew the tongue
+only of Negroland, and finding him perfectly truthful, I asked him to go
+with me to Cantor and promised him all he needed. I made the same
+promise to his chief and kept it.
+
+[Illustration: THE BORGIAN MAP OF 1450. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+"We went up the river as far as Cantor, which is a large town near the
+river-side. Farther than this the ships could not go, because of the
+thick growth of trees and underwood, but here I made it known that I had
+come to exchange merchandise, and the natives came to me in very great
+numbers. When the news spread through the country that the Christians
+were in Cantor, they came from Tambucatu in the North, from Mount Gelu
+in the South, and from Quioquun, which is a great city, with a wall of
+baked tiles. Here, too, I was told, there is gold in plenty and caravans
+of camels cross over there with goods from Carthage, Tunis, Fez, Cairo
+and all the land of the Saracens. These are exchanged for gold, which
+comes from the mines on the other side of Sierra Leone. They said that
+range ran southwards, which pleased me very greatly, because all the
+rivers coming from thence, as far as could be known, ran westward, but
+they told me that other very large rivers ran eastward from the other
+side of the ridge.
+
+"There was also, they said, East of these mountains, a great lake,
+narrow and long, on which sailed canoes like ships. The people on the
+opposite sides of this lake were always at war; and those on the eastern
+side were white. When I asked who ruled in those parts, they answered
+that one chief was a negro, but towards the East was a greater lord who
+had conquered the negroes a short time before.
+
+"A Saracen told me he had been all through that land and had been
+present at the fighting, and when I told this to the Prince, he said
+that a merchant in Oran had written him two months before about this
+very war, and that he believed it.
+
+"Such were the things told me by the negroes at Cantor; I asked them
+about the road to the gold country, and who were the lords of that
+country. They told me the King lived in Kukia, and was lord of all the
+mines on the right side of the river of Cantor, and that he had before
+the door of his palace a mass of gold just as it was taken from the
+earth, so large that twenty men could hardly move it, and that the King
+always fastened his horse to it and kept it as a curiosity on account of
+its size and purity. The nobles of his Court wore in their nostrils and
+ears ornaments of gold.
+
+"The parts to the East were full of gold mines, but the men who went
+into the pits to get gold did not live long, because of the foul air.
+The gold sand was given to women to wash the gold from it.
+
+"I enquired the road from Cantor to Kukia and was told the road ran
+eastward; where was great abundance of gold; as I can well believe, for
+I saw the negroes who went by those roads laden with it.
+
+"While I was thus trafficking with these negroes of Cantor, my men
+became worn out with the heat and so we returned towards the ocean.
+After I had gone down the river fifty leagues, they told me of a great
+chief living on the South side, who wished to speak with me.
+
+"We met in a great wood on the bank, and he brought with him a vast
+throng of people armed with poisoned arrows, assegais, swords and
+shields. And I went to him, carrying some presents and biscuit and some
+of our wine, for they have no wine except that made from the date-palm,
+and he was pleased and extremely gracious, giving me three negroes and
+swearing to me by the one only God that he would never again make war
+against Christians, but that they might trade and travel safely through
+all his country.
+
+"Being desirous of putting to proof this oath of his, I sent a certain
+Indian named Jacob whom the Prince had sent with us, in order that in
+the event of our reaching India, he might be able to hold speech with
+the natives, and I ordered him to go to the place called Al-cuzet, with
+the lord of that country, to find Mount Gelu and Timbuctoo through the
+land of Jaloffa. A knight had gone there with him before.
+
+"This Jacob, the Indian, told me that Al-cuzet was a very evil land,
+having a river of sweet water and abundance of lemons; and some of these
+he brought to me. And the lord of that country sent me elephants' teeth
+and four negroes, who carried one great ivory tusk to the ship.
+
+"Now the houses here are made of seaweed, covered with straw, and while
+I stayed here (at the river mouth) three days, I learned that all the
+mischief that had been done to the Christians had been done by a certain
+king called Nomimansa, who has the country near the great headland by
+the mouth of the river Gambia. So I took great pains to make peace with
+him, and sent him many presents by his own men in his own canoes, which
+were going for salt along the coast to his own country, for this salt
+is plentiful there and of a red colour. Now Nomimansa was in great fear
+of the Christians, lest they should take vengeance upon him.
+
+"Then I went on to a great harbour where I had many negroes come to me,
+sent by Nomimansa to see if I should do anything, but I always treated
+them kindly. When the King heard this, he came to the river side with a
+great force and sitting down on the bank, sent for me. And so I went and
+paid him all respect. There was a Bishop there of his own faith who
+asked me about the God of the Christians, and I answered him as God had
+given me to know; and then I questioned him about Mahomet, whom they
+believe. At last the King was so pleased with what I said that he sprang
+to his feet and ordered the Bishop to leave his country within three
+days, and swore that he would kill any one who should speak the name of
+Mahomet from that day forward. For he said he trusted in the one only
+God and there was no other but He, whom his brother Prince Henry
+worshipped.
+
+"Then calling the Infant his brother, he asked me to baptize him and all
+his lords and women. He himself would have no other name than Henry, but
+his nobles took our names, like James and Nuno. So I remained on shore
+that night with the King but did not baptize him, as I was a layman. But
+next day I begged the King with his twelve chief men and eight of his
+wives to dine with me on my caravel; and they all came unarmed and I
+gave them fowls and meat and wine, white and red, as much as they could
+drink, and they said to one another that no people were better than the
+Christians.
+
+"Then again on shore the King asked me to baptize him but I said I had
+not leave from the Pope; but I would tell the Prince, who would send a
+priest. So Nomimansa at once wrote to Prince Henry to send him a priest
+and some one to teach him the faith, and begged him to send him a falcon
+with the priest, for he was amazed when I told him how we carried a bird
+on the hand to catch other birds. And with these he asked the Prince to
+send him two rams and sheep and geese and ganders and a pig, and two men
+to build houses and plan out his town. And all these wishes of his I
+promised him that the Prince would grant. And he and all his people made
+a great noise at my going but I left the King at Gambia and started back
+for Portugal. One caravel I sent straight home, but with the others I
+sailed to Cape Verde.
+
+"And as we came near the sea-shore we saw two canoes putting out to sea;
+but we sailed between them and the shore, and so cut them off. Then the
+interpreter came to me and said that Bezeghichi, the lord of the land
+and an evil man, was in one of them.
+
+"So I made them come into the caravel and gave them to eat and drink
+with a double share of presents, and making as if I did not know him to
+be the chief, I said 'Is this the land of Bezeghichi?' He answered 'Yes,
+it is.' And I, to try him, exclaimed 'Why is he so bitter against the
+Christians? He would do far better to have peace with them, so that they
+might trade in his land and bring him horses and other things, as they
+do for other lords of the negroes. Go and tell your lord Bezeghichi that
+I have taken you and for love of him have let you go.'
+
+"At this he was very cheerful and he and his men got into their canoes,
+as I bade them, and as they all were standing by the side of the
+caravel, I called out 'Bezeghichi, Bezeghichi, do not think I did not
+know thee. I could have done to thee what I would, and now, as I have
+done to thee, do thou also to our Christians.'
+
+"So they went off, and we came back to Arguin and the Isle of the
+Herons, where we found flocks of birds of every kind, and after this
+came home to Lagos, where the Prince was very glad of our return.
+
+"Then after this for two years no one went to Guinea, because King
+Affonso was at war in Africa and the Prince was quite taken up with
+this. But after he had come back from Alcaçer, I reminded him of what
+King Nomimansa had asked of him; and the Prince sent him all he had
+promised, with a priest, the Abbot of Soto de Cassa, and a young man of
+his household named John Delgado. This was in 1458.
+
+"Two years afterwards King Affonso equipped a large caravel and sent me
+out as captain, and I took with me ten horses and went to the land of
+the Barbacins, which is near the land of Nomimansa. And these Barbacins
+had two kings, but the King of Portugal gave me power over all the
+shores of that sea, that any ships I might find off the coast of Guinea
+should be under me, for he knew that there were those who sold arms to
+the Moors, and he bade me to seize such and bring them bound to
+Portugal.
+
+"And by the help of God I came in twelve days to this land (of the
+Barbacins), and found two ships there,--one under Gonzalo Ferreira, of
+Oporto, of the Household of Prince Henry, that was conveying horses; the
+other was under Antonio de Noli, of Genoa. These merchants injured our
+trade very much, for the natives used to give twelve negroes for one
+horse, and now gave only six.
+
+"And while we were there, a caravel came from Gambia, which brought us
+news that a captain called De Prado was coming with a richly laden ship,
+and I ordered Ferreira to go to Cape Verde and look for that ship and
+seize it, on pain of death and loss of all his goods. And he did so, and
+we found a great prize, which I sent home with Ferreira to the King. And
+then I and Antonio de Noli left that coast, and sailed two days and one
+night towards Portugal, and we sighted islands in the ocean, and as my
+ship was lighter and faster than the rest, I came first to one of those
+islands, to a good harbour, with a beach of white sand, where I
+anchored. I told all my men and the other captains that I wished to be
+first to land, and so I did.
+
+"We saw no trace of natives, and called the island Santiago, as it is
+still known. There were plenty of fish there and many strange birds, so
+tame that we killed them with sticks. And I had a quadrant with me, and
+wrote on the table of it the altitude of the Arctic Pole, and I found it
+better than the chart, for though you see your course of sailing on the
+chart well enough, yet if once you get wrong, it is hard by map alone to
+work back into the right course.
+
+"After this we saw one of the Canary islands, called Palma, and so came
+to the island of Madeira; and then adverse winds drove me to the Azores,
+but Antonio de Noli stayed at Madeira, and, catching the right breeze,
+he got to Portugal before me, and begged of the King the captaincy of
+the island of Santiago, which I had found, and the King gave it him, and
+he kept it till his death.
+
+"But De Prado, who had carried arms to the Moors, lay in irons and the
+King ordered him to be brought out. And then they martyrised him in a
+cart, and threw him into the fire alive with his sword and gold."
+
+[Illustration: COIMBRA UNIVERSITY OF WHICH HENRY WAS THE OFFICIAL
+PATRON.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+HENRY'S LAST YEARS AND DEATH.
+
+1458-60.
+
+
+While Cadamosto and Diego Gomez were carrying the Prince's flag farther
+from the shores of Europe "than Alexander or Cæsar had ever ventured,"
+the Prince himself was getting more and more absorbed in the project of
+a new Holy War against the Infidel.
+
+The fall of Constantinople in 1453 into the hands of the Ottoman Turks,
+had at least the effect of frightening and almost of rousing Western
+Christendom at large. In the most miserably divided of Latin states
+there was now a talk about doing great things, though the time, the
+spirit for actually doing them, had long passed by, or was not yet come.
+Spain, the one part of the Western Church and State, which was still
+living in the crusading fervour of the twelfth century, was alone ready
+for action. The Portuguese kingdom in particular, under Affonso V., had
+been keeping up a regular crusade in Marocco, and was willing and eager
+to spend men and treasure in a great Levantine enterprise. So the
+Pope's Legate was welcomed when he came in 1457 to preach the Holy War.
+Affonso promised to keep up an army of twelve thousand men for war
+against the Ottoman, and struck a new gold coinage--the Cruzado--to
+commemorate the year of Deliverance.
+
+But Portugal by itself could not deliver New Rome or the Holy Land, and
+when the other powers of the West refused to move, Affonso had to
+content himself with the old crusade in Africa, but he now pushed on
+even more zealously than before his favourite ambition, a land empire on
+both sides of the Straits, and Prince Henry's last appearance in public
+service was in his nephew's camp in the Marocco campaign of 1458. In the
+siege of Alcaçer the Little, the "Lord Infant" forced the batteries,
+mounted the guns, and took charge of the general conduct of the siege. A
+breach was soon made in the walls, and the town surrendered on easy
+terms, "for it was not," said Henry, "to take their goods or force a
+ransom from them that the King of Portugal had come against them, but
+for the service of God." They were only to leave behind in Alcaçer their
+Christian prisoners; for themselves, they might go, with their wives,
+their children, and their property.
+
+The stout-hearted veteran Edward Menezes became governor of Alcaçer, and
+held the town with his own desperate courage against all attempts to
+recover it. When the besiegers offered him terms, he offered them in
+return his scaling ladders that they might have a fair chance; when they
+were raising the siege he sent them a message, Would they not try a
+little longer? It had been a very short affair.
+
+Meantime Henry, returning to Europe by way of Ceuta, re-entered his own
+town of Sagres for the last time. His work was nearly done, and indeed,
+of that work there only remains one thing to notice. The great Venetian
+map, known as the Camaldolese Chart of Fra Mauro, executed in the
+convent of Murano just outside Venice, is not only the crowning specimen
+of mediæval draughtsmanship, but the scientific review of the Prince's
+exploration. As Henry himself closes the middle age of exploration and
+begins the modern, so this map, the picture and proof of his
+discoveries, is not only the last of the older type of plan, but the
+first of the new style--the style which applied the accurate and careful
+methods of Portolano-drawing to a scheme of the whole world. It is the
+first scientific atlas.
+
+But its scale is too vast for anything of a detailed account: it
+measures six feet four inches across, and in every part it is crammed
+with detail, the work of three years of incessant labour (1457-9) from
+Andrea Bianco and all the first coasters and draughtsmen of the time. In
+general, there is an external carefulness as well as gorgeousness about
+the workmanship; the coasts, especially in the Mediterranean and along
+the west coast of Europe, would almost suit a modern Admiralty Chart,
+while its notice, the first notice, of Prince Henry's African and
+Atlantic discoveries is the special point of the whole work.
+
+There is a certain disposition to exaggerate the size of rivers,
+mountains, towns, and the whole proportion of things, as we get farther
+away from the well-known ground of Europe; Russia and the north and
+north-east of Asia are somewhat too large, but along the central belt,
+it is fair to say that the whole of the country west of the Caspian is
+thoroughly sound, the best thing yet done in any projection.
+
+No one could look at Fra Mauro's map and fail to see at a glance a
+picture of the Old World; and the more it is looked at, the more
+reliable it will prove to be, by the side of all earlier essays in this
+field. No one can look at the Arabic maps and their imitations in
+mediæval Christendom, whether conscious or unconscious (as in the
+Spanish example of 1109), without despair. It is almost hopeless to try
+and recognise in these anything of the shape, the proportions, or the
+distribution of the parts of the world which are named, and which one
+might almost fancy it was meant to represent at the time.
+
+Place the map of 1459 by the side of the Hereford map of 1300 or of
+Edrisi's scheme of 1130 (made at the Christian Court of Sicily), or in
+fact beside any of the theoretical maps of the thousand years that had
+gone to make the Italy and the Spain of Fra Mauro and Prince Henry, and
+it will seem to be almost absurd to ask the question: Do these belong to
+the same civilisation, in any kind of way? What would the higher
+criticism answer, out of its infallible internal evidence tests? Of
+course, these are quite different. The one is merely a collection of
+the scratchings of savages, the other is the prototype of modern maps.
+Yet the Christian world is answerable for both kinds; it had struggled
+through ignorance and superstition and tradition into clearer light and
+truer knowledge.
+
+[Illustration: WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA MAURO. 1457-9.
+(SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+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 Alcaçer 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 pushing 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
+ships as we have seen could sail beyond Bojador without his permit;
+whoever transgressed this forfeited his ship; and all ships 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 shirt 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 passion 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 passed all
+his days in unbroken chastity. He was so generous that no other
+uncrowned Prince in Europe had so noble a household, so large and
+splendid a school for the young nobles 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE RECUMBENT 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 passed 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 passed 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
+superstitious 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 passed 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 passed 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 passed 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 assuming--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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 passions 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 Cæsar 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, passed 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, passed 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 languishing exploration and flourishing
+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 passage 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 ships 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 passed 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 passed 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 passed 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 embassy 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 ships, 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
+passage.
+
+Camoëns 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 ships 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.
+
+Passing 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 passed
+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
+ashore 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 ships 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 ships 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."
+
+Yet another chapter of discoveries was opened by King John's Cathay
+fleet. He failed to get news of a North-east passage, but beyond the
+north coast of Asia there was found a frozen island whose name of Novaia
+Zemlaia or Nova Zembla still keeps the memory of the first Portuguese
+attempts on the road where so many Dutch and English seamen perished in
+after years.
+
+The great voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497-9), the empire founded by
+Albuquerque (1506-15) in the Indian seas, were the other steps in the
+complete achievement of Prince Henry's ambition. When in the early
+years of the sixteenth century a direct and permanent traffic was fairly
+started between Malabar and Portugal, when European settlements and
+forts controlled the whole eastern and western coasts of Africa from the
+mouth of the Red Sea to the mouth of the Mediterranean, and the five
+keys of the Indies--Malacca, Goa, Ormuz, Aden, and Ceylon--were all in
+Christian hands, when the Moslem trade between east Africa and western
+India had passed into a possession of the Kings of Lisbon, Don Henry
+might see of the travail of his soul and be well satisfied.
+
+The supposed discovery of Australia about 1530, or somewhat earlier, and
+the travels of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto in Japan and the furthest East,
+the opening of the trade with China in 1517, and the complete
+exploration of Abyssinia, the Prester's kingdom, in 1520, by Alvarez and
+the other Catholic missionaries, the millions converted by Francis
+Xavier and the Jesuit preachers in Malabar, and the union of the old
+native Christian Church of India with the Roman (1599), were other steps
+in the same road. All of them, if traced back far enough, bring us to
+the Court of Sagres, and the same is true of Spanish and French and
+Dutch and English empires in the southern and eastern world. Henry built
+for his own nation, but when that nation failed from the exhaustion of
+its best blood, other peoples entered upon the inheritance of his work.
+
+But though he was not able himself to see the fulfilment of his plans,
+both the method of a South-east passage, and the men who followed it out
+to complete success, were his,--his workmanship and his building.
+
+Da Gama, Diego Cam, the Diaz family, and most of the great seamen who
+followed the path they had traced, were either "brought up from boyhood
+in the Household of the Infant," as the _Chronicle of the Discovery_
+tells us of each new figure that comes upon the scene, or looked to him
+as their master, owed to the School of Sagres their training, and began
+their practical seamanship under his leave and protection. Even the
+lines upon which the national expansion and exploration went on were so
+strictly and exclusively the same as he had followed, that when a
+different route to the Indies was suggested after his death by
+Christopher Columbus, the Court of John II. refused to treat it
+seriously. And this brings us to the other, the indirect side of Henry's
+influence.
+
+"It was in Portugal," (says Ferdinand Columbus, in his _Life of the
+Admiral_, his father,) "that the Admiral began to think, that if men
+could sail so far south, one might also sail west and find lands in that
+quarter." The second great stream of modern discovery can thus be traced
+to the "generous Henry" of Camoëns' _Lusiads_ no less plainly, though
+more indirectly, than the first; the Western path was suggested by his
+success in the Eastern.
+
+But that success had turned the heads of his own people. When Columbus,
+the son of the Genoese wool-comber, who had been a resident in Lisbon
+since 1470, submitted to the Court of John II. some time before 1484 a
+proposal to find Marco Polo's Cipangu by a few weeks' sail west, from
+the Azores, he was treated as a dreamer. John, as Henry's disciple and
+successor, was, like other disciples, narrower than his master in the
+master's own way.
+
+He was ready for any expense and trouble, but no novelty. He would only
+go on as he had been taught. He had reason to be confident, and his
+scientific Junto of four, Martin Behaim of Nuremburg among them, to whom
+Columbus was referred, were too much elated with their new improvements
+in the astrolabe, and the now assured confidence that the Southern Cape
+would soon be passed. They could not endure with patience the vehement
+dogmatism of an unknown theorist.
+
+But as he was too full of his message to be easily shaken off, he was
+treated with the basest trickery. At the suggestion of the Bishop of
+Ceuta, Columbus was kept waiting for his answer, and asked to furnish
+his plans in detail with charts and illustrations. He did so, and while
+the Council pretended to be poring over these for a final decision, a
+caravel was sent to the Cape Verde islands to try the route he had
+suggested,--a trial with the pickings of Italian brains.
+
+The Portuguese sailed westward for several days till the weather became
+stormy; then, as their heart was not in the venture, they put back to
+Europe with a fresh stock of the legends Henry had so heartily despised.
+They had come to an impenetrable mist, which had stopped their progress;
+apparitions had warned them back; the sea in those parts swarmed with
+monsters; it became impossible to breathe.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF 1492. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+Columbus learned how he had been used, and his wife's death helped to
+decide him, in his disgust for place and people. Towards the end of
+1484, he left Lisbon. Three years later, when he had become fully as
+much disgusted with the dilatory sloth and tricks of Spain, he offered
+himself again to Portugal. King John had repented of his meanness; on
+March 20, 1488, he wrote in answer to Columbus, eagerly offering on his
+side to guarantee him against any suits that might be taken against him
+in Lisbon. But the Court of Castille now became, in its turn, afraid of
+quite losing what might be infinite advantage; Columbus was kept in the
+service of Ferdinand and Isabella; and at last in August, 1492, the
+"Catholic Kings" sent him out from Palos to discover what he could on
+his own terms.
+
+What followed, the discovery of America, and all the subsequent ventures
+of the Cabots, of Amerigo Vespucci, of Cortés and Pizarro, De Soto and
+Raleigh and the Pilgrim Fathers, are not often connected in any way with
+the slow and painful beginnings of European expansion in the Portugal of
+the fifteenth century, but it is a true and real connection all the
+same. The whole onward and outward movement of the great exploring age
+was set in motion by one man. It might have come to pass without him,
+but the fact is simply that through him it did, as a matter of history,
+result. "And let him that did more than this, go before him."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  A
+
+  Abulfeda, 28
+
+  Adelard, of Bath, geographical postulates, 9, 10
+
+  Adelard or Athelard, 84
+
+  Affonso, comes of age, 257;
+    marries his cousin Isabel, 258;
+    forces Pedro into revolt, and declares war against him, 258, 259;
+    sends out Gomez with a large caravel, 296;
+    has the body of Prince Henry laid in chapel at Batalha, 305;
+    carries on the work of his uncle, Prince Henry, 312, 313;
+    is succeeded by King John II., 314
+
+  Africa, shape of, 13
+
+  Albateny, determined problems of astronomical geography, 19
+
+  Albertus Magnus, geographical postulates, 9, 11
+
+  Albuquerque, 125
+
+  Albyrouny, work of, 21
+
+  Alfarrobeira, battle of, 260
+
+  Alfred the Great, credit due to, for discoveries, 72;
+    efforts in exploration and religious extension, 74
+
+  Al Heravy, life of, 26
+
+  Almada, the Hercules of Portugal, 184;
+    stands by Pedro, 259;
+    dies, 260
+
+  Almamoun, age of, 18
+
+  Almanack, Arab, Latin translation of, 21
+
+  Ant islands discovered, 160
+
+  Antoninus the Martyr, an older Mandeville, 34;
+    legends of, 35
+
+  Arctic colonies checked, 59
+
+  Arculf, 42;
+    travels of, 43
+
+  Arguin, fort built in the bay of, 205
+
+  Arim, "World's Summit," 8;
+    taken as measure of places, 10;
+    twofold, 11
+
+  Armada of Lagos, 228-239;
+    "the third," 247
+
+  Athelard, or Adelard, 84
+
+  Aviz, House of. _See_ John, the King of Good Memory.
+
+  Azambuga, Diego de, 315
+
+  Azaneguys described by Cadamosto, 269
+
+  Azores, colonisation of, 251;
+    the entire group found, 254
+
+  Azurara, chronicler of voyages of Henry, 157
+
+
+  B
+
+  Bacon, Roger, geographical postulates, 9, 11
+
+  Baldaya, Affonso, sent out with Gil Eannes, 173;
+    his second voyage, 174-176
+
+  Batti, King, 285, 286
+
+  Batuta, Ibn, 27
+
+  Beginnings of the art and science of discovery, 145
+
+  Benjamin of Tudela, 88
+
+  Bernard, "the French monk," route of, 46
+
+  Bezeghichi, meets Gomez, 295;
+    makes a treaty with Azambuga, 315
+
+  Bjarni Herjulfson driven to new country, 56
+
+  Blanco, Cape, visited by Cadamosto, 267
+
+  Boa Vista, 284
+
+  Bojador, southmost point of Christian knowledge, 170;
+    legends concerning, 171;
+    doubled by Gil Eannes, 173
+
+  Bruges, Jacques de, receives a grant of Captaincy of Terceira, 254
+
+
+  C
+
+  Cabral, Gonzalo, discovers Formiga group of islands and Santa Maria, 169;
+    Captain Donatory in St. Mary's Island, 251;
+    settled in Western Isles, 252;
+    sent in search of land beyond St. Mary, misses it, and is sent
+        again, 252;
+    discovers St. Michael, 253;
+    returns to St. Michael with Europeans, 253
+
+  Cadamosto, record of his two voyages, 250;
+    his narrative, 261-288;
+    is presented to the Prince, 263;
+    visits Madeira, 264, 265;
+    goes on to Canaries, 265-267;
+    to Cape Blanco, 267-269;
+    reaches the Senegal, 269;
+    describes Azaneguys, 269;
+    pushes on to land of Budomel, 275-278;
+    reaches Cape Verde, 279;
+    describes people beyond, 280;
+    explores the Gambra, 281, 282;
+    goes back to Portugal, refits, and sails on second voyage, 283;
+    explores islands off Cape Verde, 283, 284;
+    names Boa Vista and St. James, 284;
+    sails up the Gambra and names St. Andrew, 285;
+    visits Battimansa, 285, 286,
+      and Gnumimansa, 287;
+    returns to Lisbon, 287;
+    leaves Portugal, 313
+
+  Camaldolese chart of Fra Mauro, 301
+
+  Cam, Diego, 315;
+    reaches the Congo and Walvisch Bay, 316
+
+  Canaries, visited by Cadamosto, 265
+
+  Cantor, visited by Gomez, 291
+
+  Cape Cod, reached by Scandinavian migration, 65
+
+  Cape St. Vincent, modern name for "Sacred Cape" and Sagres, 160
+
+  Carpini, John de Plano, 90;
+    his _Book of the Tartars_, 92
+
+  Ceuta, King John plans an attack on, 148;
+    situation, 150;
+    left in command of Menezes, 155;
+    safe in Christian hands, 156
+
+  Chart of Fra Mauro, 301
+
+  Christian pilgrimage begins with Constantine, 32
+
+  Cintra, Gonsalo de, 197;
+    sets out for Guinea, 218;
+    is killed by Moors, 219
+
+  Cintra, Pedro de, 313
+
+  Columbus, influenced by _Imago Mundi_, 11;
+    at Portuguese Court, 322;
+    at Spanish Court, 323
+
+  Constantine, Christian pilgrimage begins with, 32
+
+  Corvo, 254, 256
+
+  Cosmas Indicopleustes, 34;
+    theory of, 37;
+    interest to us, 40
+
+  Costa, Sueiro da, 313
+
+  Covilham, 316
+
+  Crossness, place called from dead chief, 59
+
+  Crusades and land travel, 76;
+    results of, 144
+
+  Crusading movement, results of, 78
+
+  Cruzado, the, 300
+
+
+  D
+
+  Daniel of Kiev, Abbot, 85
+
+  Death, Black, in Portugal, 127
+
+  De Prado, taken captive, 297;
+    martyrised, 298
+
+  Diaz, Bartholomew, 316;
+    makes greatest discovery in all history before Columbus, 317
+
+  Diaz, Diniz, enters mouth of the Senegal, 220;
+    reaches Cape Verde, 221;
+    heads a part of the fleet sent from Lagos, 229;
+    reaches Cape Verde, 236
+
+  Diaz, Lawrence, 230
+
+  Diaz, Vincent, 233
+
+
+  E
+
+  Eannes, Gil, makes a voyage to the Canaries, 170;
+    rounds Cape Bojador, 173;
+    sails with Lagos fleet, 229
+
+  Edrisi, Arabic Ptolemy, the, 21;
+    birth and life, 22;
+    account of voyage of Lisbon "Wanderers," 23;
+    "Traveller's Doctorate," in time of, 25;
+    map superseded, 27
+
+  Edward, eldest son of King John, 136;
+    becomes King, 172;
+    dies, 188
+
+  Emosaid, family, 24;
+    establish themselves as traders, 25
+
+  England, Vikings first landed in, 52
+
+  English-born travellers, first of, 45
+
+  Eratosthenes, geography of, 5
+
+  Eric the Red, renames Greenland, 55;
+    leads colonists, 56
+
+  Esteeves, Alvaro, crosses the equator, 314
+
+  Europe, compacted together in spiritual federation, 76
+
+  European development, pilgrim stage of, 42
+
+  European expansion, beginnings of, 50
+
+  Europeans, first landing of, on coasts of unknown Africa, 175;
+    break in upon Moslem trade, 204
+
+
+  F
+
+  Farosangul, King of Gambra, 285
+
+  Fayal, 254;
+    first Captain Donatory of, 255
+
+  Ferdinand, fourth son of King John, 136;
+    revives scheme of African war, 180;
+    goes by sea to Tangier, 182;
+    is left as hostage, 185;
+    dies a captive, 188
+
+  Ferdinand the Handsome, last of House of Burgundy to reign in Lisbon, 131
+
+  Fernandez, Alvara, commands the caravel of his uncle, Zarco, 229;
+    is again sent out with the caravel, 243;
+    the voyage, 243-245
+
+  Fernandez, Joan, left as hostage at Bank of Arguin, 219;
+    taken home, 223;
+    his story, 223, 224
+
+  Fernandez, Martin, crosses the equator, 314
+
+  Ferrer, Jayme, explorer, 108
+
+  Fidelis, the monk, travels of, 46
+
+  Flores, 254, 256
+
+  Formigas discovered by Cabral, 169
+
+  Frangazick, nephew of Farosangul, 290
+
+  Freitas, Alvara de, 232
+
+  Freydis, daughter of Red Eric, tries to colonise Vinland, 62
+
+
+  G
+
+  Gama, Vasco da, 125
+
+  Geographical record, last before age of Northmen, 47
+
+  Geography, first Christian, 33;
+    of Christendom from eighth and ninth centuries, 41
+
+  Gerard of Cremona, geographical postulates, 9, 10
+
+  Gnumi, King, 287
+
+  Gog and Magog, wall to shut off, 13
+
+  Gold dust, first ever brought by Europeans direct from Guinea coast, 203;
+    effect, 217
+
+  Gomez, Diego, 251;
+    sets out in command of the caravel the _Wren_, 289;
+    his narrative, 289-298;
+    visits Cantor, 291;
+    converts Nomimansa, 293-295;
+    meets Bezeghichi, 295;
+    returns to Lagos, 296;
+    is sent out by Affonso and goes to the land of the Barbacins, 296;
+    discovers Santiago, 297;
+    returns to Portugal, 298;
+    describes last illness and death of Prince Henry, 304, 305
+
+  Gonsalvez, Antam, sent out by Henry, 193;
+    his voyage, 193-195;
+    takes the first captives, 195;
+    is knighted by Nuno Tristam, 198;
+    goes back to Portugal, 199;
+    goes back to Africa with the captive prince, 202;
+    exchanges two boys for ten prisoners, gold dust, and ostrich eggs, 203;
+    applies for command of ships, 222
+
+  Graciosa, 254;
+    settled, 255
+
+  Greenland, sighted by Gunnbiorn and renamed by Eric, 55;
+    colonised, 56
+
+  Green sea of darkness, 13, 14
+
+  Gregory X., Pope, 93
+
+
+  H
+
+  Harold Hardrada, 68;
+    type of all Vikings, 69
+
+  Helluland, or Slate-land, 56
+
+  Henry, the Navigator, special interest of the life and work, 29;
+    author of discovering movement, 30;
+    preparation for work of, 80;
+    predecessors of seamen of, 107-112;
+    first voyage, 112;
+    maps used by, 117-122;
+    Hero of Portugal, 123;
+    inspires his countrymen with love of exploration, 125;
+    his brother Pedro his right hand man, 136;
+    birth, 138;
+    his aims, 139;
+    tries to find a way round Africa to India, 139;
+    his work of exploration a foundation of an empire for his country, 141;
+    a crusader and a missionary, 142;
+    sets the example for systematic exploration, 144;
+    the teacher and master of more successful explorers, 145;
+    sends out caravels past Cape Non, 147;
+    brings Portuguese fleet into harbour at Ceuta, 150;
+    anchors off Ceuta, 151;
+    leads in the attack on Ceuta and is reported dead, 152;
+    is made a knight, 153;
+    begins coasting voyages, 154;
+    is sent to relieve Ceuta, 155;
+    plans to get possession of Gibraltar, 156;
+    returns to Court, 156;
+    is made Duke of Viseu and Lord of Covilham, 157;
+    reasons for exploring Guinea, 158;
+    Sagres his chosen home, 160;
+    is made Governor for life of the Algarves, 160;
+    his buildings on Sagres, 161;
+    his scientific work, 162;
+    results of settlement on Cape St. Vincent, 163;
+    sends out men and ships to colonise Porto Santo, 164;
+    colonises Madeira, 166;
+    directs captains to Azores, 169;
+    impatience at superstition and fears of navigators, 172;
+    receives charter for Madeira, Porto Santo, and the Desertas, 173;
+    sends out Gil Eannes, 173;
+    despatches Baldaya, 174;
+    engaged in politics, 179;
+    reverence paid to him, 179;
+    plans and organises African war, 180;
+    sets sail for Ceuta, 181;
+    pushes forward along inland routes, 182;
+    attacks and blockades Tangier, 183;
+    raises the siege, 184;
+    signs a truce with Moors, 185;
+    shuts himself up in Ceuta, 186;
+    is recalled to Portugal, 186;
+    made one of the guardians of Affonso V., 189;
+    arranges a compromise between Pedro and Leonor, 190;
+    sends to the Holy Father for treasure to aid in crusades, 200;
+    gives grant to sail to coast of Guinea to Lançarote, 206;
+    his motives in slave trade, 207;
+    keeps buccaneers in check, 216;
+    differs from West Indian planters, 217;
+    gives a caravel to Gonsalo de Cintra, 218;
+    permits Lagos to equip and send out a fleet on a Guinea voyage, 229;
+    takes special charge of widows and orphans left by Nuno Tristam's
+        expedition, 242;
+    gives a reward to explorers, 246;
+    his wonderful knowledge shown in correcting Cabral's course, 252;
+    grants captaincy of Terceira to Jacques de Bruges, 254;
+    account of him in narrative of Cadamosto, 261;
+    absorbed in new Holy War against the Infidel, 299;
+    his last appearance in public service, 300;
+    makes set of charters, 303;
+    makes grants to the Order of Christ and to the Crown of Portugal, 304;
+    his illness and death, 304, 305;
+    his body is laid in the chapel at Batalha, 305;
+    his personal appearance, 305;
+    his character, 306;
+    results of his life, 309-312, 321, 323
+
+  Heravy, Al, life of, 26
+
+  Hereford _Mappa Mundi_, 120
+
+  Heurter, Job van, notice of first settlement of Azores, 255
+
+  Hippalus, discovery of monsoon, 17
+
+  Hope, country re-named, 60
+
+
+  I
+
+  Ibn Batuta, 27
+
+  Iceland, sighted by Nadodd, 54;
+    colonised, 55
+
+  _Imago Mundi_, influence on Columbus, 11
+
+  Isidore of Seville, belief of, 40
+
+  Italian, merchants, first, who opened Court of Great Khan to Venice and
+        Genoa, 90;
+    age of South Atlantic and African voyages, 107
+
+
+  J
+
+  Jacome from Majorca, 161
+
+  Japan discovered by Kublai Khan, 99
+
+  Jerusalem, loss of, 90
+
+  John de Plano Carpini, first papal legate to the Tartars, 90;
+    gives first genuine account of Tartary, 91;
+    first real explorer of Christian Europe, 92
+
+  John, fourth son of King John I., 136;
+    succeeds Affonso V., adds a new chapter to discovery, dies, 314
+
+  John, the King of Good Memory, transition figure, 133;
+    personal work and its results, 133-135;
+    sons of, 136;
+    plans attack on Ceuta, 148;
+    speech when he hears of death of his two sons, 152;
+    dies, 160
+
+  Jordanus, 104
+
+
+  K
+
+  Karlsefne, Thorfinn, greatest of the Vinland sailors, 60
+
+  Keel-Ness (Kjalarness), 58
+
+  Kublai Khan, 93-98
+
+
+  L
+
+  Labrador, possible discovery of, 56;
+    reached by Scandinavian migration, 65
+
+  Lagos equips and sends out a fleet, 229
+
+  La Mina, 315
+
+  Lançarote, obtains grant to sail to coast of Guinea, 206;
+    his voyage, 212-214;
+    landing at Lagos and sale of slaves captured by, 214;
+    admiral of fleet sent out from Lagos, 229;
+    holds a council of his captains, 231;
+    decides to go on to the Nile, 232
+
+  Latini, Brunetto, describes the magnet, 116
+
+  Leif, a son of Red Eric, starts for discovery, 56
+
+  Leonora Telles, evil genius of Ferdinand and Portugal, 131;
+    marries King of Portugal, 132;
+    people rise against, 132
+
+  Leonor of Aragon, attempts to be regent, 189;
+    yields to persuasions of Henry, 190;
+    dies, 257
+
+  Lion, first one brought to Portugal, 247
+
+  Lisbon, capture of, 128
+
+
+  M
+
+  Machin, Robert, 110
+
+  Madagascar, first known to Europe, 102
+
+  Madeira, discovered and named by the Portuguese, 165;
+    nature of island, 166;
+    visited by Cadamosto, 264
+
+  Magellan, 125, 310
+
+  Magnet, earliest mention of, 115
+
+  Magnus the Good, 68
+
+  Mandeville, Sir Henry, 105
+
+  _Mappa Mundi_, Hereford, 120
+
+  Maps, of fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, 118
+
+  Marabout, or Prophet Bird, 230
+
+  Markland (Woodland), 57
+
+  Massoudy, visited various countries, 19;
+    discussion of problems, 20;
+    greatest name of first age of Arabic geography, 21.
+
+  Masts, Cape of, 238
+
+  Mauro, Fra, Camaldolese chart of, 301
+
+  Melli, negro empire of, 270;
+    salt trade in, 271
+
+  Menezes, Edward, 300
+
+  Menezes, Pedro de, is left in command of Ceuta, 155
+
+  Meymam, Ahude, 223, 224, 245
+
+  Mythology, geographical, gradual development of, 7
+
+
+  N
+
+  Noli, Antonio de, sails with Gomez, 297;
+    gets the captaincy of Santiago, 298
+
+  Nomimansa converted by Gomez, 293-295
+
+  Norse, discoveries, 50, 51;
+    early settlements, 54;
+    farthest point of Northern advance in Europe, 55;
+    race, type of, 69
+
+  Northern, advance, lines of, 53;
+    effects of invasions, 74
+
+  Northmen, countries made known to Europe through, 67;
+    definite advances into the unknown, 72
+
+
+  O
+
+  Odjein, Aryn, or Arim, 8
+
+  Ogane, 316
+
+  Ohthere, 70;
+    service of, to western geography, 72
+
+  Olaf Trygveson, 68
+
+
+  P
+
+  Pacheco, Gonsalo, unlucky expedition of, 225;
+    meets Diaz on homeward voyage and turns back, 230
+
+  Papal Court sends missions to convert Tartars, 90
+
+  Payva, 316
+
+  Pedro the Traveller, 136;
+    joins in attack on Ceuta, 148-153;
+    is knighted, 153;
+    is made Duke of Coimbra and Lord of the Principality, 157;
+    returns from travels, 168;
+    becomes regent, 190;
+    gives a charter to Henry, 201;
+    gives a reward to explorers, 246;
+    resigns the regency, 258;
+    takes arms against Affonso, 259;
+    marches on Lisbon and is killed, 260
+
+  Philippa, Queen, character and death, 149
+
+  Pilgrims, primitive, 34;
+    pioneers of growth of Europe and Christendom, 76
+
+  Pilgrim stage of European development, 42
+
+  Pires, Gomes, goes on toward the Nile, 232;
+    attacks natives, 234
+
+  Po Fernando, 313
+
+  Polo, Marco, makes journey to the East with uncles, 94;
+    made commissioner of Imperial Council, 96;
+    memoirs of, 96;
+    heard and wrote of Madagascar and Zanzibar, 102;
+    Herodotus of Middle Ages, 103;
+
+  Polo, Nicolo and Matteo, traders to Crimea and Southern Russia, 93;
+    make second journey to farthest East, 94;
+    consulting engineers to Mongol Court, 96;
+    dismissed, 101
+
+  Pope, decides question of reviving African war, 181
+
+  Portolani, superseded map of Edrisi, 27;
+    drawn with aid of compass, 121
+
+  Portolano, Laurentian, 118
+
+  Portugal, chief points in story of, 123;
+    guide of Europe into larger world, 125;
+    mediæval history of, 126-133
+
+  Portuguese give a value to the art and science of discovery, 145
+
+  Prado De, 297, 298
+
+  Prophet bird, or marabout, 230
+
+  Ptolemy, chart of, 2;
+    "Habitable Quarter" of the world, 12
+
+
+  R
+
+  Rio Grande, 246;
+    passed by Gomez, 289
+
+  Rubruquis, William de, 92, 93
+
+
+  S
+
+  St. George, 254, 255
+
+  St. James, 284
+
+  St. Michael, island of, discovered, 253
+
+  St. Silvia, of Aquitaine, travels of, 33
+
+  "Sacred Cape" of the Romans or Sagres, 160
+
+  Sæwulf of Worcester, 81;
+    pilgrimage of, 82;
+    classes of pilgrim-crusaders in time of, 84
+
+  Sagres, chosen home of Henry, 160;
+    systematic study of applied science founded anew at, 162
+
+  Santa Maria discovered, 169
+
+  Santiago discovered by Gomez, 297
+
+  Sanuto, Marino, Venetian map of, 118
+
+  Senegal, reached by Cadamosto, 269;
+    region about the gulf described by him, 273-275
+
+  Sinbad Saga, 19
+
+  Slate-land or Helluland, 56
+
+  Slaves, beginning of trade in, as a part of European commerce, 207;
+    description of sale of, 214, 215;
+    treatment of, 215;
+    excuse for trade in, 216
+
+  Strabo, geography of, 5
+
+
+  T
+
+  Tagaza, or the Gold-Market, 270
+
+  Tangier, siege of, 183
+
+  Tarik, the rock of (Gibraltar), 156
+
+  Terceira, sighted, 253;
+    Jacques de Bruges becomes captain, 254
+
+  Theodosius, early pilgrim, 34
+
+  Thorfinn Karlsefne, greatest of the Vinland sailors, 60
+
+  Thorstein, third son of Red Eric, puts to sea, 59
+
+  Thorvald Ericson, puts to sea, 57;
+    voyages of, 58;
+    death, 59
+
+  Timbuctoo, inland route of merchants to, 270
+
+  Tristam, Nuno, meets Antam Gonsalvez, 196;
+    assists in capturing natives, 196-199;
+    continues voyage and returns to Portugal, 199;
+    sets out on another voyage, 204;
+    sails into bay of Arguin, makes captives and returns, 205;
+    makes a third voyage, 219;
+    reaches Cape Palmar, 220;
+    arms a caravel and sets sail, 240;
+    is killed by Blackmoors, 241
+
+  Trygveson, Olaf, 68
+
+
+  V
+
+  Vallarte, his expedition and fate, 247
+
+  Vaz, Tristam, sets out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea, 163;
+    is rewarded, 166;
+    heads three ships from Madeira in Lagos fleet, 229
+
+  Vergil, Irish missionary, 40
+
+  Vikings, highest type of explorers, 31;
+    Norse, discoveries, conquests, and colonies, beginning of European
+        expansion, 50;
+    voyages of, 52;
+    struggle with Esquimaux, 58;
+    rename places visited, 65;
+    work on south and south-west not one of exploration, 66;
+    type of all, 69;
+    credit due, for discoveries, 72;
+    their principalities in time of Alfred, 73
+
+  Vinland, discovery of, 57;
+    renamed, 60;
+    visited and abandoned by Thorfinn, 61;
+    recolonised by Freydis, 62;
+    fragmentary notices of, 63
+
+
+  W
+
+  "Wanderers," Lisbon, account of, 23
+
+  William de Rubruquis, sent by St. Louis on errand of conversion and
+        discovery, 92;
+    interest of his work, 93
+
+  Willibald, 44
+
+  Wulfstan, 70;
+    tells of voyages, 71;
+    service of, to western geography, 72
+
+
+  Y
+
+  Yacout, the Roman, _Dictionary_ of, 26
+
+  Yang-Tse-Kiang, 96
+
+
+  Z
+
+  Zarco, John Gonsalvez, sets out to explore as far as the coast of
+        Guinea, 163;
+    his voyages, 164-166;
+    returns to Madeira, 166;
+    sends his caravel under his nephew with Lagos fleet, 229;
+    the voyage, 236-239;
+    same caravel sent out again, 243
+
+
+
+
+The Story of the Nations.
+
+
+MESSRS. G. P. Putnam's Sons take pleasure in announcing that they have in
+course of publication, in co-operation with Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, of
+London, a series of historical studies, intended to present in a graphic
+manner the stories of the different nations that have attained
+prominence in history.
+
+In the story form the current of each national life is distinctly
+indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy periods and episodes are
+presented for the reader in their philosophical relation to each other
+as well as to universal history.
+
+It is the plan of the writers of the different volumes to enter into the
+real life of the peoples, and to bring them before the reader as they
+actually lived, labored, and struggled--as they studied and wrote, and
+as they amused themselves. In carrying out this plan, the myths, with
+which the history of all lands begins, will not be overlooked, though
+these will be carefully distinguished from the actual history, so far as
+the labors of the accepted historical authorities have resulted in
+definite conclusions.
+
+The subjects of the different volumes have been planned to cover
+connecting and, as far as possible, consecutive epochs or periods, so
+that the set when completed will present in a comprehensive narrative
+the chief events in the great STORY OF THE NATIONS; but it is, of
+course not always practicable to issue the several volumes in their
+chronological order.
+
+The "Stories" are printed in good readable type, and in handsome 12mo
+form. They are adequately illustrated and furnished with maps and
+indexes. Price, per vol., cloth, $1.50 Half morocco, gilt top, $1.75
+
+The following volumes are now ready (Jan., 1895):
+
+  THE STORY OF GREECE. Prof. JAS. A. HARRISON.
+   "    "    " ROME. ARTHUR GILMAN.
+   "    "    " THE JEWS. Prof. JAMES K. HOSMER.
+   "    "    " CHALDEA. Z.A. RAGOZIN.
+   "    "    " GERMANY. S. BARING-GOULD.
+   "    "    " NORWAY. HJALMAR H. BOYESEN.
+   "    "    " SPAIN. Rev. E.E. AND SUSAN HALE.
+   "    "    " HUNGARY. Prof. A. VÁMBÉRY.
+   "    "    " CARTHAGE. Prof. ALFRED J. CHURCH.
+   "    "    " THE SARACENS. ARTHUR GILMAN.
+   "    "    " THE MOORS IN SPAIN. STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
+   "    "    " THE NORMANS. SARAH ORNE JEWETT.
+   "    "    " PERSIA. S.G.W. BENJAMIN.
+   "    "    " ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. GEO. RAWLINSON.
+   "    "    " ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. Prof. J.P. MAHAFFY.
+   "    "    " ASSYRIA. Z.A. RAGOZIN.
+   "    "    " THE GOTHS. HENRY BRADLEY.
+   "    "    " IRELAND. Hon. EMILY LAWLESS.
+   "    "    " TURKEY. STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
+   "    "    " MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA. Z.A. RAGOZIN.
+   "    "    " MEDIÆVAL FRANCE. Prof. GUSTAVE MASSON.
+   "    "    " HOLLAND. Prof. J. THOROLD ROGERS.
+   "    "    " MEXICO. SUSAN HALE.
+   "    "    " PHOENICIA. Prof. GEO. RAWLINSON.
+   "    "    " THE HANSA TOWNS. HELEN ZIMMERN.
+   "    "    " EARLY BRITAIN. Prof. ALFRED J. CHURCH.
+   "    "    " THE BARBARY CORSAIRS. STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
+   "    "    " RUSSIA. W.R. MORFILL.
+   "    "    " THE JEWS UNDER ROME. W.D. MORRISON.
+   "    "    " SCOTLAND. JOHN MACKINTOSH.
+   "    "    " SWITZERLAND. R. STEAD AND MRS. A. HUG.
+   "    "    " PORTUGAL. H. MORSE STEPHENS.
+   "    "    " THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. C.W.C. OMAN.
+   "    "    " SICILY. E.A. FREEMAN.
+   "    "    " THE TUSCAN REPUBLICS. BELLA DUFFY.
+   "    "    " POLAND. W.R. MORFILL.
+   "    "    " PARTHIA. Prof. GEORGE RAWLINSON.
+   "    "    " JAPAN. DAVID MURRAY.
+   "    "    " THE CHRISTIAN RECOVERY OF SPAIN. H.E. WATTS.
+   "    "    " AUSTRALASIA. GREVILLE TREGARTHEN.
+   "    "    " SOUTHERN AFRICA. GEO. M. THEAL.
+   "    "    " VENICE. ALETHEA WIEL.
+   "    "    " THE CRUSADES. T.S. ARCHER and C.L. KINGSFORD.
+
+
+
+
+Heroes of the Nations.
+
+EDITED BY
+
+EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A., FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD.
+
+
+A series of biographical studies of the lives and work of a number of
+representative historical characters about whom have gathered the great
+traditions of the Nations to which they belonged, and who have been
+accepted, in many instances, as types of the several National ideals.
+With the life of each typical character will be presented a picture of
+the National conditions surrounding him during his career.
+
+The narratives are the work of writers who are recognized authorities on
+their several subjects, and, while thoroughly trustworthy as history,
+will present picturesque and dramatic "stories" of the Men and of the
+events connected with them.
+
+To the Life of each "Hero" will be given one duodecimo volume,
+handsomely printed in large type, provided with maps and adequately
+illustrated according to the special requirements of the several
+subjects. The volumes will be sold separately as follows:
+
+Cloth extra                                      $1.50
+Half morocco, uncut edges, gilt top               1.75
+Large paper, limited to 250 numbered copies for
+  subscribers to the series. These may be obtained
+  in sheets folded, or in cloth, uncut edges.     3.50
+
+The first group of the Series comprises the following volumes:
+
+     Nelson, and the Naval Supremacy of England. By W. CLARK Russell,
+     author of "The Wreck of the Grosvenor," etc.
+
+     Gustavus Adolphus, and the Struggle of Protestantism for Existence.
+     By C.R.L. FLETCHER, M.A., late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
+
+     Pericles, and the Golden Age of Athens. By EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A.,
+     Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+     Theodoric the Goth, the Barbarian Champion of Civilisation. By
+     THOMAS HODGKIN, author of "Italy and Her Invaders," etc.
+
+     Sir Philip Sidney, and the Chivalry of England. By H.R. FOX-BOURNE,
+     author of "The Life of John Locke," etc.
+
+     Julius Cæsar, and the Organisation of the Roman Empire. By W. WARDE
+     FOWLER, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.
+
+     John Wyclif, Last of the Schoolmen and First of the English
+     Reformers. By LEWIS SERGEANT, author of "New Greece," etc.
+
+     Napoleon, Warrior and Ruler, and the Military Supremacy of
+     Revolutionary France. By W. O'CONNOR MORRIS, sometime Scholar of
+     Oriel College, Oxford.
+
+     Henry of Navarre, and the Huguenots in France. By P.F. WILLERT,
+     M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
+
+     Cicero, and the Fall of the Roman Republic. By J.L. STRACHAN
+     DAVIDSON, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+     Abraham Lincoln, and the Downfall of American Slavery. By NOAH
+     BROOKS.
+
+     Prince Henry (of Portugal) the Navigator, and the Age of Discovery.
+     By C.R. BEAZLEY, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
+
+     Julian the Philosopher, and the Last Struggle of Paganism against
+     Christianity. By ALICE GARDNER, Lecturer on Ancient History in
+     Newnham College.
+
+     Louis XIV., and the Zenith of the French Monarchy. By ARTHUR
+     HASSALL, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.
+
+
+     To be followed by:
+
+     Saladin, the Crescent and the Cross. By STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
+
+     Joan of Arc. By MRS. OLIPHANT.
+
+     The Cid Campeador, and the Waning of the Crescent in the West. By
+     H. BUTLER CLARKE, Wadham College, Oxford.
+
+     Charlemagne, the Reorganiser of Europe. By Prof. GEORGE L. BURR,
+     Cornell University.
+
+     Moltke, and the Founding of the German Empire. By SPENSER
+     WILKINSON.
+
+     Oliver Cromwell, and the Rule of the Puritans in England. By
+     CHARLES FIRTH, Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+     Alfred the Great, and the First Kingdom in England. By F. YORK
+     POWELL, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.
+
+     Marlborough, and England as a Military Power. By C.W.C. OMAN, A.M.,
+     Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
+
+     Frederic the Second, the Wonder of the World. By A.L. SMITH, of
+     Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+     Charles the Bold, and the Attempt to Found a Middle Kingdom. By R.
+     LODGE, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.
+
+     Alexander the Great, and the Extension of Greek Rule and of Greek
+     Ideas. By Prof. BENJAMIN I. WHEELER, Cornell University.
+
+
+G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+
+NEW YORK
+27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD ST.
+
+LONDON
+24 BEDFORD ST., STRAND
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+   A footnote for the anchor next to the "List of Maps" was not
+   found in the print edition.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR, THE HERO
+OF PORTUGAL AND OF MODERN DISCOVERY, 1394-1460 A.D.***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 18757-8.txt or 18757-8.zip *******
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of
+Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D., by C. Raymond Beazley</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D.</p>
+<p>       With an Account of Geographical Progress Throughout the Middle Ages As the Preparation for His Work.</p>
+<p>Author: C. Raymond Beazley</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 4, 2006  [eBook #18757]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR, THE HERO OF PORTUGAL AND OF MODERN DISCOVERY, 1394-1460 A.D.***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net/)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<h3>Heroes of the Nations.</h3>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">PER VOLUME, CLOTH, $1.50.&mdash;HALF MOROCCO, $1.75.</p>
+
+
+<p><b>I.&mdash;Nelson, and the Naval Supremacy of England.</b> By <span class="smcap">W. Clark Russell</span>,
+author of "The Wreck of the Grosvenor," etc.</p>
+
+<p><b>II.&mdash;Gustavus Adolphus, and the Struggle of Protestantism for Existence.</b>
+By <span class="smcap">C.R.L. Fletcher, M.A.</span>, late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>III.&mdash;Pericles, and the Golden Age of Athens.</b> By <span class="smcap">Evelyn Abbott, M.A.</span>,
+Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>IV.&mdash;Theodoric the Goth, the Barbarian Champion of Civilisation.</b> By
+<span class="smcap">Thomas Hodgkin</span>, author of "Italy and Her Invaders," etc.</p>
+
+<p><b>V.&mdash;Sir Philip Sidney: Type of English Chivalry.</b> By <span class="smcap">H.R. Fox Bourne</span>.</p>
+
+<p><b>VI.&mdash;Julius C&aelig;sar, and the Organisation of the Roman Empire.</b> By <span class="smcap">Warde
+Fowler, M.A.</span>, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>VII.&mdash;Wyclif, Last of the Schoolmen and First of the English Reformers.</b>
+By <span class="smcap">Lewis Sergeant</span>.</p>
+
+<p><b>VIII.&mdash;Napoleon, Warrior and Ruler; and the Military Supremacy of
+Revolutionary France.</b> By <span class="smcap">William O'Connor Morris</span>.</p>
+
+<p><b>IX.&mdash;Henry of Navarre, and the Huguenots in France.</b> By <span class="smcap">P.F. Willert,
+M.A.</span>, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>X.&mdash;Cicero, and the Fall of the Roman Republic.</b> By <span class="smcap">J.L.
+Strachan-Davidson, M.A.</span>, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>XI.&mdash;Abraham Lincoln, and the Downfall of American Slavery.</b> By <span class="smcap">Noah
+Brooks</span>.</p>
+
+<p><b>XII.&mdash;Prince Henry (of Portugal) the Navigator, and the Age of
+Discovery.</b> By <span class="smcap">C.R. Beazley</span>, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>XIII.&mdash;Julian the Philosopher, and the Last Struggle of Paganism against
+Christianity.</b> By <span class="smcap">Alice Gardner</span>, Lecturer on Ancient History, Newnham
+College.</p>
+
+<p><b>XIV.&mdash;Louis XIV., and the Zenith of the French Monarchy.</b> By <span class="smcap">Arthur
+Hassall, M.A.</span>, Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.</p>
+
+
+<p>(For titles of volumes next to appear and for further details of this
+Series see prospectus at end of volume.)</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">NEW YORK AND LONDON</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><i>Heroes of the Nations</i></h3>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">EDITED BY<br />
+<b>Evelyn Abbot, M.A.</b><br />
+FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">FACTA DUCIS VIVENT, OPEROSAQUE GLORIA RERUM.&mdash;OVID, IN LIVIAM, 265.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">THE HERO'S DEEDS AND HARD-WON FAME SHALL LIVE.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR</h1>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus001"></a><img src="./images/illus001.jpg"
+alt="GATEWAY AT BELEM. WITH STATUE, BETWEEN THE DOORS, OF PRINCE HENRY IN ARMOUR."
+title="GATEWAY AT BELEM. WITH STATUE, BETWEEN THE DOORS, OF PRINCE HENRY IN ARMOUR." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">GATEWAY AT BELEM.<br />
+<span class="smcap">with statue, between the doors, of prince henry in armour</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR</h1>
+
+<h2>THE HERO OF PORTUGAL AND OF MODERN DISCOVERY</h2>
+
+<h2>1394-1460 A.D.</h2>
+
+<h3>WITH AN ACCOUNT OF GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE AGES AS
+THE PREPARATION FOR HIS WORK</h3>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h2>C. RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A., F.R.G.S.</h2>
+
+<h4>FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD; GEOGRAPHICAL STUDENT IN THE UNIVERSITY
+OF OXFORD, 1894</h4>
+
+<div class="poemcenter15"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Venient annis s&aelig;cula seris<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tethys que novos detegat orbes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nec sit terris ultima Thule.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="smcap">Seneca</span>, <i>Medea</i> 376/380.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS</h4>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">NEW YORK<br />
+27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">LONDON<br />
+24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND</p>
+
+<h4>The Knickerbocker Press</h4>
+<p style="text-align: center;">1895</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">Copyright, 1894</p>
+<p style="text-align: center;">BY</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS</p>
+<p style="text-align: center;">Entered at Stationers' Hall, London<br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center;">Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by<br />
+<b>The Knickerbocker Press, New York</b><br />
+<span class="smcap">G. P. Putnam's Sons</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header01.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="60%" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>PAGE</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>PREFACE</td><td align='right'>xvii</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>INTRODUCTION.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>THE GREEK AND ARABIC IDEAS OF THE WORLD, AS
+THE CHIEF INHERITANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN
+MIDDLE AGES IN GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER I.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>EARLY CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS (CIRCA 333-867)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER II.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>VIKINGS OR NORTHMEN (CIRCA 787-1066)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER III.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>THE CRUSADES AND LAND TRAVEL (CIRCA 1100-1300)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER IV.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>MARITIME EXPLORATION (CIRCA 1250-1410)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER V.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE IN CHRISTENDOM FROM THE
+FIRST CRUSADES (CIRCA 1100-1460)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER VI.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>PORTUGAL TO 1400 (1095-1400)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER VII.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>HENRY'S POSITION AND DESIGNS AT THE TIME OF
+THE FIRST VOYAGES, 1410-15</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER VIII.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>PRINCE HENRY AND THE CAPTURE OF CEUTA (1415)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER IX.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>HENRY'S SETTLEMENT AT SAGRES AND FIRST DISCOVERIES
+(1418-28)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER X.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>CAPE BOJADOR AND THE AZORES (1428-41)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XI.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>HENRY'S POLITICAL LIFE (1433-41)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XII.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>FROM BOJADOR TO CAPE VERDE (1441-5)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XIII.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>THE ARMADA OF 1445</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XIV.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>VOYAGES OF 1446-8</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XV.</b></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'>THE AZORES (1431-60)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XVI.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>THE TROUBLES OF THE REGENCY AND THE FALL OF
+DON PEDRO (1440-9)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XVII.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>CADAMOSTO (1455-6)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XVIII.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>VOYAGES OF DIEGO GOMEZ (1458-60)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_289">289</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XIX.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>HENRY'S LAST YEARS AND DEATH (1458-60)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><b>CHAPTER XX.</b></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'>THE RESULTS OF PRINCE HENRY'S WORK</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_308">308</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'>INDEX</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_325">325</a></td></tr></table></div>
+
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer01.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header02.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="60%" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>PAGE</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus001">MAIN GATE OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH AT BELEM</a></td><td align='right'><i>Frontispiece</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>Built on the site of an old sailor's chapel, existing in
+Prince Henry's day, and used by his men. In the niche
+between the two great entrance doors, is a statue of Prince
+Henry in armour.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus002">THE MONASTERY CHURCH AT BATALHA</a><a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></td><td align='right'>132</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>West front of church in which Prince Henry and his
+House lie buried. This church was founded by the Prince's
+father, King John, in memory of his victory over Castille
+at Aljubarrota.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus003">BATALHA CHURCH&mdash;PORTUGAL'S WESTMINSTER</a><a name="FNanchor_1_1a" id="FNanchor_1_1a"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1a" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></td><td align='right'>136</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>The aisle containing the tombs of Prince Henry and his
+brothers, the Infants of the House of Aviz.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus004">EFFIGIES OF KING JOHN THE GREAT AND QUEEN PHILIPPA</a></td><td align='right'>148</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>Henry's father and mother, from their tomb in the Abbey
+of Batalha.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus005">GATEWAY OF THE CHURCH AT THOMAR</a></td><td align='right'>154</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>The Mother Church of the Order of Christ, of which
+Henry was Grand-Master.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus006">HENRY IN MORNING DRESS</a><a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></td><td align='right'>258</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>The original forms the frontispiece to the Paris MS. of
+Azurara's <i>Discovery and Conquest of Guinea</i>.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus007">COIMBRA UNIVERSITY</a></td><td align='right'>298</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus008">THE RECUMBENT STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY</a></td><td align='right'>306</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>From his tomb in Batalha Church; with his escutcheons (1)
+as titular King of Cyprus; (2) as Knight of the Garter of
+England; (3) as Grand Master of the Order of Christ.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus009">ALLEGORICAL PIECE</a><a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></td><td align='right'>310</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>Supposed to represent Columbus, as St. Christopher,
+carrying across the ocean the Christian faith, in the
+form of the infant Christ. From the map of Juan de la
+Cosa, 1500.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus010">VASCO DA GAMA</a><a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></td><td align='right'>314</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>From a portrait in the possession of the Count of
+Lavradio.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#illus011">AFFONSO D'ALBUQUERQUE</a><a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></td><td align='right'>318</td></tr></table></div>
+
+
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer02.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="maplist"></a><img src="./images/header03.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<h2>LIST OF MAPS.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="60%" summary="Maps">
+<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map01">THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY</a></td><td align='right'>2</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>From Nordenskj&ouml;ld's fac-simile atlas</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map02">THE WORLD ACCORDING TO EDRISI. <i>c.</i> 1150</a></td><td align='right'>24</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>As reconstructed by M. Reinaud from the written
+descriptions of the Arabic geographer. This illustrates
+the extremely unreal and untrue conception of the earth
+among Moslem students, especially those who followed the
+theories of Ptolomy&mdash;<i>e.g.</i>, in the extension to
+Africa eastward, so as practically or actually to join
+China, making the Indian Ocean an inland sea.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map03">THE MAPPE-MONDE OF ST. SEVER</a></td><td align='right'>48</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., Map room, shelf 35 [5], sheet 6). Of uncertain
+date, between <i>c.</i> 780-980 but probably not later
+than the 10th century. One of the earliest examples of
+Christian map-making.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map04">THE ANGLO-SAXON MAP</a></td><td align='right'>54</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., Cotton mss., Tib. B.V., fol. 59). This gives
+us the most interesting and accurate view of the world
+that we get in the pre-Crusading Christian science. The
+square, but not conventional outline is detailed with
+considerable care and precision. The writing, though
+minute, is legible; but the Nile, which, like the Red
+Sea in Africa, is coloured <i>red</i>, in contrast to the
+ordinary <i>grey</i> of water in this example, is made to
+wander about Africa from side to side, with occasional
+disappearances, in a thoroughly mythical fashion. This
+map, from a ms. of Priscian's <i>Peviegesis</i>, appears
+to have been executed at the end of the 10th century; it
+is on vellum, highly finished, and has been engraved, in
+outline, in Playfair's <i>Atlas</i> (Pl. I), and more fully
+in the <i>Penny Magazine</i> (July 22, 1837). In the reign
+of Henry II., it appears to have belonged to Battle Abbey.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map05">THE TURIN MAP OF THE 11TH CENTURY</a></td><td align='right'>76</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., Map room. From Ottino's reproduction).
+One of the oldest and simplest of Christian Mappe-Mondes,
+giving a special prominence to Paradise, (with the figures
+of Adam, Eve, and the serpent), to the mountains and
+rivers of the world, and to the four winds of heaven. It is
+to be associated with the Spanish map of 1109, and the
+Mappe-Monde of St. Sever.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map06">THE SPANISH-ARABIC MAP OF 1109</a></td><td align='right'>84</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., Add. mss., 11695). The original, gorgeously
+coloured, represents the crudest of Christian and Moslem
+notions of the world. Even more crude than in the Turin
+map and the Mappe-Monde of St. Sever, both of which offer
+some resemblances to this. The earth is represented as of
+quadrangular shape, surrounded by the ocean. At the E.
+is Paradise with the figures of the Temptation. A part of
+the S. is cut off by the Red Sea, which is straight (and
+coloured red), just as the straight Mediterranean, with its
+quadrangular islands, divides the N.W. quarter, or Europe,
+from the S.W. quarter, or Africa. The &AElig;gean Sea joins
+the Mediterranean at a right angle, in the centre of the
+map. In the ocean, bordering the whole, are square
+islands, <i>e.g.</i>, Tile (Thule), Britania, Scocia,
+Fu(o)rtunarum insula. The Turin map occurs in another
+copy of the same work&mdash;<i>A Commentary on the Apocalypse</i>.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map07">THE PSALTER MAP OF THE 13TH CENTURY</a></td><td align='right'>92</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., Add. mss., 28, 681). A good illustration of
+the circular type of medi&aelig;val map, which is sometimes
+little better than a panorama of legends and monsters.
+Christ at the top; the dragons crushed beneath him at the
+bottom; Jerusalem, the navel of the earth, in the middle
+as a sort of bull's-eye to a target, all show a "religious"
+geography. The line of queer figures, on the right side,
+figuring the S. coast of Africa, suggests a parallel with the
+still more fanciful Mappe-Monde of Hereford. (For copy
+see Bevan and Phillott's edition of the Hereford map).</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map08">THE S.W., OR AFRICAN SECTION OF THE HEREFORD
+MAP <i>c.</i> 1275-1300</a></td><td align='right'>106</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., King's Lib., XXIII). The S. coast of Africa,
+as in the Psalter map, is fringed with monstrous tribes;
+monstrous animals fill up a good deal of the interior; half
+of the wheel representing Jerusalem in the middle of the
+world appears in the N.E. corner; and the designer's idea
+of the Mediterranean and Atlantic islands is specially noteworthy.
+The Hereford map is a specimen of the thoroughly
+traditional and unpractical school of medi&aelig;val geographers
+who based their work on books, or fashionable collections
+of travellers' tales&mdash;such as Pliny, Solinus, or Martianus
+Capella&mdash;and who are to be distinguished from the scientific
+school of the same period, whose best works were the
+Portolani, or coast-charts of the early 14th century.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map09">THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MARINO SANUTO. <i>c.</i> A.D. 1306</a></td><td align='right'>114</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., King's Lib., 149 F. 2 p. 282). The shape of
+Africa in this map is supposed by some to be valuable in the
+history of geographical advance, as suggesting the possibility
+of getting round from the Atlantic into the Indian Ocean.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map10">SKETCH MAP OF DULCERT'S PORTOLANO OF 1339</a></td><td align='right'>116</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(From Nordenskj&ouml;ld's fac-simile atlas). This illustrates
+the accuracy of the 14th century coast-charts, especially in
+the Mediterranean.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map11">THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351</a></td><td align='right'>120</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(From the Medicean Lib. at Florence; reproduced in
+B. Mus., Map room, shelf 158, 22, 23). This is the most
+remarkable of all the Portolani of the 14th century, as
+giving a view of the world, and especially Africa, which is
+far nearer the actual truth than could be expected. Especially
+its outline of S. Africa and of the bend of the Guinea
+coast, is surprisingly near the truth, even as a guess, in
+a chart made one hundred and thirty-five years before the
+Cape of Good Hope was first rounded.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map12">N.W. SECTION OF THE CATALAN MAP OF 1375-6</a></td><td align='right'>124</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., Map room, 13, 14). This gives the British
+Islands, the W. coasts of Europe, N. Africa as far as Cape
+Boyador, and the Canaries and other islands in the Atlantic.
+The interior of Africa is filled with fantastic pictures of
+native tribes; the boat load of men off Cape Boyador in the
+extreme S.W. of the map probably represents the Catalan
+explorers of the year 1346, whose voyage in search of the
+"River of Gold" this map commemorates.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map13">CHART OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, BY BARENTSZOON</a></td><td align='right'>128</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(Engraved in copper 1595. Almost an unaltered copy of
+a Portolano from the 14th century. From Nordenskj&ouml;ld's
+fac-simile atlas). This illustrates the remarkable
+correctness in the drawing of the Mediterranean basin
+and the coasts of W. Europe, reached by the Italian and
+Balearic coast-charts, or Portolani, in the 14th century.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map14">THE BORGIAN MAP OF 1450</a></td><td align='right'>290</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., Map room, shelf 2 [6], 13, 14; copy of 1797).
+This map was executed just before the fall of Constantinople
+(1453), and gives a view of the world as imagined
+in the 15th century. It is very fantastic and
+unscientific, but remarkable among its kind for its
+comparative freedom from ecclesiastical influence.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map15">WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA
+MAURO, 1457-9</a></td><td align='right'>302</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(<i>Cf.</i> reproduction in B. Mus., Add. mss., 11267, and
+photographic copy in Map room). This map of Fra Mauro
+of Murano, (near Venice), is usually understood to be a sort
+of picture, not merely of the world as then known, but of
+Prince Henry's discoveries in particular on the W. African
+coast. From this point of view it is perhaps disappointing;
+the inlet of the Rio d'Ouro(?), to the S. of the Sahara,
+is exaggerated beyond all recognition; at the S. Cape (of
+Good Hope) a great island is depicted, separated from the
+mainland by a narrow channel&mdash;possibly Madagascar
+displaced.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map16">SKETCH-MAP OF FRA MAURO'S MAPPE-MONDE</a></td><td align='right'>304</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>As reduced and simplified in Lelewel's <i>Atlas</i>.
+The corners of the table are filled up with four small
+circles representing: (1) The Ptolemaic System in the
+Spheres. (2) The lunar influences over the tides. (3) The
+circles described in the terrestial globe. (4) A picture
+of the expulsion from Eden, with the four sacred rivers.</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#map17">MAP OF 1492</a></td><td align='right'>322</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>(B. Mus., Add. mss. 15760). This gives a general view
+of the Portuguese discoveries along the whole W. coast of
+Africa, and just beyond the Cape of Good Hope, which
+was rounded in 1486.</td></tr></table></div>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer03.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a><img src="./images/preface1.jpg" style="vertical-align: bottom;"
+alt="Preface"
+title="Preface" /><br />
+
+<img src="./images/preface2.jpg" style="float:left;"
+alt="T"
+title="T" />his volume aims at giving an account, based throughout upon original
+sources, of the progress of geographical knowledge and enterprise in
+Christendom throughout the Middle Ages, down to the middle or even the
+end of the fifteenth century, as well as a life of Prince Henry the
+Navigator, who brought this movement of European Expansion within sight
+of its greatest successes. That is, as explained in Chapter I., it has
+been attempted to treat Exploration as one continuous thread in the
+story of Christian Europe from the time of the conversion of the Empire;
+and to treat the life of Prince Henry as the turning-point, the central
+epoch in a development of many centuries: this life, accordingly, has
+been linked as closely as possible with what went before and prepared
+for it; one third of the text, at least, has been occupied with the
+history of the preparation of the earlier time, and the difference
+between our account of the eleventh-and fifteenth-century Discovery, for
+instance, will be found to be chiefly one of less and greater detail.
+This difference depends, of course, on the prominence in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span> later time
+of a figure of extraordinary interest and force, who is the true hero in
+the drama of the Geographical Conquest of the Outer World that starts
+from Western Christendom. The interest that centres round Henry is
+somewhat clouded by the dearth of complete knowledge of his life; but
+enough remains to make something of the picture of a hero, both of
+science and of action.</p>
+
+<p>Our subject, then, has been strictly historical, but a history in which
+a certain life, a certain biographical centre, becomes more and more
+important, till from its completed achievement we get our best outlook
+upon the past progress of a thousand years, on this side, and upon the
+future progress of those generations which realised the next great
+victories of geographical advance.</p>
+
+<p>The series of maps which illustrate this account, give the same
+continuous view of the geographical development of Europe and
+Christendom down to the end of Prince Henry's age. These are, it is
+believed, the first English reproductions in any accessible form of
+several of the great charts of the Middle Ages, and taken together they
+will give, it is hoped, the best view of Western or Christian map-making
+before the time of Columbus that is to be found in any English book,
+outside the great historical atlases.</p>
+
+<p>In the same way the text of this volume, especially in the earlier
+chapters, tries to supply a want&mdash;which is believed to exist&mdash;of a
+connected account from the originals known to us, of the expansion of
+Europe through geographical enterprise, from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span> conversion of the
+Empire to the period of those discoveries which mark most clearly the
+transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The chief authorities have been:</p>
+
+<p>For the Introductory chapter: (1) Reinaud's account of the Arabic
+geographers and their theories in connection with the Greek, in his
+edition of Abulfeda, Paris, 1848; (2) Sprenger's Massoudy, 1841; (3)
+Edrisi, translated by Am&eacute;d&eacute;e Jaubert; (4) Ibn-Batuta (abridgment),
+translated by S. Lee, London, 1829; (5) Abulfeda, edited and translated
+by Reinaud; (6) Abyrouny's <i>India</i>, specially chapters i., 10-14; xvii.,
+18-31; (7) texts of Strabo and Ptolemy; (8) Wapp&auml;us' <i>Heinrich der
+Seefahrer</i>, part 1.</p>
+
+<p>I. For Chapter I. (Early Christian Pilgrims): (1) <i>Itinera et
+Descriptiones Terr&aelig; Sanct&aelig;</i>, vols. i. and ii., published by the Soci&eacute;t&eacute;
+de l'Orient, Latin, Geneva, 1877 and 1885, which give the original texts
+of nearly all the Palestine Pilgrims' memoirs to the death of Bernard
+the Wise; (2) the Publications of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society;
+(3) Thomas Wright's <i>Early Travels in Palestine</i> (Bohn); (4) Avezac's
+<i>Recueil pour Servir &agrave; l'histoire de la g&eacute;ographie</i>; (5) some recent
+German studies on the early pilgrim records, <i>e.g.</i>, Gildemeister on
+Antoninus of Placentia.</p>
+
+<p>II. For Chapter II. (The Vikings): (1) Snorro Sturleson's <i>Heimskringla</i>
+or Sagas of the Norse Kings; (2) Dozy's essays; (3) the, possibly
+spurious, <i>Voyages of the Zeni</i>, with the Journey of Ivan Bardsen, in
+the Hakluyt Society's Publications.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>III. For Chapter III. (The Crusades and Land Travel): (1) Publication of
+the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society; (2) Avezac's edition of the
+originals in his <i>Recueil pour Sevir &agrave; l'histoire de la g&eacute;ographie</i>; (3)
+Yule's <i>Cathay and the Way Thither</i>; (4) Yule's Marco Polo; (5) Benjamin
+of Tudela and others in Wright's <i>Early Travels in Palestine</i>; (6)
+Yule's <i>Friar Jordanus</i>; (7) Sir John Mandeville's <i>Travels</i>.</p>
+
+<p>IV. For Chapter IV. (Maritime Exploration): (1) The Marino Sanuto Map of
+1306; (2) the Laurentian Portolano of 1351; (3) The Catalan Map of
+1375-6; (4) scattered notices collected in early chapters of R.H.
+Major's <i>Prince Henry the Navigator</i>; (5) B&eacute;thencourt's <i>Conquest of the
+Canaries</i> (Hakluyt Society, ed., Major); (6) Wapp&auml;us' <i>Heinrich der
+Seefahrer</i>, part 2.</p>
+
+<p>V. For Chapter V. (Geographical Science): (1) Neckam's <i>De Naturis
+Rerum</i>; (2) the seven chief Mappe-Mondes of the fourteenth and early
+fifteenth centuries; (3) the leading Portolani; (4) scattered notices,
+<i>e.g.</i>, from Guyot de Provins' "Bible," Brunetto Latini, Beccadelli of
+Palermo, collected in early chapters of Major's <i>Henry the Navigator</i>;
+(5) Wauwerman's <i>Henri le Navigateur</i>.</p>
+
+<p>VI. For Chapter VI. (Portugal to 1400): (1) <i>The Chronicle of Don John
+I.</i>; (2) Oliveiro Martins' <i>Sons of Don John I.</i>; (3) A. Herculano's
+<i>History of Portugal</i>; (4) Osbernus de Expugnatione Lixbonensi.</p>
+
+<p>VII. For Chapter VII. (Henry's position in 1415): Azurara's <i>Discovery
+and Conquest of Guinea</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>VIII. For Chapter VIII. (Ceuta): (1) Azurara's <i>Chronicle of the
+Conquest of Ceuta</i>; (2) Azurara's <i>Discovery of Guinea</i>.</p>
+
+<p>IX. For Chapter IX. (Henry's Settlement at Sagres): (1) Azurara's
+<i>Guinea</i>; (2) De Barro's <i>Asia</i>; (3) Wauwerman's <i>Henri le Navigateur et
+l'&Eacute;cole Portugaise de Sagres</i>.</p>
+
+<p>X. For Chapter X. (Cape Bojador and the Azores): (1) Azurara's <i>Guinea</i>;
+(2) O. Martins' <i>Sons of Don John I.</i></p>
+
+<p>XI. For Chapter XI. (Henry's Political Life, 1433-41): (1) Pina's
+<i>Chronicle of King Edward</i>; (2) O. Martins' <i>Sons of Don John I.</i>; (3)
+Azurara's <i>Chronicle of John I.</i>; (4) Pina's <i>Chronicle of Affonso V.</i></p>
+
+<p>XII. For Chapter XII. (From Boyador to Cape Verde).&mdash;(1) Azurara's
+<i>Guinea</i>; (2) De Barros; (3) Pina's <i>Chronicle of Affonso V.</i>; (4) O.
+Martins' <i>Sons of Don John I.</i></p>
+
+<p>For Chapters XIII. to the end.&mdash;(1) Azurara's <i>Discovery and Conquest of
+Guinea</i>; (2) Narratives of Cadamosto and Diego Gomez; (3) Pina's
+<i>Chronicle of Affonso V.</i>; (4) Prince Henry's Charters.</p>
+
+<p>The three modern lives of Prince Henry which I have chiefly consulted
+are:</p>
+
+<p>R.H. Major's <i>Henry the Navigator</i>, Wapp&auml;us' <i>Heinrich der Seeffahrer</i>,
+and De Weer's <i>Prinz Heinrich</i>, with O. Martins' <i>Lives of the Infants
+of the House of Aviz</i> in his <i>Sons of Don John I.</i></p>
+
+<p>The maps and illustrations have been planned in a regular series.</p>
+
+<p>I. As to the former, they are meant to show in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span> an historical succession
+the course of geographical advance in Christendom down to the death of
+Prince Henry (1460). Setting aside the Ptolemy, which represents the
+knowledge of the world at its height in the pre-Christian civilisation,
+and the Edrisi which represents the Arabic followers of Ptolemy, whose
+influence upon early Christian geography was very marked, all the maps
+reproduced belong to the science of the Christian ages and countries.
+The two Mappe-mondes above referred to are both placed in the
+introductory chapter, and are treated only as the most important
+examples of the science which the Gr&aelig;co-Roman Empire bequeathed to
+Christendom, but which between the seventh and thirteenth centuries was
+chiefly worked upon by the Arabs. Among early Christian maps, that of
+St. Sever, possibly of the eighth century, the Anglo-Saxon map of the
+tenth century, the Turin Map of the eleventh, and the Spanish map of the
+twelfth (1109), represent very crude and simple types of sketches of the
+world, in which within a square or oblong surrounded by the ocean a few
+prominent features only, such as the main divisions of countries, are
+attempted. The Anglo-Saxon example, though greatly superior to the
+others given here, essentially belongs to this kind of work, where some
+little truth is preserved by a happy ignorance of the travellers' tales
+that came into fashion later, but where there is only the vaguest and
+most general knowledge of geographical facts.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, in the next group, to which the Psalter map is
+allied, and in which the Hereford<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[Pg xxiii]</a></span> map is our best example, mythical
+learning&mdash;drawn from books like Pliny, Solinus, St. Isidore, and
+Martianus Capella, which collected stories of beasts and monsters,
+stones and men, divine, human, and natural marvels on the principle
+<i>Credo quia impossible</i>&mdash;has overpowered every other consideration, and
+a map of the world becomes a great picture-book of curious objects, in
+which the very central and primary interest of geography is lost. But by
+the side of and almost at the same time as these specimens of
+geographical mythology, geographical science had taken a new start in
+the coast charts or portolani of Balearic and Italian seamen, some
+specimens of which form our next set of maps.</p>
+
+<p>Dulcert's portolano of 1339 and the Laurentian of 1351 are two of the
+best examples of this kind of work, which gave us our first really
+accurate map of any part of the globe, but which for some time was
+entirely confined to coast drawing, and was meant to supply the
+practical wants of captains, pilots, and seamen. The Catalan atlas of
+1375-6 shows the portolano type extended to a real Mappa Mundi; the
+elaborate carefulness and sumptuousness of this example prepares us for
+the still higher work of Andrea Bianco and of Benincasa in the fifteenth
+century. As the Laurentian portolano of 1351 commemorates the voyage of
+1341 and marks its discoveries in the Atlantic islands, so the Catalan
+map of 1375-6 commemorates the Catalan voyage of 1346, and gives the
+best and most up-to-date picture of the N.W. African coast as it was
+known before Prince Henry's discoveries.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[Pg xxiv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Last of these groups of maps is that of examples from Henry's own age,
+such as the Fra Mauro map of 1459 or the maps of Andrea Bianco and
+Benincasa (<i>e.g.</i>, 1436, 1448, 1468), among which the first-named is the
+only one we have been able to give here.</p>
+
+<p>The Borgian map of 1450 is given as an extraordinary specimen of what
+could be done as late as 1450, not as an example of geographical
+progress; and the map of 1492, recording Portuguese discoveries down to
+the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, is added to illustrate the
+advance of explorers in the years closely following Henry's death, as it
+was realised at the time.</p>
+
+<p>The maps have in most cases been set from the modern standpoint, but, as
+will readily be seen by the position of the names, the normal medi&aelig;val
+setting was quite different, with the S. or E. at the top.</p>
+
+<p>II. The illustrations aim at giving portraits or pictures of the chief
+persons and places connected with the life of Prince Henry. There are
+three of the Prince himself; one from the Paris MS. of Azurara, one from
+the gateway of the great convent church of Belem, one from the recumbent
+statue over his tomb at Batalha. Two others give: (1) The whole group of
+the royal tombs of Henry's house,&mdash;of his father, mother, and brothers
+in the aisle at Batalha, and (2) the recumbent statues of his father and
+mother, John and Philippa, in detail; the exterior and general effect of
+the same church&mdash;Portugal's Westminster, and the mausoleum of the
+Navigator's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[Pg xxv]</a></span> own family of Aviz&mdash;comes next, in a view of this greatest
+of Portuguese shrines.</p>
+
+<p>Coimbra University, with which as rector or chancellor or patron Prince
+Henry was so closely connected, for which he once provided house room,
+and in which his benefactions earned him the title of "Protector of the
+studies of Portugal" is given to illustrate his life as a student and a
+man of science; the mother church of the order of Christ at Thomar may
+remind us of another side of his life&mdash;as a military monk, grand master
+of an order of religious chivalry which at least professed to bind its
+members to a single life, and which under his lead took an active part
+in the exploration and settlement of the African coasts and the Atlantic
+islands.</p>
+
+<p>The portraits of Columbus, Da Gama, and Albuquerque, which conclude this
+set of illustrations, are given as portraits of three of Prince Henry's
+more or less conscious disciples and followers, of three men who did
+most to realise his schemes. The first of these, who owed to Portuguese
+advance towards the south the suggestion of corresponding success in the
+west, and who found America by the western route to India,&mdash;as Henry had
+planned nearly a century before to round Africa and reach Malabar by the
+eastern and southern way,&mdash;was the nearest of the Prince's successful
+imitators in time, the greatest in achievement; he was not a mere
+follower of the Portuguese initiative, for he struck out a new line or
+at least a neglected one, made the greatest of all geographical
+additions to human knowledge, and took the most daring plunge into the
+unknown that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[Pg xxvi]</a></span> has ever been taken&mdash;but Columbus, beside his independent
+position and interest, was certainly on one side a disciple of Henry the
+Navigator, and drew much of his inspiration from the impulse that the
+Prince had started. Da Gama, the first who sailed direct from Lisbon to
+India round Africa, and Albuquerque, the maker, if not the founder, of
+the Portuguese empire in the East, were simply the realisers of the vast
+ambitions that take their start from the work and life of Prince Henry,
+and he has a right to claim them as two leading champions of his plans
+and policy. In many points Albuquerque, like Columbus, is more than a
+follower; but in the main outline of his achievement he follows upon the
+work of other men, and, among these men, of none so much as the Hero of
+Portugal and of modern discovery.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly. I have to thank many friends generally for their constant
+kindness and readiness to assist in any way, and in particular several
+for the most generous and valuable help in certain parts.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. T.A. Archer, besides the benefit of his suggestions throughout, has
+given special aid in Chapters I., III., V., and the Introductory
+Chapter, especially where anything is said of the connection of
+geographical progress with the Crusades.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. F. York Powell has revised Chapter II. on the Vikings, and Professor
+Margoliouth has done the same for the Introductory Chapter on Greek and
+Arabic geography; Mr. Coote has not only given me every help in the map
+room of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[Pg xxvii]</a></span> British Museum, but has read the proofs of Chapter V. Mr.
+H. Yule-Oldham in Chapter XVIII. on the Voyage of Cadamosto, and Mr.
+Prestage in Chapters VIII. and IX. on Prince Henry's capture of Ceuta
+and settlement at Sagres, have been most kind in offering suggestions.
+For several hints useful in Chapter I.&mdash;the early Christian pilgrims&mdash;I
+have also to thank Professor Sanday; and for revision of a great part of
+the proof-sheets of the entire book, Mr. G.N. Richardson and the Rev.
+W.H. Hutton.</p>
+
+<p>As to the illustrations, of portraits and monuments, etc., I am
+especially obliged to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University (Dr.
+Boyd), who has allowed his water-colour paintings of Portuguese subjects
+to be reproduced; and to the Rev. R. Livingstone of Pembroke, and Sir
+John Hawkins of Oriel, for their loan of photographs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[Pg xxviii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header04.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><span class="smcap">Prince Henry The Navigator.</span></h1>
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+<div class="poemcenter25"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Lusitanian Prince who, heaven-inspired,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To love of useful glory roused mankind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="smcap">Thomson</span>: <i>Seasons, Summer, 1010-2.</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREEK AND ARABIC IDEAS OF THE WORLD, AS THE CHIEF INHERITANCE OF THE
+CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES IN GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/a.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="A"
+title="A" />rabic science constitutes one of the main links between the older
+learned world of the Greeks and Latins and the Europe of Henry the
+Navigator and of the Renaissance. In geography it adopted in the main
+the results of Ptolemy and Strabo; and many of the Moslem travellers and
+writers gained some additional hints from Indian, Persian, and Chinese
+knowledge; but, however much of fact they added to Greek cartography,
+they did not venture to correct its postulates.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And what were these postulates? In part, they were the assumptions of
+modern draughtsmen, but in some important details they differed. And
+first, as to agreement. Three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, an
+encircling ocean, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Caspian, the Red
+Sea and Persian Gulf, the South Asiatic, and North and West European
+coasts were indicated with more or less precision in the science of the
+Antonines and even of Hannibal's age. Similarly, the Nile and Danube,
+Euphrates and Tigris, Indus and Ganges, Jaxartes and Oxus, Rhine and
+Ebro, Don and Volga, with the chief mountain ranges of Europe and
+Western Asia, find themselves pretty much in their right places in
+Strabo's description, and are still better placed in the great chart of
+Ptolemy. The countries and nations from China to Spain are arranged in
+the order of modern knowledge. But the differences were fundamental
+also. Never was there a clearer outrunning of knowledge by theory,
+science by conjecture, than in Ptolemy's scheme of the world (<i>c.</i> <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>
+130). His chief predecessors, Eratosthenes and Strabo, had left much
+blank space in their charts, and had made many mistakes in detail, but
+they had caught the main features of the Old World with fair accuracy.
+Ptolemy, in trying to fill up what he did not know from his inner
+consciousness, evolved a parody of those features. His map, from its
+intricate falsehood, backed as it was by the greatest name in
+geographical science, paralysed all real enlargement of knowledge till
+men began to question, not only his facts, but his theories. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> as
+all modern science, in fact, followed the progress of world-knowledge,
+or "geography," we may see how important it was for this revolution to
+take place, for Ptolemy to be dethroned.</p>
+
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map01"></a><a href="./images/map01.jpg"><img src="./images/map01_th.jpg"
+alt="THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY."
+title="THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>The Arabs, commanding most of the centres of ancient learning (Ptolemy's
+own Alexandria above all), riveted the pseudo-science of their
+predecessors on the learned world, along with the genuine knowledge
+which they handed down from the Greeks. In many details they corrected
+and amplified the Greek results. But most of their geographical theories
+were mere reproductions of Ptolemy's, and to his mistakes they added
+wilder though less important confusions or inventions of their own. The
+result of all this, by the tenth century <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, was a geography, based
+not on knowledge, but on ideas of symmetry. It was a scheme fit for the
+<i>Arabian Nights</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And how did Ptolemy lend himself to this?</p>
+
+<p>His chief mistakes were only two;&mdash;but they were mistakes from which at
+any rate Strabo and most of the Greek geographers are free. He made the
+Indian Ocean an inland sea, and he filled up the Southern Hemisphere
+with Africa, or the unknown Antarctic land in which he extended
+Africa.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> The Dark Continent, in his map, ran out on the one side to
+the south-east of China, and on the other to the indefinite west, though
+there was here no hint of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> America or an Atlantic continent. It was a
+triumph of learned imagination over humdrum research. Science under
+Hadrian was ambitious to have its world settled and known; it was not
+yet settled or fully known; and so a great student constructed a
+<i>m&eacute;lange</i> of fact and fancy mainly based on a guess-work of imaginary
+astronomical reckonings. On the far east, Ptolemy joined China and
+Africa; and on this imaginary western coast, fronting Malacca and
+Further India, he placed various gratuitous towns and rivers. Coming to
+smaller matters, he cut away the whole of the Indian peninsula proper,
+though preserving the Further or "Golden" Chersonesus of the Malays, and
+he enlarged Taprobane, or Ceylon, to double the size of Asia Minor. Thus
+the southern coast of Asia from Arabia to the Ganges ran almost due
+east, with a strait of sea coming through the modern Carnatic, between
+the continent and the Great Spice Island, which included most of the
+Deccan. The Persian Gulf, much greater on this map than the Black Sea,
+was made equal in length and breadth; the shape of the Caspian was, so
+to say, turned inside out and its length given as from east to west,
+instead of from north to south; while the coast line, even of the
+familiar Euxine, &AElig;gean, and Southern Mediterranean, was anything but
+true. Scandinavia was an island smaller than Ireland; Scotland
+represented a great eastern bend of Britain, with the Shetlands and
+F&auml;roes (Thule) lying a short distance to the north, but on the left-hand
+side of the great island. The Sea of Azov, hardly inferior to the
+Euxine, stretched north half way across<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> Russia. All Central Africa and
+the great Southern or Antarctic continent was described as pathless
+desert&mdash;"a land uninhabitable from the heat"; and the sources of the
+Nile were accounted for by the marshes and Mountains of the Moon.</p>
+
+<p>Thus all the problems of ancient geography were explained: where
+Ptolemy's knowledge failed him altogether, no Western of that time had
+ever been, or was likely to go. The whole realised and unrealised world
+was described with such clearness and consistency, men thought, that
+what was lacking in Aristotle was now supplied.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is worth while observing how, centuries before Ptolemy, in the
+ages nearer to Aristotle himself, the geography of Eratosthenes and
+Strabo, by a more balanced use of knowledge and by a greater restraint
+of fancy, had composed a far more reliable chart.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>This earlier and discredited map avoided all the more serious
+perversions of Ptolemy. Africa was cut off at the limit of actual
+knowledge, about Cape Non on the west and Cape Guardafui on the east;
+and the "Cinnamon-bearing Coast," between these points, was fringed by
+the Mountains of &AElig;thiopia, where the Nile rose. This was the theory
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> revived on the decline of the Ptolemaic, and which encouraged the
+Portuguese sailors with hopes of a quick approach to India round Africa,
+as the great eastern bend of the Guinea coast seemed to suggest.
+Further, on this pre-Ptolemaic map the Southern Ocean was left untouched
+by a supposed Southern Continent, and except for an undue shrinkage of
+the Old World in general as an island in the midst of the vast
+surrounding ocean, a reliable description of Western Asia and Central
+Europe and North Africa was in the hands of the learned world two
+hundred years before Christ.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that Strabo's China is cramped and cut short; that his Ceylon
+(Taprobane) is even larger than Ptolemy's; that Ireland (Ierne) appears
+to the <i>north</i> of Britain; and that the Caspian joins the North Sea by a
+long and narrow channel; but the true shape of India, of the Persian
+Gulf and the Euxine, of the Sea of Azov and the Mediterranean, is marked
+rightly enough in general outline. This earlier chart has not the
+elaborate completeness of Ptolemy's, but it is free from his enormous
+errors, and it has all the advantage of science, however imperfect, over
+brilliant guessing.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, even in Ptolemy, this guess-work pure and simple only comes
+in at intervals and does not so much affect the central and, for his
+day, far more important tracts of the Old World, but we have yet to see
+how, in the medi&aelig;val period and under Arabic imagination, all geography
+seemed likely to become an exercise of fancy.</p>
+
+<p>The chief Greek descriptions of the world, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> must clearly remember,
+were before the medi&aelig;val workers, Christian and Moslem, from the first;
+these men took their choice, and the point is that they, and specially
+the Arabs, chose with rare exceptions the last of these, the Ptolemaic
+system, because it was the more ambitious, symmetrical, and pretty.</p>
+
+<p>Let us trace for a moment the gradual development of this geographical
+mythology.</p>
+
+<p>Starting with the notion of the world as a disc, or a ball, the centre
+of the universe, round which moved six celestial circles, of the
+Meridian, the Equator, the Ecliptic, the two Tropics, and the Horizon,
+the Arab philosophers on the side of the earth's surface worked out a
+doctrine of a Cupola or Summit of the world, and on the side of the
+heavens a pseudo-science of the Anoua or Settings of the Constellations,
+connected with the twelve Pillars of the Zodiac and the twenty-eight
+Mansions of the Moon.</p>
+
+<p>With Arabic astrology we are not here concerned; it is only worth noting
+in this connection as the possible source of early Christian knowledge
+of the Southern Cross and other stars famous in the story of
+exploration, such as Dante shows in the first canto of his <i>Purgatorio</i>.
+But the geographical doctrines of Islam, compounded from the Hebrew
+Pentateuch and the theoretical parts of Ptolemy, had a more immediate
+and reactionary effect on knowledge. The symmetrical Greek divisions of
+land into seven zones or climates; and of the world's surface,<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> into
+three parts water and one part <i>terra firma</i>; the Indian fourfold
+arrangement of "Romeland" and the East; the similar fourfold Chinese
+partition of China, India, Persia, and Tartary: all these reappeared
+confusedly in Arabic geography. From India and the Sanscrit "Lanka,"
+they seem to have got their first start on the myth of Odjein, Aryn, or
+Arim, "the World's Summit"; from Ptolemy the sacred number of 360
+degrees of longitude was certainly derived, beautifully corresponding to
+the days of the year, and neatly divided into 180 of land or habitable
+earth and 180 of sea, or unharvested desert. With the seven climates
+they made correspond the great Empires of the world&mdash;chief among which
+they reckoned the Caliphate (or Bagdad), China, Rome, Turkestan, and
+India.</p>
+
+<p>The sacred city of Odjein had been the centre of most of the earlier
+Oriental systems; in the Arabic form of Arim ("The Cupola of the
+Earth"), it became the fixed point round which circled medi&aelig;val theories
+of the world's shape. "Somewhere in the Indian Ocean between Comorin and
+Madagascar," became the compromise when the mountain could not be found
+off any of the known coast-lines; it was mixed up with notions of the
+Roc, and the Moon Mountains in Africa, of the Magnet Island and of the
+Eastern Kingdom made out of one vast pearl; and even in Roger Bacon it
+serves as an algebraic sign for a mathematical centre of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The enlargement of knowledge, though forcing upon Arabic science a
+conviction of Ptolemy's mistake in over-extending the limits of the
+world known<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> to him, only led to the invention of a scholastic
+distinction between the real and the traditional East and West, while
+the confusion was made perfect by the travestied history always so
+popular among Orientals. The "Gades of Alexander and Hercules," the
+farthest points east and west, were named after the mythical conquests
+of the real Iskander and the mythical hero of Greeks and Ph&oelig;nicians.
+Arim in the middle, with the pillars of Hercules and Alexander, and the
+north and south poles at equal distance from it&mdash;the centre and the four
+corners of the world as neatly fixed as geometry could define&mdash;this was
+the map, first of the Arabs, and then of their Christian scholars.</p>
+
+<p>To form any idea of the complete spell thus cast over thought both in
+Islam and Christendom, we may look at the words of European scholars of
+the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, living far from Islam, long after
+its intellectual glory had begun to decay, and at a time when Christian
+scholastic philosophy had reached an independent position. Gerard of
+Cremona and Adelard of Bath (the translator of the great Arabic
+geographer, Mohammed Al-Kharizmy) in the twelfth century, Roger Bacon
+and Albertus Magnus in the later thirteenth, are all as clear about
+their geographical postulates as about their theological or ethical
+rules. And what concerns us here is that they exactly reflect the mind
+of the Arabic science or pseudo-science of the time just preceding, so
+that their words may represent to us the state of Mohammedan thought
+between the eighth and twelfth centuries, between the writers at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> the
+Court of Caliph Almamoun (813-833) and Edrisi at the Court of King Roger
+of Sicily (1150).</p>
+
+<p>(1.) <i>Adelard</i>, summarising Mohammed Al-Kharizmy with the results of his
+Paris education, tells us of the Arabic "Examination of planets and of
+time, starting from the centre of the world, called <i>Arim</i>, from which
+place to the four ends of the earth the distance is equal, viz., ninety
+degrees, answering to the fourth part of the world's circumference. It
+is tedious and unending to attempt to place all the countries of the
+world and to fix all the marks of time. So the meridian is taken as the
+measure of the latter and <i>Arim</i> of the former, and from this
+starting-point it is not hard to fix other countries." "Arim," he
+concludes, "is under the equator, at the point where there is no
+latitude," and he plainly implies that there were then existing among
+the Arabs tables calculating all the chief places of every country from
+the meridian of <i>Arim</i>.</p>
+
+<p>(2.) <i>Gerard</i> of Cremona, who, though for some time a resident at
+Toledo, is essentially an Italian, tells us about the "Middle of the
+World," from which longitudes were calculated, "called Arim," and "said
+to be in India," whose longitude from west to east or from east to west
+is ninety degrees.</p>
+
+<p>In his <i>Theory of the Planets</i> Gerard tells us still more wonderful
+things. Arim was a geographical centre known and used by Hermes
+Trismegistus and by Ptolemy, as well as by the great Arab geographers;
+Alexander of Macedon marched just as far to the east of Arim as Hercules
+to the west; both reached the encircling ocean, and accordingly "Arim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+is equidistant from both the Gades, 90 degrees; likewise from each pole,
+north and south, the same, 90 degrees." This all recurs in the tables of
+Alphonso the Wise of Castille about <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1260, and two of the greatest
+of medi&aelig;val thinkers, Albert and Roger Bacon, reproduced the essential
+points of this doctrine, its false symmetry, and its balance of the true
+and the traditional, with variations of their own.</p>
+
+<p>(3.) <i>Albert the Great</i>, Albertus Magnus, second only to Aquinas among
+the Continental Schoolmen, in his <i>View of Astronomy</i>, repeats Adelard
+upon the question of Arim, "where there is no latitude," while (4)
+<i>Roger Bacon</i> discusses not only the true and the traditional East and
+West, but even a twofold Arim, one "under the solstice, the other under
+the equinoctial zone." Arim he finds not to be in the centre of the real
+world, but only of the traditional. In another passage of the <i>Opus
+Majus</i>, Bacon, our first English worker in the exact sciences, allows
+the world-summit not to be exactly 90 degrees from the east, although so
+placed by mathematicians. Yet there is no contradiction, he urges,
+because the men of theory are "speaking of the habitable world known to
+them, according to the true understanding of latitude and longitude,"
+and this "true understanding" is "not as great as has been realised in
+travel by Pliny and others." "The longitude of the habitable world is
+more than half of the whole circuit." This, reproduced in the <i>Imago
+Mundi</i> of Cardinal Peter Ailly (1410), fell into the hands of Columbus
+and helped to fix his doctrines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> of the shape of the world ("in the form
+of a pear") of the terrestrial paradise, and of the earth's
+circumference,&mdash;so enormously contracted as practically to abolish the
+Pacific.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>To return to the Arabs: We have seen how they not merely followed Greek
+theories, which their own experience as conquerors in the Further East
+went to discredit, but, in the great outlines of geography, added to
+earlier errors, put prejudice in the place of knowledge, and handed on
+to Christendom a half-fanciful map of the world. It only remains for us
+to illustrate their leading fault, of a too vivid fancy, with a few
+details on minor points.</p>
+
+<p>(1.) Ptolemy's "Habitable Quarter" of the world, amounting to just half
+the longitude of the globe, was literally accepted by the Moslem world,
+as it accepted the Pentateuch from the moment when it began its study of
+science at the Court of Almamoun (813-833). But, as the conquests of the
+Caliphs disclosed districts in the east far beyond Ptolemy's limits, it
+was necessary, in case of keeping his data for the whole, to compress
+the part which alone was to be found fully described in his chart: "On
+the west, unhappily, there were no countries newly discovered to
+compensate for this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> abridgment." By Massoudy's time,&mdash;by the tenth
+century,&mdash;fact and theory were thus hopelessly at variance.</p>
+
+<p>(2.) On the shape of Africa, the mass of Arabic opinion confirmed
+Ptolemy, but among the more enlightened there is traceable from
+Massoudy's time a tendency either to react towards Strabo's partly
+agnostic position, or to invent some new theory rather more in harmony
+with the known facts. That is, either their later map-makers cut off
+Africa at Cape Non or Bojador and Cape Guardafui, and gave away the rest
+to the "Green Sea of Darkness," or, like Massoudy, they sketched a great
+Southern Continent, divided from Africa by a narrow channel, which
+connected the Western Ocean with the Sea of Habasch&mdash;of Abyssinia or
+India. In either case Africa was left an island.</p>
+
+<p>(3.) The words "Gog and Magog" from Jeremiah, describing the nomades of
+Central Asia, appear in the Koran as Yadjoudj and Madjoudj. The complete
+story, in the tenth century and in Edrisi's day, connects them with
+Alexander the Great, who is also found in the Koran as Doul-Carnain, and
+with the Wall of China. "When the Conqueror," said the Arabs, "reached
+the place near where the sun rose, he was implored to build a wall to
+shut off the marauders of Yadjoudj and Madjoudj from the rich countries
+of the South." So he built a rampart of iron across the pass by which
+alone Touran joined Iran, and henceforth Turks and Tartars were kept
+outside. Till the Arabs reached the Caucasus, they generally sup<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>posed
+this to answer to Alexander's wall; when facts dispelled this theory,
+the unknown Ural or Altai Mountains served instead; finally, as the
+Moslems became masters of Central Asia, the Wall of China, beyond the
+Gobi desert, alone satisfied the conditions of shadowy but historic
+grandeur, beyond all practical danger of verification.</p>
+
+<p>(4.) In striking contrast with the steady advance of Arabic exploration
+and trade in the Eastern Sea is the Moslem horror of the Western Ocean
+beyond Europe and Africa, the "Green Sea of Darkness" or the Atlantic.
+And what we have to note is that they imparted much of this paralysing
+cowardice to the Christian nations. Only the Northmen of Scandinavia,
+living a life apart, and forced to make their way over the wild North
+Sea, were untouched by this southern superstition, and ventured across
+the ocean by the F&auml;roes, Iceland, and Greenland, to the coast of
+Labrador.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors of the Koran indeed thought that a man mad enough to embark
+for the unknown, even on a coasting voyage, should be deprived of civil
+rights. Ibn Said goes further, and says no one has ever done this:
+"whirlpools always destroy any adventurer." As late as the generation
+immediately before Henry the Navigator, about <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1390, another light
+of Moslem science declared the Atlantic to be "boundless, so that ships
+dare not venture out of sight of land, for even if the sailors knew the
+direction of the winds, they would not know whither those winds would
+carry them, and as there is no inhabited country beyond, they would run
+a risk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> of being lost in mist, fog, and vapour. The limit of the West is
+the Atlantic Ocean."</p>
+
+<p>This was the final judgment of the Arabic race and its subject allies
+upon the western limits of the world, and in two ways they helped to fix
+this belief, derived from the timid coasting-traders of the Roman Empire
+on Greek and Latin Christendom. First, the Spanish Caliphate cut off all
+access to the Western Sea beyond the Bay of Biscay, from the eighth to
+the twelfth centuries. Not till the capture of Lisbon in 1147, could
+Christian enterprise on this side gain any basis, or starting-point. Not
+till the conquest of the Algarve in the extreme south-west of the
+peninsula, at the end of the twelfth century, was this enterprise free
+to develop itself. Secondly, in the darkest ages of Christian
+depression, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth centuries,
+when only the brief age of Charlemagne offered any chance of an
+independent and progressive Catholic Empire in the west, the Arabs
+became recognised along with the Byzantines as the main successors of
+Greek culture. The science, the metaphysic, the abstract ideas of these
+centuries came into Germany, France, and Italy from Cordova and from
+Bagdad, as much as from Byzantium. And on questions like the South
+Atlantic or Indian Ocean, or the shape of Africa,&mdash;where Islam had all
+the field to itself, and there was no positive and earlier discovery
+which might contradict a natural reluctance to test tradition by
+experiment&mdash;Christendom accepted the Arabic verdict with deference.</p>
+
+<p>In the same way, on still more difficult points,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> such as the theory of
+a canal from the Caspian to the Black Sea, or from the Caspian to the
+Arctic circle, or from the Black Sea to the Baltic, Paris and Rome and
+Bologna and Oxford accepted the Arabic descriptions.</p>
+
+<p>It has been necessary for us to attend to the defects of Arabic
+geography, in order to understand how in the long Saracen control of the
+world's trade routes and of geographical tradition, science and
+seamanship were so little advanced. Between Ptolemy and Henry of
+Portugal, between the second and the fifteenth centuries, the only great
+extension of men's knowledge of the world was: (1) in the extreme north,
+where the semi-Christian, semi-Pagan Vikings reached perhaps as far as
+the present site of New York and founded, on another side, the Medi&aelig;val
+Kingdom of Russia; (2) on the south-east coast of Africa, from Cape
+Guardafui to Madagascar, which was opened up by the trading interest of
+the Emosaid family (800-1300); (3) in the far east, in Central and
+Further Asia, by the discoveries of Marco Polo and the Friar preachers
+following on the tracks of the earlier Moslem travellers. The first of
+these was a Northern secret, soon forgotten, or an abortive development,
+cut short by the Tartars; the second was an Arabic secret, jealously
+guarded as a commercial right; the third alone added much direct new
+knowledge to the main part of the civilised world.</p>
+
+<p>But throughout their period of commercial rule from the eighth to the
+twelfth centuries, the Arabs took a keen interest in land traffic,
+conquest, and exploration. They were of small account at sea; it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> took
+them some time to turn to their own purposes Hippalus' discovery (in the
+second century <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>) of the monsoon in the Indian Ocean; but, on land,
+Moslem travellers and writers&mdash;generally following in the wake of their
+armies, but sometimes pressing on ahead of them&mdash;did not a little to
+enlarge the horizon of the Mohammedan world, though it was not till
+Marco Polo and the Franciscan missionaries of the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries, that Christian Europe shared in this gain.</p>
+
+<p>As the early Caliphs conquered, they made surveys of their new
+dominions. Thus after Tarik and Mousa had overrun Spain, Walid at
+Damascus required from them an account of the land and its resources.
+The universal obligation of the Mecca pilgrimage compelled every Moslem
+to travel once in his life; and many an Arab, after the Caliphate was
+settled in power from the Oxus to the Pyrenees, journeyed to and fro
+with the joy of a master going over vast estates, shewing his dreaded
+turban to subjects of every nation.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, was not geographical science, or even pseudo-science.
+Before Mohammed the Arabs had possessed some knowledge of the stars and
+used it for astrology; but it was at the Court of Almamoun (813-833)
+that their inquiring spirits first set themselves to answer the great
+question of geography&mdash;Where? Through the ninth and tenth centuries
+there arose a succession of travellers and thinkers who, with all their
+wild dreamings, preserved the best results of Greek maps and would have
+made much greater advances but for their helplessness in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> original work.
+As they could not recast Aristotle in philosophy, so they could not with
+all their new knowledge of the Further East recast the geography of
+Ptolemy and Strabo.</p>
+
+<p>A few great ages, the age for instance of Almamoun in Bagdad (<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 830),
+of Mahmoud in Ghazneh (<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1000), of Abderrahman III. in Cordova (<span class="smcap">a.d.</span>
+950), give us the history of Arabic geography.</p>
+
+<p>Beginning in the latter years of the eighth century, Moslem science was
+reformed and organised, in the New Empire, by the patronage of the
+Caliphs of the ninth. Itineraries of victorious generals, plans and
+tables prepared by governors of provinces, and a freshly acquired
+knowledge of Greek and Indian and Persian thought, made up the
+subject-matter of study. The barbarism of the first believers was
+passing away, and Mohammed's words were recalled: "Seek knowledge, even
+in China." By the end of the eighth century Ptolemy's Geography and the
+now lost work of Marinus of Tyre had already been translated. Almamoun
+drew to his Court all the chief "mathematicians" or philosophers of
+Islam, such as Mohammed Al-Kharizmy, Alfergany, and Solyman the
+merchant. Further he built two observatories, one at Bagdad, one at
+Damascus, and procured a chart fixing the latitude and longitude of
+every place known to him or his savants. Al-Kharizmy interpolated the
+new Arabic Ptolemy with additions from the Sanscrit, and made some use
+of Indian trigonometry. Alfergany wrote the first Arab treatise on the
+Astrolabe and adopted the Greek division of the seven Climates to the
+new learning. Solyman, at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> the time of closest intercourse between
+China, India, and the Caliphate, travelled in every country of the
+Further East, sailed in the "Sea of Pitchy Darkness" on the east coast
+of Asia, and by his voyages became the prototype of Sinbad the Sailor.</p>
+
+<p>The impulse given by Almamoun did not die with him. About 850 Alkendy
+made a fresh version of Ptolemy; as early as 840 the Caliph Vatek-Billah
+sent to explore the countries of Central Asia, and his results have been
+preserved by Edrisi. A few years later (<i>c.</i> 890) Ibn-Khordadbeh, "Son
+of the Magi," described the principal trade-routes, the Indian by the
+Red Sea from Djeddah to Scinde, the Russian by the Volga and North
+Caspian, the Persian by way of Balkh to China. It was by this last that
+some have thought the envoys of the English King Alfred went in 883,
+till they turned south to seek India and the Christians of San Thom&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>The early scientific movement in Islam reached its height in Albateny
+and Massoudy at the beginning of the tenth century. The former
+determined, more exactly than before, various problems of astronomical
+geography.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> The latter visited every country from Further India to
+Spain;&mdash;even China and Madagascar seem to have been within the compass
+of his later travels; and his voyages in the Indian Ocean bring us to
+the real Sinbad Saga of the tenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Sinbad, as his story appears in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, has been traced to
+an original in the Indian tales of <i>The Seven Sages</i>, in the voyages of
+the age of Chosroes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> Nushirvan or of Haroun-Al-Rashid, but the tale
+appears to be an Arabic original, the real account, with a little more
+of mystery and exaggeration than usual, of the ninth-and tenth-century
+travellers, from Solyman to Massoudy, reproduced in form of a series of
+novels.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>With Massoudy begins also the formal discussion of geographical problems
+affecting Islam. Was the Caspian a land-locked sea? Did it connect with
+the Euxine? Did either or both of these join the Arctic Ocean? Was
+Africa an island? If so, was there also an unknown Southern Continent?
+What was the shape of South-Eastern Asia? Was Ptolemy's longitude to be
+wholly accepted, and if not, how was it to be bettered? By a use of
+Strabo and of Albateny rather than of Ptolemy, Massoudy arrived at
+fairly accurate and very plausible results. His chief novelties were the
+long river channel from the Sea of Azov to the North Sea, and the strait
+between South Africa and the shadowy Southern Continent. On his scheme
+the Indian Ocean, or Sea of Habasch, contains most of the water surface
+of the world, and the Sea of Aral appears for the first time in Moslem
+geography. Lastly his account of the Arab coasting voyages from the
+Persian Gulf to Socotra and Madagascar proves, implicitly, that as yet
+there was no use of the compass.</p>
+
+<p>Massoudy cut down the girth of the world even more than Ptolemy. The
+latter had left an ocean to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> the west of Africa: the former made the
+Canaries or Fortunate Islands, the limit of the known Western world,
+abut upon India, the limit of the Eastern.</p>
+
+<p>The first age of Arabic geography ends with Massoudy, its greatest name,
+in the middle of the tenth century. The second age is summed up in the
+work of the Eastern sage Albyrouny and of Edrisi, the Arabic Ptolemy
+(<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1099-1154), who found a home at the Christian Court of Roger of
+Sicily. In the far East and West alike, in Spain and Morocco, in
+Khorassan and India, Moslem science was now driven to take refuge among
+strangers on the decay of the Caliphates of Bagdad and Cordova. The
+Ghaznevides Mahmoud and Massoud in the first half of the eleventh
+century, attracted to their Court not only Firdusi and Avicenna, but
+Albyrouny, whose "Canon" became a text-book of Mohammedan science, and
+who, for the range of his knowledge and the trained subtlety of his
+mind, stands without a rival for his time.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> The Spanish school, as
+resulting directly in Edrisi, half Moslem, half Christian, like his
+teachers, is of still more interest. One of its first traces may be
+found in the Latin translation of the Arab <i>Almanack</i> made by Bishop
+Harib of Cordova in 961. It was dedicated and presented to Caliph
+Hakem&mdash;one of our clearest proofs of the conscious interworking of
+Catholic and Mahometan philosophy in the age of Pope Sylvester<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> II. and
+of our own St. Dunstan. A century later, on the recapture of Toledo by
+Alfonso VI. (1084), an observatory was built, served by Jews and
+Moslems, who had been steadily producing, through the whole of the
+eleventh century, astronomical and geographical tables and dictionaries.
+A whole tribe of commentators on place-names, on the climates and
+constellations, and on geographical instruments was at work in this last
+age of the Spanish Caliphate, and their results are brought together by
+Abou Hamid of Granada and by Edrisi.</p>
+
+<p>Born at Ceuta in 1099, this great geographer travelled through Spain,
+France, the Western Mediterranean, and North Africa before settling at
+the Norman Court of Palermo. Roger, the most civilised prince in
+Christendom, the final product of the great race of Robert Guiscard and
+William the Conqueror, valued Edrisi at his proper worth, refused to
+part with him, and employed men in every part of the world to collect
+materials for his study. Thus the Moor gained, not only for the Moslem
+world but for Southern Europe as well, an approximate knowledge even of
+Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the coasts of the White Sea. His work,
+dedicated to Roger and called after him, <i>Al-Rojary</i>, was rewarded with
+a peerage, and it was as a Sicilian Count that he finished his Celestial
+Sphere and Terrestrial Disc of silver, on which "was inscribed all the
+circuit of the known world and all the rivers thereof."</p>
+
+<p>Each of his great Arabic predecessors, along with Eratosthenes, Ptolemy,
+and Strabo, was welded into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> his system&mdash;the result of fifteen years of
+abstract study, following some thirty of practical activity in
+travel.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>A special note may be made on Edrisi's account of the voyage of the
+Lisbon "Wanderers" ("Maghrurins") some time before 1147, the date of the
+final Christian capture of the Portuguese capital. For this is the
+earliest recorded voyage, since the rise of Islam, definitely undertaken
+on the Western Ocean to learn what was on it and what were its limits.
+The Wanderers, Edrisi tells us, were eight in number, all related to one
+another. They built a transport boat, took on board water and provisions
+for many months, and started with the first east wind. After eleven
+days, they reached a sea whose thick waters exhaled a fetid odour,
+concealed numerous reefs, and were but faintly lighted. Fearing for
+their lives, they changed their course, steered southwards twelve days,
+and so reached an island, possibly Madeira,&mdash;which they called El Ghanam
+from the sheep found there, without shepherd or anyone to tend them. On
+landing, they found a spring of running water and some wild figs. They
+killed some sheep, but found the flesh so bitter that they could not eat
+it, and only took the skins. Sailing south twelve more days, they found
+an island with houses and cultivated fields, but as they neared it they
+were surrounded, made prisoners, and carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> in their own boats to a
+city on the sea-shore, to a house where were men of tall stature and
+women of great beauty. Here they stayed three days, and on the fourth
+came a man, the King's interpreter, who spoke Arabic, and asked them who
+they were and what they wanted. They replied they were seeking out the
+wonders of the ocean and its limits. At this the King laughed heartily,
+and said to the interpreter: "Tell them my father once ordered some of
+his slaves to venture out on that sea and after sailing across the
+breadth of it for a month, they found themselves deprived of the light
+of the sun and returned without having learnt anything." Then the
+Wanderers were sent back to their prison till a west wind arose, when
+they were blindfolded and put on board a boat, and after three days
+reached the mainland of Africa. Here they were put ashore, with their
+hands tied, and so left. They were released by the Berbers, and after
+their reappearance in Spain, a "street at the foot of the hot bath in
+Lisbon," concludes Edrisi, "took the name of Street of the Wanderers."</p>
+
+<p>On the other extremity of the Moslem world, on the south-east coast of
+Africa, there was more real progress. By Edrisi's day that important
+addition of Arabic travellers and merchants to the geographical
+knowledge of the world, by the remarkable trade-ventures of the
+Emosaids, had been already made.</p>
+
+<p>It had taken long in the making.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map02"></a><a href="./images/map02.jpg"><img src="./images/map02_th.jpg"
+alt="THE WORLD ACCORDING TO EDRISI."
+title="THE WORLD ACCORDING TO EDRISI." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE WORLD ACCORDING TO EDRISI.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>About <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 742, ten years after the battle of Tours, the Emosaid family,
+descended from Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Mahomet, tried to make
+Said, their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> clan-chieftain, Ali's great-grandson, Caliph at Damascus.
+The attempt was foiled, and the whole tribe fled, sailed down the Red
+Sea and African coast, and established themselves as traders in the Sea
+of India. First of all, Socotra seems to have been their mart and
+capital, but before the end of the tenth century they had founded
+merchant colonies at Melinda, Mombasa, and Mozambique, which, in their
+turn, led to settlements on the opposite coasts of Asia. Thus the trade
+of the Indian Ocean was secured for Islam, the first Moslem settlements
+arose in Malabar, and when the Portuguese broke into this <i>mare
+clausum</i>, in 1497-8, they found a belt of "Moorish" coast towns, from
+Magadoxo to Quiloa, controlling both the Indian and the inland African
+trades, as Ibn Batuta had found in 1330.</p>
+
+<p>By Edrisi's day, moreover, the steady persistence and self-evident
+results of Arabic overland exploration had become recognised by a sort
+of "Traveller's Doctorate." It was not enough for the highest knowledge
+to study the Koran, and the Sunna, and the Greek philosophers at home;
+for a perfect education, a man must have travelled at least through the
+length and breadth of Islam. All the successors of Edrisi, in the
+twelfth and thirteenth centuries, shew this mingling of science and
+religion, of practical and speculative energy.</p>
+
+<p>Tradition still governed Moslem thought, but there had come into being a
+sort of half-acknowledged appendix to tradition, made up of real
+observations on men and things. And in these observations, geographical
+interest was the main factor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Life of Al Heravy of Herat (1173-1215), the "Doctor Ubiquitus" of
+Islam in the age of the Crusades, gives us a picture of another
+Massoudy. The friend of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, the "first man
+among Christians," Heravy seems able in his own person to break down the
+partition wall of religious feud by the common interest of science. In
+1192 he was offered the patronage of the Crusading princes, and Richard
+C&oelig;ur de Lion begged for the favour of an interview, and begged in
+vain. Heravy, who had been on one of his exploring journeys, angrily
+refused to see the King whose men had broken his quiet and wasted his
+time. Before his death, he had run over the world (men said) from China
+to the Pyrenees and from Abyssinia to the Danube, "scribbling his name
+on every wall," and his survey of the Eastern Empire was the single
+matter in which Turks and "Romans" made common cause,&mdash;for Greeks and
+Latins at Byzantium alike read Heravy, like a Christian doctor. Another
+example of the same catholic spirit is "Yacout the Roman,"<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> whose
+<i>Dictionary</i>, finished in the earlier half of the thirteenth century,
+was a summary of geographical advance since Edrisi, like the similar
+work of Ibn Said, of the same period.</p>
+
+<p>But as a matter of fact, the balance both of knowledge and power was now
+shifting from Islam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> to Christendom. The most daring and successful
+travellers after the rise of the Mongols were the Venetian Marco Polo
+and the Friar Preachers who revived Chinese Christianity (1270-1350);
+Madeira and the Canaries (off Moslem Africa) were finally rediscovered
+not by Arabic enterprise, but by the Italian Malocello in 1270, by the
+English Macham in the reign of our Edward III., and by Portuguese ships
+under Genoese captains in 1341; in 1291 the Vivaldi ventured beyond Cape
+Bojador, where no Moor had ever been, except by force of storm, as in
+the doubtful story of Ibn Fatimah, who "first saw the White Headland,"
+Cape Blanco, between Cape Bojador and Cape Verde.</p>
+
+<p>In the fourteenth century the map of Edrisi was superseded by the new
+Italian plans and coast-charts, or Portolani. As the Moslem world fell
+into political disorder, its science declined. "Judicial astrology"
+seemed gaining a stronger and stronger hold over Islam, and the
+irruption of the Turks gradually resulted in the ruin of all the higher
+Moslem culture. Superstition and barbarism shared the honour and the
+spoils of this victory.</p>
+
+<p>But two great names close the five hundred years of Arab learning.</p>
+
+<p>1. Ibn Batuta (<i>c.</i> 1330), who made himself as much at home in China as
+in his native Morocco, is the last of Mohammedan travellers of real
+importance. Though we have only abridgments of his work left to us,
+Colonel Yule is well within his rights in his deliberate judgment, "that
+it must rank at least as one of the four chief guide books of the
+Middle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> Ages," along with the <i>Book of Ser Marco Polo</i> and the journals
+of the two Friar-travellers, Friar Odoric and Friar William de
+Rubruquis.</p>
+
+<p>2. With <i>Abulfeda</i> the Eastern school of Moslem geography comes to an
+end, as the Western does with Ibn Batuta. In the early years of the
+fourteenth century he rewrote the "story and description of the Land of
+Islam," with a completeness quite encyclop&aelig;dic. But his work has all the
+failings of a compilation, however careful, in that, or any, age. It is
+based upon information, not upon inspection; it is in no sense original.
+As it began in imitation, so it ended. If it rejects Ptolemy, it is only
+to follow Strabo or someone else; on all the mathematical and
+astronomical data its doctrine is according to the Alexandrians of
+twelve hundred years before, and this last <i>pr&eacute;cis</i> of the science of a
+great race and a great religion can only be understood in the light of
+its model&mdash;in Greek geography.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer04.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header05.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>EARLY CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS.</h3>
+
+<h3>CIRCA 333-867.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/t.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="T"
+title="T" />he special interest of the life and work of Henry the Navigator
+(1394-1460) lies in the relation it bears to the general expansion
+of Europe and Christendom&mdash;an expansion that had been slowly gathering
+strength since the eleventh century. But even before the tide had
+turned in the age of Hildebrand and the First Crusade, even from the
+time that Constantine founded the Christian Empire of Rome, the Christian
+Capital on the Bosphorus, and the State Church of the Western
+World,&mdash;pilgrimage, trade, conquest, and colonisation had been
+successively calling out the energies of the moving races, "the motor
+muscles" of Europe. It is through the "generous Henry, Prince of
+Portugal," that this activity is brought to its third and triumphant
+stage&mdash;to the time of Columbus and Da Gama and Magellan,&mdash;but it is only
+by tracing the earlier progress of that outward movement, which has made
+Europe the ruling civilisation of the world, that we can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> fairly grasp
+the import of that transition in which Henry is the hero.</p>
+
+<p>More than any other single man he is the author of the discovering
+movement of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries,&mdash;and by
+this movement India has been conquered, America repeopled, the world
+made clear, and the civilisation which the Roman Empire left behind has
+conquered or utterly overshadowed every one of its old rivals and
+superiors&mdash;Islam, India, China, Tartary.</p>
+
+<p>But before the fifteenth century, before the birth of Prince Henry,
+Christendom, Greek and Latin, was at best only one of the greater
+civilising and conquering forces struggling for mastery; before the age
+of the Crusades, before the eleventh century, it was plainly weaker than
+the Moslem powers; it seemed unable to fight against Slav or
+Scandinavian Heathendom; it was only saved by distance from becoming a
+province of China; India, the world's great prize, was cut off from it
+by the Arabs. Even before the rise of Islam, under Constantine or
+Theodosius or Justinian, the Church-State of the Byzantine C&aelig;sars,
+though then ruling in almost every province of Trajan's empire, was in a
+splendid but sure decline from the exhaustion of the southern races. Our
+story then begins naturally with the worst time and climbs up for a
+thousand years, from the Heathen and Mohammedan conquests of the fifth
+and seventh centuries, to the reversal of that judgment, of those
+conquests, in the fifteenth. The expansion of Europe is going on all
+this time, but at our beginning, in the years before and after Pope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+Gregory the Great, even the legacy of Greece and Rome, in wide knowledge
+of the world and practical exploring energy, seemed to have passed from
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>And in the decline of the old Empire, while Constantine and Justinian
+are said to receive and exchange embassies with the Court of China,
+there is no real extension of geographical knowledge or outlook.
+Christian enterprise in this field is mainly one of pilgrimage, and the
+pilgrims only cease to be important when the Northmen, first Heathen,
+then Christian, begin to lead, in a very different manner, the expansion
+of Europe. Into this folk-wandering of the Vikings, the first great
+outward movement of our Europe in the Middle Ages, is absorbed the
+reviving energy of trade, as well as the ever-growing impulse of
+pilgrimage. The Vikings are the highest type of explorers; they do not
+merely find out new lands and trade with them, but conquer and colonise
+them. They extend not merely the knowledge, but the whole state and
+being of Europe, to a New World.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the partial activity of commerce and religion made universal and
+"political" by the leading western race&mdash;for itself only&mdash;is taken up by
+all Christendom in the Crusades, borrowed in idea from Spain, but
+borrowed with the spirit of the Norse rovers, and made universal for the
+Latin world, for the whole federation of Rome. In the eleventh, twelfth,
+and thirteenth centuries we have the preparation for the discovery and
+colonisation of the outside world by Europeans in the fifteenth,
+sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries of the Christian era.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From the conversion of Constantine to the Reformation the story of
+Christendom is unbroken; the later Roman Empire is the Church-State of a
+Christian Prince, as modern Europe is the Church-State of a nominally
+Christian society. Medi&aelig;val Europe thought of itself as nothing but the
+old world-state under religion; from Spain to Russia men were living
+under a Holy Roman Empire of an Italian, or Teutonic, or Byzantine, or
+independent type. England and Russia were not parts of the Germanic
+revival of Charlemagne, but they had just the same two elements dominant
+in their life: the classical tradition and the Christian Church.</p>
+
+<p>And so throughout this time, the expansion of this society&mdash;by whatever
+name we may call it, discovery, exploration, geographical knowledge&mdash;has
+a continuous history. But before the rise of Islam, in the seventh
+century, throws Christendom into its proper medi&aelig;val life, before the
+new religion begins the really new age, at the end of which lived Henry
+himself, we are too far from our subject to feel, for instance in the
+fourth and fifth-century pilgrims and in Cosmas Indicopleustes, anything
+but a remote preparation for Henry's work. It is only with the seventh
+century, and with the time of our own Bede and Wilfrid, that the
+necessary introduction to our subject really begins.</p>
+
+<p>Yet as an illustration of the general idea, that discovery is an early
+and natural outlet of any vigorous society and is in proportion to the
+universal activity of the State, it is not without interest to note that
+Christian Pilgrimage begins with Constantine. This,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> the first
+department of exploring energy, at once evidences the new settlement of
+religion and politics. Helena, the Emperor's mother, helped, by her
+visit to Palestine, her church at Bethlehem, and her discoveries of
+relics in Jerusalem, to make a ruling fashion out of the custom of a few
+devotees; and eight years after the council of Nic&aelig;a, in 333, appeared
+the first Christian geography, as a guide-book or itinerary, from
+Bordeaux to the Holy Places of Syria, modelled upon the imperial survey
+of the Antonines. The route followed in this runs by North Italy,
+Aquileia, Sirmium, Constantinople, and Asia Minor, and upon the same
+course thousands of nameless pilgrims journeyed in the next three
+hundred years, besides some eight or nine who have left an account
+mainly religious in form, but containing in substance the widest view of
+the globe then possible among Westerns.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the pilgrims, like Jerome's friend Paula, Bishop Eucherius, and
+Melania, tread the same path and stop at the same points, but three or
+four of them distinctly add some fresh knowledge to the ordinary
+results.</p>
+
+<p>St. Silvia, of Aquitaine (<i>c.</i> 385), not only travels through Syria, she
+visits Lower Egypt and Stony or Sinaitic Arabia, and even Edessa in
+Northern Mesopotamia, on the very borders of hostile and heathen Persia.
+"To see the monks" she wanders through Osrh&ouml;ene, comes to Haran, near
+which was "the home of Abraham and the farm of Laban and the well of
+Rachel," to the environs of Nisibis and Ur of the Chaldees, lost to the
+Roman Empire since<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> Julian's defeat; thence by "Padan-aram" back to
+Antioch. When crossing the Euphrates the pilgrims saw the river "rush
+down in a torrent like the Rhone, but greater," and on the way home by
+the great military road, then untravelled by Saracens, between Tarsus
+and the Bosphorus, Silvia makes a passing note on the strength and
+brigand habits of the Isaurian mountaineers, who in the end saved
+Christendom from the very Arabs with whom our pilgrim couples them.</p>
+
+<p>Again, Cosmas Indicopleustes, in the time of Justinian, is at the end,
+as Silvia is at the beginning, of a definite period, the period of the
+Christian empire of Rome, while still "C&aelig;sarean" and not merely
+Byzantine, "patrician" and not papal, "consular" and not Carolingian.</p>
+
+<p>And contemporary with Cosmas are two of the chief among the earlier or
+primitive pilgrims, Theodosius and Antoninus the Martyr. The first-named
+indulges in a few excursions&mdash;in fancy&mdash;beyond his known ground of
+Palestine, going as far east as Susa and Babylon, "where no one can live
+for the serpents and hippo-centaurs," and south to the Red Sea and its
+two arms, "of which the eastern is called the Persian Gulf," and the
+western or Arabian runs up to the "thirteen cities of Arabia destroyed
+by Joshua,"&mdash;but, for the rest, his knowledge is not extensive or
+peculiar. Antoninus of Placentia, on the other hand, is very
+interesting, a sort of older Mandeville, who mixes truth and its
+opposite in fairly even proportions and with a sort of resolute
+partiality to favourite legends.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He tells us how Tripolis has been ruined by the late earthquake (July 9,
+551); how silk and various woven stuffs are sold at Tyre; how the
+pilgrims scratched their names on the relics shewn in Cana of
+Galilee&mdash;"and here I, sinner that I am, did inscribe the names of my
+parents"; how Bethshan, the metropolis of Galilee, "is placed on a
+hill," though really in the plain; how the Samaritans hate Christians
+and will hardly speak to them; "and beware of spitting in their country,
+for they will never forgive it"; how "the dew comes down upon Hermon the
+Little, as David says, 'The dew of Hermon that fell upon the hill of
+Zion'"; how nothing can live or even float in the Dead Sea, "but is
+instantly swallowed up"&mdash;as exact an untruth as was ever told by
+traveller; how the Jordan opens a way for pilgrims "and stands up in a
+heap every year at the Epiphany during the baptism of Catechumens, as
+David told, 'The sea saw that and fled, Jordan was driven back'"; how at
+Jericho there is a Holy Field "sown by the Lord with his own hand." A
+report had been spread that the salt pillar of Lot's wife had been
+"lessened by licking"; "it was false," said Antoninus, the statue was
+just the same as it had always been.</p>
+
+<p>In Jerusalem the pilgrims first went up the Tower of David, "where he
+sang the Psalter," and into the Basilica of Sion, where among other
+marvels they saw the "Corner-stone that the builders rejected," which
+gave out a "sound like the murmuring of a crowd."</p>
+
+<p>We come back again to fact with rather a start<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> when told in the next
+section of the Hospitals for 3000 sick folk near the Church of St. Mary,
+close to Sion; then with the footprints and relics of Christ, and the
+miraculous flight of the Column of Scourging&mdash;"carried away by a cloud
+to C&aelig;sarea," we are taken through a fresh set of "impressions."</p>
+
+<p>The same wild notions of place and time and nature follow the Martyr
+through Galilee to Gilboa, "where David slew Goliath and Saul died,
+where no dew or rain ever falls, and where devils appear nightly,
+whirled about like fleeces of wool or the waves of the sea"&mdash;to
+Nazareth, where was the "Beam of Christ the Carpenter"&mdash;to Elua, where
+fifteen consecrated virgins had tamed a lion and trained it to live with
+them in a cell&mdash;to Egypt, where the Pyramids become for him the
+"<i>twelve</i> Barns of Joseph," for the legend had not yet insisted that the
+actual number should be made to fit the text of the seven years of
+plenty.</p>
+
+<p>But with all this Antoninus now and then gives us glimpses of a larger
+world. In Jerusalem he meets &AElig;thiopians "with nostrils slit and rings
+about their fingers and their feet." They were so marked, they told him,
+by the Emperor Trajan "for a sign."</p>
+
+<p>In the Sinai desert he tells us of "Saracen" beggars and idolaters; in
+the Red Sea ports he sees "ships from India" laden with aromatics; he
+travels up the Nile to the Cataracts and describes the Nilometer at
+Assouan, and the crocodiles in the river; Alexandria he finds "splendid
+but frivolous, a lover of pilgrims but swarming with heresies."</p>
+
+<p>But far more wonderful than the practical jumble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> of Antoninus Martyr is
+the systematic nonsense of Cosmas, who invented or worked out a theory
+and scheme of the world, a "Christian topography," which required
+nothing more than a complete disuse of human reason. His assurance was
+equal to his science.</p>
+
+<p>It may have been his voyage to India, or his monastic profession, or his
+study of Scripture, or something unknown that made him take up the part
+of a Christian Aristotle; in any case he felt himself called into the
+field to support the cause of St. Augustine against infidelity, and to
+refute the "anile fable" of the Antipodes. Cosmas referred men back to
+Revelation on such matters, and his system was "demonstrated from
+Scripture, concerning which a Christian is not allowed to doubt." Man by
+himself could not understand the world, but in the Bible it was all
+clear enough. And from the Bible this much was beyond dispute.</p>
+
+<p>The universe is a flat parallelogram; and its length is exactly double
+of its breadth. In the centre of the universe is our world surrounded by
+the ocean, and by an outer world or ring where men lived before the
+Flood. Noah and his Ark came over sea from this to the present earth.</p>
+
+<p>To the north of our world is a great hill, like the later Moslem and
+older Hindu "Cupola of the Earth," which perhaps was Cosmas' own
+original. Round this the sun and moon revolve, making day and night as
+they appear or disappear behind it.</p>
+
+<p>The sky consists of four walls meeting in the "dome of heaven" over the
+floor on which we live,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> and this sky is "glued" to the edges of the
+outer world, the world of the Patriarchs.</p>
+
+<p>But this heaven is also cut in two by the firmament, lying between our
+atmosphere and that "New Heaven and New Earth wherein dwelleth
+Righteousness"; and the floor of this upper world is covered by the
+"waters that be above the firmament"; above this is Paradise, and below
+the firmament live the angels, as "ministers" and "flaming fires" and
+"servants of God to men."</p>
+
+<p>The proofs of this are simple, mainly resting on some five texts from
+the Old Testament and two passages of St. Paul.</p>
+
+<p>First the Book of Genesis declared itself to be the "Book of the
+Generation of the Heaven and the Earth"&mdash;that is, of everything in the
+heavens, and the earth. But the "old wives' fable of the Antipodes"
+would make the heaven surround and contain the earth, and God's word
+would have to be changed "These are the generations of the sky." For the
+same truth&mdash;the twofold and independent being of heaven and
+earth&mdash;Cosmas quotes the additional testimony of Abraham, David, Hosea,
+Isaiah, Zachariah, and Melchisedek, who clenched the case against the
+Antipodes. "For how indeed could even rain be said to 'fall' or to
+'descend,' as in the Psalms and the Gospels, in those regions where it
+could only be said to 'come up'?"</p>
+
+<p>Again, the world cannot be a globe, or sphere, or be suspended in
+mid-air, or in any sort of motion, for what say the Scriptures? "Earth
+is fixed on its foundations"; "Thou hast laid the foundations of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> the
+earth and it abideth"; "Thou hast made the round world so sure, that it
+cannot be moved"; "Thou hast made all men to dwell upon the face of the
+whole earth"&mdash;not "upon every face," or upon any more than one
+face&mdash;"upon <i>the</i> face," not the back or the side, but the broad flat
+face we know. "Who then with these passages before him, ought even to
+speak of Antipodes?"</p>
+
+<p>So much against false doctrine; to establish the truth is simpler still.
+For the same St. Paul, who disposes of science falsely so called, does
+not he speak, like David, like St. Peter and St. John, of our world as a
+tabernacle? "If our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved," "We
+that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened," which points to
+the natural conclusion of enlightened faith, that Moses' tabernacle was
+an exact copy of the universe. "See thou make all things according to
+the pattern shewn thee in the Mount." So the four walls, the covered
+roof, the floor, the proportions of the Tent of the Wilderness, shewed
+us in small compass all that was in nature.</p>
+
+<p>If any further guidance were needed, it was ready to hand in the Prophet
+Isaiah and the Patriarch Job. "That stretcheth out the heavens as a
+curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in"; "Also can any
+understand the spreadings of the clouds or the noise of his tabernacle?"</p>
+
+<p>The whole reasoning is like the theological arguments on the effects of
+man's fall upon the stars and the vegetable world, or the atmospheric
+changes due to angels.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But though Cosmas states his system with the claims of an article of
+faith, there were not wanting men, and even saints, who stood out on the
+side of reason in geography in the most traditional of times. Isidore of
+Seville, and Vergil, the Irish missionary of the eighth century, both
+maintained the old belief of Basil and Ambrose, that the question of the
+Antipodes was not closed by the Church, and that error in this point was
+venial and not mortal. For the positive tabernacle-system of "the man
+who sailed to India" there was never much support; his work was soon
+forgotten, though it has been called by some paradox-makers "the great
+authority of the Middle Ages"&mdash;in the face of the known facts, that this
+was the real position of Ptolemy and Strabo, that no one can speak of
+the "Middle Ages" in this unqualified way any more than of the Modern or
+Ancient worlds; and that Cosmas is almost unnoticed in the great age of
+medi&aelig;val science, from the twelfth century.</p>
+
+<p>And whatever we may think of Cosmas and his <i>Christian System of the
+Whole World, Evolved out of Holy Scripture</i>, he is of interest to us as
+the last of the old Christian geographers, closing one age which,
+however senile, had once been in the truest sense civilised, and
+preparing us to enter one that in comparison is literally dark. From the
+age of Justinian, and from the rise of Islam in the early years of the
+seventh century, the geographical knowledge of Christendom is on a par
+with its practical contraction and apparent decline. There are
+travellers; but for the next five hundred years there are no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> more
+theorists, cosmographers, or map-makers of the Universe or Habitable
+Globe.</p>
+
+<p>From the time that Islam, after a century of world-conquest, began to
+form itself into an organised state, or federation of states, in the
+later eighth and earlier ninth centuries <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>,&mdash;thus making itself until
+the thirteenth century the principal heir of the older Eastern
+culture,&mdash;Christendom was content to take its geography, its ideas of
+the world in general, from the Arabs, who in their turn depended upon
+the pre-Christian Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>The relation of Ptolemy and Strabo to modern knowledge is best seen
+through the work of the Arabic geographers, but the Saracens did much to
+destroy before they began to build up once more. As the northern
+barbarians of the fifth century interrupted the hope of a Christian
+revival of Pagan literature and science, so the Moslems of the seventh
+and eighth cut short the Catholic and Roman revival of Justinian and
+Heraclius, in which the new faith and the old state had found a working
+agreement.</p>
+
+<p>Between Cosmas and the Viking-Age, "Christian," "Roman," "Western"
+exploration falls within very narrow limits: the few pilgrims whose
+recollections represent to us the whole literature of travel in the
+seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, add nothing fresh even of
+practical discovery; theory and theoretical work has ceased altogether,
+and the first stirrings of the new life in the commerce and voyages of
+Amalphi, and in the sudden and splendid outburst of Norse life in its
+age of piracy, are not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> yet, are not really before the world until the
+time of Alfred of England, of Charles the Bald, of Pope Nicholas I. "the
+Great." Yet such as it is, this pilgrim stage of European development
+stands for something. Religion, as it is the first agent in forming our
+modern nations, is the first impulse towards their expansion. And to us
+there is a special interest.</p>
+
+<p>For the best known of western travellers in this darkest of the
+Christian ages (600-870 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>), Arculf and Willibald, are both connected
+with England and the beginnings of English science in the age of Bede.</p>
+
+<p>Arculf, a Frank or Gallican Bishop, who about 690 visited, first of
+"Latin" writers since the Mohammedan conquest, Jerusalem, the Jordan
+valley, Nazareth, and the other holy places of Syria, was driven by
+storms on his return to the great Irish monastery of Iona. There he
+described his wonders to the Abbot Adamnan, who then sat in the seat of
+the Irish Apostles Patrick and Columba, and by Adamnan this narrative
+was presented and dedicated to Aldfrith the Wise, last of the great
+Northumbrian Kings, in his Court at York (<i>c.</i> <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 701). Not only does
+the original remain to us, but we have also two summaries of it, one
+longer, another shorter, made by Baeda, the Venerable Bede, as a useful
+manual for Englishmen, <i>Concerning the Holy Sites</i>. We are again
+reminded by this how constantly fresh life is growing up under an
+appearance of death. The conversion of England, which Gregory the Great,
+Theodore, and the Irish monks had carried through in the seventh, that
+darkest of Christian centuries, was now bearing its fruit in the work
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> Bede, who was really the sign of a far more permanent intellectual
+movement than his own, and in that of Boniface, Wilbrord, and Willibald,
+who began to win for Christendom in Germany more than a counterpoise for
+her losses in the South and East, from Armenia to Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Arculf is full of the mystical unscientific spirit of the time. He notes
+in Jerusalem "a lofty column, which at mid-day casts no shadow, thus
+proving itself to be the centre of the earth for as David says, 'God is
+my king of old, working salvation <i>in the midst of the</i> earth.'"</p>
+
+<p>"At the roots of Lebanon" he comes to the place "where the Jordan has
+its rise from two fountains Jor and Dan, whose waters unite in the
+single river Jordan." In the Dead Sea a lighted lamp would float safely,
+and no man could sink if he tried; the bitumen of this place was almost
+indissoluble; the only fruit here about were the apples of Sodom, which
+crumbled to dust in the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>The three churches on the top of Tabor were "according to the three
+tabernacles described by Peter."</p>
+
+<p>From Damascus Arculf made for the port of Tyre, and so came by Jaffa to
+Egypt. Alexandria he found so great that he was one entire day in merely
+passing through. Its port he thought "difficult of access and something
+like the human body in shape, with a narrow mouth and neck, then
+stretching out far and wide."</p>
+
+<p>The great Pharos tower was still lit up every night with torches. Here
+was the "Emporium of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> whole world"; "countless merchants from all
+parts": the "country rainless and very fertile."</p>
+
+<p>The Nile was navigable to the Town of Elephants; beyond this, at the
+Cataracts, the river "runs in a wild ruin down a cliff." Its
+embankments, its canals, and even its crocodiles, "not so large as
+ravenous," are all described, and Arculf, returning home by
+Constantinople, concludes with an account of the capital of Christendom,
+"beyond doubt the metropolis of the Roman Empire, and by far the
+greatest city therein"; lastly, as the pilgrim sails by Sicily he sees
+the "isle of Vulcan vomiting smoke by day and flame by night, with a
+noise like thunder, which is always fiercer on Fridays and Saturdays."</p>
+
+<p>Willibald, a nephew of St. Boniface and related through his mother to
+King Ina of Wessex, started for the East about 721, passed ten years in
+travel, and on his return followed his countrymen to mission work and to
+death among the heathen of Upper Germany. He went out by Southampton and
+Rouen, by Lucca and the Alps, to Naples and Catania, "where is Mount
+Etna; and when this volcano casts itself out they take St. Agatha's veil
+and hold it towards the fire, which ceases at once." Thence by Samos and
+Cyprus to Antaradus and Emesda, "in the region of the Saracens," where
+the whole party, who had escaped the Moslem brigands of Southern Gaul,
+were thrown into prison on suspicion of being spies. A Spaniard made
+intercession for them and got their release; but Willibald went up
+country one hundred miles, and cleared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> himself of all suspicion before
+the Caliph at Damascus. "We have come from the West, where the sun has
+his setting, and we know of no land beyond&mdash;nothing but water." This was
+too far for spies, he pleaded, and the Caliph agreed, and gave him a
+pass for all the sites of Palestine, with which he traversed the length
+and breadth of the Holy Land four times, finding the same trouble in
+leaving as he had found in entering. Like Arculf, he saw the fountains
+of Jor-Dan, the "glorious church" of Helena at Bethlehem, the tombs of
+the Patriarchs at Hebron, the wonders of Jerusalem. Especially was he
+moved at the sight of the columns in the Church of the Ascension on
+Olivet, "for that man who can creep between those columns and the wall
+is freed from all his sins." Tyre and Sidon he passed again and again
+"on the coast of the Adriatic Sea (as he calls the Levant), <i>six</i> miles
+from one another"; at last he got away to Constantinople, with some
+safely smuggled trophies of pilgrimage, and some "balsam in a calabash,
+covered with petroleum," but the customs officers would have killed all
+of them if the fraud had been found out&mdash;so Willibald believed. After
+two years of close intercourse with the Greek Christians of New Rome,
+living in a "cell hollowed out of the side of a church" (possibly Saint
+Sophia), the first of English-born travellers returned to Old Rome, as
+Arculf had done, by sea, noticing, like him, "Theodoric's Hell" in the
+Liparis. He could not get up the mountain, though curious to see "what
+sort of a hell it was" where the Gothic "Tyrant" was damned for the
+murder of B&ouml;ethius<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> and Symmachus, and for his own impenitent Arianism.
+But though he could not be seen or heard, all the pilgrims remarked how
+the "pumice that writers use was thrown up by the flame from the hell,
+and fell into the sea, and so was cast upon the shore and gathered up."</p>
+
+<p>Such was the philosophy of Catholicism about the countries of the known
+world in the eighth century, for Willibald's account was published with
+the imprimatur of Gregory III., and, with Arculf's, took rank as a
+satisfactory comment on the old Bordeaux Itinerary of four hundred years
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the impression given by our two chief Guide-Books, Arculf and
+Willibald, is confirmed by the monk Fidelis, who travelled in Egypt
+about 750, and by Bernard the Wise of Mont St. Michel, who went over all
+the pilgrim ground a century later (867). Fidelis, sailing up the Nile,
+was astonished at the sight of the "Seven Barns of Joseph, (the
+Pyramids) looking like mountains, but all of stone, square at the base,
+rounded in the upper part and twisted at the summit like a spire. On
+measuring a side of one of them, it was found to be four hundred feet."
+From the Nile Fidelis sailed by the freshwater canal of Necho, Hadrian,
+and Amrou, not finally blocked up till 767, direct to the Red Sea, "near
+where Moses crossed with the Israelites." The pilgrim wanted to go and
+look for Pharaoh's chariot-wheels, but the sailors were obstinate, and
+took him round the Peninsula of Sinai, down one arm of the sea and up
+another, to Eziongeber and Edom.</p>
+
+<p>Bernard, "the French Monk" of Mont St. Michel,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> took the straight route
+overland by Rome to Bari, then a Saracen city, whose Emir forwarded the
+pilgrims in a fleet of transports carrying some nine thousand Christian
+slaves to Alexandria. Here, like Willibald, Bernard found himself
+"suspect"&mdash;thrown into prison till Backsheesh had been paid, then only
+allowed to move stage by stage as fees were prompt and sufficient, for a
+traveller must pay, as an infidel, not only the ordinary tribute of the
+subject Christians of Egypt, but the "money of the road" as well. Islam
+has always made of strangers a fair mark for extortion.</p>
+
+<p>Safe at last in Jerusalem, the party (Bernard himself and two friends,
+one a Spaniard, the other a monk of Beneventum) were lodged "in the
+Hostel of the glorious Emperor Charles, founded for all the pilgrims who
+speak the Roman tongue," and after making the ordinary visits of
+devotion, and giving us their account of the Easter Miracle of the Holy
+Fire at the Church of the Sepulchre, they took ship for Italy, and
+landed at Rome after sixty days of misery at sea.</p>
+
+<p>Bernard's account closes with the Roman churches&mdash;the Lateran, where the
+"keys of the whole city are given every night into the hands of the
+Apostolic Pope," and St. Peter's on the "West side of Rome, that for
+size has no rival in the world."</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, or a little earlier than the Breton traveller (<i>c.</i>
+808-850), another Latin had written a short tract <i>On the Houses of God
+in Jerusalem</i>, which, with Bernard's note-book, is our last geographical
+record before the age of the Northmen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A new time was coming&mdash;a time not of timid creeping pilgrims only, but
+of sea-kings and seamen, who made the ocean their home, and, for the
+North of Europe at least, broke the tradition of land journeys and
+coasting voyages.</p>
+
+<p>But the early pilgrims after all have their place. It is of no use
+insisting that the mental outlook of these men is infantile;&mdash;that is
+best proved by their own words, their own scale of things; but it is
+necessary to insist that in these travellers we have comparatively
+enlarged experience and knowledge; and as comparison is the only test of
+any age, or of any man therein, the very blunders and limitations of the
+past, as we see them to be, have a constant, as well as an historical,
+value to us. That is, we are always being reminded, first, how we have
+come to the present mastery over nature, over ourselves, over all being;
+and, secondly, how imperfect, how futile, our work is still, and seems
+always doomed to be, if judged from a really final standpoint, or rather
+from our own dreams of the ultimately possible.</p>
+
+<p>So if in the case of our medi&aelig;val travellers their interests are the
+very reverse of ours; if they take delight in brooding over thoughts
+which to us do not seem worth the thinking; if their minds seem to rest
+as much on fable implicitly accepted as on the little amount of
+experienced fact necessary for a working life, it will not be for us to
+judge, or to pity, or to despise the men who were making our world for
+us, and through whose work we live.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map03"></a><a href="./images/map03.jpg"><img src="./images/map03_th.jpg"
+alt="THE MAPPE-MONDE OF ST. SEVER."
+title="THE MAPPE-MONDE OF ST. SEVER." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE MAPPE-MONDE OF ST. SEVER.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Especially we cannot afford to forget this as we reach the lowest point
+of the fortunes, the mental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> and material work and position and
+outlook, of Europe and Christendom. A half-barbarised world had entered
+upon the inheritance of a splendid past, but it took centuries before
+that inheritance was realised by the so altered present. In this time of
+change we have men writing in the language of C&aelig;sar and Augustine, of
+Alexander and Plato and Aristotle, who had been themselves, or whose
+fathers had been, pirates, brigands, nomades,&mdash;"wolves of the land or of
+the sea"&mdash;to Greeks or Romans of the South; who had been even to the
+Romanised provincials of the North, as in Britain, mere "dogs," "whelps
+from the kennel of barbarism," the destroyers of the order of the world.
+The boundless credulity and servile terror, the superstition and feudal
+tyranny of the earlier Middle Ages, mark the first stage of the
+reconstruction of society, when savage strong men who had conquered were
+set down beside the overworked and outworn masters of the Western world,
+to learn of them, and to make of them a more enduring race.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer01.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header06.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>VIKINGS OR NORTHMEN.</h3>
+
+<h3>CIRCA 787-1066.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/t.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="T"
+title="T" />he discoveries and conquests and colonies of the Norse Vikings, from
+the White Sea to North America, are the first glimpses of light on the
+sea of darkness round the little island of the known world that made up
+Christendom. And from the needs of the time these were the natural, the
+only natural beginnings of European expansion. From the rise of Islam,
+Saracens controlled the great trade-routes of the South and East. It was
+only on the West and North that the coast was clear&mdash;of all but natural
+dangers.</p>
+
+<p>In the Moslem Caliphate men were now busy in following up the old lines
+of trade, the immemorial traditions of the East, or as in southern
+Africa, extending the sphere of commercial activity and so of
+civilisation; men of science were commenting on the ancient texts of
+Greeks and Latins, or adapting them to enlarged knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>But in Christendom, in the atrophy both of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> mental and physical
+activity, broken for short periods and in certain lands by the revivals
+of Charles the Great, of the Isaurian Emperors, of Otto I., of Alfred
+and his House, the practical energy of Heathen enemies,&mdash;for the
+Northmen were not seriously touched by Christianity till about the end
+of the first millennium,&mdash;was the first sign of lasting resurrection.
+After the material came the spiritual revival; the whole life of the
+Middle Ages awoke on the conversion of the Northern nations and of
+Hungary; but in the abundant and brilliant energy of the eleventh, the
+twelfth, the thirteenth centuries, we must recognise the offspring of
+the irrepressible Norsemen as well as of the Irish and Frank and English
+missionaries, who in the Dark Ages of Christendom were working out the
+empire of Innocent III.</p>
+
+<p>In exploration, especially, it was true that theory followed
+achievement. Flavio Gioja, of Amalphi, did not apply the magnet to
+navigation&mdash;did not "give sailors the use of the magnet"&mdash;till
+navigation itself had begun to venture into the unknown Atlantic. The
+history of geographical advance in the earlier Middle Ages is thus
+rather a chronicle of adventure than of science.</p>
+
+<p>But the Norse discoveries are not only the first, they are the leading
+achievements of Western travel and enterprise in the true Unknown,
+between the time of Constantine and the Crusades. The central fact of
+European expansion in the Dark Ages (from the seventh to the eleventh
+century) is the advance of the Vikings to the Arctic Continent and to
+America<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> about the year 1000. All that precedes this on the same line is
+doubtful and unimportant. For, of the other voyages to the West in the
+sixth, the eighth, the tenth centuries, which, on Columbus' success,
+turned into prior claims to the finding of the New World, there is not
+one that deserves notice.</p>
+
+<p>St. Brandon in 565, the Seven Spanish Bishops in 734, the Basques in 990
+may or may not have sighted their islands of "Antillia," of "Atlantis,"
+of the "Seven Cities." They cannot be verified or valued, any more than
+the journeys of the Enchanted Horse or the Third Calendar. We only know
+for certain a few unimportant, half-accidental facts, such as the visits
+of Irish hermits to Iceland and the F&auml;roes during the eighth century,
+and the traces of their cells and chapels&mdash;in bells and ruins and
+crosses&mdash;found by the Northmen in the ninth.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 787 that the Vikings first landed in England; by the opening
+of the next century they were threatening the whole coast line of
+Christendom, from Gallicia to the Elbe; in 874 they began to colonise
+Iceland; in 877 they sighted Greenland; in 922 Rolf the Ganger won his
+"Normandy" from Charles the Simple, by the Treaty of Clair-sur-Epte; as
+early as 840 was founded the first Norse or Ostman kingdom in Ireland,
+and in 878 the Norse earldom of the Orkneys, while about the same time
+the first Vikings seem to have reached the White Sea and the extreme
+North of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>This advance is almost as rapid as that of the early Saracens; within a
+hundred years from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> first disturbance of Danes and Northmen by the
+growing, all-including power of the new national kingdoms,&mdash;within three
+generations from Halfdan the Black,&mdash;first the flying rebels, and then
+the royalists in pursuit of them, had reached the farthest western and
+northern limits of the known world, from Finisterre in "Spanland" to
+Cape Farewell in Greenland, from the North Cape in Finland to the
+Northwest Capes of "Irland," from Novgorod or "Holmgard" in Russia to
+"Valland," between the Garonne and the Loire.</p>
+
+<p>The chief lines of Northern advance were three&mdash;by the north-west,
+south-west, and north-east, but each of these divided, after a time,
+with important results.</p>
+
+<p>The first sea-path, running by Caithness, Orkneys, Shetlands, and
+F&auml;roes, reached Iceland, Greenland, and at last Vinland on the North
+American Continent; but from the settlements on the coasts and islands
+of northern Scotland, a fresh wave of pirate colonists swept down
+south-west into the narrow seas of St. George's Channel and beat upon
+the east and north and south of Ireland and the western coasts of
+England and of "Bretland."</p>
+
+<p>The second invasion ran along the North German coast, and on reaching
+the Straits of Dover, fell upon both sides of the English Channel,
+according as the resistance was stronger or weaker in Wessex or in
+Frankland. The advanced guard reunited with Ostmen and Orkneyers in the
+Scilly Isles, and in Cornwall, and pressed on to the plunder of the Bay
+of Biscay and its coasts. The most restless of all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> were not long in
+finding out the wealth of the Moslem Caliphate of Cordova, and trying to
+force their way up the Douro and the Tagus.</p>
+
+<p>The expansion on this side was not to stop till it had founded, from the
+Norman colony on the Seine, a Norman kingdom of England, and a dominion
+in the Two Sicilies, but this was the work of the eleventh century, the
+time of organisation and settled empire.</p>
+
+<p>On the third side of northern expansion, to east and north-east, there
+were two separate roads from the first; one taking the Baltic for its
+track, and dividing northwards to Finland, up the Gulf of Bothnia,
+eastwards to Russia and Novgorod ("Gardariki" and "Holmgard"), the other
+coasting along "Halogaland" to Biarmaland, along Lapland to Perm and the
+Archangel of later time.</p>
+
+<p>Of these three lines of movement by far the most vital to our subject is
+the first, which is also the earliest; the second, to south and
+south-west, hardly gives any direct results for our story; and the
+third, to east and north, is mainly concerned with Russian history.
+While King Alfred was yet unborn, Norse settlements had been permanently
+founded in the outlying points, coasts, and islands of Scotland and
+Ireland, and in the years of his boyhood, about 860, Nadodd the F&auml;eroe
+Jarl sighted Iceland, which had been touched at by the Irish monks in
+795 but was now to be first added as a lasting gain to Europe, as a new
+country, "Snowland"&mdash;something more than a hermitage for religious
+exiles from the world. Four years later (in 864) Gardar the Swede<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+reached this new Ultima Thule, and re-named it from himself "Gardar's
+Holm." Yet another Viking, Raven Floke, followed the track of the first
+explorer in 867, before Iceland got its final name and earliest
+colonisation from the Norsemen Ingolf and Leif and the sheep-farmers of
+the F&auml;roes in 874, the third year of Alfred's reign in Wessex.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map04"></a><img src="./images/map04.jpg"
+alt="THE ANGLO-SAXON MAP."
+title="THE ANGLO-SAXON MAP." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE ANGLO-SAXON MAP.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Three years later, 877-8, at the very time of the farthest Danish
+advance in England, when Guthrum had driven the English King into the
+Isle of Athelney, the Norsemen reached their farthest point of northern
+advance in Europe; Gunnbiorn sighted a new land to the north-west, which
+he called "White Shirt," from its snow-fields, and which Red Eric a
+century later re-named Greenland&mdash;"for there is nothing like a good name
+to attract settlers." By this the Old World had come nearer than ever
+before to the discovery of a new one.</p>
+
+<p>Geographically, this side of the Arctic Continent falls to the share of
+North America, and once its fiords had been made in their turn centres
+of colonisation and of further progress, the actual reaching of
+Newfoundland and Cape Cod was natural enough. The real voyage lay
+between Cape Farewell and the European mainland; it was a stormy and
+dangerous passage from the Greenland Bays to Labrador, but not a long
+one, and, as far as can be judged from scanty records, neither so cold
+nor so icebound as at present.</p>
+
+<p>But exploration had outrun settlement. It was not till 986, more than
+one hundred years after Gunnbiorn's discovery, that Eric the Red, one of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> chiefs of the Iceland colonists, led a band of followers and
+friends into a permanent exile in the unknown land. The beginnings of
+several villages were made in the next few years, and the first American
+discoveries followed at once. About 989 one Bjarni Herjulfson, following
+his father from Iceland to Eric's Fiord in Greenland, was driven west by
+storms first to a flat, well-wooded country, then to a mountainous
+island, covered with glaciers. He bore away with a fresh breeze and
+reached his home in Eric's Fiord in four days.</p>
+
+<p>But his report aroused great interest; the time had come, and the men,
+and Norse rovers, who after so much in the past were ready to dare
+anything in the future, eagerly volunteered to follow up the new route;
+Bjarni himself visiting Norway and telling his story, was blamed for his
+slackness, and when he went back to Greenland there was "much talk of
+finding unknown lands." In the year 1000 Leif, a son of Red Eric,
+started with a definite purpose of discovery. He bought Bjarni's ship,
+manned it with five and twenty men and put out. First they came to the
+land Bjarni had sighted last, and went on shore. There was no grass to
+be seen, but great snowy ridges far inland, "and all the way from the
+coast to these mountains was one field of snow, and it seemed to them a
+land of no profit,"&mdash;so they left, calling it Helluland, or Slate-land,
+perhaps the Labrador of the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>They put to sea again and found another land, flat and wooded, with a
+white sand shore, low-lying towards the sea. This, said Leif, we will
+call after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> its nature, Markland (Woodland). Thence driving for two days
+before a north-east wind, they came to an island, where they landed to
+wait for good weather. They tasted the dew on the grass and thought they
+had never known anything so sweet. Sailing on again into a sound between
+the island and a ness, they reached a place where a river came out of a
+lake; into this they towed the ship and anchored, carrying their beds
+out on the shore and setting up their tents, with a large hut in the
+middle, and made all ready for wintering there.</p>
+
+<p>There was no want of fish food&mdash;"the largest salmon in the lake they had
+ever seen"&mdash;and the country seemed to them so good that they would need
+no fodder for cattle in the winter. There was no frost; the grass seemed
+fresh enough all the year round, and day and night were more equal than
+in Iceland or in Greenland. The crew were divided in two parts: one
+worked at the huts and the other explored the country, returning every
+night to the camp. From the wild vines found by the foragers, the whole
+district was called Vinland, and samples of these, enough to fill the
+stern boat, and of the trees and "self-sown wheat" found in the fields
+were taken back to Eric's Fiord. Thereafter Leif was called the Lucky,
+and got much wealth and fame, but Thorwald Ericson, his brother, thought
+he had not explored enough, and "determined to be talked about" even
+more than the first settler of Vinland.</p>
+
+<p>He put to sea with thirty men and came straight to Leif's Booths in
+Vinland, where he stayed the winter. On the first signs of spring
+Thorwald<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> ordered his vessel to be rigged, and sent his longboat on
+ahead to explore.</p>
+
+<p>All alike thought the land beautiful and well-wooded; they noticed that
+the distance was small between the forest and the sea, that the beach
+was all of white sand, and that there were many islands off the shore
+and very shallow water; but they saw no trace of man or beast, except a
+wooden corn-barn on an island far to the west. After coasting all the
+summer they came back in the autumn to the booths.</p>
+
+<p>The next spring Thorwald went eastwards, and "towards the north along
+the land they drove upon a cape and broke their keel and stayed long to
+repair, and called the place Keel-Ness (Kjalarness) from this." Then
+they sailed away eastwards along the country, everywhere thickly wooded,
+till at one place Thorwald drew up his ships to the land and laid out
+gangways to the shore, saying, "I would gladly set up my farm here."</p>
+
+<p>But now they came upon the first traces of other men; far off upon the
+white sandy beach three specks were sighted&mdash;three skin boats of the
+Skr&aelig;lings or Esquimaux, with three men hiding under each. Thorwald's men
+captured and killed eight of them, but one escaped "to where within the
+fiord were several dwellings like little lumps on the ground." A heavy
+drowsiness now fell upon the Norsemen, in the Saga, till a "sudden
+scream came to them, and a countless host from up the fiord came in skin
+boats and laid themselves alongside."</p>
+
+<p>The Vikings put up their shield-wall along the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> gunwale and kept off the
+arrows of the Esquimaux till they had shot them all away, and "fled off
+as fast as they could," leaving Thorwald with a mortal wound under the
+arm. He had time just to bid his men "carry him to the point he had
+wished to dwell at, for it was true that he would stay there awhile, but
+with a cross at head and feet; and so died and was buried as he had
+said." The place was called Crossness from the dead chief, but the crew
+stayed all the winter and loaded the ship with vines and grapes, and in
+the spring came back to Eric in Greenland.</p>
+
+<p>And now, after the first mishap, discovery became more serious&mdash;not to
+be undertaken but by strong and well-armed fleets. It was this that
+checked the expansion of these Arctic colonies; at their best they were
+too small to do more than hold their own against nature and the Skr&aelig;ling
+savages in their tiny settlements along the coast, where the ice-fields
+have long since pushed man slowly but surely into the sea, with his
+painfully won patches of hay and corn and pasturage.</p>
+
+<p>But the colonists would never say die till they were utterly worn out;
+now they only roused themselves to conquer the new lands they had found,
+and found disputed.</p>
+
+<p>First a third son of Red Eric, Thorstein, bethought him to go to Vinland
+for his brother Thorwald's body. He put to sea and lost all sight of
+land, beating about in the ocean the whole summer, till he came back to
+Greenland in the first week of winter. (1004-6.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was followed by the greatest of the Vinland sailors, Thorfinn
+Karlsefne, who really took in hand the founding of a new settlement over
+the Western Sea. He came from Norway to Iceland soon after Thorwald's
+death in 1004, passed on to Greenland about 1005, "when, as before, much
+was talked about a Vinland voyage," and in 1006 made ready to start with
+one hundred and sixty men and five women, in three ships. They had with
+them all kinds of cattle, meaning to settle in the land if they could,
+and they made an agreement, Karlsefne and his people, that each should
+have an equal share in the gain. Leif lent them his houses in Vinland,
+"for he would not give them outright," and they sailed first to
+Helluland (Labrador), where they found a quantity of foxes, then to
+Markland, well-stocked with forest animals, then to an island at the
+mouth of a fiord, unknown before, covered with eyder ducks. They called
+the new discoveries Stream Island and Stream Fiord, from the current
+that here ran out into the sea, and sent off a party of eight men, in
+search of Vinland, in a stern boat. This was driven by westerly gales
+back to Iceland, but Thorfinn, with the rest, sailed south till he came
+to Leif Ericson's "river that fell into the sea from a lake, with
+islands lying off the mouth of the stream, low grounds covered with
+wheat growing wild, and rising grounds clad with vines."</p>
+
+<p>Here they settled, re-named the country "Hope, from the good hope they
+had of it," and began to fell the wood, to pasture their cattle in the
+upland, and to gather the grapes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After the first winter the Skr&aelig;lings came upon them, at first to traffic
+with furs and sables against milk and dairy produce, and then to fight;
+for as neither understood the other, and the natives tried to force
+their way into Thorfinn's houses, and to get hold of his men's weapons,
+a quarrel was bound to come.</p>
+
+<p>Fearing this, Karlsefne put a fence round the settlement and made all
+ready for battle, "and at this very time was a child born to him in the
+village, called Snorre, of Gudrid his wife, the widow of Thorstein
+Eric-son, whom he had brought with him." Then the Esquimaux came down
+upon them, "many more than before, and there was a battle, and
+Thorfinn's men won the day and saved the cattle," and their enemies fled
+into the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Thorfinn stayed all the winter, but towards spring he grew tired of his
+enterprise, and returned to Greenland, "taking much goods," vines, wood
+for timber, and skin-wares, and so came back to Eric's Fiord in the
+summer of 1008.</p>
+
+<p>Thus ends the story of the last serious effort to colonise Vinland, and
+the Saga, while giving no definite cause for this failure upon failure,
+seems to show that even the trifling annoyance of the Skr&aelig;lings was
+enough to turn the scale. Natural difficulties were so immense, men were
+so few, that a pigmy enemy had all the power of the last straw in a
+load, the odd man in a council. The actual resistance of American
+natives to European colonists was never very serious in any part of the
+continent, but the distance from the starting-point and the
+difficulties<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> of life in the new country were able, even in the time of
+Raleigh and De Soto, to keep in check men who far more readily founded
+and kept up European empires in the Indian seas.</p>
+
+<p>So now, though on Thorfinn's return the "talk began to turn again upon a
+Vinland voyage, as both gainful and honourable," and a daughter of Red
+Eric, named Freydis, talked men over&mdash;especially two brothers, Helge and
+Finnboge&mdash;to a fresh attempt in the country where all the House of Eric
+had tried and failed; though Leif lent his booths as before, and sixty
+able-bodied men, besides women, were found willing to go, the colony
+could never be firmly planted. Freydis and her allies sailed in 1011,
+reached the settlement, which was now for the third time recolonised,
+and wintered there;&mdash;but jealousies soon broke up the camp, Helge and
+Finnboge were murdered with all their followers, and the rest came back
+in 1013 to Greenland, "where Thorfinn Karlsefne was just ready for
+sailing back to Norway, and it was common talk that never did a richer
+ship leave Eric's Fiord than that which he steered." It was that same
+Karlsefne who gave the fullest account of all his travels, concludes the
+Saga, but whether Thorfinn ever returned to Vinland, whether there were
+any more attempts to settle at Leif's Booths or elsewhere, whether the
+account we have of these voyages is really an Eric Saga, only telling
+the deeds of Red Eric and his House&mdash;for after Bjarni, almost every
+Vinland leader is of this family&mdash;we cannot tell. We can only fancy that
+all these suggestions are probable, by the side of the few addi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>tional
+facts known to the Norse Skalds or Bards. The first of these is, that in
+983-4, Are Marson of Reykianes in Iceland was driven by storms far West
+to White Man's Land, where he was followed by Bjarni Asbrandson in 999,
+and by Gudleif Gudlangson in 1029. This was the tale of his friend Rafn,
+"the Limerick trader," and of Are Frode, his great-great-grandson, who
+called the unknown land Great Ireland.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> True or untrue, in whatever
+way, this would be a later discovery than those of Eric and his sons, if
+the news of it did not come into Iceland or Norway till after Thorfinn
+Karlsefne's voyage, as is generally supposed. Again, the length of the
+voyage is a difficulty, and the whole matter has a doubtful look&mdash;an
+attempt to start a rival to the Eric Saga, by a far more brilliant
+success a few years earlier.</p>
+
+<p>We seem to be on more certain ground in our next and last chapter of
+Viking exploration in the north-west, in the fragmentary notices of
+Greenland and Vinland voyages to the middle of the fourteenth century,
+and in the fairly clear and continuous account of the two Greenland
+settlements of the western and the eastern Bays.</p>
+
+<p>We hear, for instance, of Bishop Eric going over from Eric's Fiord to
+Vinland in 1121; of clergy from the Eastern Bay diocese of Gardar
+sailing to lands in the West, far north of Vinland, in 1266; of the two
+Helgasons discovering a country west of Iceland in 1285; of a voyage
+from Greenland to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Markland in 1347 by a crew of seventeen men, recorded
+in 1354.</p>
+
+<p>Unless these are pure fabrications, they would seem to prove something
+of constant intercourse between the mother and daughter colonies of
+north-west Europe and north-east America, and something of a permanent
+Christian settlement of Northmen in the New Continent is made probable
+by assuming such intercourse. Between 981-1000, both Iceland and
+Greenland had become "Catholic in name and Christian in surname"; in
+1126 the line of Bishops of Gardar begins with Arnold, and the clergy
+would hardly have ventured on the Vinland voyage to convert Skr&aelig;lings in
+an almost deserted country.</p>
+
+<p>The later story of the Greenland colonies, interesting as it is, and
+traceable to the year 1418, is not part of the expansion but of the
+contraction of Europe and Christendom. And the voyages of the Zeni in
+1380-95 to Greenland and the Western islands Estotiland and Drogeo,
+belong to another part; they are the last achievements of medi&aelig;val
+discovery before Henry of Portugal begins his work, and form the natural
+end of an introduction to that work.</p>
+
+<p>But it is curious to notice that just as the ice and the Esquimaux
+between them were bringing to an end the last traces of Norse settlement
+in the Arctic Continent, and just as all intercourse between Vinland,
+Greenland, Iceland, and Norway entirely ceases&mdash;at any rate to record
+itself&mdash;the Portuguese sailors, taking up the work of Eric and Leif and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+Thorfinn, on another side, were rounding Cape Verde and nearing the
+southern point of Africa, and so providing for the mind of Columbus
+suggestions which resulted in the lasting discovery of the world that
+the Vikings had sighted and colonised, but were not able to hold.</p>
+
+<p>The Venetian, Welsh, and Arabic claims to have followed the Norsemen in
+visits to America earlier than the voyage of 1492, belong rather to the
+minute history of geographical controversy. It is a fairly certain fact
+that the north-west line of Scandinavian migration reached about A.D.
+1000 to Cape Cod and the coasts of Labrador. It is equally certain that
+on this side the Norsemen never made any further advance, lasting or
+recorded. Against all other medi&aelig;val discoveries of a Western Continent,
+one only verdict can stand:&mdash;Not Proven.</p>
+
+<p>The other lines of Northern advance, though marked by equal daring and
+far greater military exploits, have less of original discovery. There
+was fighting in plenty, the giving and taking of hard knocks with every
+nation from Archangel to Cordova and from Limerick to Constantinople;
+and the Vikings, as they reached fresh ground, re-named most of the
+capes and coasts, the rivers and islands and countries of Europe, of
+North Africa, of Western Asia. Iberia became "Spanland"; Gallicia,
+"Jacobsland"<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>; Gallia, "Frankland"; Britannia, "England," "Scotland,"
+"Bretland"; Hibernia, "Irland"; Islam, outside "Spanland," passed into
+"Serkland" or Saracenland.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> Greece was "Grikland"; Russia, "Gardariki";
+the Pillars of Hercules, the Straits of Gibraltar, were "Norva's Sound,"
+which later days derived from the first Northman who passed through
+them. The city of Constantine was the Great Town&mdash;"Miklagard"; Novgorod
+was "Holmgard," the town of all others that most touched and influenced
+the earlier, the Viking age, of Northern expansion. For was it not their
+own proudest and strongest city-state, and "Who can stand before God, or
+the Great Novgorod?" except the men who had built it, and would rush to
+sack it if it turned against them?</p>
+
+<p>But all this was only the passing of a more active race over ground
+which had once been well known to Rome and to Christendom, even if much
+of this was now being forgotten. It was only in upland Russia and in the
+farthest North that the Norsemen sensibly enlarged the Western world to
+east or north-east, as they did through their Iceland settlements on the
+north-west.</p>
+
+<p>On the south and south-west no Vikings or Royalist followers of Vikings,
+like Sigurd the Crusader, sailed the seas beyond Norva's Sound and
+Serkland,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> and as pilgrims, traders, travellers, and conquerors in
+the Mediterranean, their work was of course not one of exploration. They
+bore a foremost share in breaking down the Moslem incubus on southern
+Europe; they visited the Holy sites<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When sacred Hierosolyma they'd reliev&egrave;d<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fed their eyes on Jordan's holy flood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which the dear body of Lord God had lav&egrave;d";<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>they fought as Varangian body-guards in the armies of the great
+Byzantines, Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes, Basil II. or Maniakes;
+but in all this they discovered for themselves rather than for Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But Russia, that is, Old Russia round Novgorod and Kiev, the White Sea,
+the North Cape and Finland coasts, as well as the more outlying parts of
+Scotland and Ireland, were first clearly known to Europe through the
+Northmen. The same race did much to open up the modern Lithuania and
+Prussia, and the conversion of the whole of Scandinavia, mother country
+and colonies alike, in the tenth and eleventh centuries added our
+Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, with all the Viking settlements, to the
+civilised world and church of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>First, on the eastern side, it was in 862 that the Russians invited help
+from their less dreaded neighbours around Upsala against their more
+vexatious neighbours around Kiev, and in September of the same year
+Ruric arrived at Novgorod and founded the Medi&aelig;val Kingdom of Russia,
+which in the tenth century under Oleg, Igor, and Vladimir was first the
+plunderer, then the open enemy, and finally the ally in faith and in
+arms of the Byzantine Empire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All through this time and afterwards, till the time of the Tartar
+deluge, the intercourse of Swedes, Danes, and Northmen with Gardariki
+was constant and close, and not least in the time of the Vinland
+voyages, when Vladimir and Jaroslav reigned at Novgorod, and the two
+Olafs, the son of Trygve and the Saint, found refuge at their court
+before and after their hard rule in Norway.</p>
+
+<p>Olaf Trygveson's uncle had grown old in exile at Novgorod when young
+Olaf and his mother fled from Norway to join him there and were captured
+by Vikings in the Baltic and kept six years in the Gulf of Riga before
+they got to Holmgard (972).</p>
+
+<p>In 1019 Ingigerd of Sweden was married to Jaroslav; ten years later St.
+Olaf was driven from Norway by revolt, and flying into Russia, was
+offered a Kingdom called Volgaria&mdash;the modern Casan, whose old
+metropolis of Vulghar was known to the Arab travellers of the ninth
+century, and whose ruins can still be seen. Olaf hesitated between this
+and a pilgrim's death in Jerusalem and at last preferred to fight his
+way back to Norway.</p>
+
+<p>The next King of the Norsemen, Magnus the Good, came from Novgorod by
+Ladoga to Trondhjem, when Olaf's son Harold Hardrada fled back to his
+father's refuge, to the court of Jaroslav; while Magnus had been in
+exile, men had asked news of him from all the merchants that traded to
+Novgorod.</p>
+
+<p>Last of these earlier kings, Harold Hardrada, during all the time of his
+wild romance in East and South, before he went to Miklagard, and after
+his flight, and all the time of his service in the Varangian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> Guard of
+the Empress Zoe, made Novgorod his home. His pilgrim relics from Holy
+Land and his war spoils from Serkland&mdash;Africa and Sicily&mdash;were all sent
+back to Jaroslav's care till their master could come and claim them, and
+when he came at last, flying from Byzantine vengeance across the Black
+Sea into the Sea of Azov and "all round the Eastern Realm" of Kiev, he
+found his wealth untouched and Princess Elizabeth ready to be his wife
+and to help him with Russian men and money to win back Norway and to die
+at Stamford Bridge for the Crown of England (1066).</p>
+
+<p>Harold is the type of all Vikings, of the Norse race in its greatest,
+most restless energy. William the Conqueror, or Cnut the Great, or
+Robert Guiscard, or Roger of Sicily, are all greater and stronger men,
+but there is no "ganger," no rover, like the man who in fifty years,
+after fighting in well-nigh every land of Christians or of the
+neighbours and enemies of Christendom, yet hoped for time to sail off to
+the new-found countries and so fulfil his oath and promise to perfect a
+life of unmatched adventure by unmatched discovery. He had fought with
+wild beasts in the Arena of Constantinople; he had bathed in the Jordan
+and cleared the Syrian roads of robbers; he had stormed eighty castles
+in Africa; he had succoured the Icelanders in famine and lived as a
+prince in Russia and Northumberland; by his own songs he boasts that he
+had sailed all round Europe; but he fell, the prototype of sea-kings
+like Drake or Magellan, without one discovery. Men of his own nation and
+time had been before him everywhere,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> but he united in himself the work
+and adventures, the conquests and discoveries of many. He was the
+incarnation of Northern spirit, and it was through the lives and records
+of such as he that Europe became filled with that new energy of thought
+and action, that new life and knowledge, which was the ground and
+impulse of the movement led by Henry the Navigator, by Columbus, and the
+Cabots.</p>
+
+<p>Harold's wars kept him from becoming a great explorer, but Norse
+captains who took service under peaceful kings did something of what he
+aimed at doing.</p>
+
+<p>We must retrace our steps to the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan under
+King Alfred about the year 890, about the time when a Norse King, Harold
+Fair-hair, was first seen in the Scotch and Irish seas. Their discovery
+of the White Sea, the North Cape, and the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland
+was followed up by many Norsemen, such as Thorer Hund under St. Olaf, in
+the next one hundred and fifty years,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> but Ohthere's voyage was the
+first and chief of these adventures both in motive and result.</p>
+
+<p>"He told his lord King Alfred that he dwelt northmost of all Northmen on
+the land by the Western Sea and he wished to find how far the land lay
+right north, or whether any man dwelt north of the waste. So he went
+right north near the land;&mdash;for three days he left the waste land on the
+right and the wide sea on the left, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> far as the whale hunters ever
+go"; and still he kept north three days more (to the North Cape of
+Europe).</p>
+
+<p>"Then the land bent right east, and with a west wind he sailed four days
+till the land bent south, and he sailed by it five days more to a great
+river&mdash;the Dwina&mdash;that lay up into the land, and where beyond the river
+it was all inhabited"&mdash;the modern country of Perm and Archangel.</p>
+
+<p>Here he trafficked with the people, the first he had met, except the
+Finn hunters, since leaving his fiord. Besides his wish to see the
+country, he was looking for walrus-ivory and hides.</p>
+
+<p>The Finns and Biarma-men (men of Archangel), it seemed to him, spoke
+nearly the same language, but between his home and this Biarmaland no
+human being lived in any fixed dwelling, and all the Northman's land was
+long and narrow and thinly peopled, decreasing in breadth as it
+stretched northward, from sixty to three days' journey.</p>
+
+<p>Again Alfred told how Ohthere, sailing south for a month from his house,
+having <i>Ireland</i> on his right and coasting Norway all the time on his
+left, came to Jutland, "where a great sea runs up into the land, so vast
+that no man can see across it," whence in five days more he reached the
+coast, "from which the English came to Britain."</p>
+
+<p>Wulfstan, in the service of the same king, told him how he sailed in
+seven days from Sleswick to Truso and the Vistula, having Wendland (or
+Pomerania and Prussia) on his right all the way. He described "Witland
+near the Vistula and Estland and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> Wendland and Estmere and the Ilfing
+running from the Truso lake into Eastmere," but neither the king nor his
+captains knew enough to contradict the old idea, found in Ptolemy and
+Strabo, of Scandinavia as one vast island.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was for the satisfaction of their Saxon Lord that Wulfstan and
+Ohthere, by their voyages along the coasts of Norway and Lapland, of
+Pomerania and Prussia, round the White Sea and the Gulf of Riga and
+southern Finland, added a more coherent view of north-east Europe, and
+specially of the Baltic Gulf, to Western geography; but these Norse
+discoveries, though in the service of an English king, were scarcely
+used save by Norsemen, and they must partly go to the credit of Vikings,
+as well as of Alfred the Great. Thus in 965 King Harold Grayskin of
+Norway "went and fought with the folk on the banks of the Dwina," and
+plundered them, and in 1026 Thorer Hund joined himself to a fleet sent
+by St. Olaf to the White Sea, pillaged the temple of the idol Jomala,
+and destroyed his countrymen by treachery on their way home. Where two
+expeditions are recorded they may well stand for twenty unknown and
+uneventful ones, and the same must be equally granted as to the gradual
+advance of knowledge through the unceasing attacks of the Norse kings
+and pirates on the lands to the south of the Baltic, where lived the
+Wends.</p>
+
+<p>Thus on the west and east, north-west and north-east, the Northmen could
+and did make a definite advance into the unknown; even the south-west
+lines of Northern invasion and settlement,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> though they hardly yield any
+general results to discovery, certainly led to a more thorough inclusion
+of every part of the British isles in the civilised West, through the
+Viking earldoms in Caithness, in the Orkneys and the Shetlands, in Man
+and the Hebrides, and on the coast of Ireland, where the Ostman colonies
+grew into kingdoms. From about 840, when the first of these settlements
+was fairly and permanently started, to the eleventh century, when a
+series of great defeats,&mdash;by Brian Boru at Clontarf in 1014, by Godwine
+and Harold in England from 1042 to 1066, and by the Norman and Scottish
+kings in the next generation,&mdash;practically destroyed the Norse dominion
+outside the Orkneys,&mdash;for those two hundred years, Danes and Northmen
+not only pillaged and colonised, but ruled and reorganised a good half
+of the British isles.</p>
+
+<p>By the time of Alfred the Viking principalities were scattered up and
+down the northern and western coasts of the greater of our two islands,
+and were fringing three sides of the lesser. About <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 900 the pioneer
+of the Norse kings, Harold Fair-hair, pursued his traitors, first to
+Shetlands and Orkneys, then to Caithness, the Hebrides, and Man. His son
+Eric, who followed him, ranged the Northern seas from Archangel to
+Bordeaux, and so Hakon the Good in 936 and other Norse princes in 946,
+961, 965, above all, the two great Kings Olaf in 985-9 and 1009-14,
+fought and triumphed through most of the world as known to the Northmen.
+Thus, Frankland, England, Ireland, Scotland were brought into a closer
+unity through the common danger, while as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> the sea-kings founded settled
+states, and these grew by alliance, first with one another and then with
+their older Christian victims, as the Norse kingdoms themselves became
+parts of Latin Christendom, after Latin Christendom had itself been
+revived and re-awakened by their attacks, the full value of the time of
+trial came out on both sides, to conquered and to conquerors.</p>
+
+<p>For the effects&mdash;formative, invigorative, provocative,&mdash;of the Northern
+invasions had a most direct bearing on the expansion that was to come in
+the next age even for those staid and sober Western countries, England
+and France and Italy, which had long passed through their time of
+migration, and where the Vikings could not, as in the far north-east and
+north-west, extend the area of civilisation or geographical knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the new start made by England in exploration, and trade, and
+even in pilgrimage, is plainly the result&mdash;in action and reaction&mdash;of
+the Norse and Danish attacks, waking up the old spirit of a kindred
+race, of elder cousins that had sunk into lethargy and forgotten their
+seamanship.</p>
+
+<p>But from the Peace of Wedmore (878) Alfred first of all began to build
+an English navy able to meet and chase and run down the Viking keels;
+then established a yearly pilgrimage and alms-giving at the Threshold of
+the Apostles in Rome; then sent out various captains in his service to
+explore as much of the world as was practicable for his new description
+of Europe. His crowning effort in religious extension was in 883, when
+Sigehelm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> and Athelstan bore Alfred's gifts and letters to Jerusalem and
+to India, to the Christians of San Thom&eacute;; the corresponding triumph of
+the King's scientific exploration, the discoveries in the White Sea and
+the Baltic, seem to have happened nearer the end of the reign, somewhere
+before 895.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer03.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header01.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CRUSADES AND LAND TRAVEL.</h3>
+
+<h3>CIRCA 1100-1300.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/t.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="T"
+title="T" />he pilgrims were the pioneers of the growth of Europe and of
+Christendom until Charlemagne, in one sense, in another and a broader
+sense until the Crusades.</p>
+
+<p>Their original work, as far as it can be called original at all, was
+entirely overshadowed by the Vikings, who made real discoveries of the
+first importance in hunting for new worlds to conquer; but when first
+the Viking rovers themselves, and then the Northmen, settled in the
+colonies and the old home, took up Christianity as the Arabs had taken
+up Islam, the pilgrim spirit was translated, as it were, into new and
+more powerful forms. Through the conversion of Hungary and of
+Scandinavia,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>&mdash;Europe, Christian Europe, was compacted together in a
+stronger Empire than that of Constantine or of Charlemagne&mdash;a spiritual
+federation, not a political unity&mdash;one and undivided not in visible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+subordination, but in a common zeal for a common faith. This was the
+state of the Latin world, and in a measure of the Greek and Russian
+world as well, by the middle of the eleventh century, when the Byzantine
+Emperors had broken the strength of the Eastern Caliphate, and recovered
+most of the realm of Heraclius; when the Roman Papacy under Leo IX.,
+Hildebrand, and Urban began its political stage, aiming, and in great
+part successfully aiming, at an Imperial Federation of Europe under
+religion; when on every side, in Spain, in France, in England, in
+Germany, and in Italy, the nations that had been slowly built into that
+<i>Domus Dei</i> were filled with fresh life and purpose from the Norsemen,
+who, as pirates, or conquerors, or brothers, had settled among them. The
+long crusade that had gone on for four hundred years in Spain and in
+southern Italy and in the Levant, which had raged round the islands of
+the Mediterranean, or the passes of the Alps and Pyrenees, or the banks
+of the Loire and the Tiber,&mdash;was now, on the eve of the first Syrian
+Crusade of 1096, rapidly tending to decisive victory. Toledo was won
+back in 1084; the Norman dominion in the Two Sicilies had already taken
+the place of a weak and halting Christian defence against Arab emirs;
+pilgrims were going in thousands where there had been tens or units by
+the reopened land route through Hungary; only in the far East the first
+appearance of the Turks as Moslem champions,<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> threatened an ebb of
+the tide. Christendom had seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> a wonderful expansion of the Heathen
+North; now that it had won the Northmen to itself, it was ready to
+imitate their example. The deliberate purpose of the Popes only gave
+direction to the universal feeling of restless and abundant energy
+longing for wider action. But it was not the crusading movement itself
+which brought so much new light, so much new knowledge of the world, to
+Europe, as the <i>results</i> of that impulse in trade, in travel, and in
+colonisation.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map05"></a><a href="./images/map05.jpg"><img src="./images/map05_th.jpg"
+alt="THE TURIN MAP OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY."
+title="THE TURIN MAP OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE TURIN MAP OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>(1) From the eleventh century, from the beginning of this period, all
+the greater pilgrims, S&aelig;wulf the English-merchant, King Sigurd of
+Norway, Abbot Daniel of Kiev, and their followers, have something more
+in view than piety; they have a general interest in travel; some of them
+a special interest in trade; most of them go to fight as well as to
+pray.</p>
+
+<p>(2) But as the warlike spirit of the Church Militant seems to grow
+tired, and its efforts at founding new kingdoms&mdash;in Antioch, in
+Jerusalem, in Cyprus, in Byzantium&mdash;more and more fruitless, the direct
+expansion of European knowledge, begins in scientific travel. Vinland
+and Greenland and the White Sea and the other Norse discoveries were
+discoveries made by a great race for itself; unconnected as they were
+with the main lines of trade or with religious sentiment, they were
+unrealised by the general consciousness of the West. A full account of
+the Norse voyages to America was lying at the Vatican when Columbus was
+searching for proofs of land within reach,&mdash;of India, as he expected, in
+the place where he found an unknown continent and a new world. But no
+one knew of these; even the Greenland col<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>ony had been lost and
+forgotten in the fifteenth century; in 1553 the English sailors reached
+the land of Archangel without a suspicion that Ohthere or Thorer Hund
+had been there six hundred years before; Russia from the thirteenth to
+the sixteenth centuries was almost out of sight and mind under the
+Tartar and Moslem rule; but the missionaries and merchants and
+travellers who followed the crusading armies to the Euphrates, and crept
+along the caravan routes to Ceylon and the China Sea, added Further and
+Central Asia&mdash;"Thesauri Arabum et divitis Indi&aelig;"&mdash;to the knowledge of
+Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>And as this knowledge was bound up with gain; as the Polos and their
+companions had really opened to the knowledge of the West those great
+prizes of material wealth which even the Rome of Trajan had never fully
+grasped, and which had been shared between Arabs and natives without a
+rival for so long; it was not likely to be easily forgotten. From that
+time, at the end of the thirteenth century, to the success of the
+Portuguese on another road, at the end of the fifteenth, European
+interest was fairly engaged in pressing in upon the old land-routes and
+getting an ever larger share of their profits.</p>
+
+<p>(3) There was another side of the same problem, a still brighter hope
+for men who could dare to try it. By finding a sea-path to the Indian
+store-house, mariners like the Venetians and Genoese, or their Spanish
+pupils, might cut into the treasuries of the world at their very source,
+found a trade-empire for their country, and gain the sole command of
+heaven on earth, of the true terrestrial paradise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then masters of the wealth of the East and of the fighting power of the
+West, the Christian nations might crush their old enemy, Islam, between
+two weights, hammer and anvil; might fairly strike for the rule of the
+entire habitable globe.</p>
+
+<p>It was with thoughts of this kind, vaguely inspired by the Crusades and
+their legacy of discovery from Bagdad to Cathay, that the Vivaldi left
+Genoa to find an ocean way round Africa in 1281-91, "with the hope of
+going to the parts of the Indies"; that Malocello reached the Canary
+Islands about 1270; and that volunteers went on the same quest nearly
+twenty times in the next four generations before their spasmodic efforts
+were organised and pressed on to achievement by Henry and his Portuguese
+(1412-1497).</p>
+
+<p>(4) Lastly, the renaissance of Europe in the crusading age was not only
+practical but spiritual. Science was at last touched and changed by the
+new life scarcely less than the art of war, or the social state of the
+towns, or the trade of the commercial republics. And geography and its
+kindred were not long in feeling some change, though it was very slowly
+realised and made useful. The first notice of the magnet in the West is
+of about 1180; the use of this by sailors is perhaps rightly dated from
+the thirteenth century and the discoveries of Amalphi.</p>
+
+<p>But to return. We must trace more definitely the preparation which has
+been generally described for the work of Prince Henry first in the
+pilgrim-warriors, and the travellers of the New Age, merchants or
+preachers or sight-seers, who follow out the East<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>ern land-routes; next
+in the seamen who begin to break the spell of the Western Ocean and to
+open up the high seas, the true high-roads of the world; lastly in the
+students who most of all, in their maps and globes and instruments and
+theories, are the trainers and masters and spiritual ancestors of the
+Hero of Discovery.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these classes supplied the matter, the attractions and
+rewards of the exploring movement; the others may be said to provide the
+form by which success was reached, genius in seamanship.</p>
+
+<p>And the one was as much needed as the other.</p>
+
+<p>Human reason did its work so well because of a reasonable hope; men
+crept round Africa in face of the Atlantic storms because of the golden
+East beyond.</p>
+
+<p>It was as we have seen the land travellers of the twelfth and thirteenth
+and fourteenth centuries who laid open that golden East to Europe, and
+added inspiring knowledge to a dream and a tradition. And of these land
+travellers the first worth notice are S&aelig;wulf of Worcester, Adelard of
+Bath, and Daniel of Kiev, three of that host of peaceful pilgrims who
+followed the conquerors of the First Crusade (1096-9). All of these left
+their recollections and all of them are of the new time, in sharp
+contrast with the hordes of earlier pilgrims, even the most recent, like
+Bishop Ealdred of Worcester and York, who crowned William the Conqueror,
+or Sweyn Godwineson or Thorer Hund, whose visits are all mere visits of
+penitence. Every fresh conversion of the Northern nations brought a
+fresh stream of devotees to Italy and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> Syria, a fresh revival of the
+fourth century habit of pilgrimage; but when medi&aelig;val Christendom had
+been formed, and religious passion was more steady and less unworldly,
+the discoverer and observer blends with the pilgrim in all the records
+left to us.</p>
+
+<p>S&aelig;wulf was a layman and a trader, who went on a pilgrimage (1102), and
+became a monk at the instance of his confessor, Wulfstan, Bishop of
+Worcester. But though his narrative has been called an immense advance
+on all earlier guide-books, it ends with the Holy Land and does not
+touch even the outlying pilgrim sites, in Mesopotamia or Egypt, visited
+and described by Silvia or Fidelis.</p>
+
+<p>Starting some three years after the Latin capture of Jerusalem in 1099,
+the English traveller takes us up six different routes from Italy to
+Syria, evidence of the vast development of Mediterranean intercourse and
+of practical security against pirates, gained very largely since the
+second millennium began.</p>
+
+<p>His own way, by Monopoli, Corfu, Corinth, and Athens, took him to Rhodes
+"which once had the Idol called Colossus, one of the Seven Wonders of
+the World, but destroyed by the Persians, with nearly all the land of
+Roumania, on their way to Spain. These were the Colossians to whom St.
+Paul wrote."</p>
+
+<p>Thence to Myra in Lycia, "the port of the Adriatic as Constantinople is
+of the &AElig;gean."</p>
+
+<p>Landing at Jaffa, after a sail of thirteen weeks, S&aelig;wulf was soon among
+the wonders of Jerusalem, that had not grown less since Arculf's day. At
+the head of the Sepulchre Church was the famous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> Navel of the Earth,
+"now called Compas, which Christ measured with his own hands, working
+salvation in the midst, as say the Psalms." For the same legends were
+backed by the same texts as in the sixth or seventh century.</p>
+
+<p>Going down to the Jordan, "four leagues east of Jericho," Arabia was
+seen beyond "hateful to all who worship God, but having the Mount whence
+Elias was carried into Heaven in a chariot of fire."</p>
+
+<p>Eighteen days journey from the Jordan is Mount Sinai, by way of Hebron,
+where "Abraham's Holm Oak" was still standing, and where, as pilgrims
+said, he "sat and ate with God," but S&aelig;wulf himself did not go outside
+Palestine, on this side. After travelling through Galilee and noting the
+House of Saint Archi-Triclin (Saint "Ruler-of-the-Feast"), at Cana, he
+made his way to Byzantium by sea, escaping the Saracen cruisers and
+weathering the storms that wrecked in the roads of Jaffa before his eyes
+some twenty of the pilgrim and merchant fleet then lying at anchor. But
+not only can we see from this how the religious and commercial traffic
+of the Mediterranean had been increased by the Crusades; the main lines
+of that traffic had been changed. Since the Moslem conquest, visitors
+had mostly come to Palestine through Egypt; the Christian conquest of
+Syria re-opened the direct sea route as the conversion of Hungary and
+north-east Europe had re-opened the direct land route one hundred years
+before (<i>c.</i> 1000-1100). The lines of the Danube valley and of the
+"Roman Sea" were both cleared, and the West again poured itself into the
+East as it had not done<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> since Alexander's conquest, since the Oriental
+reaction had set in about the time of the Christian era, rising higher
+and higher into the full tide of the Persian and Arabian revivals of
+Asiatic Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Among the varied classes of pilgrim-crusaders in S&aelig;wulf's day were
+student-devotees like Adelard and Daniel from the two extremes of
+Christendom, England and Russia, Bath and Kiev; northern sea-kings like
+Sigurd, or Robert of Normandy; even Jewish travellers, rabbis, or
+merchants like Benjamin of Tudela. All these, as following in the wake
+of the First Crusade, and for the most part stopping at the high-water
+mark of its advance, belong to the same group and time and impulse as
+S&aelig;wulf himself, and are clearly marked off from the great thirteenth
+century travellers, who acted as pioneers of the Western Faith and
+Empire rather than as camp-followers of its armies.</p>
+
+<p>But except Abbot Daniel (<i>c.</i> 1106) and Rabbi Benjamin (<i>c.</i> 1160-73)
+who stand apart, none of our other pilgrim examples of twelfth century
+exploration have anything original or remarkable about them.</p>
+
+<p>Adelard or Athelard, the countryman of S&aelig;wulf and Willibald, is still
+more the herald of Roger Bacon and of Neckam. He is a theorist far more
+than a traveller, and his journey through Egypt and Arabia (<i>c.</i>
+1110-14) appears mainly as one of scientific interest. "He sought the
+causes of all things and the mysteries of Nature," and it was with "a
+rich spoil of letters," especially of Greek and Arab manuscripts, that
+he returned to England to translate into Latin one of the chief works of
+Saracen astronomy, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> Kharizmian tables. We have already met with him
+in trying to follow the transmission of Greek and Indian geography or
+world-science through the Arabs to Europe and to Christendom.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map06"></a><img src="./images/map06.jpg"
+alt="THE SPANISH-ARABIC MAP OF 1109."
+title="THE SPANISH-ARABIC MAP OF 1109." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE SPANISH-ARABIC MAP OF 1109.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Abbot Daniel of Kiev in himself is a very ordinary and rather mendacious
+traveller, a harmless, devout pilgrim, as careless in all matters of
+fact as Antonine the Martyr. But, as representing the beginnings of
+Russian expansion, he is of almost unique interest and value. His tract
+upon the Holy Road is one of the first proofs of his people's interest
+in the world beyond their steppes, and of that nation's readiness and
+purpose to expand Christian civilisation in the East as the Franks,
+after breaking through the Western Moslems, were now doing. Medi&aelig;val
+Russia, Russia before the Tartars, after the Northmen, was now a very
+different thing from the "people fouler than dogs" of the Arab
+explorers. The House of Ruric had guided and organised a nation second
+to none in Europe, till it had fallen into the general lines of
+Christian development. Jury trial and justices in assize it had taken
+from the West; its church and faith and architecture, its manners and
+morals came to it from the court of the Roman Empire on the Bosphorus.
+Daniel and the other Russians, who passed through that Empire in the age
+of Nestor for trade or for religion, were the vanguard of a great
+national and race expansion that is now just beginning to "bestride the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>In 1022 and 1062 two monks of Kiev are recorded, out of a crowd of the
+unknown, as visitors to Syria, and about 1106, probably through the news
+of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> Frankish conquest, Daniel left his native river, the Snow, in
+Little Russia, and passed through Byzantium and by way of the
+Archipelago and Cyprus to Jaffa and Jerusalem, describing roughly in
+versts or half-miles the whole distance and that of every stage.</p>
+
+<p>His tone is much like S&aelig;wulf's and his mistakes are quite as bad, though
+he tells of "nothing but what was seen with these self-same eyes." The
+"Sea of Sodom exhales a burning and fetid breath that lays waste all the
+country, as with burning sulphur, for the torments of Hell lie under
+it." This, however, he did not see; Saracen brigands prevented him, and
+he learnt that "the very smell of the place would make one ill."</p>
+
+<p>His measurements of distance are all his own. Capernaum is "in the
+desert, not far from the Great Sea (Levant) and eight versts (four
+miles) from C&aelig;sarea," half the distance given in the next chapter as
+between Acre and Haifa, and less than half the breadth of the Sea of
+Tiberias. The Jordan reminds Daniel of his own river, the Snow,
+especially in its sheets of stagnant water.</p>
+
+<p>Samaria, or "Sebastopol," he confuses with Nablous; Bethshan with
+Bashan; Lydda with Ramleh; C&aelig;sarea Philippi with the greater C&aelig;sarea on
+the coast. Not far from Capernaum and the Jordan is "another large river
+that comes out of the Lake of Gennesaret, and falls into the Sea of
+Tiberias, passing by a large <i>town</i> called Decapolis." From Mt. Lebanon
+"six rivers flow east into the Lake of Gennesaret and six west towards
+great Antioch, so that this is called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> Mesopotamia, or the land between
+the rivers, and Abraham's Haran is between these rivers that feed the
+Lake of Gennesaret."</p>
+
+<p>Daniel has left us also an account of his visits to Mar Saba Convent in
+the Kedron gorge near the Dead Sea, to Damascus in the train of Prince
+Baldwin, and to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, to
+witness the miracle of the Holy Fire, noticed by Bernard the Wise, as a
+sort of counterpart to the wonder of Beth-Horon, also retold by Daniel
+"when the sun stood still while Joshua conquered King Og of Bashan."</p>
+
+<p>It is not in outlook nor in knowledge nor even in the actual ground
+traversed that these later pilgrims shew any advance on the chief of the
+earlier travellers; it is in the new life and movement, in the new hope
+they give us of greater things than these. This is the interest&mdash;to
+us&mdash;in King Sigurd of Norway (1107-11), a Crusader-Norseman in the new
+age that owed so much of its very life to the Northmen, but who is only
+to be noticed here as a possible type of the explorer-chief&mdash;possible,
+not actual&mdash;for his voyage added nothing definite to the knowledge or
+expansion of Christendom. His campaign in Jacob's Land or Gallicia, and
+his attack on Moslem Lisbon, some forty years before it became the head
+and heart of Portugal, like his exploits in the Balearics, shew us a
+point in the steady decline of western Islam, and so far may be called a
+preparation for Prince Henry's work, but properly as a chapter of
+Portuguese, not of general European, growth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were many others like Sigurd,&mdash;Robert of Normandy, Godric the
+English pirate, who fought his way through the Saracen fleets with a
+spear-shaft for his banner, Edgar the &AElig;theling, grandson of Edmund
+Ironside, the Dartmouth fleet of 1147 which retook Lisbon,&mdash;but the
+Latin conquest of Syria has now brought us past the Crusades, in the
+narrower sense, to their results, in the exploration of the Further
+East.</p>
+
+<p>The first great name of this time, of our next main chapter of
+Preparation, is Benjamin of Tudela, but standing as he does well within
+the earlier age, when the primary interest was the Holy War itself, he
+is also the last of the Palestine travellers&mdash;of those Westerns whose
+real horizon was the sacred East of Syria. He is a little before the
+awakening of universal interest in the unknown world, for the Christian
+Northmen lost with the new definiteness of the new faith much of their
+old infinite unrest and fierce inquisitive love of wandering, and their
+spirit, though related to the whole Catholic West by the crusading
+movement, was not fully realised till the world had been explored and
+made known, till the men of Europe were at home in every country and on
+every sea.</p>
+
+<p>Benjamin, as a Jew and a rabbi, has the interest of a sectary, and his
+work was not of a kind that would readily win the attention of the
+Christian world. So the value of his travels was hidden till religious
+divisions had ceased to govern the direction of progress. He visited the
+Jewish communities from Navarre to Bagdad, and described those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> beyond
+from Bagdad to China, but he wrote for his own people and none but they
+seem to have cared about him. What he discovered (<i>c.</i> 1160-73) was for
+himself and for Judaism, and only his actual place in the twelfth
+century makes him a fore-runner of the Polos or of Prince Henry. We may
+see this from his hopeless strangeness and confusion in Rome, like a
+Frank in Pekin or Delhi. "The Church of St. Peter is on the site of the
+great palace of Julius C&aelig;sar, near which are eighty Halls of the eighty
+Kings called Emperors from Tarquin to Pepin the father of Charles, who
+first took Spain from the Saracens.... In the outskirts of the city is
+the palace of Titus, who was deposed by three hundred senators for
+wasting three years over the siege of Jerusalem which he should have
+finished in two."</p>
+
+<p>And so on&mdash;with the "Hall of Galba, three miles round and having a
+window for each day in the year," with St. John Lateran and its Hebrew
+trophies, "two copper pillars from the temple of Solomon, that sweat at
+the anniversary of the burning of the Temple," and the "statues of
+Samson and of Absalom" in the same place. So with Sorrento, "built by
+Hadarezer when he fled before King David," with the old Roman tunnel
+between Naples and Pozzuoli, "built by Romulus who feared David and
+Joab," with Apulia, "which is from King Pul of Assyria"&mdash;in all this we
+have as it were Catholic mythology turned inside out, David put into
+Italy when the West put Trajan at the sources of the Nile. It was not
+likely that writing of this sort would be read in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> the society of the
+Popes and the Schoolmen, the friars and the crusaders, any more than the
+Buddhist records of missionary travel from China one thousand years
+before. The religious passion which had set the crusaders in motion,
+would keep Catholics as long as it might from the Jews, Turks, infidels,
+and heretics they conquered and among whom they settled.</p>
+
+<p>But with the final loss of Jerusalem by the Latins, and the overthrow of
+the Bagdad Caliphate by the Mongol Tartars (1258), the barrier of
+fanatic hatred was weakened, and Central Asia became an attraction to
+Christendom instead of a dim horror, without form and void, except for
+Huns and Turks and demons. The Papal court sent mission after mission to
+convert the Tartars, who were wavering, as men supposed, between Islam
+and the Church, and with the first missionaries to the House of Ghenghiz
+went the first Italian merchants who opened the court of the Great Khan
+to Venice and to Genoa.</p>
+
+<p>As early as 1243 an Englishman is noticed as living among the Western
+Horde, the conquerors of Russia; but official intercourse begins in 1246
+with John de Plano Carpini. This man, a Franciscan of Naples, started in
+1245 as the Legate of Pope Innocent IV. to the Tartars, took the
+northern overland route through Germany and Poland, reached Kiev, "the
+metropolis of Russia," through help of the Duke of Cracow, and at last
+appeared in the camp of Batou, on the Volga. Hence by the Sea of Aral,
+"of moderate size with many islands," to the court of Batou's brother,
+the Great Khan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> "Cuyuc" himself, where the Christian stranger found
+himself one of a crowd of four thousand envoys from every part of Asia
+(1246).</p>
+
+<p>After sixteen months Carpini made his way back by the same route, "over
+the plains" and through Kiev, to give at Rome the first genuine account
+of Tartary, in its widest sense, from the Dnieper to China (1247).</p>
+
+<p>The great rivers and lakes and mountains of Russia and Turkestan, the
+position and distribution of the land and its peoples, "even from the
+Caspian to the Northern Ocean, where men are said to have dogs' faces,"
+are now first described by an honest and clear-headed and keen-eyed
+observer, neither timid nor credulous.</p>
+
+<p>Carpini really begins the reliable western map of Further Asia. His
+personal knowledge did not reach China or India, but in his <i>Book of the
+Tartars</i>, Europe was told nearly the whole truth, and almost nothing but
+the truth, about the vast tract and the great races between the
+Carpathians and the Gobi Desert. In the same was included the first fair
+account of the manners and history of the "Mongols whom we call
+Tartars," and the simple truthfulness of the Friar stands out in all the
+allusions that make his work so human;&mdash;his interviews with the Tartar
+Chiefs and with brother-travellers, his dangers and difficulties from
+Lettish robbers and abandoned or guarded ferries, his passage of the
+Dnieper on the ice, his last three weeks on "trotting"<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> hacks over
+the steppes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p><p>We have gone a good way from Abbot Daniel, for in John de Plano Carpini
+Christian Europe has at last a real explorer, a real historian, a
+genuine man of science, in the service of the Church and of discovery.</p>
+
+<p>Carpini was followed after six years by William de Rubruquis, a Fleming
+sent by St. Louis of France on the same errand of conversion and
+discovery (1253), but by a different route, through the Black Sea, and
+Cherson, over the Don "at the Head of Azov, that divides Europe and
+Asia, as the Nile divides Asia and Africa," to the great camp on the
+Volga, "the greatest river I had ever seen, which comes from Great
+Bulgaria in the north and falls into a lake (the Caspian Sea), that
+would take four months to journey round." Higher in their course the Don
+and the Volga "are not more than ten days' journey apart, but diverge as
+they run south." The Caspian is "made out of the Volga and the rivers
+that flow into it from Persia." Thence through the Iron Gates of
+Derbend, between the Caspian and the Caucasus, "which Alexander made to
+shut the barbarians out of Persia." Helped by a Nestorian, who possessed
+influence at the Tartar Court, like so many of his Church, Rubruquis
+reached the "Alps" of the Altai country, where he found a small
+Nestorian lordship, governed like the Papal States, by a priest, who was
+at least one original of the great medi&aelig;val phantom&mdash;Prester John.</p>
+
+<p>Crossing the great steppes of eastern "Tartary," "like the rolling sea
+to look at," Rubruquis at last reached the Mongol headquarters at
+Caracorum, satisfied on the way that the Caspian had no northern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+outlet, as Strabo and Isidore had imagined. Thence he made his way home
+without much fresh result.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map07"></a><img src="./images/map07.jpg"
+alt="THE PSALTER MAP OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY."
+title="THE PSALTER MAP OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE PSALTER MAP OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Though Rubruquis is well called the most brilliant and literary of the
+medi&aelig;val travellers, his mission was fruitless, and the interest of his
+work lay rather in recording custom and myth&mdash;in sociology&mdash;than in
+adding anything definite to the geographical knowledge of the West. John
+de Plano had already been over the ground to Caracorum, and recorded all
+the main characteristics of the lands west of the Gobi Desert. The
+further advance, east to China, south to India, was yet to come.</p>
+
+<p>But while Rubruquis was still among the Tartars, Nicolo and Matteo Polo,
+the uncles of the more famous Marco, were trading (1255-65) to the
+Crimea and the districts of southern Russia that were now under the
+Western Horde,&mdash;and soon after, following the caravans to Bokhara, they
+were drawn on to the court of Kublai Khan, then somewhere near the wall
+of China. After a most friendly reception they were sent back to Europe
+with presents and a letter to Pope Clement IV., offering a welcome and
+maintenance to Christian teachers. Kublai "had often questioned the
+Polos of the Western lands," and now he asked for one hundred "Latins,
+to shew him the Christian faith, for Christ he held to be the only God."
+Furnished with the imperial passport of the Golden Tablet, our merchants
+made their way back to Acre in April, 1269.</p>
+
+<p>They found the old pope dead, Gregory X. in his place, and he shewed a
+coolness in answering the Khan's requests, but in 1271 they set out on
+their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> second journey to the furthest East, taking with them two friar
+preachers and their nephew Marco, now nineteen years of age.</p>
+
+<p>In Armenia the friars took alarm at the troubled state of the nearer
+East and turned back, just as Augustine of Canterbury tried to find a
+way out of the mission to the English that Pope Gregory I. laid upon him
+in 597. For the Church it was perhaps as momentous a time now as then;
+the thirteenth century, if it had ended in the Christianising of the
+Mongol Empire, would have turned the Catholic victory of the fourth and
+sixth centuries in the West, the victory that had been worked out in the
+next seven hundred years to fuller and fuller realisation, into a world
+empire,&mdash;which did come at last for European civilisation, but not for
+Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>The Polos however kept on their way north-east for more than "one
+thousand days," three years and a half, till they stood in the presence
+of Kublai Khan; beyond Gobi and the Great Wall and the mountain barriers
+of China, in Cambaluc or Pekin, "princess encrowned of cities capital."</p>
+
+<p>Their journey was first through Armenia Lesser and Greater, then through
+Mosul (Nineveh) to Bagdad, where the last "Caliph and Pope of the
+Saracens" had been butchered by Holgalu and his Tartars, sewn in a sack
+and thrown into the Tigris by one account, walled up alive by another,
+in 1258. But though the stories in Marco's journal are a main interest
+of his work, as a summary and reflection of the science and history and
+general culture of the Christian world of his time, we must not here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+look outside his geography. And his first place-note of value is on the
+Caspian, "which containeth in circuit twenty-eight hundred miles and is
+like a lake, having no union with other seas and in which are many
+islands, cities, and castles." The extent of the Nestorian missions,
+"through all parts of India and to Cairo and Bagdad, and wherever
+Christians dwell," strikes him even now at the beginning of his
+travels&mdash;much more when he finds their churches on the Hoang Ho and the
+Yang-Tse-Kiang&mdash;declining indeed, but still living to witness to the
+part which that great heresy had played as an intermediary between the
+further and the nearer East&mdash;a part which history has never yet worked
+out. Entering Persia as traders, the Polos went naturally to Ormuz,
+already the great mart of Islam for the Indian trade, where Europeans
+really entered the third, and, to them, unknown belt of the world, after
+passing from a zone of known home-land through one of enemies' country,
+known and only known as such. Failing to take the sea route at Ormuz for
+China, as they had hoped, our Italians were obliged to strike back
+north-east, through Persia and the Pamir, the Kashgar district and the
+Gobi steppes, to Cathay and the pleasure domes of Kublai, visiting
+Caracorum and the Altai country on the way, by a turn due north. In 1275
+they were in Shang-tu, the Xanadu<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> of Coleridge&mdash;the summer capital
+of Kublai Khan&mdash;and not till 1292 did they get leave to turn their faces
+to the West once more.</p>
+
+<p>Here the Polos became what may be called consulting engineers to the
+Mongol Court; Marco was even made in 1277 a commissioner of the Imperial
+Council, and soon after sent upon government missions to Yunnan in
+extreme south-west China and to Yangchow city.</p>
+
+<p>The greater part of Marco's own memoirs is taken up with his account of
+the thirty-four provinces of the Tartar Empire that centred round the
+"six parts of Cathay and the nine parts of Mangi," the districts of
+northern and southern China as we know them,&mdash;an account of the roads,
+rivers, and towns, the trade, the Court and the Imperial Ports, the
+customs and manner of life among the subject peoples in that Empire,
+perhaps the largest ever known. Especially do the travellers dwell on
+the public roads from Pekin or Cambaluc through all the provinces, the
+ten thousand Royal inns upon the highways, the two hundred thousand
+horses kept for the public service, the wonderful speed of transit in
+the Great Khan's embassages, "so that they could go from Pekin to the
+wall of China in two days."</p>
+
+<p>But scarcely less is said about the great rivers&mdash;the arteries of
+Chinese commerce, even more than the caravan routes,&mdash;above all, the
+Yang-Tse-Kiang, "the greatest stream in the world, like an arm of the
+sea, flowing above one hundred days' journey from its source into the
+ocean, and into which flow countless others, making it so great that
+incredible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> quantities of merchandise are brought by this river. It
+flows," exclaims Marco, "through sixteen provinces, past the quays of
+two hundred cities, at one of which I saw at one time five thousand
+vessels, and there are other marts that have more."</p>
+
+<p>The breadth and depth and length and merchandise of the Pulisangan and
+the Caramaran are only less than the Kiang's; from the point where Marco
+crossed the second of these, there was not another bridge till it
+reached the ocean, hundreds of miles away, "by reason of its exceeding
+greatness."</p>
+
+<p>Lastly Pekin, the capital of the Empire, with Quinsai and the other
+provincial capitals of Mangi and Cathay, call out the unbounded
+admiration of the Polos as of every other Western traveller, from the
+Moslem Ibn Batuta to the Christian friars of the fourteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Pekin, two days' journey from the ocean, the residence of the Court in
+December, January, and February, in the extreme north-east of Cathay,
+had been lately rebuilt in a "central square of twenty-four miles in
+compass, and twelve suburbs, three or four miles long, adjoining each of
+the twelve gates," where merchants and strangers lived, each nation with
+separate "burses" or store-houses, where they lodged. From this centre
+to the land of Gog and Magog and the champaign-land of Bargu, the Great
+Khan travelled every year in midsummer for the fresh air of the plateau
+country of central Asia, as well as for a better view of the great
+Russian and Bactrian sub-kingdoms of his House. The six months of spring
+and autumn were spent in slow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> progresses through central and southern
+China to Thibet on one side, and to Tonquin on the other. But greater
+even than Pekin, Quinsai, or Kansay, the City of Heaven, in southern
+China, though no longer the capital even of a separate Kingdom of Mangi,
+was the crowning work of Chinese civilisation. It surpassed the other
+cities of Kublai, as much as these overshadowed the Rome or Venice of
+the thirteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>"In the world there is not its like, for by common report it is one
+hundred miles in circuit, with a lake on one side and a river on the
+other, divided in many channels and upon these and the canals adjoining
+twelve thousand bridges of stone; there are ten market places, each half
+a mile square; great store-houses of stone, where the Indian merchants
+lay by their goods; palaces and gardens on both sides of the main
+street, which, like all the highways in Mangi, is paved with stone on
+each side, and in the midst full of gravel, with passages for the water,
+which keeps it always clean." Salt, silk, fruit, precious stones, and
+cloth of gold are the chief commodities; the paper money of the Great
+Khan is used everywhere; all the people, except a few Nestorians and
+Moslems, are "idolaters, so luxurious and so happy that a man would
+think himself in Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>It was only in recent years that Kublai, or his general, Baian, had
+captured Quinsai and driven out the King of Mangi with his seraglio and
+his friends. The exile till then had only thought of pleasure, of wine,
+women, and song, the "sweet meat which cost him the sour sauce ye have
+heard," on the approach<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> of danger, had fled on board the ships he had
+prepared to "certain impregnable isles in the ocean," and if these
+impregnable islands may be identified with Zipangu or Japan, the
+conquerors pursued him even here. There is nothing more interesting in
+Polo's book than his story of the Mongol failure in the Eastern islands,
+fifteen hundred miles from the coast of Mangi, now first discovered to
+Christian knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>This country of Japan, "very great, the people white, of gentle manners,
+idolaters in religion, under a King of their own," was attacked by
+Kublai's fleet in 1264 for the gold they had, and had in such plenty
+that "the King's house, windows, and floors were covered with it, as
+churches here with lead, as was reported by merchants&mdash;but these were
+few and the King allowed no exportation of the gold."</p>
+
+<p>The expedition was as disastrous a failure as the old Athenian attack
+upon Sicily, and was not repeated, although fleets were sent by the
+Great Khan after this into the Southern Seas, which were supposed to
+have made a discovery of Papua, if not of the Australian Continent. "In
+this Sea of China, over against Mangi," Marco reported, from hearsay "of
+mariners and expert pilots, are 7440 islands, most of them inhabited,
+whereon grows no tree that yields not a pleasant smell&mdash;spices,
+lignum-aloes, and pepper, black and white." The ships of Zaitum (the
+great Chinese mart for Indian trade) knew this sea and its islands, "for
+they go every winter and return every summer, taking a year on the
+voyage, and all this though it is far from India and not subject to the
+Great Khan."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But not only did Polo in these sections of his Guide Book or Memories of
+Travel, record the main features of a coast and ocean scarcely guessed
+at by Europeans, and flatly denied by Ptolemy and the main traditional
+school of Western geography. In his service under Kublai, and in his
+return by sea to Aden and Suez, he opened up the eight provinces of
+Thibet, the whole of south-east Asia from Canton to Bengal, and the
+great archipelago of further India.</p>
+
+<p>Four days' journey beyond the Yang-Tse-Kiang, Marco entered "the wide
+country of Thibet, vanquished and wasted by the Khan for the space of
+twenty days' journey, and become a wilderness wanting inhabitants, where
+wild beasts are excessively increased." Here he tells us of the Yak-oxen
+and great Thibetan dogs as great as asses, of the musk deer, and spices,
+"and salt lakes having beds of pearls," and of the cruel and bestial
+idolatry and social customs of the people.</p>
+
+<p>Still farther to the south-west, Commissioner Polo came to the Cinnamon
+river, called Brius, on the borders of the province of Caindu, to the
+porcelain-making districts of Carazan, governed by Kublai's son, and so
+to Bengal, "which borders upon India," and where Marco laughs at the
+tattoo customs of "flesh embroidery for the dyeing of fools' skins."</p>
+
+<p>Thence back to China, the richest and most famous country of all the
+East, where was "peace so absolute that shops could be left open full of
+wares all night and travellers and strangers could walk day and night
+through every part, untouched and fearing none."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the Polos wearied even of the Court favours and their celestial
+home; they longed to come back to earth, to Frankland and Christendom,
+where life was so rough, and poor, and struggling, but for whose sake
+they had come so far and braved so much. But the Khan was hurt at the
+least hint of their wishes, and it was only a fortunate chance that
+restored them to Europe. Twenty years after their outward start, they
+were dismissed for a time and under solemn promise of return, as the
+guides of an embassy in charge of a Mongol bride for a Persian Khan,
+living at Tabrez and related to Kublai himself. So, in 1292, they
+embarked for India at Zaitum, "one of the fairest ports in the world,
+where is so much pepper that what comes by Alexandria to the West is
+little to it, and, as it were, one of a hundred." Then striking across
+the Gulf of Cheinan, for fifteen hundred miles, and passing "infinite
+islands, with gold and much trade,"&mdash;a gulf "seeming in all like another
+world"&mdash;they reached Ziambar and, after another run of the same
+distance, Java, then supposed by mariners to be the greatest island in
+the world, "above three thousand miles round and under a king who pays
+tribute to none, the Khan himself not offering to subject it, because of
+the length and danger of the voyage."</p>
+
+<p>One hundred miles south-east the fleet touched at Java the Less "in
+compass about two thousand miles, with abundance of treasure and spices,
+ebony, and brazil, and so far to the south that the North Star cannot be
+seen, and none of the stars of the Great Bear." Here they were in great
+fear of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> "those brutish man eaters," with whom they traded for victuals
+and camphire and spices and precious stones, being forced to stay for
+five months by stress of weather&mdash;till they got away into the Bay of
+Bengal, the extreme point of European knowledge until this time, "where
+there are savages living in the deep sea islands with dogs' heads and
+teeth, as I was told, all naked, both men and women, and living the life
+of beasts (Andamans)."<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sailing hence a thousand miles to the west, adds Marco, is Ceylon, "the
+finest island in the world, 2400 miles in circuit, and once 3600, as is
+seen in old maps, but the north winds have made great part of it sea."</p>
+
+<p>Again west for sixty miles, to Malabar, "which is firm continent in
+India the Greater," and where the Polos re-entered as it were the
+horizon of Western knowledge, at the shrine of St. Thomas, the Apostle
+of India.</p>
+
+<p>Here we must leave the Venetians, with only a bare mention of their
+homeward route from Malabar by Murfili and the Valley of Diamonds, by
+Camari, where they had a glimpse of the Pole-Star once more, and by
+Guzerat and Cambay to Socotra, where Marco, in his stay, heard and wrote
+down the first news ever brought to Europe of the "great isle Magaster,"
+or Madagascar, and of Zensibar or Zanzibar.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p><p>Of Polo's account of Hindu customs,&mdash;self-immolation and especially
+Suttee, of Caste, of the Brahminical "thread with one hundred and four
+beads by which to pray"; of their etiquette in eating, drinking, birth,
+marriage, and death&mdash;only the simple fact can be noticed here, that the
+first serious and direct Christian account of India, as of China, is
+also among the most accurate and well judged, and that both in what he
+says and what he leaves unsaid, Messer Marco is a true Herodotus of the
+Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>But not only does his account discover for Europe the extreme east and
+south of Asia; in his last chapter he returns to the Tartars, and after
+adding a few words on the nomades of the central plains, gives us our
+first "Latin" account of Siberia, "where are found great white bears,
+black foxes, and sables; and where are great lakes, frozen except for a
+few months in the year, and crossed in sledges by the fur-traders."</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this the Obscure Land reaches to the furthest North, "near which
+is Russia, where for the most of winter the sun appears not, and the air
+is thick and dark as betimes in the morning with us, where the men are
+pale and squat and live like the beasts, and where on the East men come
+again to the Ocean Sea and the islands of the Falcons."</p>
+
+<p>The work of Marco Polo is the high-water mark of medi&aelig;val land travel;
+the extension of Christendom after him was mainly by the paths of the
+sea; the Roman missions to the Tartars and to Malabar, vigorously and
+stubbornly pressed as they were, ended in unrelieved collapse; only by
+the revolt and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> resurrection of the Russian kingdom did the European
+world permanently and markedly expand on the side of Asia. But a crowd
+of missionaries followed the first traders to Cathay and to Mangi&mdash;Friar
+Odoric, John de Monte Corvino, John de Cora; statesmen like Marignolli
+the Papal Legate, sight-seers like Mandeville followed these; Bishop
+Jordanus of Capua worked for years in Coulam near Cape Comorin (<i>c.</i>
+1325-35); the martyrdom of four friars on April 1, 1322, at Tana, in
+India, became one of the great commemorations of the Latin Church; there
+seemed no cause why Christian missions which had won north and
+north-east Europe should not win central and eastern Asia, whose peoples
+seemed as indifferent, as agnostic, as our own Norse or English pagans.</p>
+
+<p>"The fame of the Latins," says Jordanus, about 1330&mdash;and he is borne out
+by Marino Sanuto&mdash;"is greater in India than among ourselves. Here our
+arrival is always looked for, and said to be predicted in their books.
+Once gain Egypt and launch a fleet even of two galleys on this sea and
+the battle is won." As Egypt could not be gained by arms, it was turned
+by seamanship. Before Polo returned from China, the coasting of Africa
+had begun, and Italian mariners were already in search of the longer way
+to the East.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no work of land travel after that of Messer Marco which
+really adds anything decisive to European knowledge before the fifteenth
+century; the advance of trade intercourse between India and the Italian
+Republics, the gradual liberation of Rus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>sia the use made of the caravan
+routes by some of the most active of the Western clergy, are the chief
+notes of the time between the Polos and Prince Henry; and the flimsy
+fabrications of Mandeville&mdash;"of all liars that type of the first
+magnitude"&mdash;would be fairly left without a word even in a minute history
+of discovery, if he had not, like Ktesias with Herodotus, won a hearing
+for himself and drawn men's minds away from the truth-telling original
+that he travestied, by the sheer force of impudence.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian travels of the Italian Nicolo Conti and the Russian merchant
+Athanasius Nikitin belong to a later time, to the age of the Portuguese
+voyages; they are not part of the preparation for our central subject,
+they are only a somewhat obscure parallel to that subject.</p>
+
+<p>For in the later Middle Ages the chief interest lies elsewhere. The
+expansion of Christendom in the fourteenth century, and still more in
+the fifteenth (Prince Henry's own), is the story of the ventures and the
+successes, not so much of landsmen, as of mariners.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer05.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header02.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MARITIME EXPLORATION.</h3>
+
+<h3>CIRCA 1250-1410.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/i.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="I"
+title="I" />talian, Catalan, French, and English sailors were the forerunners of
+the Portuguese in the fourteenth century, and the latter years of the
+thirteenth. And as in land travel, so in maritime, the republics of
+Italy, Amalphi, Pisa, Venice, and Genoa, were the leaders and examples
+of Europe. Just as the Italian Dante is the first great name in the new
+literatures of the West, so the Italian Dorias and Vivaldi and Malocelli
+are the first to take up again the old Greek and Ph&oelig;nician enterprise
+in the ocean. Since Hanno of Carthage and Pharaoh Necho's Tyrians, there
+had been nothing in the nature of a serious trial to find a way round
+Africa, and even the knowledge of the Western or Fortunate Islands, so
+clear to Ptolemy and Strabo, had become dim. The Vikings and their
+crusader-followers had done nothing south of Gibraltar Straits.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map08"></a><a href="./images/map08.jpg"><img src="./images/map08_th.jpg"
+alt="THE S.W., OR AFRICAN SECTION OF THE HEREFORD MAP. C. 1275-1300."
+title="THE S.W., OR AFRICAN SECTION OF THE HEREFORD MAP. C. 1275-1300." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE S.W., OR AFRICAN SECTION OF THE HEREFORD MAP. C. 1275-1300.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But while the Crusades were still dragging along a weary and hopeless
+warfare under St. Louis of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> France and Prince Edward of England,
+discovery began again in the Atlantic. In 1270 Lancelot Malocello found
+the Canaries; in 1281 or 1291 the Genoese galleys of Tedisio Doria and
+the Vivaldi, trying to "go by sea to the ports of India to trade there,"
+reached Gozora or Cape Non in Barbary, the southern Ultima Thule, and
+according to a later story "sailed the Sea of Ghinoia (Guinea) to a city
+of &AElig;thiopia," where even legend lost sight of them, for in 1312 nothing
+more had been heard. From the frequent and emphatic references to this
+attempt in the literature of the later Middle Ages, it is clear that the
+daring Genoese drew upon themselves the attention of the learned and
+mercantile worlds, as much as one would naturally expect. For these men
+are the pioneers of Christian explorations in the southern world&mdash;the
+precursors of all the ocean voyages that led to the discoveries of
+Prince Henry, Da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan,&mdash;the first who directly
+challenged the disheartening theories of geographers, such as Ptolemy,
+the inaction and traditionalism of the Arabs, and the elaborate
+falsities of story tellers, who, in the absence of real knowledge, had a
+grand opening for terrible fairy tales.</p>
+
+<p>The first age, if so it may be called, of South Atlantic and African
+voyages was purely Italian; the second was chiefly marked by the efforts
+of the Spanish States to equip fleets and send out explorers under
+Genoese captains. In 1317 the Genoese Emmanuel Pessanha became Admiral
+of Portugal; in 1341 three ships manned by Portuguese and "other
+Spaniards"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> with some Italians put out from Lisbon in search of
+Malocello's "Rediscovered" islands, granted by the Pope to Don Luis of
+Spain in a Bull of November 15, 1334, and now described, from the
+original letters of Florentine merchants and partners in the venture of
+1341, by Boccaccio. "Land was found on the fifth day after leaving the
+Tagus" (July 1); the fleet stayed till November, and then brought back
+four natives and products of the islands. The chief pilot thought these
+were near nine hundred miles from Seville, and we may fully suppose that
+the archipelago of thirteen, now first explored and described,
+represents the Fortunate Islands of Greek geography, the Canaries of
+modern maps, and that the five chief islands with their naked but not
+quite savage people, with excellent wood houses, and flocks of goats,
+palms, and figs, gardens and corn patches, rocky mountains and pine
+forests, were our Ferro, Palma, Gomera, Grand Canary, and Teneriffe. The
+last they took to be thirty thousand feet high, with its white scarped
+sides looking like a fortress, but terrified at signs of enchantment
+they did not dare to land, and returned to Spain, leaving the Islands of
+the Rediscovered to be visited as a convenient slave depot by merchants
+and pirates from the Peninsula till the Norman Conquest of B&eacute;thencourt
+in 1402.</p>
+
+<p>The voyage of 1341 gained much by attempting little; the Catalan voyage
+of 1346, which followed close upon it, was something of a return to the
+wilder and larger schemes of the first Genoese. On August 10, 1346,
+Jayme Ferrer left Majorca "to go to the River of Gold," but of the said
+galley, says the Cata<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>lan map of 1375, no news has since been heard. On
+the same map, however, the explorers' boat is sketched off the "Cape
+Finisterre of west Africa," and there is, after all, some ground for
+supposing this to be nothing more than a mercantile venture to the Gold
+Coast of Guinea, which was becoming known to the traders of Nismes,
+Marseilles, and the Christian Mediterranean by the caravan traffic
+across the Sahara. Even Prince Henry began in the same way; Guinea was
+his half-way house for India.</p>
+
+<p>About the same date (<i>c.</i> 1350) as the Catalan voyage is the Book of the
+Spanish Friar, "of the voyage south to the River of Gold," which gives a
+more than half fabulous story of travel, first by sea beyond Capes Non
+and Bojador, then by land across the heart of Africa to the Mountains of
+the Moon, the city of Melli, where dwelt Prester John, and "the
+Euphrates, which comes from the terrestrial Paradise," where behind some
+real notes of Barbary coasting, perhaps gained from the Catalans of
+1346, there is little but a confused transcript of Edrisi's geography.
+Yet this was one of the books which helped to fix the notion of a double
+Nile, Northern and Western, a Nile of Egypt and a Nile of the Blacks,
+with a common source in the Mountains of the Moon, upon the Christian
+science of the time, as the Arab geographers had fixed it upon Islam.</p>
+
+<p>The next piece of Atlantic exploration was a romantic accident. In the
+reign of Edward III., an Englishman named Robert Machin eloped with Anne
+d'Arfet from Bristol (<i>c.</i> 1370), was driven from the coast of France by
+a north-east wind, and after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> thirteen days sighted an island, Madeira,
+where he landed. His ship was swept away by the storm, his mistress died
+of terror and exhaustion, and five days after Machin was laid beside her
+by his men, who had saved the ship's boat and now ran her upon the
+African coast. They were enslaved, like other Christian captives of the
+Barbary corsairs, but in 1416 a fellow-prisoner, one Morales of Seville,
+an old pilot, was ransomed with others and sent back to Spain. On his
+way Morales was captured by a Portuguese captain, Zarco, the servant of
+Prince Henry, the rediscoverer of Madeira, and through this the full
+story of Machin and his island, came to be known in the court of the
+Navigator Prince, who promptly made his gain of the new knowledge a
+lasting one, by the voyage of Zarco in 1420.</p>
+
+<p>Last among the immediate predecessors of Prince Henry's seamen come the
+French. In the seventeenth century it was claimed, on newly found
+evidence, that between 1364 and 1410 the men of Dieppe and Rouen opened
+a regular trade in gold, ivory, and malaguette pepper with the coast of
+Guinea, and built stations at Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, and La Mine,
+which they named from the precious metal found there. But all this is
+more than doubtful, and the genuine Norman voyage of De B&eacute;thencourt in
+1402 shows us nothing but the Canaries and the north-west coast of
+Morocco. Cape Non, or Cape Bojador, was still the European Furthest on
+the African coast.</p>
+
+<p>The French Seigneur was stirred up to attack the Fortunate Islands by
+two events. First in 1382 one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> Lopez, a captain of Seville sailing to
+Gallicia, was driven by a tempest to Grand Canary, and lived among the
+natives seven years till he and his men were denounced for writing home
+and inviting rescue. To stop this intrigue they, the "thirteen Christian
+brothers" whose testament reached B&eacute;thencourt twelve years later, were
+all massacred. News of this and of the voyage of a Spaniard named
+Becarra to the same islands at the same time, reached Rochelle about
+1400, and found several French adventurers ready for a trial. The chief
+of these, Jean de B&eacute;thencourt, Lord of Grainville, and Gadifer de la
+Salle, a needy knight, started in July, 1402, to conquer in the sea a
+new kingdom for themselves. Though the leaders quarrelled and Grand
+Canary beat off all attacks, the enterprise was successful in the main,
+and several of the islands became Christian colonies,&mdash;a first step
+towards the colonial empires of the great European expansion, as the
+record of B&eacute;thencourt's chaplains is the first chapter of modern
+colonial history.</p>
+
+<p>But nothing is clearer in this tract than its limitations. The French
+colonists as late as 1425 seem to know nothing of the African coast
+beyond Cape Bojador; they look upon the Canaries rather as an extension
+of Spain and of Europe than as the beginning of a new world. They are
+anxious to get to the River of Gold and traffic there, but they do not
+know the way, save by report. De B&eacute;thencourt had been to Bojador
+himself, and "if things in that country are such as they are described
+in the Book of the Spanish Friar," he meant to open a way to the River<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+of Gold, for, the Friar says, "it is only one hundred and fifty leagues
+from Cape Bojador, and the map proves the same&mdash;which is only a three
+days' voyage for sailing boats&mdash;whereby access would be gained to the
+land of Prester John, whence come so many riches." But as yet our
+Normans are only "eager to know the state of the neighbouring countries,
+both islands and <i>terra firma</i>:" they do not know the coast beyond the
+"Utmost Cape" of Bojador, which had taken the place of the first Arab
+Finisterre, Cape Non,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Nun, or Nam, as the limit of navigation.</p>
+
+<p>We are now at the very time of Prince Henry himself; his first voyage
+was in 1412. De B&eacute;thencourt died in 1425, and it is quite needless to
+follow out at length the stories, however interesting, of sporadic
+navigation in other parts of the European Seas. Between 1380-95 the
+Venetian Zeni sailed in the service of Henry Sinclair, Earl of the
+Orkneys, to Greenland, and brought back fisher stories, which read like
+those of Central America, of its man-eating Caribs and splendid
+barbarism. Somewhat earlier, about 1349, Ivar Bardsen of Norway paid one
+of the last of Christian visits to the Arctic colonies of Greenland, the
+legacy of the eleventh century, now sinking into ruin; but neither of
+these voyages gives us any new knowledge of the Unknown which was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> now
+being pierced, not from the North and East, but from the South and West.</p>
+
+<p>Both in land travel and sea voyages we have traced the progress of
+Western exploration and discovery up to its Hero, the real central
+figure both in the history of Portugal and of the European expansion. A
+little remains to be said on the other lines of preparation for his work
+in scientific theory and national development from the Age of the
+Crusades.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer06.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header03.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE IN CHRISTENDOM FROM THE FIRST CRUSADES.</h3>
+
+<h3>CIRCA 1100-1460.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/b.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="B"
+title="B" />efore the Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
+scientific geography of Christendom, as we have seen, was mainly a
+borrowed thing. From the ninth century to the time of the Medi&aelig;val and
+Christian Renaissance, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
+centuries, the Arabs were the recognised heirs of Greek science, and
+what Franks or Latins knew of Ptolemy or Strabo was either learnt or
+corrected in the schools of Cordova and Bagdad.</p>
+
+<p>But when the Northmen and the Holy War with Islam had once thoroughly
+aroused the practical energies of Christendom, it began to expand in
+mind as well as in empire, and in the time of Prince Henry, in the
+fifteenth century, a Portuguese could say: "Our discoveries of coasts
+and islands and mainland were not made without foresight and knowledge.
+For our sailors went out very well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> taught, and furnished with
+instruments and rules of <i>astrology</i> and geometry, things which all
+mariners and map-makers must know."</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map09"></a><a href="./images/map09.jpg"><img src="./images/map09_th.jpg"
+alt="THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MARINO SANUTO. C. 1306."
+title="THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MARINO SANUTO. C. 1306." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MARINO SANUTO. C. 1306.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In fact, compass, astrolabe, timepiece, and charts, were all in use on
+the Mediterranean about 1400, just as they were to be found among the
+Arab traders of the Indian Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>In this section it will be enough to glance hastily at the later and
+growingly independent science of Christendom, from the time that it
+ceased merely to follow the lead of Islam, and thought and even invented
+for itself. In another chapter we have seen something of the lasting and
+penetrating influence of Greek and Moslem and Hindu tradition upon the
+Western thought, which has conquered by absorbing all its rivals; we
+must not forget that some original self-reliant work in geographical
+theory not less than in practical exploration is absolutely needed to
+explain the very fact of Prince Henry and his life&mdash;a student's life,
+far more even than a statesman's. And after all, the invention of
+instruments, the drawing of maps and globes, the reckoning of distances,
+is not less practical than the most daring and successful travel. For
+navigation, the first and prime demand is a means of safety, some power
+of knowing where you stand and where to go, such as was given to sailors
+by the use of the magnet.</p>
+
+<p>"Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis," says Beccadelli of Palermo,
+but the earliest mention of the "Black ugly stone" in the West is traced
+to an Englishman. Alexander Neckam, a monk of St.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> Albans, writing about
+1180 on "The Natures Of Things," tells us of it as commonly used by
+sailors, not merely as the secret of the learned. "When they cannot see
+the sun clearly in cloudy weather, or at night, and cannot tell which
+way their prow is tending, they put a Needle above a Magnet which
+revolves till its point looks North and then stops." So the satirist,
+Guyot de Provins, in his <i>Bible</i> of about 1210, wishes the Pope were as
+safe a point to steer by in Faith as the North Star in sailing, "which
+mariners can keep ahead of them, without sight of it, only by the
+pointing of a needle floating on a straw in water, once touched by the
+Magnet."</p>
+
+<p>It might be supposed from this not merely that the magnet was in use at
+the end of the twelfth century, but that it had been known to a few
+<i>savants</i> much earlier; yet when Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini, visits
+Roger Bacon at Oxford about 1258, and is shown the black stone, he
+speaks of it as new and wonderful, but certain, if used, to awake
+suspicion of magic. "It has the power of drawing iron to it, and if a
+needle be rubbed upon it and fastened to a straw so as to swim upon
+water, the needle will instantly turn towards the Pole-Star. But no
+master mariner could use this, nor would the sailors venture themselves
+to sea under his command if he took an instrument so like one of
+infernal make."</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map10"></a><img src="./images/map10.jpg"
+alt="SKETCH-MAP OF DULCERT'S PORTOLANO OF 1339."
+title="SKETCH-MAP OF DULCERT'S PORTOLANO OF 1339." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">SKETCH-MAP OF DULCERT'S PORTOLANO OF 1339.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was possibly after this that the share of Amalphi came in; it may
+have been Flavio Gioja, or some other citizen of that earliest
+commercial republic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> of the Middle Ages, which filled up so large a
+part of the gap between two great ages of progress, who fitted the
+magnet into a box, and by connecting it with the compass-card, made it
+generally and easily available. This it certainly was before Prince
+Henry's earliest voyages, where he takes its use for granted even by
+merchant coasters, "who, beyond hugging the shore, know nothing of chart
+or needle." In any case it would seem that prejudice was broken down,
+and the mariner's compass taken into favour, at least by Italian seamen
+and their Spanish apprentices, in the early years of the fourteenth
+century, or the last years of the thirteenth, and that when the Dorias
+set out for India by the ocean way in 1291, and the Lisbon fleet sailed
+for the western islands in 1341, they had some sort of natural guide
+with them, besides the stories of travellers and their own imaginings.
+About the same time (<i>c.</i> 1350) mathematics and astronomy began to be
+studied in Portugal, and two of Henry's brothers, King Edward and the
+Great Regent Pedro, left a name for observations and scientific
+research. Thus Pedro, in his travels through most of Christendom,
+collected invaluable materials for discovery, especially an original of
+Marco Polo and a map given him at Venice, "which had all the parts of
+the earth described, whereby Prince Henry was much furthered."</p>
+
+<p>Good maps indeed were almost as valuable to him as good instruments, and
+they are far clearer landmarks of geographical knowledge. There are at
+least seven famous charts (either left to us or described<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> for us) of
+the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, which give a pretty clear
+idea of what Henry's own age and his father's thought and knew of the
+world&mdash;some of which we believe to have been used by the Prince himself,
+and each of which follows some advance in actual exploration.</p>
+
+<p>First of all comes the Venetian map of Marino Sanuto, drawn about 1306,
+and putting into map-form the ideas that inspired the first Italian
+voyages in the Atlantic. On this the south of Africa is washed by the
+sea as the Vivaldi had hoped to find it, but the old story of a central
+zone "uninhabitable from the heat" still finds a place, helping to keep
+up the notion of the Tropical Seas, "always kept boiling by the sun,"
+that held its own so long. Besides this, in Sanuto's map there is no
+evidence that anyone had really been coasting Africa; Henry is not
+anticipated and can hardly have been much helped by this very
+hypothetical leap in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>But the Florentine map of 1351, called the Laurentian Portolano, is to
+all appearance a record of the actual discoveries of 1341 and 1346, and
+a wonderful triumph of guess-work if it is nothing better. For Africa is
+not only made an island, but the main outline of its coast is fairly
+drawn; in its western corner the headlands, bays, and rivers are laid
+down as far as Bojador, and the three groups of Atlantic islands,
+Azores, Canaries, and Madeira, appear together for the first time.
+Beyond this names grow scarce, and on the great indent of the Gulf of
+Guinea, enormously exaggerated as it is, there is nothing to show for
+certain any past<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> discovery, which suggests that this map was made for
+two purposes. First, to record the results of recent travel; secondly,
+and chiefly, to put forward geographical theories based upon tradition
+and inference, what men of old had told and what men of the present
+could fancy.</p>
+
+<p>Long after the Italian leadership in exploration had passed westward,
+Italian science kept control of geographical theory; the Venetian maps
+of the brothers Pizzigani in 1367, and of the Camaldolese convent at
+Murano in 1380 and 1459, and the work of Andrea Bianco in 1436 and 1448,
+are the most important of medi&aelig;val charts, after the Laurentian, and
+along with these must be reckoned that mentioned above as given in
+1425-8 to Henry's brother, Don Pedro, on his visit to Venice. This
+treasure has disappeared, but it was said by men of Henry's day and
+aftertime, who saw it in the monastery of Al&ccedil;oba&ccedil;a, to show "as much or
+more discovered in time past than now." If their account is even an
+approach to the truth, it was in itself proof sufficient of the
+supremacy and almost monopoly of Italians in geographical theory.</p>
+
+<p>With 1375 and the Catalan map of that year, which specially refers to
+the Catalan voyage of 1346 and may be taken as one result of the same,
+we come to Spanish parallels; but until the death of Henry in 1460,
+Italian draughtsmen were in possession, and Fra Mauro's great map of
+1459, the evidence and result, in great measure, of the Navigator's
+work, could only be drawn by Venetians for the men whose discoveries it
+recorded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But there is one other point in Italian map-science which is worth
+remembering. At a time when most schemes of the world were covered with
+monsters and legends, when cartography was half mythical and half
+miscalculated, the coasting voyagers of the Mediterranean had brought
+their <i>Portolani</i> or sea charts to a very different result. And how was
+this? Did they get right, as it were, by chance? "They never had for
+their object," says the great Swedish explorer and draughtsman, Baron
+Nordenskjold, "to illustrate the ideas of some classical author, of some
+learned prelate, or the legends and dreams of feats of Chivalry within
+the Court circle of some more or less lettered feudal lord." They were
+simply guides to mariners and merchants in the Mediterranean seaports;
+they were seldom drawn by learned men, and small enough, in return, was
+the attention given them by the learned geographers, the men of theory,
+in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.</p>
+
+<p>But these plans of practical seamen are a wonderful contrast in their
+almost present-day accuracy to the results of theory let loose, as we
+see them in Ptolemy and the Arabian geographers, and in such fantastics
+as the Hereford Mappa Mundi, so well known in England. Map-sketches of
+this sort, were unknown to Greeks and Romans, as far as we can tell. The
+old Peripli were sailing directions, not drawn but written, and the only
+Arabian coast-chart known to us was copied from an Italian one. But from
+the opening of the twelfth century, if not before, the western
+Mediterranean was known to Christian seamen&mdash;to those at least concerned
+in the trade and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> intercourse of the great inland sea,&mdash;by the help of
+these practical guides.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map11"></a><img src="./images/map11.jpg"
+alt="THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351."
+title="THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From the middle of the thirteenth century, when the use of the compass
+began on the coasts of southern Europe, the Portolani began to be drawn
+with its aid, and by the end of the same century, by the time of our
+Hereford map (<i>c.</i> 1300), these charts had reached the finish that we
+see and admire in those left to us from the fourteenth century. For, of
+the 498 specimens of this kind of practical map now left to us, there is
+not one of earlier date than the year 1311. Among these specimens not
+merely the mass of materials, but the most important examples, not
+merely 413 out of 498, but all the more famous and perfect of the 498
+are Italian. The course begins with Vesconte's chart, of the year 1311,
+and with Dulcert's of 1339, and the outlines of these two are faithfully
+reproduced, for instance, in the great Dutch map of the Barentszoons
+(<i>c.</i> 1594), for the type once fixed in the fourteenth century, recurs
+steadily throughout the fifteenth, and sixteenth. The type was so
+permanent because it was so reliable; every part of the Mediterranean
+coast was sketched without serious mistake or disproportion, even from a
+modern point of view, while the fulness and detail of the work gave
+everything that was wanted by practical seamen. Of course this detail
+was in the coast lines, river mouths, and promontories; it only touched
+the land features as they touched the seas. For the Portolani were never
+meant to be more than mariners' charts, and became less and less
+trustworthy if they tried to fill up the inland spaces usually left
+blank.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> For this, we must look to the highest class of medi&aelig;val
+theoretical maps, those founded on Portolani, but taking into their view
+land as well as water and coast line. And such were the celebrated
+examples<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> we have noticed already.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Note</span>.&mdash;It was a man of theory, Raymond Lulli (1235-1315), of Majorca,
+the famous Alchemist, who is credited with the first suggestion of the
+idea of seeking a way to India by rounding Africa on the West and South.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer07.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header07.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>PORTUGAL TO 1400.</h3>
+
+<h3>1095-1400.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/h.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="H"
+title="H" />enry the Navigator is the Hero of Portugal, as well as of discovery,
+the chief figure in his country's history, as well as the first leader
+of the great European expansion; and the national growth of three
+hundred years is quite as much a part of his life, quite as much a cause
+of his forward movement, as the growth of Christendom towards a living
+interest in the unknown or half-known world around.</p>
+
+<p>The chief points of interest in the story of Portugal are first the
+stubborn restless independence of the people, always rising into fresh
+vigour after a seeming overthrow, and secondly their instinct for
+seamanship, which Henry was able to train into exploring and colonising
+genius. There was no physical justice in the separate nationality of the
+Western Kingdom of Lisbon any more than of the Eastern Kingdom of
+Barcelona. Portugal<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> was essentially part of Spain, as the United
+Provinces of William of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> Orange were essentially part of the
+Netherlands; in both cases it was only the spirit and endurance of the
+race that gave to some provincials the right to become a people, while
+that right was denied to others.</p>
+
+<p>And Portugal gained that right by a struggle of three hundred years,
+which was first a crusade against Islam; then a war of independence
+against brother Christians of Castille; last of all a civil strife
+against rebels and anarchists within.</p>
+
+<p>In the twelfth century the five kingdoms of Spain were clearly marked
+off from the Moslem States and from one another; by the end of the
+fifteenth there is only the great central Realm of Ferdinand and
+Isabella, and the little western coast-kingdom of Emanuel the Fortunate,
+the heir of Prince Henry. Nations are among our best examples of the
+survival of the fittest, and by the side of Poland and Aragon we may
+well see a meaning in the bare and tiresome story of the medi&aelig;val
+kingdom of Portugal. The very fact of separate existence means something
+for a people which has kept on ruling itself for ten generations. Though
+its territory was never more than one fourth of the peninsula, nor its
+numbers more than one third of the Spanish race&mdash;from the middle of the
+twelfth century, Portugal has stood alone, with less right to such
+independence from any distinction of place or blood, than Ireland or
+Navarre, fighting incessantly against foes without, from north, east,
+and south, and keeping down the still worse foes of its own household.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map12"></a><img src="./images/map12.jpg"
+alt="N.W. SECTION OF THE CATALAN MAP OF 1375-6."
+title="N.W. SECTION OF THE CATALAN MAP OF 1375-6." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">N.W. SECTION OF THE CATALAN MAP OF 1375-6.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the meaning of the growth of the Portuguese power is not in its
+isolation, its stubbornly defended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> national distinction from all other
+powers, but in its central and as it were unifying position in modern
+history&mdash;as the guide of Europe and Christendom into that larger world
+which marks the real difference between the Middle Ages and our own day.</p>
+
+<p>For Henry the Navigator breathed into his countrymen the spirit of the
+old Norse rovers, that boundless appetite for new knowledge, new
+pleasures, new sights and sounds, which underlay the exploration of the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries&mdash;the exploration of one half of the
+world's surface, the finding of a new continent in the south and in the
+west, and the opening of the great sea-routes round the globe. The
+scientific effects of this, starting from the new proof of a round world
+won by a Portuguese seaman, Magellan; and the political effects, also
+beginning with the first of modern colonial empires, founded by Da Gama,
+Cabral, and Albuquerque, are too widespread for more than a passing
+reference in this place, but this reference must be connected with the
+true author of the movement. For if the industrial element rules modern
+development; if the philosophy of utility, as expressing this element,
+is now our guide in war and peace; and if the substitution of this for
+the military spirit<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> is to be dated from that dominion in the Indian
+seas which realised the designs of Henry&mdash;if this be so, the Portuguese
+become to us, through him, something like the founders of our commercial
+civilisation, and of the European empire in Asia.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p><p>By the opening years of the fifteenth century, Portugal&mdash;in a Catholic
+rather than a Classical Renaissance&mdash;had already entered upon its modern
+life, some three generations before the rest of Christendom. But its
+medi&aelig;val history is very much like that of any other of the Five Spanish
+Kingdoms. Like the rest, Portugal had joined in driving the Moors from
+the Asturias to Andalusia, in the two hundred years of successful
+Western Crusade (1001-1212). In the same time, between the death of the
+great vizier Almanzor, the last support of the old Western Caliphate
+(1001), and the overthrow of the African Moors, who had supplanted that
+Western Caliphate,&mdash;between those two points of Moslem triumph and
+Christian reaction, the Portuguese kingdom had been formed out of the
+County granted in 1095 by Alfonso VI. of Leon to the free-lance Henry of
+Burgundy.</p>
+
+<p>For the next three hundred years (1095-1383), under his descendants who
+reigned as kings in Guimara&euml;ns or Lisbon, we may trace a gradual but
+chequered national rise, to the Revolution of 1383 with two prominent
+movements of expansion and two relapses of contraction and decline.</p>
+
+<p>First comes the formation of a national spirit by Count Henry's widow
+Donna Theresa and her son Affonso Henriquez, who from a Lord of Coimbra
+and Oporto, dependent on the Kingdom of Gallicia or of Leon, becomes the
+first free King of Portugal. His victories over the Moors in taking
+Lisbon (1147) and winning the day of Ourique (1139), are followed by the
+first wars with Castille and by the time of quiet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> organisation in his
+last years under the regency of his son Sancho, the City Builder. The
+building and planting of Sancho is again followed by the first relapse,
+into the weakness of Affonso II., and the turbulent minority of Sancho
+II. Constitutional troubles begin with the First Sancho's quarrel with
+Innocent III. and with the appearance of the first national Cort&eacute;s under
+Chancellor Julian.</p>
+
+<p>The second forward movement starts with Affonso III., "of Boulogne," who
+saves the kingdom from anarchy and conquers the Algarves, on the south
+coast, from Islam; who first organises the alliance of Crown and people
+against nobles and clergy, and, in the strength of this, defies the
+interdict of Urban IV.</p>
+
+<p>Diniz, his bastard son, for whose legitimation he had made this same
+struggle with Rome, follows Affonso III., in 1279, and with him begins
+the wider life of Portugal, her navy and her literature, her
+agriculture, justice, and commerce.</p>
+
+<p>The second relapse may be dated from the Black Death (1348), which
+threatened the very life of the nation, and left behind a sort of
+chronic weakness. National spirit seemed worn out; Court intrigue and
+political disaster the order of the day; the Church and Cort&eacute;s alike
+effete and useful only against themselves.</p>
+
+<p>But in the revival under a new leader, John, the father of Prince Henry,
+and a new dynasty&mdash;the House of Aviz&mdash;and its "Royal Race of Famous
+Infants," in the years that follow the Revolution of 1383, the older
+religious and crusading fervour is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> joined with the new spirit of
+enterprise, of fierce activity, and the Portugal thus called into being
+is a great State because the whole nation shares in the life and energy
+of a more than recovered liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Before the age of King Diniz, before the fourteenth century, there is
+little enough in the national story to suggest the first
+state-profession of discovery and exploration in Christian history. But
+we must bring together a few of the suggestive and prophetic incidents
+of the earlier time, if we are to be fully prepared for the later.</p>
+
+<p>(1.) Oporto, the "port" of Gallicia, from the formation of the county or
+"march" of Henry of Burgundy, seems to have given the district its name
+of "Portugallia," at one time as a military frontier against Islam, then
+as an independent State, lastly as an imperial Kingdom. Also, as the
+earliest centre of Portugal was a harbour, and its earliest border a
+river, there was a sort of natural, though slumbering, fitness for
+seamanship in the people.</p>
+
+<p>(2.) Again, in the alliance of the Crown with the towns, first formed by
+Count Henry's wife Theresa in her regency after his death, 1114-28, and
+renewed by her grandson Sancho, the City Builder, and by Affonso III.,
+the "Saviour of the Kingdom," we have an early example of the power of
+that class, which was the backbone of the great movement of expansion,
+when the meaning of this was fairly brought home to them.</p>
+
+<p>(3.) In the capture of Lisbon, in 1147, by Affonso Henriquez, Theresa's
+son, at the head of the allied forces of native militia and northern
+Crusaders&mdash;Flemish,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> French, German, and English&mdash;we have brought
+clearly before us, not merely the facts of the gain of a really great
+city by a rising Christian State, not merely the result of this in the
+formation of a kingdom out of a county, but the more general connection
+of the crusading spirit with the new nations of Europe. Portugal is the
+most lasting monument of crusading energy; it was this that strengthened
+the "Lusitanians" to make good their stand both against the Moors and
+against Castille; and it was this which brought out the maritime bent of
+the little western kingdom, and drew out its interest on the one and
+only side where that could be of great and general usefulness. The
+Crusades without and the policy of statesmen within, we may fairly say,
+made the Portuguese ready to lead the expansion of Christendom, made
+possible the work of Henry the Navigator. The foreign help given at
+Lisbon in 1147 was only a repetition on a grand scale of what had long
+been done on a smaller, and it was offered again and again till the
+final conquest of the southern districts, between Cape St. Vincent and
+the Guadiana (<i>c.</i> 1250), left the European kingdom fully formed, and
+the recovery of Western Spain from the Moslem had been achieved.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map13"></a><a href="./images/map13.jpg"><img src="./images/map13_th.jpg"
+alt="Chart of the Mediterranean Sea by Willem Barentszoon."
+title="Chart of the Mediterranean Sea by Willem Barentszoon." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">Chart of the Mediterranean Sea by <span class="smcap">Willem Barentszoon</span>.
+Engraved in copper 1595.<br />
+Almost unaltered copy of a Portolano from the
+14th century. (Orig. size 418 x 855 m.m.).<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>(4.) And when the Crusading Age passed away, it left behind an
+intercourse of Portugal with England, Flanders, and the North Sea
+coasts, which was taken up and developed by Diniz and the kings of the
+fourteenth century, till under the new Royal House of Aviz, in the
+boyhood of Henry the Navigator, this maritime and commercial element
+had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> clearly become the most important in the State, the main interest
+even of Government.</p>
+
+<p>So, from the first mercantile treaty of 1294, between the traders of
+Lisbon and London, we feel ourselves beyond the mere fighting period,
+and before the death of Diniz (1325), there is a good deal more progress
+in the same direction. The English treaty of exchange is followed by
+similar ones with France and with Flanders, while for the protection of
+this commerce, as well as to prove his fellowship or his rivalry with
+the maritime republics of Italy, Diniz,<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> the "Labourer King," built
+the first Portuguese navy, founded a new office of state for its
+command, and gave the post to a great Genoese sailor, Emanuel Pessanha,
+1317. With the new Lord High Admiral begins the Spanish-Italian age of
+ocean voyages, and the rediscovery of the Canaries in 1341 is the first
+result of the alliance. In 1353 the old treaty of 1294 is enlarged and
+safeguarded by fresh clauses signed in London, as if to guard against
+future trouble in the dark days then hanging over Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>For the next generation (1350-1380), the national politics are bound up
+with Spanish intrigues and lose nearly all reference to that larger
+world, to which the kingdom was recalled by the Revolution of 1383, the
+overthrow of Castille on the battle-field of Aljubarrota, and the
+accession of John of Aviz. Once more intensely, narrowly national, one
+might almost say provincial, in peninsular matters, Portugal then
+returned to its older ambition of being, not a make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> weight in Spanish
+politics, but a part of the greater whole of commercial and maritime
+Europe. Almost ceasing to be Spanish, she was, by that very transfer of
+interest from land to sea, fitted for her special part,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"to open up those wastes of tide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No generation open&egrave;d before."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was through a love affair that the crisis came about. Ferdinand the
+Handsome, the last of the House of Burgundy to reign in Lisbon, became
+the slave of the worst of his subjects, the evil genius of himself and
+his kingdom, Leonora Telles. For her sake he broke his marriage treaty
+with Castille (1372), and brought down the vengeance of Henry of
+Trastamara, whom the Black Prince of England had fought and seemed to
+conquer at Navarette, but who in the end had foiled all his
+enemies&mdash;Pedro the Cruel, Ferdinand of Portugal, and Prince Edward of
+Cre&ccedil;y and Poictiers.</p>
+
+<p>For Leonor's sake Ferdinand braved the great riot of the Lisbon mob,
+when Fernan Vasquez the Tailor led his followers to the palace, burst in
+the gates, and forced from the King an oath to stand by the Castilian
+marriage he had contracted. For her sake he broke his word to his
+artisans, as he had broken it to his nobles and his brother monarch.</p>
+
+<p>Leonor herself the people hunted for in vain through the rooms and
+corridors of the palace; she escaped from their lynch law to Santarem.
+The same night Ferdinand joined her. Safe in his strongest fortress, he
+gathered an army and forced his way back into the capital. The mob was
+scattered;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> Vasquez and the other leaders beheaded on the spot. Then at
+Oporto, without more delay, the King of Portugal married his paramour,
+in the face of her husband, of Castille, and of his own people.</p>
+
+<p>"Laws are nil," said the rhyme, "when kings will," but though nobles and
+people submitted in the lifetime of Ferdinand, the storm broke out again
+on his death in October, 1383. During the last ten years the Queen had
+practically governed, and the kingdom seemed to be sinking back into a
+province of Spain. Ferdinand's bastard brother, John, Master of the
+Knights of Aviz, and father of Henry the Navigator, was the leader of
+the national party, and Leonor had in vain tried to get rid of him,
+silent and dangerous as he was. She forged some treasonable letters in
+his name, and procured his arrest; then as the King would not order him
+to execution without trial, she forged the warrant, too, and sent it
+promptly to the Governor of Evora Castle, where the Master lay in
+prison. But he refused to obey without further proof, and John escaped
+to lead the national restoration.</p>
+
+<p>On the death of Ferdinand his widow took the regency in the name of her
+daughter Beatrice, just married to the King of Castille. It was only a
+question of time, this coming subjection of Portugal, unless the whole
+people rose and made monarchy and government national once more. And in
+December, 1383, they did so. Under John of Aviz the patriots cut to
+pieces the Queen's friends, and made ready to meet her allies from
+Castille. On the battle field of Aljubarrota (August 14, 1385), the
+struggle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> was decided. Castille was finally driven back, and the new
+age, of the new dynasty, was fairly started. The Portuguese people under
+King John I. and his sons Edward, Pedro, Henry, and Ferdinand, passed
+out of the darkness of their slavery into the light and life of their
+heroic age.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus002"></a><img src="./images/illus002.jpg"
+alt="WEST FRONT OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH OF BATALHA WHERE PRINCE HENRY LIES BURIED."
+title="WEST FRONT OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH OF BATALHA WHERE PRINCE HENRY LIES BURIED." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">WEST FRONT OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH OF BATALHA WHERE PRINCE HENRY LIES BURIED.</p>
+
+<p>The founder of the House of Aviz, John, the King of Good Memory, is the
+great transition figure in his country's history, for in his reign the
+age of the merely European kingdom is over, and that of discovery and
+empire begins. That is, the limits of territory and of population, as
+well as the type of government and of policy, both home and foreign,
+secured by his victory and his reign, are permanent in themselves, and
+as the conditions of success they lie at the root of the development of
+the next hundred years.</p>
+
+<p>Even the drift of Portuguese interests, seawards and southwards, is
+decided by his action, his alliance with England, his encouragement of
+trade, his wars against the Moors. For, by the middle of his reign, by
+the time of the Ceuta conquest (1415), his third son, Prince Henry, had
+grown to manhood.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, King John's personal work (1383-1433) is rather one of settlement
+and the providing of resources for future action than the taking of any
+great share in that action. His mind was practical rather than
+prophetic, common-sense rather than creative; but in his regeneration of
+the Court and trade and society and public service of the kingdom, he
+fitted his people to play their part, to be for a time the "very
+foremost men of all this world."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>First of all, he founded a strong centralised monarchy, like those which
+marked the fifteenth century in France and England and Russia. The
+spirit, the aim of Louis XI., of the Tudors, of Ivan III., was the same
+as that of John I. of Portugal&mdash;to rule as well as govern in every
+department, "over all persons, in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as
+civil, within their dominions supreme." The Master of Aviz had been the
+people's choice; the Lisbon populace and their leaders had been among
+the first who dared to fight for him; but he would not be a simple King
+of Parliaments. He preferred to reign with the help of his nobles. For
+though he distrusted feudalism, he dreaded Cort&eacute;s still more. So, while
+in most of the new monarchies of Europe the subjection or humiliation of
+the baronage was a primary article of policy, John tried to win his way
+by lavish gifts of land, while resolutely checking feudalism in
+government, curtailing local immunities, and guarding the liberties of
+the towns against noble usurpers.</p>
+
+<p>We shall see the results of this in the life of Prince Henry; at present
+there is only space to notice the general fact. The other lines of
+John's home government&mdash;his reform of criminal procedure, his sanction
+of the vernacular in legal and official business in place of Latin, his
+attempt to publish the first collection of Portuguese laws, his
+settlement of the Court in the true national capital of Lisbon&mdash;are only
+to be linked with the life of his son, as helping one and all of them
+towards that conscious political unity on which Henry's work was
+grounded.</p>
+
+<p>The same was the result of his foreign policy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> which was nothing more
+than the old state-rules of Diniz. Systematic neutrality in Spain and a
+commercial alliance with England and the northern nations, were but the
+common-sense securities of the restored kingdom; but they played another
+part than one of mere defence, in drawing out the seamanship and worldly
+knowledge, and even the greed of Portuguese traders. In the marts of
+Bruges and London, "the Schoolmasters of Husbandry to Europe," Henry's
+countrymen met the travellers and merchants of Italy and Flanders and
+England and the Hanse Towns, and gained some inkling of the course and
+profits of the overland trade from India and the further East, first as
+in Nismes and Montpellier they saw the Malaguette pepper and other
+merchandise of the Sahara and Guinea caravans.</p>
+
+<p>The Windsor and Paris treaties of 1386 and 1389; the marriage of John
+himself with Philippa, daughter of old "John of Gaunt, time-honoured"
+and time-serving "Lancaster," and the consequent alliance between the
+House of Aviz and the House of our own Henry IV., are proofs of an
+unwritten but well understood Triple Alliance of England, Flanders, and
+Portugal, which had been fostered by the Crusades and by trade and
+family politics. And through this friendship had come into being what
+was now the chief outward activity of Portuguese life, an interest in
+commerce, which was the beginning of a career of discovery and
+colonisation. Lastly, besides good government, besides saving the
+kingdom and keeping it safely in the most prosperous path, Portugal owed
+to King John and his English wife<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> the training of their five sons,
+Edward the Eloquent, Pedro the Great Regent, Henry the Navigator, John
+the Constable, Ferdinand the Saint&mdash;the cousins of our own Henry V.,
+Henry of Azincourt.</p>
+
+<p>Edward, the heir of John the Great and his unfortunate successor
+(1433-8), unlucky as most literary princes, but deserving whatever
+courage and honesty and the best gifts can deserve, was a good ruler, a
+good son, a good brother, a good lawyer, and one of the earliest writers
+in his own Portuguese. As a pupil of his father's great Chancellor, John
+of the Rules, he has left a tract on the <i>Ordering of Justice</i>; as a
+king, two others, on <i>Pity</i> and <i>A Loyal Councillor</i>; as a cavalier, <i>A
+Book of Good Riding</i>. Still more to our purpose, he was always at the
+side of his brother Henry, helped him in his schemes and brought his
+movement into fashion at a critical time, when enterprise seemed likely
+to slacken in the face of unending difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>But the Navigator's right-hand man was his next brother Pedro the
+Traveller, who, after visiting all the countries of Western Europe and
+fighting with the Teutonic knights against the heathen Prussians,
+brought back to Portugal for the use of discovery that great mass of
+suggestive material, oral and written, in maps and plans and books,
+which was used for the first ocean voyages of Henry's sailors.</p>
+
+<p>On his judgment and advice, more than of any other man, Henry relied,
+and after Edward's death it was due to him as Regent that the generous
+support of the past was more than kept up, that so many ships and men
+were found for the rounding of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>Cape Verde, and that Edward's son and
+heir Affonso V., was trained in the mind of his father and his uncle, to
+be their successor in leading the expansion of Portugal and of
+Christendom.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus003"></a><img src="./images/illus003.jpg"
+alt="AISLE IN BATALHA CHURCH CONTAINING THE TOMBS OF HENRY AND HIS BROTHERS."
+title="AISLE IN BATALHA CHURCH CONTAINING THE TOMBS OF HENRY AND HIS BROTHERS." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">AISLE IN BATALHA CHURCH CONTAINING THE TOMBS OF HENRY AND HIS BROTHERS.</p>
+
+<p>John and Ferdinand, Henry's two younger brothers, are not of much
+importance in his work, though they were both of the same rare quality
+as the elder Infantes, and the worst disaster of Henry's life, the
+Tangier campaign, is closely bound up with the fate of "Fernand the
+Constant Prince," but as we pass from the earlier story of Portugal to
+the age of its great achievements, it would be hard to doubt or to
+forget that the mother of the Navigator was also of some account in the
+shaping of the heroes of her house. Through her at least the Lusitanian
+Prince of Thomson's line is half an Englishman:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The Lusitanian prince, who, Heaven-inspired,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To love of useful glory roused mankind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in unbounded commerce mixed the world."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>[<span class="smcap">Note</span> 1.&mdash;The Old Roman Lusitania, but with a wider stretch on the
+North, and a narrower stretch on the East. So the Portuguese are
+"Lusians," "Lusitanians," etc., in poetry. <i>Cf.</i> Camo&euml;ns, <i>Lusiads</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>[<span class="smcap">Note</span> 2.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What Diniz will&egrave;d<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He ever fulfill&egrave;d<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;said the popular rhyme.]</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer08.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header08.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HENRY'S POSITION AND DESIGNS AT THE TIME OF THE FIRST VOYAGES, 1410-15.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="poemcenter25"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then from ancient gloom emerged<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rising world of trade: the genius then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Navigation, held in hopeless sloth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had slumbered on the vast Atlantic deep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For idle ages, starting, heard at last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Lusitanian Prince, who, Heaven-inspired,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To love of useful glory roused mankind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="smcap">Thomson</span>, <i>Seasons, Summer, 1005-1012</i>.</p>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/t.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="T"
+title="T" />he third son of John the Great and of Philippa was the Infant Henry,
+Duke of Viseu, Master of the Order of Christ, Governor of the Algarves,
+born March 4, 1394, who might have travelled from Court to Court like
+his brother Pedro, but who refused all offers from England, Italy, and
+Germany, and chose the life of a student and a seaman,&mdash;retiring more
+and more from the known world that he might open up the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>After the capture of Ceuta, in 1415, he planted himself in his Naval
+Arsenal at Sagres, close to Lagos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> town and Cape St. Vincent, and for
+more than forty years, till his death in 1460, he kept his mind upon the
+ocean that stretched out from that rocky headland to the unknown West
+and South. Twice only for any length of time did he come back into
+political life; for the rest, though respected as the referee of
+national disputes and the leader and teacher of the people, his time was
+mainly spent in thinking out his plans of discovery&mdash;drawing his maps,
+adjusting his instruments, sending out his ships, receiving the reports
+of his captains. His aims were three: to discover, to add to the
+greatness and wealth of Portugal, and to spread the Christian Faith.</p>
+
+<p>(1.) First of all, he was trying to find a way round Africa to India for
+the sake of the new knowledge itself and for the power which that
+knowledge would give. As his mind was above all things interested in the
+scientific question, it was this side which was foremost in his plans.
+He was really trying to find out the shape of the world, and to make men
+feel more at home in it, that the dread of the great unknown round the
+little island of civilised and habitable world might be lightened. He
+was working in the mist that so long had hung round Christendom,
+chilling every enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the whole question of the world and its shape, its countries and
+climates, its seas and continents, on every side of practical
+exploration, was bound to be before Prince Henry as a theorist; the
+practical question which he helped to solve was only a part of this
+wider whole. Did this Africa stretching opposite to him in his retreat
+at Sagres never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> end till it reached the Southern pole, or was it
+possible to get round into the Eastern ocean? Since Ptolemy's map had
+held the field, it had been heresy to suppose this; but in the age of
+Greek and Ph&oelig;nician voyages it had been guessed by some, and perhaps
+even proved by others.</p>
+
+<p>The Tyrians whom Pharaoh Necho sent down the Red Sea more than six
+hundred years before Christ, brought back after three years a story of
+their finding Africa an island, and so returning by the west and north
+through the Straits of Gibraltar.</p>
+
+<p>The same tradition, after a long time of discredit, was now reviving
+upon the maps of the fourteenth century, and, in spite of the terrible
+stories of the Arabs, Henry was able in the first years of the fifteenth
+to find men who would try the forlorn hope of a direct sea-route from
+Europe to the Indies. We have seen how far the charts and guide-books of
+the time just before this had advanced Christian knowledge of the world;
+how the southern coastline of Asia is traced by Marco Polo, and how even
+Madagascar is named, though not visited, by the same traveller; the
+Florentine map of 1351 proves that a fairly true guess of the shape of
+Africa could be made even before persistent exploration began with Henry
+of Portugal; the Arab settlements on the east coast of Africa and their
+trade with the Malabar coast, though still kept as a close monopoly for
+Islam, had thoroughly opened up a line of navigation, that was ready, as
+it were, for the first Europeans who could strike into it and press the
+Moorish pilots into a new service. Discovery was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> thus anticipated when
+the coasts of West and South had once been rounded.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this, the vague knowledge of the Guinea coast already gained
+through the Sahara Caravan Trade was improved by the Prince himself,
+during his stay at Ceuta, into the certainty that if the great western
+hump of Africa beyond Bojador could be passed, his caravels would come
+into an eastern current, passing the gold and ivory coast, which might
+lead straight to India, and at any rate would be connected by an
+overland traffic with the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>(2.) Again, Henry was founding upon his work of exploration an empire
+for his country. At first perhaps only thinking of the straight
+sea-passage as the possible key of the Indian trade, it became clearer
+with every fresh discovery that the European kingdom might and must be
+connected by a chain of forts and factories with the rich countries for
+whose sake all these barren coasts were passed. In any case, and in the
+eyes of ordinary men, the riches of the East were the plain and primary
+reason of the explorations. Science had its own aims, but to gain an
+income for its work it must promise some definite gain. And the chief
+hope of Henry's captains was that the wealth now flowing by the overland
+routes to the Levant would in time, as the prize of Portuguese daring,
+go by the water way, without delay or fear of plunder or Arab middlemen,
+to Lisbon and Oporto. This would repay all the trouble and all the cost,
+and silence all who murmured. For this Indian trade was the prize of the
+world, and for the sake of this Rome had destroyed Palmyra, and
+at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>tacked Arabia and held Egypt, and struggled for the mastery of the
+Tigris. For the same thing half the wars of the Levant had been waged,
+and by this the Italian republics, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, had grown to
+greatness.</p>
+
+<p>(3.) Lastly, Henry was a Crusader with Islam and a missionary with the
+heathen. Of him fully as much as of Columbus, it may be said, that if he
+aimed at an empire, it was a Christian one, and from the time of the
+first voyages his captains had orders not merely to discover and to
+trade, but to convert. Till his death he hoped to find the land of
+Prester John, the half-true, half-fabulous Christian Priest-King of the
+outer world, so long cut off from Christendom by the Mohammedan states.</p>
+
+<p>At this time many things were drawing western Europe towards the East
+and towards discovery. The progress of science and historic knowledge,
+the records and suggestions of travellers, the development of the
+Christian nations, the position of Portugal and the spirit of her
+people,&mdash;all these lines met, as it were, in Henry's time and nation and
+person, and from that meeting came the results of Columbus and Da Gama
+and Magellan.</p>
+
+<p>In the earlier chapters we have tried to trace the preparation along
+these slowly converging paths, for the discoveries of the fifteenth
+century. We started with that body of knowledge and theory about the
+world which the Roman Empire bequeathed to Christendom, and which in the
+earlier Middle Ages was worked upon by the Arabs, and we gained some
+idea, from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> sayings of Moslem geographers and from the doings of
+Moslem warriors, of the hindrance as well as of the help that Islam gave
+to European expansion. We saw that during the great struggle of
+Christianity and of the old Order with barbarism, the chief energy of
+our Western world in discovery or extension of any sort took the shape
+of pilgrimage. Then, as time went on, it was possible to see that the
+Saracens, who had begun as destroyers in the South, were acting as
+teachers and civilisers upon Europe, and that the Vikings, who as
+pirates in the North seemed raised up to complete the ruin of Latin
+civilisation, were really waking it into a new activity.</p>
+
+<p>In the Crusades this activity, which had already founded the kingdom of
+Russia on one side and touched America on the other, seemed to pass from
+the Northern seamen into every Christian nation and every class of
+society, and with the conversion of the Northmen their place as the
+discoverers and leaders of the Christian world fitted in with the other
+movements of Mediterranean commerce and war and devotion. Even the
+pilgrims of the Crusading Age were now no longer distinctive: they were
+often, as individuals, members of other classes, traders, fighters, or
+travellers who, after gaining a firm foothold in Syria, began the
+exploration of the further East.</p>
+
+<p>The three great discovering energies of the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries&mdash;in land-travel, navigation, and science&mdash;were all seen to be
+results, in whole or in part, of the Crusades themselves, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> in
+following the more important steps of European travel and trade and
+proselytism from the Holy Land to China, it became more and more evident
+that this practical finding out of the treasures of Cathay and the
+Indies was the necessary preparation for the attempts of Genoese and
+Portuguese to open up the sea route as another and a safer way to the
+source of the same treasures.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the intermittent and uncertain ventures of the
+fourteenth-century seamen, Italian, Spanish, French, or English, to
+coast round Africa or to find the Indies by the Southern route&mdash;to reach
+a definite end without any clear plan of means to that end&mdash;and the
+revival in theoretical geography, which was trying at the same time to
+fill up the gaps of knowledge by tradition or by probability&mdash;seemed to
+offer a clear contrast and a clear foreshadowing also of Prince Henry's
+method. Even his nearest forerunners, in seamanship or in map-making<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>
+were strikingly different from himself. They were too much in the spirit
+of Ptolemy and of ancient science; they neglected fact for hypothesis,
+for clever guessing, and so their work was spasmodic and unfruitful, or
+at least disappointing.</p>
+
+<p>It was true enough that each generation of Christian thought was less in
+fault than the one before it; but it was not till the fifteenth century,
+till Henry had set the example, that exploration became systematic and
+continuous. To Marco Polo and men like him we owe the beginnings of the
+art and science<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> of discovery among the learned; to the Portuguese is
+due at least the credit of making it a thing of national interest, and
+of freeing it from a false philosophy. To find out by incessant and
+unwearying search what the world really was, and not to make known facts
+fit in with the ideas of some thinker on what the world ought to be,
+this we found to be the main difference between Cosmas or even Ptolemy
+and any true leader of discovery. For a real advance of knowledge, fancy
+must follow experiment, and no merely hypothetical system or Universe as
+shewn in Holy Scripture, would do any longer. We have come to the time
+when explorers were not Ptolemaics or Strabonians or Scripturists, but
+Naturalists&mdash;men who examined things afresh, for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>These various objects are all involved in the one central aim of
+discovery, but they are not lost in it. To know this world we live in
+and to teach men the new knowledge was the first thing, which makes
+Henry what he is in universal history; his other aims are those of his
+time and his nation, but they are not less a part of his life.</p>
+
+<p>And he succeeded in them all; if in part his work was for all time and
+in part seemed to pass away after a hundred years, that was due to the
+exhaustion of his people. What he did for his countrymen was realised by
+others, but the start, the inspiration, was his own. He persevered for
+fifty years (1412-60) till within sight of the goal, and though he died
+before the full result of his work was seen, it was none the less his
+due when it came.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We find these results put down to the credit of others, but if Columbus
+gave Castille and Leon a new world in 1492, if Da Gama reached India in
+1498, if Diaz rounded the Cape of Tempests or of Good Hope in 1486, if
+Magellan made the circuit of the globe in 1520-2, their teacher and
+master was none the less Henry the Navigator.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer09.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header04.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>PRINCE HENRY AND THE CAPTURE OF CEUTA.</h3>
+
+<h3>1415.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/w.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="W"
+title="W" />e have seen how the kingdom of Portugal itself was almost an offspring
+of the Crusades. They had left behind them a thirst for wealth and for a
+wider life on one side, and a broken Moslem power on the other, which
+opened the way and stirred the enterprise of every maritime state. We
+know that Lisbon had long been an active centre of trade with the Hanse
+Towns, Flanders, and England. And now the projected conquest of Ceuta
+and the appeal of the conqueror of Aljubarrota for a great national
+effort found the people prepared. A royal prince could do what a private
+man could not; and Portugal, more fully developed than any other of the
+Christian kingdoms, was ready to expand abroad without fear at home.</p>
+
+<p>Even before the conquest of Ceuta, in 1410 or 1412, Henry had begun to
+send out his caravels past Cape Non, which had so long been with C.
+Bojador the Finisterre of Africa. The first object of these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> ships was
+to reach the Guinea coast by outflanking the great western shoulder of
+the continent. Once there, the gold and ivory and slave trade would pass
+away from the desert caravans to the European coasters. Then the eastern
+bend of Africa, along the bights of Benin and Biafra, might be followed
+to the Indies, if this were possible, as some had thought; if not, the
+first stage of the work would have to be taken up again till men had
+found and had rounded the Southern Cape. The outflanking of Guinea
+proved to be only a part of the outflanking of Africa, but it was far
+more than half the battle; just as India was the final prize of full
+success, so the Gold Coast was the reward of the first chapter in that
+success.</p>
+
+<p>But of these earlier expeditions nothing is known in detail; the history
+of the African voyages begins with the war of 1415, and the new
+knowledge it brought to Henry of the Sahara and the Guinea Coast and of
+the tribes of tawny Moors and negroes on the Niger and the Gambia.</p>
+
+<p>In 1414, when Edward was twenty-three, Pedro twenty-two, and Henry
+twenty, King John planned an attack on Ceuta, the great Moorish port on
+the African side of the Straits of Gibraltar. The three princes had all
+asked for knighthood; their father at first proposed to celebrate a year
+of tournaments, but at the suggestion of the Treasurer of Portugal, John
+Affonso de Alemquer, he decided on this African crusade instead. For the
+same strength and money might as well be spent in conquests from the
+Moslem as in sham-fights between Christians. So after reconnoitring the
+place, and lulling the suspicions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> of Aragon and Granada by a pretence
+of declaring war against the Count of Holland, King John gained the
+formal consent of his nobles at Torres Vedras, and set sail from Lisbon
+on St. James' Day, July 25, 1415, as foretold by the dying Queen
+Philippa, twelve days before.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus004"></a><img src="./images/illus004.jpg"
+alt="KING JOHN THE GREAT AND QUEEN PHILIPPA. FROM THEIR TOMB AT BATALHA."
+title="KING JOHN THE GREAT AND QUEEN PHILIPPA. FROM THEIR TOMB AT BATALHA." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">KING JOHN THE GREAT AND QUEEN PHILIPPA.<br />
+<span class="smcap">from their tomb at batalha</span>.</p>
+
+<p>That splendid woman, who had shared the throne for eight and twenty
+years, and who had trained her sons to be fit successors of her husband
+as the leaders of Portugal and the "Examples of all Christians," was now
+cut off by death from a sight of their first victories. Her last thought
+was for their success. She spoke to Edward of a king's true vocation, to
+Pedro of his knightly duties in the help of widows and orphans, to Henry
+of a general's care for his men. On the 13th, the last day of her
+illness, she roused herself to ask "What wind was blowing so strong
+against the house?" and hearing it was the north, sank back and died,
+exclaiming, "It is the wind for your voyage, that must be about St.
+James' Day." It would have been false respect to delay. The spirit of
+the Queen, the crusaders felt, was with them, urging them on.</p>
+
+<p>By the night of the 25th of July the fleet had left the Tagus; on the
+27th the crusaders anchored in the bay of Lagos and mustered all their
+forces: "33 galleys, 27 triremes, 32 biremes, and 120 pinnaces and
+transports," carrying 50,000 soldiers and 30,000 mariners. Some nobles
+and merchant adventurers from England, France, and Germany took part. It
+was something like the conquest of Lisbon over again; a greater Armada
+for a much smaller prey.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the 10th of August they were off Algeziras, still in Moorish hands,
+as part of the kingdom of Granada, and on the 12th the lighter craft
+were over on the African coast; a strong wind nearly carried the heavier
+into Malaga.</p>
+
+<p>Ceuta, the ancient Septa,<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> once repaired by Justinian, was the chief
+port of Morocco and a centre of commerce for the trade routes of the
+South and East, as well as a centre of piracy for the Barbary corsairs.
+It had long been an outpost of Moslem attack on Christendom; now that
+Europe was taking the offensive, it would be an outpost of the Spanish
+crusade against Islam.</p>
+
+<p>The city was built on the ordinary model, in two parts: a citadel and a
+port-town, which together covered the neck of a long peninsula running
+out some three miles eastward from the African mainland, and broadening
+again beyond the eastern wall of Ceuta into a hilly square of country.</p>
+
+<p>It was here, just where the land began to spread and form a natural
+harbour, that the Portuguese had planned their landing, and to this
+point Prince Henry, with great trouble, brought up the heavier craft.
+The strong currents that turned them off to the Spanish coast, proved
+good allies of the Europeans after all. For the Moors, who had been
+greatly startled at the first signs of attack, and had hurried to get
+all the help they could from Fez and the upland, now fancied the
+Christian fleet to be scattered once for all, and dismissed all but
+their own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> garrison; while the Portuguese had been roused afresh to
+action by the fiery energy of King John, Prince Henry, and his brothers.
+On the night of the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, the
+whole armada was at last brought up to the roads of Ceuta; Henry
+anchored off the lower town with his ships from Oporto, and his father,
+though badly wounded in the leg, rowed through the fleet in a shallop,
+preparing all his men for the assault that was to be given at daybreak.
+Henry himself was to have the right of first setting foot on shore,
+where it was hoped the quays would be almost bared of defenders. For the
+main force was brought up against the castle, and every Moor would rush
+to the fight where the King of Portugal was leading.</p>
+
+<p>While these movements were being settled in the armada, all through that
+night Ceuta was brilliantly lighted up, as if <i>en f&ecirc;te</i>. The Governor in
+his terror could think of nothing better than to frighten the enemy with
+the show of an immensely populous city, and he had ordered a light to be
+kept burning in every window of every house. As the morning cleared and
+the Christian host saw the beach and harbour lined with Moors, shouting
+defiance, the attack was begun by some volunteers who forgot the
+Prince's claim. One Ruy Gonsalvez was the first to land and clear a
+passage for the rest. The Infantes, Henry and Edward, were not far
+behind, and after a fierce struggle the Moslems were driven through the
+gate of the landing-place back to the wall of the city. Here they
+rallied, under a "negro giant, who fought naked, but with the strength
+of many men,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> hurling the Christians to the earth with stones." At last
+he was brought down by a lance-thrust, and the crusaders forced their
+way into Ceuta. But Henry, as chief captain on this side, would not
+allow his men to rush on plundering into the heart of the town, but kept
+them by the gates, and sent back to the ships for fresh troops, who soon
+came up under Fernandez d'Ataide, who cheered on the Princes. "This is
+the sort of tournament for you; here you are getting a worthier
+knighthood than you could win at Lisbon."</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the King, with Don Pedro, had heard of Henry's first success
+while still on shipboard, and ordered an instant advance on his side.
+After a still closer struggle than that on the lower ground, the Moors
+were routed, and Pedro pressed on through the narrow streets, just
+escaping death from the showers of heavy stones off the house tops, till
+he met his brothers in a mosque, or square adjoining, in the centre of
+Ceuta.</p>
+
+<p>Then the conquerors scattered for plunder, and came very near losing the
+city altogether. But for the dogged courage of Henry, who twice broke up
+the Moslem rally with a handful of men, at last holding a gate on the
+inner wall between the lower town and the citadel, "with seventeen,
+himself the eighteenth," Ceuta would have been lost after it had been
+gained. Both Henry and Pedro were reported dead. "Such is the end a
+soldier must not fear," was all their father said, as he stayed by the
+ships under the lee of the fortress, waiting, like Edward III. at Cre&ccedil;y,
+for what his sons would do. But towards evening it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> was known throughout
+the army that the Princes were safe, that the port-town had been gained,
+and that the Moors were slipping away from the citadel.</p>
+
+<p>Henry, Edward, and Pedro held a council, and settled to storm the castle
+next morning; but after sunset a few scouts, sent out to reconnoitre,
+reported that all the garrison had fled.</p>
+
+<p>It was true. The Governor, who had despaired all along of holding out,
+was no sooner beaten out of the lower city than he set the example of a
+strategic movement up the country, and when the Portuguese appeared at
+the fortress gate with axes and began to hew it down, only two Moors
+were left inside. They shouted out that the Christians might save
+themselves that trouble, for they would open it themselves, and the
+standard of St. Vincent, Patron of Lisbon, was planted, before dark
+came, upon the highest tower of Ceuta.</p>
+
+<p>King John offered Henry, for his gallant leadership, the honours of the
+day and the right to be knighted before his brothers, but the Prince,
+who had offered at the beginning of the storm to resign his command to
+Edward, as the eldest, begged that "those who were before him in age
+might have their right, to be first in dignity as well," and the three
+Infantes received their knighthood in order of birth, each holding in
+his hands the bare sword that the Queen had given him on her deathbed.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first Christian rite held in the great Mosque of Ceuta, now
+purified as the Cathedral, and after it the town was thoroughly and
+carefully sacked from end to end. The plunder, of gold and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> silver and
+gems, stuffs and drugs, was great enough to make the common soldiers
+reckless of other things. The "great jars of oil and honey and spices
+and all provisions" were flung out into the streets, and a heavy rain
+swept away what would have kept a large garrison in plenty.</p>
+
+<p>The great nobles and the royal Princes took back to Portugal some
+princely spoils. Henry's half-brother, now Count of Barcellos,
+afterwards more famous and more troublesome as Duke of Braganza, chose
+for his share some six hundred columns of marble and alabaster from the
+Governor's palace. Henry himself gained in Ceuta a knowledge of inland
+Africa, of its trade routes and of the Gold Coast, that encouraged him
+to begin from this time the habit of coasting voyages. His earlier
+essays in exploration had been attempts, like the unconnected and
+occasional efforts of Spanish and Italian daredevils. It is from this
+year that continuous ocean sailing begins; from the time of his stay in
+Ceuta, Henry works steadily and with foresight towards a nearer goal
+well foreseen, a first stage in his wider scheme which had been
+traversed by men he had known and talked with. They had come into Ceuta
+from Guinea over the sea of the desert; he would send his sailors to
+<i>their</i> starting-point by the longer way, over the desert of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the victory at Ceuta is not without a very direct influence on our
+subject; and for the same reason, it was important that the conquerors,
+instead of razing the place, decided to hold it. When most of the
+council of war were for a safe and quick return<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> to Portugal, one
+noble, Pedro de Menezes, a trusted friend of Henry's, struck upon the
+ground impatiently a stick of orange-wood he had in his hands. "By my
+faith, with this stick I would defend Ceuta from every Morisco of them
+all." He was left in command, and thus kept open, as it were, to Europe
+and to the Prince's view, one end of a great avenue of commerce and
+intercourse, which Henry aimed at winning for his country. When his
+ships could once reach Guinea, the other end of that same line was in
+his hands as well.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus005"></a><img src="./images/illus005.jpg"
+alt="GATEWAY OF THE CHURCH OF THE ORDER OF CHRIST AT THOMAR."
+title="GATEWAY OF THE CHURCH OF THE ORDER OF CHRIST AT THOMAR." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">GATEWAY OF THE CHURCH OF THE ORDER OF CHRIST AT THOMAR.</p>
+
+<p>The King and the Princes left Ceuta in September of the same year (Sept.
+2, 1415), but Henry's connection with his first battle-field was not yet
+over. Menezes found after three years' sole command, that the Moors were
+pressing him very hard. The King of Granada had sent seventy-four ships
+to blockade the city from the sea, and the troops of Fez were forcing
+their way into the lower town. Henry was hurriedly sent from Lisbon to
+its relief, while Edward and Pedro got themselves ready to follow him,
+if needed, from Lagos and the Algarve coast. But Ceuta had already saved
+itself. As the first succours were sailing through the Straits of
+Gibraltar, Menezes contrived to send them word of his danger; the
+Berbers on the land side had mastered Almina, or the eastern part of the
+merchant town, while the Granada galleys had closed in upon the port
+itself. At this news Henry made the best speed he could, but he was only
+in time to see the rout of the Moors. Menezes and the garrison made a
+desperate sally directly they sighted the relief coming through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> the
+straits; the same appearance struck a panic into the enemy's fleet, and
+only one galley stayed on the African coast to help their landsmen, who
+were thus left alone and without hope of succour on the eastern hills of
+the Ceuta peninsula, cut off by the city from their Berber allies. When
+Henry landed, Almina had been won back and the last of the Granada
+Moslems cut to pieces. From that day Ceuta was safe in Christian hands.</p>
+
+<p>But the Prince, after spending two months in the hope that he might find
+some more work to do in Africa, planned a daring stroke in Europe. Islam
+still owned in Spain the kingdom of Granada, too weak to reconquer the
+old Western Caliphate, but too strong, as the last refuge of a conquered
+and once imperial race, to be an easy prey of the Spanish kingdoms. And
+in that kingdom, Gibraltar, the rock of Tarik, was the most troublesome
+of Moorish strongholds. The Mediterranean itself was not fully secured
+for Christian trade and intercourse while the European Pillar of the
+Western straits was a Saracen fort. If Portugal was to conquer or
+explore in northern Africa, Gibraltar was as much to be aimed at as
+Ceuta. Both sides of the straits, Calpe and Abyla, must be in her hands
+before Christendom could expand safely along the Atlantic coasts.</p>
+
+<p>So Henry, in the face of all his council, determined to make the trial
+on his voyage back to Lisbon. But a storm broke up the fleet, and when
+it could be refitted and re-formed, the time had gone by, and the Prince
+obeyed his father's repeated orders and returned at once to Court. For
+his gallantry and skill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> in the storm of Ceuta, he had been made Duke of
+Viseu and Lord of Covilham, when King John first touched his own
+kingdom&mdash;after the African campaign&mdash;at Tavira, on the Algarve coast.
+With his brother Pedro, who shared his honours as Duke of Coimbra and
+Lord of the lands henceforward known as the Infantado or Principality,
+Henry thus begins the line of Dukes in Portugal, and among the other
+details of the war, his name is specially joined with that of an English
+fleet which he had enrolled as a contingent of his armada while
+recruiting for ships and men in the spring of 1415. In the same way as
+English crusaders had passed Lisbon just in time to aid in its conquest
+by Affonso Henriquez, the "great first King" of Portugal in 1147, so now
+twenty-seven English ships on their way to Syria were just in time to
+help the Portuguese make their first conquest abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the results of the Ceuta campaign in giving positive knowledge
+of western and inland Africa to a mind like Henry's already set on the
+finding of a sea-route to India, have been noticed by all contemporaries
+and followers, who took any interest in his plans, but it was not merely
+caravan news that he gained in these two visits of 1415 and 1418. Both
+Azurara, the chronicler of his voyages and Diego Gomez, his lieutenant,
+the explorer of the Cape Verde Islands and of the Upper Gambia, are
+quite clear about the new knowledge of the coast now gained from Moorish
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>Not only did the Prince get "news of the passage of merchants from the
+coasts of Tunis to Timbuctoo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> and to Cantor on the Gambia, which
+inspired him to seek the lands by the way of the sea," but also "the
+Tawny Moors (or Azanegues) his prisoners told him of certain tall palms
+growing at the mouth of the Senegal or western Nile, by which he was
+able to guide the caravels he sent out to find that river." By the time
+Henry was ready to return from Ceuta to Portugal for good and all, in
+1418, there were clearly before his mind the five reasons for exploring
+Guinea given by his faithful Azurara:</p>
+
+<p>First of all was his desire to know the country beyond Cape Bojador,
+which till that time was quite unknown either by books or by the talk of
+sailors.</p>
+
+<p>Second was his wish that if any Christian people or good ports should be
+discovered beyond that cape, he might begin a trade with them that would
+profit both the natives and the Portuguese, for he knew of no other
+nation in Europe who trafficked in those parts.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, he believed the Moors were more powerful on that side of Africa
+than had been thought, and he feared there were no Christians there at
+all. So he was fain to find out how many and how strong his enemies
+really were.</p>
+
+<p>Fourthly, in all his fighting with the Moors he had never found a
+Christian prince to help him from that side (of further Africa) for the
+love of Christ, therefore he wished, if he could, to meet with such.</p>
+
+<p>Last was his great desire for the spread of the Christian Faith and for
+the redemption of the vast tribes of men lying under the wrath of God.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Behind all these reasons Azurara also believed in a sixth and deeper
+one, which he proceeds to state with all gravity, as the ultimate and
+celestial cause of the Prince's work.</p>
+
+<p>"For as his ascendant was Aries, that is in the House of Mars and the
+Exaltation of the Sun, and as the said Mars is in Aquarius, which is the
+House of Saturn, it was clear that my lord should be a great conqueror,
+and a searcher out of things hidden from other men, according to the
+craft of Saturn, in whose House he was."<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer10.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header05.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>HENRY'S SETTLEMENT AT SAGRES AND FIRST DISCOVERIES.</h3>
+
+<h3>1418-28.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/w.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="W"
+title="W" />hatever the Prince owed to his stay at Ceuta beyond the general
+suggestion and encouragement to take up a life-profession of discovery,
+it was at any rate put into practice on his second and last return
+(1418). From that time to the end of his life he became a recluse from
+the Court life of Lisbon, though he soon gathered round himself a rival
+Court, of science and seamanship.</p>
+
+<p>The old "Sacred Cape" of the Romans, then called Sagres, now the "Cape
+St. Vincent" of Nelson and modern maps, was his chosen home for the next
+forty years, though he seems to have passed a good deal of his time in
+his port of Lagos, close by.</p>
+
+<p>In 1419 King John made him Governor for life of the Algarves (the
+southern province of Portugal) and the new governor at once began to
+rebuild and enlarge the old naval arsenal, in the neck of the Cape, into
+a settlement that soon became the "Prince's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> Town." In Lagos, his ships
+were built and manned; and there, and in Sagres itself, all the schemes
+of discovery were thought out, the maps and instruments corrected, and
+the accounts of past and present travellers compared by the Prince
+himself. His results then passed into the instructions of his captains
+and the equipment of his caravels. The Sacred Cape, which he now
+colonised, was at any rate a good centre for his work of ocean voyaging.
+Here, with the Atlantic washing the land on three sides, he was well on
+the scene of action. There were buildings on Sagres headland as old as
+the eleventh century; Greek geography had made this the starting-point
+of its shorter and continental measurements for the length of the
+habitable world, and the Genoese, whose policy was to buy up points of
+vantage on every coast, were eager to plant a colony there, but Portugal
+was not ready to become like the Byzantine Empire, a depot for Italian
+commerce, and Henry had his own reasons for securing a desolate
+promontory.</p>
+
+<p>On this he now built himself a palace, a chapel, a study, an
+observatory&mdash;the earliest in Portugal&mdash;and a village for his helpers and
+attendants. "In his wish to gain a prosperous result for his efforts,
+the Prince devoted great industry and thought to the matter, and at
+great expense procured the aid of one Master Jacome from Majorca, a man
+skilled in the art of navigation and in the making of maps and
+instruments, and who was sent for, with certain of the Arab and Jewish
+mathematicians, to instruct the Portuguese in that science." So at
+least, says De<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> Barros, the "Livy of Portugal." At Sagres was thus
+founded anew the systematic study of applied science in Christendom; it
+was better than the work of the old Greek "University" at Alexandria
+with which it has been compared, because it was essentially practical.
+From it "our sailors," says Pedro Nunes, "went out well taught and
+provided with instruments and rules which all map-makers should know."
+We would gladly know more of Henry's scientific work; a good many
+legends have grown up about it, and even his foundation of the Chair of
+Mathematics in the University of Lisbon or Coimbra, our best evidence of
+the unrecorded work of his school, has been doubted by some modern
+critics, even by the national historian, Alexander Herculano. But to
+Prince Henry's study and science two great improvements on this side may
+be traced: first in the art of map-making, secondly in the building of
+caravels and ocean craft.</p>
+
+<p>The great Venetian map of Fra Mauro of the Camaldolese convent of
+Murano, finished in 1459, one year before the Navigator's death, is
+evidence for the one; Cadamosto's words, as a practical seaman, of
+Italian birth, in Henry's service, that the "caravels of Portugal were
+the best sailing ships afloat," may be proof sufficient of the other.</p>
+
+<p>On both these lines, Henry took up the results of Italians and worked
+towards success with their aid. As Columbus and the Cabots and Verazzano
+in later times represented the intellectual leadership of Italy to other
+nations&mdash;Spain, England, and France; but had to find their career and
+resources not in their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> own commercial republics, but at the Courts of
+the new centralised kingdoms of the West, where a paternal despotism
+gave the best hope of guiding any popular movement, social or religious
+or political or scientific,&mdash;so in the earlier fifteenth century,
+mariners like Cadamosto and De Nolli, scientific draughtsmen like Fra
+Mauro and Andrea Bianco, looked from Venice and Genoa to the Court of
+Sagres and to the service of Prince Henry as their proper sphere, where
+they would find the encouragement and reward they sought for at home and
+often sought in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Henry's settlement on Cape St. Vincent was not long without results. The
+voyage of his captain, John de Trasto, to the "fruitful" district of
+Grand Canary in 1415 was not in any sense a discovery, as the conquest
+of John de B&eacute;thencourt in 1402 had made these "Fortunate" islands
+perfectly well known, but the finding of Porto Santo and Madeira in
+1418-20 was a real gain. For the Machin story of the English landing in
+Madeira was a close secret, which by good fortune passed into the
+Prince's keeping, but not beyond, so that as far as general knowledge
+went, the Portuguese were now fairly embarked upon the Sea of Darkness.</p>
+
+<p>First came the sighting of the "Holy Haven" in 1418. In this year, says
+Azurara, two squires of the Prince's household, named John Gonsalvez
+Zarco and Tristam Vaz, eager for renown and anxious to serve their lord,
+had set out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea, but they were
+caught by a storm near Lagos and driven to the island of Porto Santo.
+This name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> they gave themselves "at this very time in their joy at thus
+escaping the perils of the tempest."</p>
+
+<p>Zarco and Vaz returned in triumph to Sagres and reported the new-found
+island to be well worth a permanent settlement. Henry, always
+"generous," took up the idea with great interest and sent out Zarco and
+Vaz with another of his equerries, one Bartholomew Perestrello, to
+colonise, with two ships and products for a new country; corn, honey,
+the sugar cane from Sicily, the Malvoisie grape from Crete, even the
+rabbit from Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>On his first return voyage Zarco had captured the pilot Morales of
+Seville, and from him the Prince had gained certain news of the English
+landing in Madeira. So it was with a definite purpose of further
+discovery that his captains returned to Porto Santo in 1420, with
+Morales as their guide. Now, as before, Zarco appears as chief in
+command; he had won himself a name at Ceuta, and if the tradition be
+true, had just brought in the first use of ship-artillery; the finding
+of Porto Santo was mainly credited to him.</p>
+
+<p>Sailing from Lagos in June, 1420, he had no sooner reached once again
+the "Fair Haven" of his first success, than he was called to note a dark
+line, like a mark of distant land, upon the south-west horizon. The
+colonists he had left on his earlier visit had watched this day by day
+till they had made certain of its being something more than a passing
+appearance of sea or sky, and Morales was ready with his suggestion that
+this was Machin's island. The fog that hung over this part of the ocean
+would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> natural to a thick and dank woodland like that on the island
+of his old adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Zarco resolved to try: After eight days' rest in Porto Santo he set
+sail, and, observing that the fog grew less toward the east of the cloud
+bank, made for that point and came upon a low marshy cape, which he
+called St. Lawrence Head. Then, creeping round the south coast, he came
+to the high lands and the forests of Madeira,&mdash;so named here and now,
+either as De Barros says, "from the thick woods they found there," or,
+in the form of Machico, from the first discoverer, luckless Robert
+Machin. For on landing the Portuguese, guided by Morales, soon found the
+wooden cross and grave of the Englishman and his mistress, and it was
+there that Zarco, with no human being to dispute his title, "took
+seizin" of the island in the name of King John, Prince Henry, and the
+Order of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Embarking once more, he then coasted slowly round from the "River of the
+Flint" to "Jackdaw Point," and the "Chamber of the Wolves," where his
+men started a herd of sea-calves. So he came to the vast plain overgrown
+with fennel or "Funchal," where the chief town of after days grew up. A
+party sent inland to explore, reported that on every side the ocean
+could be seen from the hills; and Zarco, after taking in some specimens
+of the native wood and plants and birds at Funchal, put back in the last
+days of August to Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>He was splendidly received at Court, made a count&mdash;"Count of the Chamber
+of the Wolves,"&mdash;and granted the command of the island for his own
+life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> A little later, the commandership was made hereditary in his
+family. Tristam Vaz, the second in the Prince's commission, was rewarded
+too: the northern half of Madeira was given him as a captaincy, and in
+1425 Henry began to colonise in form. Zarco, as early as May, 1421, had
+returned with wife and children and attendants, and begun to build the
+"port of Machico," and the "city of Funchal," but this did not become a
+state affair until four years more had gone by.</p>
+
+<p>But from the first, the island, by its export of wood and dragon's blood
+and wheat, began to reward the trouble of discovery and settlement.
+Sugar and wine were brought to perfection in later years, after the
+great "Seven years' fire" had burnt down the forests and enriched the
+soil of Madeira. It was soon after Zarco's return to Funchal that he
+first set fire to the woods behind the fennel fields of the coast, to
+clear himself a way through the undergrowth into the heart of the
+island; the fire blazed and smouldered till it had taken well hold of
+the entire mass of timber that covered the upper country, nothing in the
+feeble resources of the first settlers could stop it, and Madeira
+lighted the ships of Henry on their way to the south, like a volcano,
+till 1428. This was at least the common story as told in Portugal, and
+it was often joined with another&mdash;of the rabbit plague, which ate up all
+the green stuff of the island in the first struggling years of Zarco's
+settlement, and so prevented the export of anything but timber. So much
+of this was brought into Portugal that Henry's lifetime is a landmark in
+the domestic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> architecture of Spain, and from the trade of the "Wood
+Island" is derived the lofty style of building that now began to replace
+the more modest fashion of the Arabs.</p>
+
+<p>A charter of Henry's, dated 1430, ten years after the rediscovery of
+Madeira, and reciting the names of some of the first settlers, and his
+bequest of the island, or rather of its "spiritualties," to the Order of
+Christ on September 18, 1460, just before his death, are the chief links
+between this colony and the home country in the next generation&mdash;but in
+the history of institutions there are few more curious facts than the
+insistence of the Prince on a census for his little "Nation." From the
+first, the family registers of the colonists were carefully kept, and
+from these we see something of the wonder of men who were beginning
+human life, as it were, in a new land. The first children born in
+Madeira&mdash;a son and daughter of Ayres Ferreira, one of Zarco's
+comrades&mdash;were christened Adam and Eve.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer11.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header06.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>CAPE BOJADOR AND THE AZORES.</h3>
+
+<h3>1428-1441.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/b.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="B"
+title="B" />ut in spite of Zarco's success, Cape Bojador had not yet been passed,
+though every year, from 1418, caravels had left Sagres, "to find the
+coasts of Guinea."</p>
+
+<p>In 1428, Don Pedro, Henry's elder brother, had come home from his
+travels, with all the books and charts he had collected to help the
+explorers&mdash;and it is practically certain that the Mappa Mundi given him
+in Venice acted as a direct suggestion to the next attempts on west and
+south&mdash;westward to the Azores, southward towards Guinea.</p>
+
+<p>Kept in the royal monastery of Al&ccedil;oba&ccedil;a till late in the sixteenth
+century, though now irrecoverably lost, this treasure of Don Pedro's,
+like his "manuscripts of travel," would seem to have been used at the
+Sagres school till Prince Henry's death, and at least as early as 1431
+its effect was seen in the first Portuguese recovery of the Azores. All
+the West African islands, plainly enough described in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> map of 1428,
+were half within, half without the knowledge of Christendom, ever and
+anon being brought back or rediscovered by some accident or enterprise,
+and then being lost to sight and memory through the want of systematic
+exploration. This was exactly what the Portuguese supplied. The Azores,
+marked on the Laurentian Portulano of 1351, were practically unknown to
+seamen when, after eighty years had passed, Gonzalo Cabral was sent out
+from Sagres to find them (1431). He reached the Formiga group&mdash;the Ant
+islands,&mdash;and next year (1432) returned to make further discoveries,
+chiefly of the island Santa Maria. But the more important advances on
+this side were made between 1444-50, after the first colony had been
+planted twelve or fourteen years, and were the result of the Prince's
+theoretical correction of his captains' practical oversight. From a
+comparison of old maps and descriptions with their accounts, he was able
+to correct their line of sail and so to direct them to the very islands
+they had searched for in vain.</p>
+
+<p>But as yet these results were far distant, and the slow and sure
+progress of African coasting towards Cape Bojador was the chief outcome
+of Pedro's help. In 1430, 1431, and 1432, the Infant urged upon his
+captains the paramount importance of rounding the Cape, which had
+baffled all his caravels by its strong ocean currents and dangerous
+rocks. At last this became the Prince's one command: Pass the Cape if
+you do nothing beyond; yet the years went by, King John of good memory
+died in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> 1433, and Gil Eannes, sent out in the same year with strong
+hopes of success, turned aside at the Canaries and only brought a few
+slaves back to Portugal. A large party at Court, in the Army, and among
+the nobles and merchant classes, complained bitterly of the utter want
+of profit from Henry's schemes, and there was at this time a danger of
+the collapse of his movement. For though as yet he paid his own
+expenses, his treasury could not long have stood the drain without any
+incoming.</p>
+
+<p>Bojador, the "paunch" or "bulging Cape," 180 miles beyond Cape Non, had
+been, since the days of the Laurentian Portulano (1351), and the Catalan
+and Portuguese voyages of 1341 and 1346, the southmost point of
+Christian knowledge. A long circuit was needed here, as at the Cape of
+Good Hope, to round a promontory that stretched, men said, fully one
+hundred miles into the ocean, where tides and shoals formed a current
+twenty miles across. It was the sight or the fancy of this furious surge
+which frightened Henry's crews, for it plainly forbade all coasting and
+compelled the seamen to strike into the open sea out of sight of land.
+And though the discovery of Porto Santo had proved the feasibility and
+the gain of venturing boldly into the Sea of Darkness, and though since
+that time (1418) the Prince had sent out his captains due west to the
+Azores and south-west to Madeira, both hundreds of miles from the
+continent, yet in rounding Bojador there were not only the real terrors
+of the Atlantic, but the legends of the tropics to frighten back the
+boldest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Most mariners had heard it said that any Christian who passed Bojador
+would infallibly be changed into a black, and would carry to his end
+this mark of God's vengeance on his insolent prying. The Arab tradition
+of the Green Sea of Night had too strongly taken hold of Christian
+thought to be easily shaken off. And it was beyond the Cape which
+bounded their knowledge that the Saracen geographers had fringed the
+coast of Africa with sea-monsters and serpent rocks and water unicorns,
+instead of place names, and had drawn the horrible giant hand of Satan
+raised above the waves to seize the first of his human prey that would
+venture into his den. If God made the firm earth, the Devil made the
+unknown and treacherous ocean&mdash;this was the real lesson of most of the
+medi&aelig;val maps, and it was this ingrained superstition that Henry found
+his worst enemy, appearing as it did sometimes even in his most trusted
+and daring captains.</p>
+
+<p>And then again, the legends of Tropical Africa, of the mainland beyond
+Bojador, were hardly less terrible than those of the Tropical Ocean. The
+Dark Continent, with its surrounding Sea of Darkness, was the home of
+mystery and legend. We have seen how ready the Arabs were to write
+Uninhabitable over any unknown country&mdash;dark seas and lands were simply
+those that were dark to them, like the Dark Ages to others, but nowhere
+did their imagination revel in genies and fairies and magicians and all
+the horrors of hell, with more enthusiastic and genial interest than in
+Africa. Here only the northern parts could be lived in by man. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+south and central deserts, as we have heard from the Moslem doctors
+themselves, the sun poured down sheets of liquid flame upon the ground
+and kept the sea and the rivers boiling day and night with the fiery
+heat. So any sailors would of course be boiled alive as soon as they got
+near to the Torrid Zone.</p>
+
+<p>It was this kind of learning, discredited but not forgotten, that was
+still in the minds of Gil Eannes and his friends when they came home in
+1433, with lame excuses, to Henry's Court. The currents and south winds
+had stopped them, they said. It was impossible to get round Bojador.</p>
+
+<p>The Prince was roused. He ordered the same captain to return next year
+and try the Cape again. His men ought to have learned something better
+than the childish fables of past time. "And if," said he, "there were
+even any truth in these stories that they tell, I would not blame you,
+but you come to me with the tales of four seamen who perhaps know the
+voyage to the Low Countries or some other coasting route, but, except
+for this, don't know how to use needle or sailing chart. Go out again
+and heed them not, for by God's help, fame and profit must come from
+your voyage, if you will but persevere."</p>
+
+<p>The Prince was backed by the warm encouragement of the new King, Edward,
+his eldest brother, who had only been one month upon the throne when he
+bestirred himself to shew his favour to a national movement of
+discovery. King John had died on August 14, 1433 (the anniversary of
+Aljubarrota), and on September 26th, of the same year, by a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> charter
+given from Cintra, King Edward granted the islands of Madeira and Porto
+Santo, with the Desertas, to Henry as Grand Master of the Order of
+Christ.</p>
+
+<p>With this encouragement the Infant sent out Gil Eannes in 1434 under the
+strongest charge not to return without a good account of the Cape and
+the seas beyond. Running far out into the open, his caravel doubled
+Bojador, and coming back to the coast found the sea "as easy to sail in
+as the waters at home," and the land very rich and pleasant. They landed
+and discovered no trace of men or houses, but gathered plants, "such as
+were called in Portugal St. Mary's roses," to present to Don Henry. Not
+even the southern Cape of Tempests or Good Hope was so long and
+obstinate a barrier as Bojador had been, and the passing of this
+difficulty proved the salvation of the Prince's schemes. Though again
+and again interrupted by political troubles between 1437 and 1449, the
+advance at sea went on, and never again was there a serious danger of
+the failure of the whole movement through general opposition and
+discontent.</p>
+
+<p>In 1435 Gil Eannes was sent out again to follow up his success with
+Affonso Baldaya, the Prince's cupbearer, in a larger vessel than had yet
+been risked in exploration, called a varinel, or oared galley. The two
+captains passed fifty leagues&mdash;one hundred and fifty miles&mdash;beyond the
+Cape, and found traces of caravans, reached as far as an inlet they
+named Gurnet Bay, from its shoals of fish, and again put back to Lagos,
+early in the year.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were still several months left for ocean sailing in 1435, and
+Henry at once despatched Baldaya again in his varinel, with orders to go
+as far as he could along the coast, at least till he could find some
+natives. One of these he was to bring home with him. Baldaya accordingly
+sailed 130 leagues&mdash;390 miles&mdash;beyond Cape Bojador, till he reached an
+estuary running some twenty miles up the country and promising to lead
+to a great river. This might prove to be the western Nile of the
+Negroes, or the famous River of Gold, Baldaya thought, and though it
+proved to be only an inlet of the sea, the name of Rio d'Ouro, then
+given by the first hopes of the Portuguese, has outlasted the
+disappointment that found only a sandy reach instead of a waterway to
+the Mountains of the Moon and the kingdom of Prester John.</p>
+
+<p>Baldaya anchored here, landed a couple of horses which the Infant had
+given him to scour the country, and set "two young noble gentlemen" upon
+them to ride up country, to look for signs of natives, and if possible
+to bring back one captive to the ship. Taking no body-armour, but only
+lance and sword, the boys followed the "river" to its source, seven
+leagues up the country, and here came suddenly upon nineteen savages,
+armed with assegais. They rode up to them and drove them out of the open
+up to a loose mound of stones; then as evening was coming on and they
+could not secure a prisoner, they rode back to the sea and reached the
+ship about the dawn of day. "And of these boys," says the chronicler, "I
+myself knew one, when he was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> noble gentleman of good renown in arms.
+His name was Hector Homen, and you will find him in our history well
+proved in brave deeds. The other, named Lopez d'Almeida, was a nobleman
+of good presence, as I have heard from those who knew him."</p>
+
+<p>This first landing of Europeans on the coasts of unknown Africa, since
+the days of Carthaginian colonies, is one of the great moments in the
+story of Western expansion and discovery. For it means that Christendom
+on her Western side has at last got beyond the first circle of her
+enemies, the belt of settled Moslem ground, and has begun to touch the
+wider world outside, on the shore of the ocean as well as along the
+Eastern trade routes. And it almost seemed to be of little practical
+value that Marco Polo and the friars and traders who followed him had
+passed Islam in Asia, and reached even furthest Tartary, for it only
+made more clear that Asia was not Christian, and that there would have
+to be a deadly struggle before European influence could be restored on
+this side to what it had been under Alexander; but on the west, by the
+Atlantic coasts, once Morocco had been passed, there were only scattered
+savage tribes to be dealt with. Baldaya had now reached the pagans
+beyond Islam; the rival civilisation of the Arabs and their converts had
+been almost outflanked by Don Henry's ships; and the boys who rode up
+the Rio d'Ouro beach in 1435 were the first pickets of a great army.
+Their charge upon a body of grown men ten times their number, was a
+prophecy of the coming conquests of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> Christian Europe in the new worlds
+it was now in search of, in south and east and west.</p>
+
+<p>Now Baldaya instantly followed up his pioneers. He took a party in his
+ship's boat and rode up the stream to the scene of the fight, with the
+boys on horseback riding by the bank and shewing him the stone-heap
+where the natives had rallied on the day before. But in the night they
+had all fled farther up country, leaving most of their miserable goods
+behind. All these were carried off, and the Portuguese left the Bay of
+the Horses, as they called this farthest reach of the Rio d'Ouro, and
+pulled back to the varinel, without any further success than a wholesome
+disappointment. They must go farther southward if they were to find the
+western Nile and the way round Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Still Baldaya was not content. He wished to carry back a prisoner, as
+Henry had charged him, and so he coasted along fifty leagues more, from
+the Rio d'Ouro to the Port of Gallee, a rock that looked like a galley,
+where there was a more prominent headland than he had passed since
+Bojador. Here he landed once again, and found some native nets, made of
+the bark of trees, but none of the natives who made them.</p>
+
+<p>In the early months of 1436 he and his varinel were again in Portuguese
+waters; but the land had now been touched that lay three hundred miles
+beyond the old African Finisterre, and in two years (1434-6) Portugal
+and all the Christian nations, through Henry's work, had entered on a
+new chapter of history. The narrower world of the Roman Empire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> and the
+Medi&aelig;val Church was already growing into the modern globe in the break
+up of that old terror of the sea which had so long fixed for men the
+bounds that they must not pass. The land routes had been cleared to
+Western knowledge, though not mastered, by the Crusades; now the far
+more dreaded and unknown water-way was fairly entered. For up to this
+time there is no fair evidence that either Christian or Moorish
+enterprise had ever rounded Bojador, and the theoretical marking of it
+upon maps was a very different thing from the experience that it was
+just like any other cape, and no more an end of the world than Cape St.
+Vincent itself. Neither Genoese, nor Catalans, nor Normans of Dieppe,
+nor the Arab wanderers of Edrisi and Ibn Said were before Don Henry now.
+His discoveries of the Atlantic islands were findings, rediscoveries;
+his coast voyages from the year 1433 are all ventures in the true
+unknown.</p>
+
+<p>But from 1436 to 1441, from Baldaya's second return to the start of Nuno
+Tristam and Antam Gonsalvez for Cape Blanco, exploration was not
+successful or energetic. The simple cause of this was the Infant's other
+business. In these years took place the fatal attempt on Tangier, the
+death of King Edward, and the troubles of the minority of his child,
+Affonso V.&mdash;Affonso the African conqueror of later years.</p>
+
+<p>True it is, we read in our <i>Chronicle of the Discovery of Guinea</i>, that
+in these years there went to those parts two ships, one at a time, but
+the first turned back in the face of bad weather, and the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> only
+went to the Rio d'Ouro for the skins and oil of sea wolves, and after
+taking in a cargo of these, went back to Portugal. And true it is, too,
+that in the year 1440 there were armed and sent out two caravels to go
+to that same land, but in that they met with contrary fortune, we do not
+tell any more of their voyage.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer12.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header08.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>HENRY'S POLITICAL LIFE. 1433-1441.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/t.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="T"
+title="T" />he Prince's exile from politics in his hermitage at Sagres could not be
+absolutely unbroken. He was ready to come back to Court and to the
+battle field when he was needed. So he appeared at the deathbed of his
+father in 1433 and of his brother in 1438, at the siege of Tangier in
+1437, and during the first years of the Regency (1438-40) he helped to
+govern for his nephew, Edward's son Affonso. From 1436 till 1441 he did
+not seriously turn his attention back to discovery.</p>
+
+<p>What is chiefly interesting in the story of these years is the
+half-religious reverence paid to Henry by his brothers, by Cort&eacute;s, and
+the whole people. He was above and beyond his age, but not so much as to
+be beyond its understanding. He was not a leader where there are no
+followers; he was one of the fortunate beings who are most valued by
+those who have lived on the closest terms with them, by father and by
+brothers.</p>
+
+<p>It was believed throughout the kingdom that King<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> John's last words were
+"an encouragement to the Infant to persevere in his right laudable
+purpose of spreading the Christian faith in the lands of darkness";
+whether true or not, at any rate it was felt to fit the place and the
+man, and Henry's brothers, Pedro and Edward, took up loyally their
+father's commission to keep peace at home and sailing ships on the sea.</p>
+
+<p>But the new reign was short and full of trouble. King Edward had
+scarcely been crowned when the scheme of an African war was revived by
+Don Ferdinand, the fourth of the "Famous Infants" of the House of Aviz
+(1433). Ferdinand, always a Crusader at heart, had refused a Cardinal's
+hat, that he might keep his strength for killing the enemies of Christ,
+and in Henry he found a ready listener. It was the Navigator, in fact,
+who planned and organised the scheme of campaign now pressed upon the
+King and the country. It was perfectly natural that he should do so. The
+war of Ceuta had been of the first importance to his work of discovery;
+it had been largely his own achievement, and his wish to conquer
+Heathens and Saracens and to make good Christians of them was hardly
+less strong than his natural bent for discovery and exploring
+settlement. He now took up Ferdinand's suggestion, made of it a definite
+project&mdash;for a storm of Tangier&mdash;and wrung a reluctant consent from
+Edward and from Cort&eacute;s. The chief hindrance was lack of money; even the
+popularity of the Government could not prevent "sore grudging and
+murmuring among the people." Don Pedro himself was against the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+plan, and from respect to his wishes the question was referred to the
+Pope. Are we to make war on the infidels or no?</p>
+
+<p>If the infidels in question, answered the Curia, were in Christian land
+and used Christian churches as mosques of Mohammed, or if they made
+incursions upon Christians, though always returning to their own land,
+or if doing none of these things they were idolaters or sinned against
+nature, the Princes of Portugal would do right to levy war upon them.
+But this should be done with prudence and piety, lest the people of
+Christ should suffer loss. Further, it was only just to tax a Christian
+people for support of an infidel war, when the said war was of necessity
+in defence of the kingdom. If the war was voluntary, for the conquering
+of fresh lands from the Heathen, it could only be waged at the King's
+own cost.</p>
+
+<p>But before this answer arrived, the armament had been made ready, and
+things had gone too far to draw back; the Queen was eager for the war,
+and had brought King Edward to a more willing consent. So in the face of
+bad omens, an illness of Prince Ferdinand's, and the warning words of
+Don Pedro, the troops were put on board ship, August 17, 1437. On August
+22d they set sail, and on the 26th landed at Ceuta, where Menezes still
+commanded. The European triumphs of 1415 and 1418 were still fresh in
+the memories of the Moors, and Don Henry was remembered as their hero.
+So it was to him that the tribes of the Beni Hamed sent offers of
+submission and tribute on the first news of the invasion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> The Prince
+accepted their presents of gold and silver, cattle and wood, and left
+them in peace during the war, for the forces he had with him were barely
+sufficient for the siege of Tangier. Out of fourteen thousand men levied
+in Portugal, only six thousand answered the roll-call in Ceuta. A great
+number had shirked the dangers of Africa; and the room on shipboard had
+in itself been absurdly insufficient. The transports provided were just
+enough for the battalions that actually crossed, and for a fresh supply
+they must be sent back to Lisbon. In the council of war most were agreed
+upon this as the best thing on paper, but the practical difficulties
+were so great that Henry decided not to wait for reinforcements, but to
+push forward with the troops in hand.</p>
+
+<p>The direct road to Tangier by way of Ximera was now found impassable,
+and it was determined to march the army round by Tetuan, while the fleet
+was brought up along the coast. Ferdinand, who was still suffering and
+unequal to the land journey, was to go by sea, while his elder brother,
+as chief captain of the whole armament, undertook to force his way along
+the inland routes. In this he was successful. In three days he came
+before Tetuan, which opened its gates at once, and on September 23d,
+without losing a single man, he appeared before Old Tangier, where
+Ferdinand was already waiting his arrival.</p>
+
+<p>A rumour was now spread that the Moors were flying from Tangier as they
+had fled from Ceuta castle two and twenty years before, but Zala ben
+Zala, who commanded here as he had done there,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> now knew better how to
+defend a town, with the desperate courage of his Spanish foes. The
+attack instantly ordered by Henry on the gates of Tangier was roughly
+repulsed, and for the next fortnight the losses of the crusaders were so
+heavy that the siege was turned into a blockade. On September 30th,
+10,000 horse and 90,000 foot came down from the upland to the coast for
+the relief of Tangier. Henry promptly led his little army into the open
+and ordered an attack, and the vast Moorish host which had taken up its
+station on a hill within sight of the camp, not daring to accept the
+challenge, wavered, broke, and rushed headlong to the mountains. But
+after three days they reappeared in greater numbers and even ventured
+down into the plain. Again Henry drove them back; again&mdash;next day&mdash;they
+returned; at last, after their force had been swollen to 130,000 men,
+and by overwhelming numbers had compelled the Christians to keep within
+their trenches, they threw themselves upon the Portuguese outposts.
+After a desperate struggle they were repulsed and a sally from the town
+was beaten back at the same time; the Europeans seemed ready to meet any
+odds. With these victories, Henry was confident that Tangier must soon
+fall; he ordered another escalade, but all his scaling ladders were
+burnt or broken and many of his men crushed beneath the overhanging
+parts of the wall, that were pushed down bodily upon the storming
+parties. In this final assault of the 5th of October, two Moors were
+taken who told Henry of immense succours now coming up under the Kings
+of Fez, of Morocco,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> and of Tafilet. They had with them, said the
+captives, at least 100,000 horse; their infantry was beyond count. Sure
+enough; on the 9th of October, the hills round Tangier seemed covered
+with the native armies, and it became clear that the siege must be
+raised. All that was left for Henry was to bring off his soldiers in
+safety. He tried his best. With quiet energy he issued his orders for
+all contingents; the marines and seamen were to embark at once; the
+artillery was given in charge of the Marshal of the Kingdom; Almada, the
+Hercules of Portugal, was to draw up the foot in line of battle; the
+Infant himself took his station with the cavalry on a small piece of
+rising ground.</p>
+
+<p>When the Moors charged, they were well received. In spite of all their
+strength, one army being held ready to take another's place, as men grew
+tired, the Portuguese held their own. Henry had a horse killed under
+him; Cabral, his Master of Horse, fell at his side with five and twenty
+of his men; the cowardice of one regiment, who fled to the ships, almost
+ruined the defence; but when night fell, the Moorish columns fell
+sullenly back and left the Infant one more chance of flight and safety.
+It was the only hope, and even this was lost through the desertion of a
+traitor. Martin Vieyra, the apostate priest, once Henry's chaplain, now
+gave up to the enemy's generals the whole plan of escape.</p>
+
+<p>After a long debate, it was determined, not to massacre the Christian
+army, but to take sureties from them that Ceuta should be restored with
+all the Moorish captives in the Prince's hands. These terms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> were
+accepted, for it was soon known that escape was hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>But next morning a large party of Moors, with more than the ordinary
+Moslem treachery, made a last fierce attempt to surprise the camp. For
+eight hours, eight separate attacks went on; when all had failed, the
+retreating Berbers tried to set fire to the woodwork of the
+entrenchments. With the greatest trouble, Henry saved his timbers, and
+under cover of night fortified a new and smaller camp close to the
+shore. Food and water had both run short, and the besiegers, who were
+now become the besieged, had to kill their horses and cook them, with
+saddles for fuel. They were saved from a fatal drought by a lucky shower
+of rain, but their ruin was only a matter of time, for it was hopeless
+to try an embarkation under the walls of the city with all the hosts of
+Morocco waiting for the first chance of a successful storm; but the
+losses of the native kings and chiefs had been so great that they were
+ready to sign a written truce and to keep their cut-throats to the terms
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>On the 15th of October, Don Henry, for the Portuguese, agreed that
+Ceuta, with all the Moorish prisoners kept in guard by Menezes, should
+be given up and that no further attack should be made by the King of
+Portugal on any side of Barbary for one hundred years. The arms and
+baggage of the crusaders were to be surrendered at once: directly this
+was done they were to embark, with none of the honours of war, and to
+sail back at once to Europe. Don Ferdinand was left with twelve nobles
+as host<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>ages for the treaty till Ceuta was restored; on the other side
+Zala ben Zala's eldest son was all the security given. Even after this,
+a plot was laid to massacre the "Christian dogs" as they passed through
+the streets of Tangier, on their free passage to the harbour which the
+treaty secured them. Henry got wind of this just in time, and instantly
+embarked his men by boats from the shore outside the walls, but his
+rearguard was set upon just as they were leaving the land and about
+sixty were killed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible disaster. Although his losses were but some five
+hundred killed and disabled, Henry was overcome with the disgrace. As he
+thought of his brother among the Moors, he refused to show his face in
+Portugal and shut himself up in Ceuta. Here, as he worried himself to
+find some means of saving Ferdinand, he fell dangerously ill, till fresh
+hope came to him with the arrival of Don John, whom Edward had sent to
+the help of his brothers with some reserves from Algarve. Henry and John
+consulted about Ferdinand's ransom and at last offered their chief
+hostage, Zala ben Zala's boy, as an exchange for the Infant. It was the
+only ransom, they told the Moors, that would ever be thought of; Ceuta
+would never be surrendered.</p>
+
+<p>Don John's mission was a failure, as might have been expected, and both
+the Princes were now recalled to Portugal, where Henry steadily refused
+to go to Court, staying at Sagres in an almost complete retirement from
+his usual interests, till King Edward's death forced him again into
+action. It was the unavoidable shame of the only choice given to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+himself and the kingdom that paralysed his energy, and made him moody
+and helpless through this time of inaction and disgrace.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Captive he saw his brother, bright Fernand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Saint, aspiring high with purpose brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who as a hostage in the Saracen's hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Betrayed himself his 'leagured host to save.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest bought with price of Ceita's potent town<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To public welfare be preferred his own."<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The mere failure to storm Tangier was brilliantly atoned for by the
+bravery of the army and the repeated victories over immensely superior
+force. But now either Ceuta must be exchanged for Ferdinand, or the
+youngest and favourite brother of the House of Aviz must be left to die
+among the Berbers. Many, if not most of the Cort&eacute;s, summoned in 1438 to
+Leiria to discuss the ransom, were in favour of letting Ceuta go; but
+all the chiefs of the Government, except the King himself, "thought it
+not just to deliver a whole people to the fury of the infidels for the
+liberty of one man." Even Henry at last agreed in this with Don Pedro
+and Don John.</p>
+
+<p>Edward was in despair; he was willing to pay almost any price to recover
+Ferdinand, and in hope of finding support he now appealed from his own
+royal house and his nobles to the Pope, the cardinals, and the crowned
+heads of Europe. All agreed that a Christian city must not be bartered
+even for a Christian Prince; Edward's offers of money and "perpetual
+peace" were scornfully rejected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> by the Moors, who held to their bond
+"Ceuta or nothing"&mdash;and their wretched captive, treated to all the
+filthy horrors of Mussulman imprisonment and slavery and torture, died
+under his agony in the sixth year of his living death and the
+forty-first of his age, 5th June, 1443.</p>
+
+<p>Before this his loss had dragged down to the same fate his eldest
+brother, King Edward, and but for the inspiration of a great purpose,
+which again put meaning into his life, Henry might have died of the same
+"illness of soul." Every Portuguese burned to revenge the Constant
+Prince; the Pope was called upon to approve a new crusade, levies were
+made and vessels built, when the plague broke out with terrible
+violence, and ravaged every class and every district as it had not since
+the days of the Black Death. The King, seized by it in his misery and
+weakness and bitter disappointment, fell a victim. The wreck of all his
+hopes left him with hardly a wish to live, and on September 9, 1438, at
+the age of forty-seven, and after a reign of five years, he died at
+Thomar, in the act of breaking open a letter, but not before Henry had
+come to his side.</p>
+
+<p>To the last he kept on working for his people, and it was in the fatigue
+of travelling from one plague-stricken town to another that he caught
+the pest. Among all the kings of Christendom there was never a better,
+or nobler, or more luckless, an Alfred with the fortune of "Unready"
+Ethelred.</p>
+
+<p>By his last will there was fresh trouble provided for Don Henry and Don
+Pedro and the Cort&eacute;s. His successor&mdash;the child Affonso V., now six years
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> age&mdash;was strictly charged to rescue Ferdinand even at the price of
+Ceuta; this was nothing to practical politics; but in naming his wife,
+Leonor of Aragon, along with Don Pedro and Don Henry, as guardian of his
+children and regent of the kingdom, he put power in the wrong place.</p>
+
+<p>The Portuguese were always intensely suspicious of foreign government,
+and after the age of Leonora Telles they might well refuse a female
+Regent. On the other side King Edward's Queen, who had won his absolute
+trust as a wife and a mother, was not willing to stand aside for Pedro
+or for Henry. She began to organise a party, and she worked on her side,
+the nobles and the patriots counterworked on theirs. Don John was the
+first of her husband's brothers to take his natural place as a leader of
+the national opposition; Henry for a time seemed to waver between
+friendship and loyalty; all who knew the Queen loved her, but the people
+hated the very notion of a foreign female reign. Like John Knox they
+could not be fair to the Monstrous Regiment of Women, and their voices
+grew clearer and clearer for Don Pedro and his rights, real or supposed.
+The eldest of the young King's uncles, the right-hand man of the State
+since his return from travel in 1428, he was the proper guardian of the
+kingdom; Henry was a willing exile from most of Court life, though his
+support was the greatest moral strength of any government; John had
+begun the movement of discontent, but no one thought of him before his
+brothers; while they lived his only part was in helping them on their
+way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Donna Leonor recognised her chief danger in Don Pedro, and tried to win
+him over. When she summoned Cort&eacute;s, she pressed him to sign the royal
+writs; then she offered to betroth his daughter Isabel to her son; Pedro
+secured a written promise, and waited for the opening of the National
+Assembly in 1439. Here a fierce outcry was raised by a party of the
+nobles against the marriage-settlement of their King, but Don Pedro was
+too strong to be put down. He moved on by slow and steady intrigue
+towards the Regency he claimed. Henry had now appeared as peacemaker,
+and in his brother's interests arranged a compromise. The Queen was to
+keep the actual charge of her children, and to train the little King for
+his duties; Pedro was to govern the state as "Defender of the Kingdom
+and of the King"; the Count of Barcellos, soon to be Duke of Braganza,
+the leader of the factious and fractious party, was to be bought off
+with the Administration of the Justice of the Interior.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen at first struggled on against this dethronement; fortified
+herself in Alemquer, and sent for help from her old home in Aragon. At
+this the mob rose in fury and only Henry was able to prevent a massacre
+and a war that would have stopped the expansion of Portugal abroad for
+many a day. He went straight to Alemquer (1439), talked Queen Leonor
+into reason, and brought her back with him to Lisbon, where she
+introduced Affonso to his people and his Parliament. For another year
+Henry stayed at Court, completing his work of settlement and
+reconciliation, and towards the end of 1440 that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> work seemed fairly
+safe. The fear of civil war was over; Don Pedro's government was well
+started; Henry could now go back to Sagres to his other work of
+discovery.</p>
+
+<p>It was time to do something on this side. For in the past five years
+scarcely any progress had been made to Guinea and the Indies.</p>
+
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer07.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header01.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>FROM BOJADOR TO CAPE VERDE.</h3>
+
+<h3>1441-5.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/b.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="B"
+title="B" />ut with the year 1441 discovery begins again in earnest, and the
+original narratives of Henry's captains, which old Azurara has preserved
+in his chronicle, become full of life and interest. From this point to
+the year 1448, where ends the <i>Chronica</i>, its tale is exceedingly
+picturesque, as it was written down from the remembrance of
+eye-witnesses and actors in the discoveries and conquests it records.
+And though the detail may be wearisome to a modern reader as a wordy and
+emotional and unscientific history, yet the story told is delightfully
+fresh and vivid, and it is told with a simple na&iuml;vet&eacute; and truth that
+seems now almost lost in the self-consciousness of modern literature.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me, says our author" (Azurara's favourite way of alluding
+to himself), "that the recital of this history should give as much
+pleasure as any other matter by which we satisfy the wish of our Prince;
+and the said wish became all the greater,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> as the things for which he
+had toiled so long, were more within his view. Wherefore I will now try
+to tell of something new," of some progress "in his wearisome seedtime
+of preparation."</p>
+
+<p>"Now it was so that in this year 1441, as the affairs of the kingdom had
+now some repose, though it was not to be a long one, the Infant caused
+them to arm a little ship, which he gave to Antam Gonsalvez, his
+chamberlain, a young captain, only charging him to load a cargo of skins
+and oil. For because his age was so unformed, and his authority of needs
+so slight, he laid all the lighter his commands upon him and looked for
+all the less in performance."</p>
+
+<p>But when Antam Gonsalvez had performed the voyage that had been ordered
+him, he called Affonso Goterres, another stripling of the Infant's
+household and the men of his ship, who were in all twenty-one, and said
+to them, Brothers and friends, it seems to me to be shame to turn back
+to our Lord's presence, with so little service done; just as we have
+received the lest strict orders to do more than this, so much more ought
+we to try it with the greater zeal. And how noble an action would it be,
+if we who came here only to take a cargo of such wretched merchandise as
+these sea wolves, should be the first to bring a native prisoner before
+the presence of our Lord. In reason we ought to find some hereabout, for
+it is certain there are people, and that they traffic with camels and
+other beasts, who bear their merchandise; and the traffic of these men
+must be chiefly towards the sea and back again; and since they have yet
+no knowledge of us, they will be scattered and off their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> guard, so that
+we can seize them; with all which our Lord the Infant will be not a
+little content, as he will thus have knowledge of who and what sort of
+people are the dwellers in this land. Then what shall be our reward, you
+know well enough from the great expense and trouble our Prince has been
+at, in past years, only to this one end.</p>
+
+<p>The crew shouted a hearty "Do as you please; we will follow," and in the
+night following Antam Gonsalvez set aside nine men, who seemed to him
+most fit, and went up from the shore about three miles, till they came
+on a path, which they followed, thinking that by this they might come up
+with some man or woman, whom they might catch. And going on nine miles
+farther they came upon a track of some forty or fifty men and boys, as
+they thought, who had been coming the opposite way to that our men were
+going. Now the heat was very great and by reason of that, as well as of
+the trouble they had been at, the long tramp they had on foot and the
+failure of water, Antam Gonsalvez saw the weariness of his men, that it
+was very great. So let us turn back and follow after these men, said he,
+and turning back toward the sea, they came upon a man stark naked,
+walking after and driving a camel, with two spears in his hand, and of
+our men, as they rushed on after him, there was not one who kept any
+remembrance of his great weariness. As for the native, though he was
+quite alone, and saw so many coming down upon him, he stood on his
+defence, as if wishing to show that he could use those weapons of his,
+and making his face by far more fierce than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> his courage was warrant
+for. Affonso Goterres struck him with a dart and the Moor, frightened by
+his wounds, threw down his arms like a conquered thing and so was taken,
+not without great joy of our men. And going on a little farther they saw
+upon a hill the people whose track they followed. And they did not want
+the will to make for these also, but the sun was now very low and they
+very weary, and thinking that to risk more might bring them rather
+damage than profit, they determined to go back to their ship.</p>
+
+<p>But as they were going, they came upon a blackamoor woman, a slave of
+the people on the hill, and some were minded to let her alone, for fear
+of raising a fresh skirmish, which was not convenient in the face of the
+people on the hill, who were still in sight and more than twice their
+number. But the others were not so poor-spirited as to leave the matter
+thus, Antam Gonsalvez crying out vehemently that they should seize her.
+So the woman was taken and those "on the hill made a show of coming down
+to her rescue; but seeing our men quite ready to receive them, they
+first retraced their steps and then made off in the opposite direction."
+And so Antam Gonsalvez took the first captives.</p>
+
+<p>And for that the philosopher saith, resumes the next chapter of the
+chronicle, "that the beginning is two parts of the whole matter," great
+praise should be given to this noble squire, who now received his
+knighthood, as we shall tell. For now we have to see how Nuno Tristam, a
+noble knight, valiant and zealous, who had been brought up from boyhood
+at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> the Infant's Court, came to that place where was Antam Gonsalvez,
+bringing with him an armed caravel with the express order of his lord
+that he was to go to the port of Gallee and as far beyond as he could,
+and that he should try and make some prisoners by every means in his
+power. And you may imagine what was the joy of the two captains, both
+natives of one and the self-same realm and brought up in one and the
+self-same household, thus to meet so far from home. And now Nuno Tristam
+said that an Arab he had brought with him, a servant of the Infant,
+should speak with Gonsalvez' prisoners, and see if he understood their
+tongue, and that if he understood it, it would profit them much thus to
+know all the state and conditions of the people of that land. But the
+tongue of the Arab was very different from that of the captives, so that
+they could not understand each other.</p>
+
+<p>And when Nuno Tristam perceived that he could not learn any more of the
+manner of that land, he would fain be gone, but envy made him wish to do
+something before the eyes of his fellows that should be good for all.</p>
+
+<p>You know, he said to Antam Gonsalvez, that for fifteen years the Infant
+has been seeking in vain for certain news of this land and its people,
+in what law or lordship they do live. Now let us take twenty men, ten
+from each of the crews, and go up country in search of those that you
+found. Not so, said the other, for those whom we saw will have warned
+all the others, and peradventure when we are looking out to capture
+them, we may in our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> turn become their prisoners. But where we have
+gained a victory let us not return to suffer loss. Nuno Tristam said
+this counsel was good, but there were two squires whose longing to do
+well outran all besides. Gonsalo de Cintra was the first of these, whose
+valour we shall know more of in the progress of this history, and he
+counselled that as soon as it was night they should set out in search of
+the natives, and so it was determined. And such was their good fortune
+that they came early in the night to where the people lay scattered in
+two dwellings; now the place between the two was but small, and our men
+divided themselves in three parties and began to shout at the top of
+their voice "Portugal," "St. James for Portugal," the noise of which
+threw the enemy into such confusion, that they began to run without any
+order, as ours fell upon them. The men only made some show of defending
+themselves with assegais, especially two who fought with Nuno Tristam
+till they received their death. Three others were killed and ten were
+taken, of men, women, and children. But without question, many more
+would have been killed or taken if all our men had rushed in together at
+the first. And among those who were taken was one of their chiefs, named
+Adahu, who shewed full well in his face that he was nobler than the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when the matter was well over, all came to Antam Gonsalvez and
+begged him to be made a Knight, while he said it was against reason that
+for so small a service he should have so great an honour, and that his
+age would not allow it, and that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> would not take it without doing
+greater things than these, and much more of that sort. But at last, by
+the instant demand of all others, Nuno Tristam knighted Antam Gonsalvez,
+and the place was called from that time "Port of the Cavalier."</p>
+
+<p>When the party got back to the ships, Nuno Tristam's Arab was set to
+work again, with no better success, "for the language of the captives
+was not Moorish but Azaneguy of Sahara," the tongue of the great desert
+zone of West Africa, between the end of the northern strip of fertile
+country round Fez and Morocco, and the beginning of the rich tropical
+region at the Senegal, where the first real blacks were found. The
+Portuguese were in despair of finding a prisoner who could "tell the
+lord Infant what he wanted to know," but now the chief, "even as he
+shewed that he was more noble than the other captives, so now it
+appeared that he had seen more than they, and had been to other lands
+where he had learnt the Moorish tongue so that he understood our Arab
+and answered to whatever was asked of him."</p>
+
+<p>And so to make trial of the people of the land and to have of them more
+certain knowledge, they put that Arab on shore and one of the Moorish
+women their captives with him, who were to speak to the natives if they
+could, about the ransom of those they had taken and about exchange of
+merchandise.</p>
+
+<p>And at the end of two days there came down to the shore quite one
+hundred and fifty Moors on foot, and thirty-five mounted on camels and
+horses, and though they seemed to be a race both barbarous and bestial,
+there was not wanting in them a cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>tain sharpness, with which they
+could cheat their enemies, for at first there only appeared three of
+them on the beach, and the rest lay in ambush till our men should land
+and they could rush out and master them, which thing they could easily
+have done, so many were they, if our men had been a whit less sharp than
+themselves. But when the Moors saw that our boats did not land, but
+turned back again to the ship, they discovered their treachery, and all
+came down in a body upon the beach, hurling stones and making gestures
+of defiance, shewing us the Arab we had sent to them as a captive in
+their hands.</p>
+
+<p>So our men came back to the ship and made their division of the
+prisoners, according to the lot of each. And Antam Gonsalvez turned back
+because he had now loaded his caravel with the cargo that the Infant had
+ordered him, but Nuno Tristam went on, as he for his part had in charge.
+But as his vessel was in need of repair, he put to shore and careened
+and refitted it as well as he could, keeping his tides as if he were
+before the port of Lisbon, at which boldness of his many wondered
+greatly. And sailing on again, he passed the port of "Gallee," and came
+to a cape which he called "The White" (Cape Blanco), where the crew
+landed to see if they could make any captures. But after finding only
+the tracks of men and some nets, they turned back, seeing that for that
+time they could not do any more than they had already done.</p>
+
+<p>Antam Gonsalvez came home first with his part of the booty and then
+arrived Nuno Tristam, "whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> present reception and future reward were
+answerable to the trouble he had borne, like a fertile land that with
+but little sowing answers the husbandman."</p>
+
+<p>The chief, or "cavalier" as he is called, whom Antam Gonsalvez brought
+home was able to "make the Infant understand a great deal of the state
+of that land where he had been," though as for the rest, they were
+pretty well useless, except as slaves, "for their tongue could not be
+understood by any other Moors who had been in that land." But the Prince
+was so encouraged by the sight of the first captives that he at once
+began to think "how it would be necessary to send to those parts many a
+time his ships and crews well armed, where they would have to fight with
+the infidels. So he determined to send at once to the Holy Father and
+ask of him that he should give him of the treasures of Holy Church, for
+the salvation of the souls of those who in this conquest should meet
+their end."</p>
+
+<p>Pope Eugenius IV., then reigning, if not governing, in the great
+Apostolic See of the West, answered this appeal "with great joy" and
+with all the rhetoric of the Papal Register. "As it hath now been
+notified to us by our beloved son Henry, Duke of Viseu, Master of the
+Order of Christ, that trusting firmly in the aid of God, for the
+confusion of the Moors and enemies of Christ in those lands that they
+have desolated, and for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith,&mdash;and
+because that the Knights and Brethren of the said Order of Christ
+against the said Moors and other enemies of the Faith have waged war
+with the Grace of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> God, under the banner of the said Order,&mdash;and to the
+intent that they may bestir themselves to the said war with yet greater
+fervour, we do to each and all of those engaged in the said war, by
+Apostolic authority and by these letters, grant full remission of all
+those sins of which they shall be truly penitent at heart and of which
+they have made confession by their mouth. And whoever breaks,
+contradicts, or acts against the letter of this mandate, let him lie
+under the curse of the All-Mighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter
+and Paul."</p>
+
+<p>And besides, adds the chronicle, rather quaintly, of more temporal and
+material benefits, the Infant D. Pedro, then Regent of the kingdom, gave
+to his brother Henry a charter, granting him the whole of the fifth of
+the profits which appertained to the King, and, considering that it was
+by him alone that the whole matter of the discovery was carried out at
+infinite trouble and expense, he ordered further that no one should go
+to those parts without D. Henry's licence and express command.</p>
+
+<p>The chronicle, which has told us how Antam Gonsalvez made the first
+captives, now goes on to say how the same one of the Prince's captains
+made the first ransom. For the captive chief, "that cavalier of whom we
+spoke," Henry's first prize from the lands beyond Bojador, pined away in
+Europe, "and many times begged of Antam Gonsalvez that he would take him
+back to his own land, where, as he said, they would give for him five or
+six blackamoors, and he said, too, that there were two boys among the
+other captives for whom they would get a like ran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>som." So the Infant
+sent him back with Gonsalvez to his own people, "as it was better to
+save ten souls than three, for though they were black, yet had they
+souls like others, all the more as they were not of Moorish race, but
+Heathen and so all the easier to lead into the way of salvation. From
+the negroes too it would be possible to get news of the land beyond
+them. For not only of the Negro land did the Infant wish to know more
+certainly, but also of the Indies and of the land of Prester John."</p>
+
+<p>So Gonsalvez sailed with his ransom, and in his ship went a noble
+stranger, like Vallarte the Dane, whom we shall meet later on, one of a
+kind which was always being drawn to Henry's Court. This was Balthasar
+the Austrian, a gentleman of the Emperor's Household, who had entered
+the Infant's service to try his fortune at Ceuta, where he had got his
+knighthood, and who now "was often heard to say that his great wish was
+to see a storm, before he left that land of Portugal, that he might tell
+those who had never seen one what it was like.</p>
+
+<p>"And certainly his fortune favoured him. For at the first start, they met
+with such a storm that it was by a marvel they escaped destruction."</p>
+
+<p>Again they put out to sea, and this time reached the Rio d'Ouro in
+safety, where they landed their chief prisoner, "very well vested in the
+robes that the Infant had ordered to be given him," under promise that
+he would soon come back and bring his tribe with him.</p>
+
+<p>"But as soon as he got safely off, he very soon forgot his promises,
+which Antam Gonsalvez had trusted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> thinking that his nobility would
+hold him fast and not let him break his word, but by this deceit all our
+men got warning that they could not trust any of the natives save under
+the most certain security."</p>
+
+<p>The ships now went twelve miles up the Rio d'Ouro, cast anchor, and
+waited seven days without a sign of anybody, but on the eighth there
+came a Moor, on top of a white camel, with fully one hundred others who
+had all joined to ransom the two boys. Ten of the tribe were given in
+exchange for the young chiefs, "and the man who managed this barter was
+one Martin Fernandez, the Infant's own Ransomer of Captives, who shewed
+well that he had knowledge of the Moorish tongue, for he was understood
+by those people whom Nuno Tristam's Arab, Moor though he was by nation,
+could not possibly get speech with, except only the one chief, who had
+now escaped."</p>
+
+<p>With the "Blackamoors," Antam Gonsalvez got as ransom what was even more
+precious, a little gold dust, the first ever brought by Europeans direct
+from the Guinea Coast, which more thoroughly won the Prince's cause at
+home and brought over more enemies and scoffers and indifferentists to
+his side than all the discoveries in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Many ostrich eggs, too," were included in the native ransom, "such that
+one day men saw at the Infant's table three dishes of the same, as fresh
+and as good as those of any other domestic fowls." Did the Court of
+Sagres suppose the ostrich to be some large kind of hen?</p>
+
+<p>What was still more to the Prince's mind, "those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> same Moors related,
+that in those parts there were merchants who trafficked in that gold
+that was found there among them"&mdash;the same merchants, in fact, whose
+caravels Henry had already known on the Mediterranean coast, and whose
+starting-point he had now begun to touch. Ever since the days of the
+first Caliphs, this Sahara commerce had gone on under the control of
+Islam; for centuries these caravans had crossed the valleys and plains
+to the south of Morocco and sold their goods&mdash;pepper, slaves, and gold
+dust&mdash;in Moslem Ceuta and Moslem Andalusia; now, after seven hundred
+years of monopoly, this Moslem trade was broken in upon by the
+Europeans, who, in fifty years' time, broke into the greater monopoly of
+the Indian Seas, when Da Gama sailed from Lisbon to Malabar (1497-9).</p>
+
+<p>Next year (1443) came Nuno Tristam's turn once more. People were now
+eager to sail in the Infant's service, after the slaves, and still more
+the gold dust, had been really seen and handled in Portugal, and "that
+noble cavalier," for each and all of the three reasons of his
+fellows&mdash;"to serve his lord," "to gain honour," "to increase his
+profit,"&mdash;was eager to follow up his first successes.</p>
+
+<p>Commanding a caravel manned in great part from the Prince's household,
+he went out straight to Cape Blanco, the white headland, which he had
+been the first to reach in 1441. Passing twenty-five leagues,
+seventy-five miles beyond, into the bank or bight of Arguin, he saw a
+little island, from which twenty-five canoes came off to meet him, all
+hollowed out of logs of wood, with a host of native savages, "naked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> not
+for swimming in the water, but for their ancient custom." The natives
+hung their legs over the sides of their boats, and paddled with them
+like oars, so that "our men, looking at them from a distance and quite
+unused to the sight, thought they were birds that were skimming so over
+the water." As for their size, the sailors expected much greater marvels
+in those parts of the world, where every map and traveller's tale made
+the sea swarm with monsters as big as a continent.</p>
+
+<p>"But as soon as they saw they were men, then were their hearts full of a
+new pleasure, for that they saw the chance of a capture." They launched
+the ship's boat at once, chased them to the shore, and captured
+fourteen; if the boat had been stronger, the tale would have been
+longer, for with a crew of seven they could not hold any more prisoners,
+and so the rest escaped.</p>
+
+<p>With this booty they sailed on to another island, "where they found an
+infinite number of herons, of which they made good cheer, and so
+returned Nuno Tristam very joyfully to the Prince."</p>
+
+<p>This last piece of discovery was of much more value than Nuno thought.
+He saw in it a first-rate slave hunting-ground, but it became the
+starting-point for trade and intercourse with the Negro States of the
+Senegal and the Gambia, to the south and east. It was here, in the bay
+of Arguin, where the long desert coast of the Sahara makes its last bend
+towards the rich country of the south,&mdash;that Henry built in 1448 that
+fort which Cadamosto found, in the next ten years, had become the centre
+of a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> European commerce, which was also among the first permanent
+settlements of the new Christian exploration, one of the first steps of
+modern colonisation.</p>
+
+<p>And now the volunteer movement had fairly begun. Where in the beginning,
+says Azurara, people had murmured very loudly against the Prince's
+enterprise, each one grumbling as if the Infant was spending some part
+of <i>his</i> property, now when the way had been fairly opened and the
+fruits of those lands began to be seen in Portugal in much greater
+abundance, men began, softly enough, to praise what they had so loudly
+decried. Great and small alike had declared that no profit would ever
+come of these ventures, but when the cargoes of slaves and gold began to
+arrive, all were forced to turn their blame into flattery, and to say
+that the Infant was another Alexander the Great, and as they saw the
+houses of others full of new servants from the new discovered lands and
+their property always increasing, there were few who did not long to try
+their fortune in the same adventures.</p>
+
+<p>The first great movement of the sort came after Nuno's return at the end
+of 1443. The men of Lagos took advantage of Henry's settlement so near
+them in his town of Sagres, to ask for leave to sail at their own cost
+to the Prince's coast of Guinea. For no one could go without his
+licence.</p>
+
+<p>One Lan&ccedil;arote, a "squire, brought up in the Infant's household, an
+officer of the royal customs in the town of Lagos, and a man of great
+good sense," was the spokesman of these merchant adventurers. He won his
+grant very easily, "the Infant was very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> glad of his request, and bade
+him sail under the banner of the Order of Christ," so that six caravels
+started in the spring of 1444 on the first exploring voyage that we can
+call national since the Prince had begun his work.</p>
+
+<p>So, as the beginning of general interest in the Crusade of Discovery
+which Henry had now preached to his countrymen for thirty years, as the
+beginning of the career of Henry's chief captain, the head of his
+merchant allies, as the beginning, in fact, of a new and bright period,
+this first voyage of Lan&ccedil;arote's, this first Armada sent out to find and
+to conquer the Moors and Blacks of the unknown or half-known South, is
+worth more than a passing notice.</p>
+
+<p>And this is not for its interest or importance in the story of discovery
+pure and simple, but as a proof that the cause of discovery itself had
+become popular, and as evidence that the cause of trade and of political
+ambition had become thoroughly identified with that of exploration. The
+expansion of the European <i>nations</i>, which had languished since the
+Crusades, had begun again. What was more unfortunate, from a modern
+standpoint, the African slave trade, as a part of European commerce,
+begins here too. It is useless to try to explain it away.</p>
+
+<p>Henry's own motives were not those of the slave-driver; it seems true
+enough that the captives, when once brought home to Spain, were treated,
+under his orders, with all kindness; his own wish seems to have been to
+use this man-hunting traffic as a means to Christianise and civilise the
+native tribes, to win over the whole by the education of a few
+prisoners.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> But his captains did not always aim so high. The actual
+seizure of the captives&mdash;Moors and Negroes&mdash;along the coast of Guinea,
+was as barbarous and as ruthless as most slave-drivings. There was
+hardly a capture made without violence and bloodshed; a raid on a
+village, a fire and sack and butchery, was the usual course of
+things&mdash;the order of the day. And the natives, whatever they might gain
+when fairly landed in Europe, did not give themselves up very readily to
+be taught; as a rule, they fought desperately, and killed the men who
+had come to do them good, whenever they had a chance.</p>
+
+<p>The kidnapping, which some of the Spanish patriot writers seem to think
+of as simply an act of Christian charity, "a corporal work of mercy,"
+was at the time a matter of profit and money returns. Negro bodies would
+sell well, Negro villages would yield plunder, and, like the killing of
+wild Irish in the sixteenth century, the Prince's men took a Black-Moor
+hunt as the best of sport. It was hardly wonderful, then, that the later
+sailors of Cadamosto's day (1450-60) found all the coast up in arms
+against them, and that so many fell victims to the deadly poisoned
+arrows of the Senegal and the Gambia. Every native believed, as they
+told one of the Portuguese captains in a parley, that the explorers
+carried off their people to cook and eat them.</p>
+
+<p>In most of the speeches that are given us in the chronicle of the time,
+the masters encourage their men to these slave-raids by saying, first,
+what glory they will get by a victory; next, what a profit can be made
+sure by a good haul of captives; last, what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> a generous reward the
+Prince will give for people who can tell him about these lands.
+Sometimes, after reprisals had begun, the whole thing is an affair of
+vengeance, and thus Lan&ccedil;arote, in the great voyage of 1445, coolly
+proposes to turn back at Cape Blanco, without an attempt at discovery of
+any sort, "because the purpose of the voyage was now accomplished." A
+village had been burnt, a score of natives had been killed, and twice as
+many taken. Revenge was satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>It was only here and there that much was said about the Prince's purpose
+of exploration, of finding the western Nile or, Prester John, or the way
+round Africa to India; most of the sailors, both men and officers, seem
+to know that this, or something towards this, is the "will of their
+Lord," but it is very few who start for discovery only, and still fewer
+who go straight on, turning neither to right hand nor left, till they
+have got well beyond the farthest of previous years, and added some
+piece of new knowledge to the map of the known world out of the blank of
+the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>What terrified ignorance had done before, greed did now, and the last
+hindrance was almost worse than the first. So one might say,
+impatiently, looking at the great expense, the energy, and time and life
+spent on the voyages of this time, and especially of the years 1444-8.
+More than forty ships sail out, more than nine hundred captives are
+brought home, and the new lands found are all discovered by three or
+four explorers. National interest seems awakened to very little purpose.
+But what explains the slow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> progress of discovery, explains also the
+fact that any progress, however slow, was made at all, apart from the
+personal action of Henry himself. Without the mercantile interest, the
+Prince's death would have been the end and ruin of his schemes for many
+a year.</p>
+
+<p>But for the hope of adventure and of profitable plunder, and the
+certainty of reward; but for the assurance, so to say, of such and such
+a revenue on the ventures of the time, Portuguese "public opinion" would
+not probably have been much ahead of other varieties of the same organ.
+In deciding the abstract question to which the Prince had given his
+life, the mob of Lisbon or of Lagos would hardly have been quicker than
+modern mobs to rise to a notion above that of personal gain. If the
+cause of discovery and an empire to come had been left to them, the
+labour leaders might have said then in Spain, as some of them have said
+to-day in England, "What is all this talk about the Empire? What is it
+to us working men? We don't want the Empire, we want more wages." And so
+when the great leader was dead, and the people were left to carry out
+his will, his spiritual foresight of great scientific discoveries, his
+ideas of conversion and civilisation, were not the things for the sake
+of which ordinary men were reconciled to his scheme and ready to finish
+his work. If they thought or spoke or toiled for the finding of the way
+to India, it was to find the gold and spices and jewels of an earthly
+paradise.</p>
+
+<p>This is not fancy. It is simply impossible to draw any other conclusion
+from the original ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>counts of these voyages in Azurara's chronicle, for
+Azurara himself, though one of Henry's first converts, a man who
+realised something of the grandeur of his master's schemes and their
+reach beyond a merely commercial ideal through discovery to empire, yet
+preserves in the speeches and actions of captains and seamen alike,
+proof enough of the thoroughly commonplace aims of most of the first
+discoverers.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the strength of the movement lay of course in the few
+exceptions. As long as all or nearly all the instruments employed were
+simply buccaneers, with a single eye to trade profits, discovery could
+not advance very fast or very far. Till the real meaning of the Prince's
+life had impressed his nearest followers with something of his own
+spirit, there could be no exploration, except by accident, though
+without this background of material gain no national interest could have
+been enlisted in exploration at all.</p>
+
+<p>Real progress in this case was by the slow increase of that inner circle
+which really shared Henry's own ambition, of that group of men who went
+out, not to make bargains or do a little killing, but to carry the flag
+of Portugal and of Christ farther than it had ever been planted before,
+"according to the will of the Lord Infant." And as these men were called
+to the front, and only as they were there at all, was there any rapid
+advance. If two sailors, Diego Cam and Bartholomew Diaz, could within
+four years, in two voyages, explore the whole south-west coast of Africa
+from the Equator to the Cape of Tem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>pests or of Good Hope, was it not
+absurd that the earlier caravels, after Bojador was once passed should
+hang so many years round the north-west shores of the Sahara?</p>
+
+<p>Even some of the more genuine discoverers, the most trusted of the
+Prince's household, men like Gil Eannes, the first who saw the coasts
+beyond the terrible Bojador, or Diniz Diaz, or Antam Gonsalvez, or Nuno
+Tristam, as they come before us in Azurara's chronicle, are more like
+their men than their master.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of the slaves they brought home "with unspeakable pleasure,
+as to the saving of their souls, which but for him, would have been for
+ever lost." They thought a good deal more, like the crowd that gathered
+at the slave market in Lagos, of the "distribution of the captives," and
+of the money they would get for each. At those sales, which Azurara
+describes so vividly, Henry had the bearing of one who cared little for
+amassing plunder, and was known, once and again, to give away his fifth
+of the spoil, "for his spoil was chiefly in the success of his great
+wishes." But his suite seems to have been as keenly on the look-out for
+such favours as their lord was easy in bestowing them.</p>
+
+<p>To return to Lan&ccedil;arote's voyage:</p>
+
+<p>"For that the Infant knew, by certain Moors that Nuno Tristam had
+carried off, that in the Isle of Naar, in the Bay of Arguin, and in the
+parts thereabout, were more than two hundred souls," the six caravels
+began with a descent on that island. Five boats were launched and thirty
+men in them, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> they set off from the ships about sunset. And rowing
+all that night, we are told, they came about the time of dawn to the
+island that they sought. And as day was breaking they got up to a
+Moorish village close to the shore, where were living all the people in
+the island. At sight of this the boats' crews drew up, and the leaders
+consulted whether to go on or turn back. It was decided to attack.
+Thirty "Portugals" ought to be a match for five or six times as many
+natives; the sailors landed and rushed upon the villagers and "saw the
+Moors with their women and children coming out of their huts as fast as
+they could, when they caught sight of their enemy; and our men, crying
+out 'St. James, St. George, Portugal,' fell upon them, killing and
+taking all they could. There you might have seen mothers catch up their
+children, husbands their wives, each one trying to fly as best he could.
+Some plunged into the sea, others thought to hide themselves in the
+corners of their hovels, others hid their children underneath the shrubs
+that grew about there, where our men found them.</p>
+
+<p>"And at last our Lord God, who gives to all a due reward, to our men
+gave that day a victory over their enemies, in recompence for all their
+toil in His service, for they took, what of men, women, and children,
+one hundred and sixty-five, without counting the slain."</p>
+
+<p>Then finding from the captives that there were other well-peopled
+islands near at hand, they raided these for more prisoners. In their
+next descent they could not catch any men, but of women and little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+boys, not yet able to run, they seized seventeen or eighteen; soon after
+this they did meet the "Moormen bold," who were drawing together on all
+sides to defend themselves; a great power of three hundred savages
+chased another raiding party to their boats.</p>
+
+<p>That the whole expedition had no thought of discovery was plain enough
+from the fact that Lan&ccedil;arote did not try to go beyond the White Cape
+(Blanco), which had been already passed several times, but turned back
+directly he found the hunting grounds becoming deserted, and a descent
+producing no prize, except one girl, who had chosen to go to sleep when
+the rest of the people fled up country at the first sight of the
+Christian boats.</p>
+
+<p>The voyage was a slave chase from first to last, and two hundred and
+thirty-five Blacks were the result. Their landing and their sale at
+Lagos was a day of great excitement, a long remembered 8th of August.
+"Very early in the morning, because of the heat (of the later day) the
+sailors began to land their captives, who as they were placed all
+together in the field by the landing-place, were indeed a wonderful
+sight; for among them there were some that were almost white, of
+beautiful form and face; others were darker; and others again as black
+as moles and so hideous, alike in face and body, that they looked, to
+any one who saw them, the very images of a Lower Hemisphere."</p>
+
+<p>But what heart so stern, exclaims the chronicler, as not to be pierced
+with pity to see that company. For some held down their heads, crying
+piteously, others looked mournfully upon one another, others<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> stood
+moaning very wretchedly, sometimes looking up to the height of Heaven,
+calling out with shrieks of agony, as if invoking the Father of Nature;
+others grovelled upon the ground, beating their foreheads with their
+hands, while others again made their moan in a sort of dirge, in their
+own way, for though one could not understand the words, the sense of all
+was plain in the agony of those who uttered it.</p>
+
+<p>But most terrible was that agony when came the partition and each
+possessor took away his lot. Wives were divided from husbands, fathers
+from sons, brothers from brothers, each being forced to go where his lot
+might send him. Parents and children who had been ranged opposite one
+another, now rushed forward to embrace, if it were for the last time;
+mothers, holding their little children in their arms, threw themselves
+down, covering their babes with their own bodies.</p>
+
+<p>And yet these slaves were treated with kindness, and no difference was
+made between them and other and freeborn servants. The younger captives
+were taught trades, and those who showed that they could manage property
+were set free and married. Widow ladies treated the girls they bought
+like their own daughters, and often left them dowries by will, that they
+might marry as entirely free. Never have I known one of these captives,
+says Azurara, put in irons like other slaves, or one who did not become
+a Christian. Often have I been present at the baptisms or marriages of
+these slaves, when their masters made as much and as solemn a matter of
+it as if it had been a child or a parent of their own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During Henry's life the action of buccaneers on the African coast was a
+good deal kept in check by the spirit and example and positive commands
+of the Infant, who sent out his men to explore, and could not prevent
+some outrages in the course of exploration. Again and again he ordered
+his captains to act fairly to the natives, to trade with them
+honourably, and to persuade them by gentler means than kidnapping to
+come to Europe for a time. In the last years of his life he did succeed
+in bettering things; by establishing a regular Government trade in the
+bay of Arguin he brought a good deal more under control the unchained
+deviltry of the Portuguese freebooters; Cadamosto and Diego Gomez, his
+most trusted lieutenants of this later time, were real discoverers, who
+tried to make friends of the natives rather than slaves.</p>
+
+<p>In the early days of Portuguese exploration, it may also be said,
+information, first-hand news of the new countries and their dangers, was
+absolutely needed, and if the Negroes and the Azaneguy Moors could not
+or would not speak some Christian tongue and guide the caravels to
+Guinea, they must be carried off and made fit and proper instruments for
+the work.</p>
+
+<p>It would be out of place here to justify or condemn this excuse or to
+enter on the wider question of the right or wrong of the slave-trade in
+general. It is enough to see how brutally the work of "saving the
+Heathen," was carried out by the average explorer, when discovery was
+used as a plea for traffic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No one then questioned the right of Christians to make slaves of Heathen
+Blacks; Henry certainly did not, for he used slavery as an education, he
+made captives of "Gentiles" for the highest ends, as he believed, to
+save their souls, and to help him in the way of doing great things for
+his country and for Christendom. He knew more of the results than of the
+incidental cruelty, more of the hundreds taken than of the hundreds more
+killed and maimed and made homeless in the taking. For centuries past
+Moors had brought back slaves from the south across the Sahara to sell
+on the coast of Tunis and Morocco; no Christian doubted the right
+and&mdash;more than the right&mdash;the merit of the Prince in bringing black
+slaves by sea from Guinea to Lisbon, where they might be fairly saved
+from the grasp of "Foul Mahumet."</p>
+
+<p>So if it is said that Henry started the African slave-trade of European
+nations, that must not be understood as the full-blooded atrocity of the
+West Indian planters, for the use he made of his prisoners was utterly
+different, though his action was the cause of incessant abuse of the
+best end by the worst of means.</p>
+
+<p>At the time the gold question was much more important than the
+slave-trade, and most Portuguese, most Europeans&mdash;nobles, merchants,
+burghers, farmers, labourers&mdash;were much more excited by the news and the
+sight of the first native gold dust than by anything else whatever. It
+was the first few handfuls of this dust, brought home by Gonsalvez in
+1442, that had such a magical effect on public opin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>ion, that spread the
+exploring interest from a small circle out into every class, and that
+brought forward volunteers on every side. For a Guinea voyage was now
+the favourite plan of every adventurer.</p>
+
+<p>But however they may be explained, however natural and even necessary
+they may seem to be, as things stood in Portugal and in Latin
+Christendom, the slave-trade and the gold hunger hindered the Prince's
+work quite as much as they helped it. If further discovery depended upon
+trade profits, native interpreters, and the attractions of material
+interest, there was at least a danger that the discoverers who were not
+disposed to risk anything, and only went out to line their own pockets,
+would hang about the well known coasts till they had loaded all the
+plunder they could hold, and would then simply reappear at Sagres with
+so many more souls for the good Prince to save, but without a word or a
+thought of "finding of new lands." And this, after all, was the end.
+Buccaneering on the north-west coast of Africa was not what Henry aimed
+at.</p>
+
+<p>So he gave a caravel to one of his household, Gonsalo de Cintra, "who
+had been his stirrup-boy," and "bade him go straight to the Land of
+Guinea, and that for no cause whatever should he do otherwise." But when
+De Cintra got to the White Cape (Blanco) it struck him that "with very
+little danger he could make some prisoners there."</p>
+
+<p>So with a cheerful impudence, in the face of the Infant's express
+commands, he put his ship about and landed in that bay of Arguin, where
+so many captures had been made, but he was cut off from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> the rest of the
+men, and killed with seven others by a host of more than two hundred
+Moors, and the chronicle which tells of all such details at the greatest
+length, stops to give seven reasons for this, the first serious loss of
+life the Europeans had suffered in their new African piracies. And for
+the rest, "May God receive the soul that He created and the nature that
+came forth from Him, as it is His very own. <i>Habeat Deus animam quam
+creavit et naturam, quod suum est.</i>" (<i>Azurara</i>, ch. 27).</p>
+
+<p>Three other caravels, which quickly followed De Cintra, sailed with
+special orders to Christianise and civilise the natives wherever and
+however they could, and the result of this was seen in the daring
+venture of Joan Fernandez. This man, the pattern of all the Crusoes of
+after time, offered to stay on shore among the Blacks "to learn what he
+could of the manners and speech and customs of the people," and so was
+left along with that "bestial and barbarous" nation for seven months, on
+the shores of the Bank of Arguin, while in exchange for him an old Moor
+went back to Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>Yet a third voyage was made in this spring of 1445 by Nuno Tristam. And
+of this, says Azurara, I know nothing very exact or at first hand,
+because Nuno Tristam was dead before the time that King Affonso (D.
+Henry's nephew) commanded me to write this history. But this much we do
+know, that he sailed straight to the Isle of Herons in Arguin, that he
+passed the sandy wilderness and landed in the parts beyond, in a land
+fertile and full of palm trees; and having landed he took a score of
+prison<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>ers. And so Nuno Tristam was the first to see the country of the
+real Blacks. In other words, Nuno reached Cape Palmar, far beyond Cape
+Blanco, where he saw the palms and got the all-important certainty that
+the desert did end somewhere, and that beyond, instead of a country
+unapproachable from the heat, where the very seas were perpetually
+boiling as if in a cauldron, there was a land richer than any northern
+climate, through which men could pass to the south.</p>
+
+<p>Still further was this proved by the next voyage, which reached the end
+of the great western trend of the African coast, and found that instead
+of the continent stretching out farther and farther to an infinite
+breadth, there was an immense contraction of the coast.</p>
+
+<p>Diniz Diaz, the eldest of that family which gave to Portugal some of her
+greatest men and makers, now begged a caravel from the Prince with the
+promise of "doing more with it than any had done before." He had done
+well under old King John, and now he kept his word.</p>
+
+<p>Passing Arguin and Cape Blanco and Cape Palmar, he entered the mouth of
+the Senegal, the western Nile, which was now fixed as the northern limit
+of Guinea, or Blackman's Land. "Nor was this a little honour for our
+Prince, whose mighty power was thus brought to bear upon the peoples so
+far distant from our land and so near to that of Egypt." For Azurara
+like Diaz, like Henry himself, thought not only that the Senegal was the
+Niger, the western Nile of the Blacks, but that the caravels of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+Portugal were far nearer to India than was the fact,&mdash;were getting close
+to the Mountains of the Moon and the sources of the Nile.</p>
+
+<p>But Diaz was not content with this. He had reached and passed, as he
+thought, the great western stream up which men might sail, in the belief
+of the time, to the mysterious sources of the world's greatest river,
+and so down by the eastern and northern course of the same to Cairo and
+the Christian seas. He now sailed on "to a great cape, which he named
+Cape Verde," a green and beautiful headland covered with grass and trees
+and dotted with native villages, running out into the Western Ocean far
+beyond any other land, and beyond which, in turn, there was no more
+western coast, but only southern and eastern. From this point Diaz
+returned to Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>"But great was the wonder of the people of the coast in seeing his
+caravel, for never had they seen or heard tell of the like, but some
+thought it was a fish, others were sure it was a phantom, others again
+said it might be a bird that had that way of skimming along the surface
+of the sea." Four of them picked up courage to venture out in a canoe
+and try to settle this doubt. Out they went in their little boat, all
+made from one hollow tree, but when they saw that there were men on
+board the caravel they fled to the shore and "the wind falling our men
+could not overtake.</p>
+
+<p>"And though the booty of Diniz Diaz was far less than what others had
+brought home before him, the Prince made very much of his getting to
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> land of Negroes and Cape Verde and the Senegal," and with reason,
+for these discoveries assured the success of his work, and from this
+time all trouble and opposition were at an end. Mariners now went out to
+sail to the golden country that had been found or to the spice land that
+was now so near; men passed at once from extreme apathy or extreme
+terror to an equally extreme confidence. They seemed to think the fruit
+was within reach for them to gather, before the tree had been half
+climbed. Long before Fernando Po had been reached, while the caravels
+were still off the coasts of Sierra Leone, men at home, from King
+Affonso to the common seamen of the ports, "thought the line of Tunis
+and even of Alexandria had been long passed." The difficult first steps
+seemed all.</p>
+
+<p>Now three volunteers, Antam Gonsalvez, and two others who had already
+sailed in the Prince's service, applied for the command of ships for the
+discovery and conquest of the lands of Guinea, and to bring back Joan
+Fernandez from his exile. Sailing past Cape Blanco they set up there a
+great wooden cross and "much would it have amazed any one of another
+nation that should have chanced to pass that way, not knowing of our
+voyages along that coast," says Azurara gleefully, giving us proof
+enough in every casual expression of this sort, often dropped with
+perfect simplicity and natural truthfulness, that to his knowledge and
+that of his countrymen, to the Europe of 1450, the Portuguese had had no
+forerunners along the Guinea Coast.</p>
+
+<p>A little south of the Bight of Arguin the caravels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> sighted a man on the
+shore making signals to the ships, and coming closer they saw Fernandez
+who had much to tell. He had completely won over the natives of that
+part during his seven months' stay, and now he was able to bring the
+caravels to a market where trinkets were exchanged for slaves and gold
+with a Moorish chief&mdash;"a cavalier called Ahude Meymam." Then he was
+taken home to tell his story to the Prince, the fleet wasting some time
+in descents on the tribes of the bay of Arguin.</p>
+
+<p>When he was first put on shore, Joan Fernandez told Don Henry, the
+natives came up to him, took his clothes off him and made him put on
+others of their own make. Then they took him up the country, which was
+very scantily clothed with grass, with a sandy and stony soil, growing
+hardly any trees. A few thorns and palms were the only relief to the
+barren monotony of this African prairie, over which wandered a few
+nomade shepherds in search of pasture for their flocks. There were no
+flowers, no running streams to light up the waste, so Fernandez thought
+at first, till he found one or two exceptions that proved the rule. The
+natives got their water from wells, spoke a tongue and wrote a writing
+that was different from that of the other Moors, though all these
+people, in the upland, were Moslems, like the Berbers nearer home. For
+they themselves were a tribe, the Azaneguy tribe, of the great Berber
+family, who had four times&mdash;in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and
+fourteenth centuries&mdash;come over to help the Moslem power in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, said Fernandez, these Moors of the west are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> quite barbarous: they
+have neither law nor lordship; their food is milk and the seeds of wild
+mountain herbs and roots; meat and bread are both rare luxuries; and so
+is fish for those on the upland, but the Moors of the coast eat nothing
+else, and for months together I have seen those I lived among, their
+horses and their dogs, eating and drinking only milk, like infants. 'T
+is no wonder they are weaker than the negroes of the south with whom
+they are ever at war, fighting with treachery and not with strength.
+They dress in leather&mdash;leather breeches and jackets, but some of the
+richer wear a native mantle over their shoulders&mdash;such rich men as keep
+good swift horses and brood mares. It was about the trade and religion
+of the country that Fernandez was specially questioned, and his answers
+were not encouraging on either point. The people were bigoted, ignorant
+worshippers of the abominations of Mahumet, he said, and their traffic
+in slaves and gold was a small matter after all. The only gold he saw in
+their country was in ankle rings on the women of the chiefs; the gold
+dust and black bodies they got from the negroes they took to Tunis and
+the Mediterranean coast on camels. Their salt, on which they set great
+store, was from the Tagazza salt quarries, far inland. The chief, Ahude
+Meymam, who had been so kind to Fernandez, lived in the upland; the
+Christian stranger had been induced to ride up from the coast, and had
+reached the Court only after tortures of thirst. The water failed them
+on the way, and for three days they had nothing to drink.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Altogether, Fernandez' report discouraged any further attempts to
+explore by land, where all the country as far as could be reached seemed
+to yield nothing but desert with a few slender oases. It was not indeed
+till the European explorers reached the Congo on their coasting voyages
+to the south that they found a natural and inviting pathway into the
+heart of Africa. The desert of the north and west, the fever-haunted
+swamps and jungle of the Guinea Coast only left narrow inlets of more
+healthy and passable country, and these the Portuguese did their best to
+close by occasional acts of savage cruelty and impudent fraud in their
+dealings with the natives.</p>
+
+<p>Another expedition, and that an unlucky one, under Gonsalo Pacheco, a
+gentleman of Lisbon, followed this last of Antam Gonsalvez. Pacheco got
+leave to make the voyage, equipped a caravel that he had built for
+himself, and got two others to share the risk and profits with him. And
+so, says Azurara, hoisting the banners of the Order of Christ, they made
+their way to Cape Blanco. Here they found, one league from the Cape, a
+village, and by the shore a writing, that Antam Gonsalvez had set up, in
+which he counselled all who passed that way not to trouble to go up and
+sack the village, as it was quite empty of people. So they hung about
+the Bank of Arguin, making raids in various places, and capturing some
+one hundred and twenty natives, all of which is not of much interest to
+any one, though as Pacheco and his men had to pay themselves for their
+trouble, and make a profit on the voyage, these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> man-hunts were the
+chief thing they thought about and the main thing in their stories when
+they got home.</p>
+
+<p>Men like Pacheco and his friends were not explorers at all. They stopped
+far short of the mark that Diniz Diaz had made for the European
+Furthest, and their only discovery was of a new cape one hundred miles
+and more beyond the Bank of Arguin. Sailing south, because the natives
+fled at their approach and left the coast land all bare, "they came to a
+headland which they called Cape St. Anne, by which an arm of the sea ran
+four leagues up the country," where they hunted for more prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>Still in search of slaves and gold they sailed on two hundred and fifty
+miles&mdash;eighty leagues&mdash;to Negroland, where Diaz had been before, and
+where they saw a land, to the north of the Great Western Cape, all
+green, peopled with men and cattle, but when they tried to near the
+shore and land a storm drove them back. For three days they struggled
+against it, but at last they found themselves near Cape Blanco, more
+than three hundred miles to the north, where they gave up all thought of
+trying to push into the unknown south, and turned cheerfully to their
+easier work of slave-hunting. In one of these raids, a party of seven,
+in a boat away from all the rest, was overpowered and killed like De
+Cintra's men by a large body of natives, "whose souls may God in His
+mercy receive in the Habitation of the Saints." The Moors carried off
+the boat and broke it up for the sake of its nails, and Azurara was told
+by some that the bodies of the dead were eaten by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> their brutal
+conquerors. 'T is certain at least, he adds, that their custom is to eat
+the livers of their victims and to drink their blood, when they are
+avenging the death of parents or brothers or children, as they do it to
+have full vengeance on such as have so greatly injured them.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer13.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header02.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ARMADA OF 1445.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/w.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="W"
+title="W" />hile Gonsalo Pacheco had been wasting time and men and the good name of
+Europe and Christendom in his plunderings between C. Bojador and C.
+Blanco, the memory of the death of Gonsalo de Cintra was kept alive in
+Lagos, and the men of the town came in solemn deputation to the Prince,
+before the summer of this same year (1445) was out, to beg him for
+permission to take full, perfect, and sufficient vengeance. In other
+words, they offered to equip the largest fleet that had ever sailed on
+an ocean voyage&mdash;as it now began to be called, a Guinea voyage&mdash;since
+the Prince began his work. As far as we know, this was also one of the
+greatest armadas that had been sent out into the new-discovered or
+re-discovered or undiscovered seas and lands since the European nations
+had begun to look at all beyond their own narrow limits.</p>
+
+<p>Neither the fleet of 1341, which found the Canaries, and of which
+Boccaccio tells us, nor the Genoese expedition of 1291, nor the Catalan
+venture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> of 1346, nor De B&eacute;thencourt's armament of 1402, for the
+conquest of the Fortunate Isles, was anything like this armada of 1445.
+For this last was a real sign of national interest in a work which was
+not only discovery, but profit and a means to more; it proved that in
+Portugal, in however base and narrowly selfish a way, there was now a
+spirit of general enterprising activity, and till this had been once
+awakened, there was not much hope of great results from the efforts of
+individuals.</p>
+
+<p>The first contingent now equipped in Lagos&mdash;for the Prince at once
+approved of his men's idea&mdash;numbered fourteen caravels&mdash;fourteen of the
+best sailing ships afloat, as Cadamosto said a little later; but this
+was only the central fleet, under Lan&ccedil;arote as Admiral. Three more ships
+came from Madeira, one of them under Tristam Vaz, the coloniser of
+Funchal; Diniz Diaz headed another contingent from Lisbon; Zarco, the
+chief partner in the discovery and settlement of Madeira, sent his own
+caravel in command of his nephew; in all there were seven and twenty
+ships&mdash;caravels, galleys, and pinnaces. Since the Carthaginians sent out
+their colonists under Hanno beyond the Pillars of Hercules, a larger and
+braver fleet had not sailed down that desolate West of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Gil Eannes, who had rounded Bojador, was there, with the Diaz, who had
+passed the Green Headland and come first to the land of the Negroes, and
+the list of captains was made up of the most daring and seasoned of
+Spanish seamen. Scarcely a man who had ventured on the ocean voyages of
+the last thirty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> years was still alive and able-bodied who did not sail
+on the 10th August, 1445.</p>
+
+<p>At the start Cape Blanco was appointed as the rendezvous; with favouring
+wind and tide the ships raced out as far as Arguin. Lawrence, a younger
+brother of the Diaz family, drew ahead, and was the first to fall in
+with Pacheco's three caravels, which were slowly crawling home after
+their losses. Now, hearing of the great fleet that was coming after to
+take vengeance, they turned about to wait for them, "as it was worth
+while to have revenge though one had to live on short rations." So, now,
+thirty European ships and their crews were included in the fleet. The
+pioneer, Lawrence Diaz, and the rest, lay to at the Isle of Herons in
+the Bank of Arguin; while waiting there they saw some wonderful things
+in birds, and Azurara tells us what they told him, though rather
+doubtfully. The great beaks of the Marabout, or Prophet Bird, struck
+them most,&mdash;"a cubit long and more, three fingers' breadth across, and
+the bill smooth and polished, like a Bashaw's scabbard, and looking as
+if artificially worked with fire and tools,"&mdash;the mouth and gullet so
+big that the leg of a man of the ordinary size would go into it. On
+these birds particularly, says Azurara, our men refreshed themselves
+during their three days' stay.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly but surely, two by two, three by three, nine caravels mustered at
+C. Blanco, and as the flagship of Lan&ccedil;arote was among them, an attack
+was made at once with two hundred and seventy-eight men picked from
+among the crews, the foot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>men and lancers in one boat and the archers in
+another, with Lan&ccedil;arote himself and the men-at-arms behind. They were
+steered by pilots who had been on the coast before and knew it, and it
+was hoped they would come upon the natives of Tider Island with the
+first light of dawn. But the way was longer than the pilots reckoned,
+the night was pitchy dark, without moon or stars, the tide was on the
+ebb, and at last the boats were aground. It was well on in the morning
+before they got off on the flood and rowed along the coast to find a
+landing-place. The shore was manned with natives, not at all taken by
+surprise, but dancing, yelling, spitting, and throwing missiles in
+insolent defiance. After a desperate struggle on the beach, they were
+put to flight with trifling loss&mdash;eight killed, four taken,&mdash;but when
+the raiders reached the village, they found it empty; the women and
+children had been sent away, and all their wretched little property had
+gone with them. The same was found true of all the villages on that
+coast; but in a second battle on the next day, fifty-seven Moors were
+captured, and the army went back on shipboard once more.</p>
+
+<p>And now the fleet divided. Lan&ccedil;arote, holding a council of his captains,
+declared the purpose of the voyage was accomplished. They had punished
+the natives and taken vengeance for Gonsalo de Cintra and the other
+martyrs; now it was for each crew and captain to settle whether they
+would go farther. All the prisoners having now been divided like
+prize-money between the ships, there was nothing more to stay for.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Five caravels at once returned to Portugal after trying to explore the
+inlet of the sea at C. Blanco; but they only went up in their boats five
+leagues, and then turned back. One stayed in the Bay of Arguin to
+traffic in slaves, and lost one of the most valuable captives by sheer
+carelessness,&mdash;a woman, badly guarded, slipped out and swam ashore.</p>
+
+<p>But there was a braver spirit in some others of the fleet. The captain
+of the King's caravel, which had come from Lisbon in the service of the
+King's uncle, swore he would not turn back. He, Gomes Pires, would go on
+to the Nile; the Prince had ordered him to bring him certain word of it.
+He would not fail him. Lan&ccedil;arote for himself said the same, and another,
+one Alvaro de Freitas, capped the offers of all the rest. He would go on
+beyond the Negro-Nile to the Earthly Paradise, to the farthest East,
+where the four sacred rivers flowed from the tree of life. "Well do you
+all know how our Lord the Infant sets great store by us, that we should
+make him know clearly about the land of the Negroes, and especially the
+River of Nile. It will not be a small guerdon that he will give for such
+service."</p>
+
+<p>Six caravels in all formed the main body of the Perseverants, and these
+coasted steadily along till they came to Diaz's Cape of Palms, which
+they knew was near the Senegal and the land of the Negroes, "and so
+beautiful did the land now become, and so delicious was the scent from
+the shore, that it was as if they were by some gracious fruit garden,
+ordained to the sole end of their delights. And when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> the men in the
+caravels saw the first palms and towering woodland, they knew right well
+that they were close upon the River of Nile, which the men there call
+the Sanaga." For the Infant had told them how little more than twenty
+leagues beyond the sight of those trees they would see the river, as his
+prisoners of the Azanegue tribes had told him. And as they looked
+carefully for the signs of this, they saw at last, two leagues from
+land, "a colour of the water that was different from the rest, for that
+was of the colour of mud."</p>
+
+<p>And understanding this to mean that there were shoals, they put farther
+out to sea for safety, when one took some of the water in his hand and
+put it to his mouth, and found that it was sweet. And crying out to the
+others, "Of a surety," said they, "we are now at the River of Nile, for
+the water of the river comes with such force into the sea as to sweeten
+it." So they dropped their anchors in the river's mouth, and they of the
+caravel of Vincent Diaz (another brother of Diniz and Lawrence) let down
+a boat, into which jumped eight men who pulled ashore.</p>
+
+<p>Here they found some ivory and elephant hide, and had a fierce battle
+with a huge negro whose two little naked children they carried off,&mdash;but
+though the chronicle of the voyages stops here for several chapters of
+rapturous reflection on the greatness of the Nile, and the valour and
+spirit of the Prince who had thus found a way to its western mouth, we
+must follow the captains as they coast slowly along to Cape Verde, "for
+that the wind was fair for sail<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>ing." Landing on a couple of uninhabited
+islands off the Cape, they found first of all "fresh goat-skins and
+other things," and then the arms of the Infant and the words of his
+motto, <i>Talan de bien faire</i>, carved upon trees, and they doubted, like
+Azurara when writing down his history from their lips; "whether the
+great power of Alexander or of C&aelig;sar could have planted traces of itself
+so far from home," as these islands were from Sagres. For though the
+distance looks small enough on a full map of all the world, on the chart
+of the Then Known it was indeed a lengthy stretch&mdash;some two thousand
+miles, fully as great a distance as the whole range of the Mediterranean
+from the coast of Palestine to the Straits of Gibraltar.</p>
+
+<p>Now by these signs, adds the chronicler, they understood right well that
+other caravels had been there already&mdash;and it was so; for it was the
+ship of John Gonsalvez Zarco, Captain of Madeira, which had passed this
+way, as they found for a fact on the day after. And wishing to land, but
+finding the number of the natives to be such that they could not land by
+day or night, they put on shore a ball and a mirror and a paper on which
+was drawn a cross.</p>
+
+<p>And when the natives came and found them in the morning, they broke the
+ball and threw away the pieces, and with their assegais broke up the
+mirror into little bits, and tore the paper, showing that they cared for
+none of these things.</p>
+
+<p>Since this is so, said Captain Gomes Pires to the archers, draw your
+bows upon these rascals, that they may know we are people who can do
+them a damage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the negroes returned the fire with arrows and assegais&mdash;deadly
+weapons, the arrows unfeathered and without a string-notch, but tipped
+with deadly poison of herbs, made of reed or cane or charred wood with
+long iron heads, and the assegais poisoned in like manner and pricked
+with seven or eight harpoons of iron, so that it was no easy matter to
+draw it out of the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>So they lost heart for going farther, with all the coast-land up in arms
+against them, and turned back to Lagos, but before they left the Cape
+they noticed in the desert island, where they had found the Prince's
+arms, trees so large that they had never seen the like, for among them
+was one which was 108 palms round at the foot. Yet this tree, the famous
+baobab, was not much higher than a walnut; "of its fibre they make good
+thread for sewing, which burns like flax; its fruit is like a gourd and
+its kernels like chestnuts." And so, we are told, all the captains put
+back along the coast, in a mind to enter the aforesaid River of Nile,
+but one of the caravels getting separated from the rest and not liking
+to enter the Senegal alone, went straight to Lagos, and another put back
+to water in the Bay of Arguin and the Rio d'Ouro estuary, where there
+came to them at once the Moors on board the caravel, full of confidence
+because they had never had any dealings before with the merchants of
+Spain, and sold them a negro for five doubloons, and gave them meat and
+water from their camels, and came in and out on board the ship, so that
+there was great fear of treachery, but at last without any quarrel they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+were all put on shore, under promise that next July their friends would
+come again and trade with them in slaves and gold to their hearts'
+content. And so, taking in a good cargo of seal-skins, they made their
+way straight home.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime two of the other caravels and a pinnace, which had been
+separated early in the voyage from the main body, under the pilotage of
+the veteran Diniz Diaz, had also made their way to C. Verde, had fought
+with the natives in some desperate skirmishes&mdash;one knight had his
+"shield stuck as full with arrows as the porcupine with quills," and had
+turned back in the face of the same discouragements as the rest; and so
+would have ended the whole of this great enterprise but for the
+dauntless energy of one captain and his crew.</p>
+
+<p>Zarco of Madeira had given his caravel to his nephew with a special
+charge that, come what might, he was not to think of profit and trading,
+but of doing the will of the Prince his lord. He was not to land in the
+fatal Bay of Arguin, which had been the end of so many enterprises; he
+was to go as Diniz Diaz had first gone, straight to the land of the
+Negroes, and pass beyond the farthest of earlier sailors. Now the
+caravel, says Azurara proudly, was well equipped and was manned by a
+crew that was ready to bear hard ship, and the captain was full of
+energy and zeal, and so they went on steadily, sailing through the great
+Sea of Ocean till they came to the River of Nile, where they filled two
+pipes with water, of which they took back one to the city of Lisbon. And
+not even Alexander, though he was one of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> monarchs of the world,
+ever drank of water that had been brought from so far as this.</p>
+
+<p>"But now, still going on, they passed C. Verde and landed upon the
+islands I have spoken of, to see if there were any people there, but
+they found only some tame goats without any one to tend them; and it was
+there that they made the signs that the others found on coming after,
+the arms of the Infant with his device and motto. And then drawing in
+close to the Cape, they waited to see if any canoes would come off to
+them, and anchored about a mile off the shore. But they had not waited
+long before two boats, with ten negroes in them, put off from the beach
+and made straight for the caravel, like men who came in peace and
+friendship. And being near, they began to make signs as if for a
+safe-conduct, which were answered in like manner, and then at once,
+without any other precaution, five of them came on board the caravel,
+where the captain made them all the entertainment that he could, bidding
+them eat and drink, and so they went away with signs of great
+contentment, but it appeared after, that in their hearts they meditated
+treachery. For as soon as they got to land they talked with the other
+natives on shore, and thinking that they could easily take the ship,
+with this intent there now set out six boats, with five and thirty or
+forty men, arrayed as those who come to fight, but when they came close
+they were afraid and stayed a little way off, without daring to make any
+attack. And seeing this, our men launched a boat on the other side of
+the caravel, where they could not be seen by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> enemy, and manned it
+with eight rowers, who were to wait till the canoes came nearer to the
+ship. At last the negroes were tired of waiting and watching, and one of
+their canoes came up closer, in which were five strong warriors, and at
+once our boat rowed round the caravel and cut them off. And because of
+the great advantage that we had in our style of rowing, in a trice our
+men were upon them, and they having no hope of defence, threw themselves
+into the water, and the other boats made off for the shore. And our men
+had the greatest trouble in catching those that were swimming away, for
+they dived not a whit worse than cormorants, so that we could scarcely
+catch hold of them. One was taken, not very easily, on the spot, and
+another, who fought as desperately as two men, was wounded, and with
+these two the boat returned to the caravel.</p>
+
+<p>"And for that they saw that it would not profit them to stay longer in
+that place, they resolved to see if they could find any new lands of
+which they might bring news to the Infant their lord. And so, sailing on
+again, they came to a cape, where they saw 'groves of palm trees dry and
+without branches, which they called the Cape of Masts.'" Here, a little
+farther along the coast, a reconnoitring party of seven landed and found
+four negro hunters sitting on the beach, armed with bows and arrows, who
+fled on seeing the strangers. "And as they were naked and their hair cut
+very short, they could not catch them," and only brought away their
+arrows for a trophy.</p>
+
+<p>This Cape of Masts, or some point of the coast a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> little to the
+south-east, was the farthest now reached by Zarco's caravel. "From here
+they put back and sailed direct to Madeira, and thence to the city of
+Lisbon, where the Infant received them with reward enough. For this
+caravel, of all those who had sailed at this time (1445), had done most
+and reached farthest."</p>
+
+<p>There was one contingent of the great armada yet unaccounted for, but
+they were sad defaulters. Three of the ships on the outward voyage which
+had separated from the main body and Lan&ccedil;arote's flagship, had the
+cowardice or laziness to give up the purpose of the voyage altogether;
+"they agreed to make a descent on the Canary Islands instead of going to
+Guinea at all that year."</p>
+
+<p>Here they stayed some time, raiding and slave-hunting, but also making
+observations on the natives and the different natural features of the
+different islands, which, as we have them in the old chronicle, are not
+the least interesting part of the story of the Lagos Armada of 1445.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer01.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header07.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>VOYAGES OF 1446-8.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/a.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="A"
+title="A" />nd yet, but for the enterprise of Zarco's crew, this expedition of 1445
+that began with so much promise, and on which so much time and trouble
+had been spent, was almost fruitless of "novelties," of discoveries, of
+the main end and object of all the Prince's voyages.</p>
+
+<p>The next attempt, made by Nuno Tristam in 1446, ended in the most
+disastrous finish that had yet befallen the Christian seamen of Spain.
+Nuno, who had been brought up from boyhood at the Prince's court,
+"seeing how earnest he was that his caravels should explore the land of
+the Negroes, and knowing how some had already passed the River of Nile,
+thought that if he should not do something of right good service to the
+Infant in that land, he could in no wise gain the name of a brave
+knight.</p>
+
+<p>"So he armed a caravel and began sail, not stopping anywhere that he
+might come straight to the Black Man's land. And passing by Cape Verde
+he sailed on sixty leagues and found a river, where he judged there
+ought to be some people living. So he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> bade them lower two small boats
+and put ten men in the one and twelve in the other, which pulled
+straight towards some huts they sighted ahead of them. But before they
+could jump on shore, twelve canoes came out on the other side, and
+seventy or eighty Blackmoors in them, with bows in their hands, who
+began to shoot at our people." As the tide rose, one of the Guinea boats
+passed them and landed its crew, "so that our men were between a fire
+from the land and a fire from the boats." They pulled back as hard as
+they could, but before they could get on board, four of them were lying
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>"And so they began to make sail home again, leaving the boats in that
+they were not able to take charge of them. For of the twenty-two who
+went to land in them there did not escape more than two; nineteen were
+killed, for so deadly was the poison that with a tiny wound, a mere
+scratch that drew blood, it could bring a man to his last end. But above
+and beyond these was killed our noble knight, Nuno Tristam, earnestly
+desiring life, that he might die not a shameful death like this, but as
+a brave man should." Of seven who had been left in the caravel, two had
+been struck by the poisoned arrows as they tried to raise the anchors,
+and were long in danger of death, lying a good twenty days at the last
+gasp, without the power to raise a finger to help the others who were
+trying to get the caravel home, so that only five were left to work the
+ship.</p>
+
+<p>Nuno's men were saved by the energy and skill of one&mdash;a mere boy, a page
+of the Infant's House&mdash;who took charge of the ship, and steered its
+course<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> due north, then north by east, so that in two months' time they
+were off the coast of Portugal. But they were absolutely helpless and
+hopeless, knowing nothing of their whereabouts, for in all those two
+months they had had no glimpse of land,&mdash;so that when at last they
+caught sight of an armed fusta, they were "much troubled," supposing it
+to be a Moorish cruiser. When it came near and shewed itself to be a
+Gallician pirate, the poor fellows were almost wild with delight, still
+more when they found they were not far from Lagos. They had had a
+terrible time; first they were almost poisoned by the dead bodies of
+Nuno Tristam and the victims of the savages' poisoned arrows; then, when
+at last they had "thrown their honour to the winds and those bodies to
+the fishes," shamefaced and utterly broken in spirit, the five
+wretchedly ignorant seamen, who were now left alone, drifted, with the
+boundless and terrible ocean on one side, and the still more dangerous
+and unknown coast of Africa on the other, for sixty days. A common
+sailor, "little enough skilled in the art of sailing"; a groom of the
+Prince's chamber, the young hero who saved the ship; a negro boy, who
+was taken with the first captives from Guinea; and two other "little
+lads small enough,"&mdash;this was the crew. As for the rest, Beati mortui
+qui in Domino moriuntur, Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord,
+cries the chronicler in that outburst of bewildered grief with which he
+ends his story. There were widows and orphans left for the Prince to
+care for, and "of these he took especial charge."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But all people were not so unlucky as Nuno Tristam. The caravel of Zarco
+of Madeira, which under Zarco's nephew, Alvaro Fernandez, had already
+passed beyond every other in the year of the great armada, 1445, was
+sent back again on its errand "of doing service in the unknown lands of
+Guinea to the Lord Don Henry," in the black year, 1446. Its noble and
+valiant owner now "charged the aforesaid" Alvaro Fernandez, with the
+ship well armed, to go as far as he could, and to try and make some
+booty, that should be so new and so splendid that it would be a sign of
+his good-will to serve the Lord who had made him. So they sailed on
+straight to Cape Verde, and beyond that to the Cape of Masts (or Spindle
+Palms), their farthest of the year before, but they did not turn back
+here, in spite of unfriendly natives and unknown shores. Still coasting
+along, they found tracks of men, and a little farther on a village,
+"where the people came out as men who shewed that they meant to defend
+their homes; in front of them was a champion, with a good target on his
+arm and an assegai in his hand. This fellow our captain rushed upon, and
+with a blow of his lance struck him dead upon the ground. Then, running
+up, he seized his sword and spear, and kept them as trophies to be
+offered to the Lord Infant." The negroes fled, and the conquerors turned
+back to their ship and sailed on. Next day they came to a land where
+they saw certain of the women of those negroes, and seized one who was
+of age about thirty, with her child a baby of two, and another, a young
+girl of fourteen, "the which had a good enough pres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>ence and beauty for
+that country"; but the strength of the woman was so wonderful, that she
+gave the three men who held her trouble enough to lift her into the
+boat. And seeing how they were kept struggling on the beach, they feared
+that some of the people of the country might come down upon them. So one
+of them put the child into the boat, and love of it forced the mother to
+go likewise, without much more pushing.</p>
+
+<p>Thence they went on, pursues the story, till they came to a river, into
+which they made an entrance with a boat, and carried off a woman that
+they found in a house. But going up the river somewhat farther, with a
+mind to make some good booty, there came out upon them four or five
+canoes full of negroes, armed as men who would fight for their country,
+whose encounter our men in the boat did not wish to await in face of the
+advantage of the enemy, and fearing above all the great peril of
+poisoned arrows. So they began to pull down stream as hard as they could
+towards the caravel; but as one of the canoes distanced the others and
+came up close to them, they turned upon it and in the fight one of the
+negroes shot a dart, that wounded the captain, Alvaro Fernandez, in the
+foot. But he, as he had been already warned of the poison, drew out the
+arrow very quickly and bathed it with acid and oil, and then anointed it
+well with theriack, and it pleased God that he passed safely through a
+great trouble, though for some days he lay on the point of death. And so
+they got back to the caravel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But though the captain was so badly wounded, the crew did not stop in
+following the coast and went on (all this was over quite new ground)
+till they came to a certain sand-spit, directly in front of a great bay.
+Here they launched a boat, and rowed out to see the land they had come
+to, and at once there came out against them full 120 negroes, some with
+bows, others with shields and assegais, and when they reached the edge
+of the sea, they began to play and dance about, "like men clean wearied
+of all sadness, but our men in the boat wishing to be excused from
+sharing in that festival of theirs, turned and rowed back to the ship."</p>
+
+<p>Now all this was a good 110 leagues,&mdash;320 miles beyond Cape Verde,
+"mostly to the south of the aforesaid cape" (that is, about the place of
+Sierra Leone on our maps), and this caravel remained a longer time
+abroad and went farther than any other ship of that year, and but for
+the sickness of the wounded captain they would not have stopped there.
+But as it was they came straight back to the Bank of Arguin, "where they
+met that chief Ahude Meymam, of whom we have spoken before," in the
+story of Joan Fernandez. And though they had no interpreter, by whom
+they might do their business, by signs they managed so that they were
+able to buy a negress, in exchange for certain cloths that they had with
+them. And so they came safe home. There was not much trouble now in
+getting volunteers for the work of discovery, and a reward of 200
+doubloons&mdash;100 from Prince Henry, 100 more from the Regent Don Pedro&mdash;to
+the last bold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> explorers who had got fairly round Senegambia, added zest
+to enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>In this same year 1446-7, no fewer than nine caravels sailed to Guinea
+from Portugal in another armada, on the track of Zarco's successful
+crew. At Madeira they were joined by two more, and the whole fleet
+sailed through the Canary island group to Cape Verde. Eight of them
+passed sixty leagues, 180 miles, beyond, and found a river, the Rio
+Grande, "of good size enough," up which they sailed, except one ship,
+belonging to a Bishop&mdash;the Bishop of Algarve&mdash;"for that this happened to
+run upon a sand-bank, in such wise, that they were not able to get her
+off, though all the people on board were saved with the cargo. And while
+some of them were busy in this, others landed and found the country just
+deserted by its inhabitants, and going on to find them, they soon
+perceived that they had found a track, which they had chanced on near
+the place where they landed."</p>
+
+<p>They followed this track recklessly enough, and nearly met the fate of
+Nuno Tristam. "For as they went on by that road, they came to a country
+with great sown fields, with plantations of cotton trees and rice plots,
+in a land full of hills like loaves, after which they came to a great
+wood," and as they were going into the wood, the Guineas came out upon
+them in great numbers, with bows and assegais and saluted them with a
+shower of poisoned arrows. The first five Europeans fell dead at once,
+two others were desperately wounded, the rest escaped to the ships, and
+the ships went no farther that year.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Still worse was the fate of Vallarte's venture in the early months of
+1448. Vallarte was a nobleman of the Court of King Christopher of
+Denmark, who had been drawn to the Court of Henry at Sagres by the
+growing fame of the Prince's explorations, and who came forward with the
+stock request, "Give me a caravel to go to the land of the negroes."</p>
+
+<p>A little beyond Cape Verde, Vallarte went on shore with a boat's crew
+and fell into the trap which had caught the exploring party of the year
+before. He and his men were surrounded by negroes and were shot down or
+captured to a man. But one escaped, swimming to the ship, and told how
+as he looked back over his shoulder to the shore, again and again, he
+saw Vallarte sitting a prisoner in the stern of the boat.</p>
+
+<p>"And when the chronicle of these voyages was in writing at the end of
+the self-same year, there were brought certain prisoners from Guinea to
+Prince Henry, who told him that in a city of the upland, in the heart of
+Africa, there were four Christian prisoners." One had died, three were
+living, and in these four, men in Europe believed they had news of
+Vallarte and his men.</p>
+
+<p>But between the last voyage of Zarco's caravel in 1446 and the first
+voyage of Cadamosto in 1455, there is no real advance in exploration.</p>
+
+<p>The "third armada," as it was called, that is the fleet of the nine
+caravels of 1446-7, the voyage of Gomes Pires to the Rio d'Ouro at the
+same time, the trading ventures of the Marocco coast which were the
+means of bringing the first lion to Portugal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> in 1447, the expeditions
+to the Rio d'Ouro and to Arguin in the course of the same year, are not
+part of the story of discovery, but of trade. There is hardly a
+suspicion of exploring interest about most of them. Even Vallarte's
+venture in 1448 has nothing of the novelty which so many went out to
+find "for the satisfaction of the Lord Henry." Guinea voyages are
+frequent, almost constant, during these years, and this frequency has at
+any rate the point of making Europeans thoroughly familiar with the
+coast already explored, if it did little or nothing to bring in new
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>But the value and meaning of Henry's life and work was not after all in
+commerce, except in a secondary sense; and these voyages of purely
+trading interest, with no design or at any rate no result of discovery,
+do not belong to our subject. Each one of them has its own picturesque
+beauty in the pages of the old chronicle of the Conquest of Guinea, but
+measured by its importance to the general story of the expansion of
+Europe, there is no lasting value in any one of the last chapters of
+Azurara's voyages,&mdash;his description of the Canaries, and of the
+"Inferno" of Teneriffe, "of how Madeira was peopled, and the other
+islands that are in that part, of how the caravel of Alvaro Dornellas
+took certain of the Canarians, of how Gomes Pires went to the Rio d'Ouro
+and of the Moors that he took, of the caravel that went to Me&ccedil;a (in
+Marocco) and of the Moors that were taken, of how Antam Gonsalvez
+received the island of Lan&ccedil;arote in the name of the Prince."</p>
+
+<p>Only the chronicler's summary of results, up to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> year 1446, the year
+of Nuno Tristam's failure, is of wider interest. "Till then there had
+been fifty-one caravels to those parts, which had gone 450 leagues (1350
+miles) beyond the Cape (Boyador). And as it was found that the coast ran
+southward with many points, the Prince ordered these to be added to the
+sailing chart. And here it is to be noted, that what was clearly known
+before of the coast of the great sea was 200 leagues (600 miles), which
+have been increased by these 450. Also what had been laid down upon the
+Mappa Mundi was not true but was by guess work, but now 't is all from
+the survey by the eyes of our seamen. And now seeing that in this
+history we have given account sufficient of the first four reasons which
+brought our noble Prince to his attempt, it is time we said something of
+the accomplishment of his fifth object, the conversion of the Heathen,
+by the bringing of a number of infidel souls from their lands to this,
+the which by count were nine hundred and twenty-seven, of whom the
+greater part were turned into the true way of salvation. And what
+capture of town or city could be more glorious than this."</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer14.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header05.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE AZORES.</h3>
+
+<h3>1431-1460.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/w.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="W"
+title="W" />e have now come very nearly to the end of the voyages that are
+described in the old <i>Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of
+Guinea</i>, and setting aside the story of the famous Venetian Cadamosto,
+this is also the end of the African mainland-coasting of Henry's seamen.
+Though he did not die till 1460, and we have now only reached the year
+1448, for Azurara's solemn catalogue of negroes brought to Europe is
+reckoned only up to that year&mdash;"nine hundred and twenty-seven who had
+been turned into the true path of salvation,"&mdash;yet there is no more
+exploration in the last ten years of Henry's life worth noting, except
+what falls into this and two of the following chapters.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these is Cadamosto's own record of his two voyages along
+the Guinea coast, in which he is supposed to have reached Cape Palmar,
+some five hundred miles beyond Cape Verde, and certainly reached the
+Gambia, whose great mouth, "like an arm of the sea," is well described
+in his journal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The second is the "true account of the finding of the Cape Verde islands
+by Diego Gomez, servant of Don Henry," who writes the story of the
+Prince's death and was as faithful a servant as he had at his Court. But
+there is one other chapter of the exploration directed from Sagres and
+described by Azurara, which must find its place, and is best spoken of
+here and now, in the interval between the two most active periods of
+African coasting voyages. This is the story of the colonisation of the
+Azores, of the Western or Hawk islands, known to map-makers at least as
+early as 1351, for they figure clearly enough on the great Florentine
+chart of that year, though not reclaimed for Europe and Christendom till
+somewhere about 1430. These islands were found, says a legend, on the
+Catalan map of 1439, by Diego de Sevill, pilot of the King of Portugal,
+in 1427. But these islands were after all only two groups of the
+Archipelago, and the rediscovery or finding of the rest fell between the
+years 1432 and 1450.</p>
+
+<p>The voyage of Diego de Sevill and Gonzalo Velho Cabral to the Azores,
+that is to the island of St. Mary and the Formigas, has been alluded to
+as among the earliest of Prince Henry's successes. But as it was out of
+this first attempt that the discovery of the whole group resulted, it
+has been necessary to refer to it again. Cabral, rewarded by his lord
+with the gift of his discoveries and living in St. Mary's island as
+"Captain Donatory" or Lord of the Land, was in charge of the
+colonisation of the islands he had already found, and of as many others
+as might come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> to light. He spent three years (1433-6) collecting men
+and means in Portugal and then settled in the "Western Isles" with some
+of the best families in this country.</p>
+
+<p>With this, discovery seemed to have come to a standstill, but years
+after, somewhere about 1440-1 an odd chance started exploration westward
+once more. There was a hunt after a runaway slave, a negro, of course,
+from the continent, who had escaped to the top of the highest mountain
+in St. Mary. The weather was of the clearest, and he fancied that he saw
+far off on the horizon the outline of an unknown land. Was it another
+island? He knew his masters were there as explorers quite as much as
+colonisers, and he must often have heard their talk about the finding of
+new lands, and the will of their Lord the Prince that those new lands
+should at all costs be found, was no secret. That will had sent them
+there; that same will would secure their slave's pardon, if he came back
+from hiding with the news of a real discovery.</p>
+
+<p>So he reasoned to himself; and he was right. The Prince, hearing the
+news, instantly consulted his ancient maps and found that these hinted
+at lands in the same direction as the slave had pointed out. He ordered
+Cabral to start at once in search of them. Cabral tried and missed. Then
+came a wonderful test of Henry's knowledge; he who had never been within
+a thousand miles of the place, proved to his captain that he had passed
+between St. Mary and the unknown land, and correcting his course sent
+him out again, to seek and to find.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the 8th of May, 1444, the new island was found "on the day of the
+apparition of St. Michael," and named after the festival. It is our
+modern "St. Michael of the Oranges."</p>
+
+<p>As with the other islands so with this, colonisation followed discovery.
+On the 29th of September, 1445, Cabral returned with Europeans, having
+before left only a few Moors to open up the country. Now on his return
+he found these wretched men frightened almost to death by the
+earthquakes that had kept them trembling since they first landed. "And
+if they had been able to get a boat, even the lightest, they would
+certainly have escaped in it." Cabral's pilot also, who had been with
+him before to that same island, declared that of the two great mountain
+peaks which he had noticed at the two ends of the island, east and west,
+only the Eastern was now standing. The slang name of "Azores" or "Hawks"
+now began to take the place of the old term of "Western" islands, from
+the swarms of hawks or kites that were found in the new discovered St.
+Michael, and in the others which came to light soon after. For the Third
+Group, "Terceira," was sighted between 1444-50, and added to the
+Portugal that was thus creeping slowly out towards the unknown West, as
+if in anticipation of Columbus, throwing its outposts farther and
+farther into the ocean, as its pioneers grew more and more sure of their
+ground outside the Straits of Gibraltar. Some seamen of Prince Henry's,
+returning from "Guinea" to Spain, some adventurer trying to "win fame
+for himself with the Lord Infant," some merchants<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> sent out to try their
+luck on the western side as so many had tried on the southern, some
+African coasters driven out of sight of land by contrary winds;&mdash;it may
+have been any of these, it must have been some one of them, who found
+the rest of the Azores, Terceira or the island of Jesus, St. George,
+Graciosa, Fayal, Flores, and Corvo.</p>
+
+<p>Who were the discoverers is absolutely unknown. At this day we have only
+a few traces of the first colonisation, but of two things we may be
+pretty certain. First, that the Azores were all found and colonised in
+Henry's lifetime, and for the most part between 1430 and 1450. Second,
+that no definite purpose was formed of pushing discovery beyond this
+group across the waste of waters to the west, and so of finding India
+from the "left" hand. Henry and all his school were quite satisfied,
+quite committed, to the south-east route. By coasting round the
+continent, not by venturing across the ocean, they hoped and meant to
+find their way to Malabar and Cathay. As to the settlement of these
+islands, a copy is still left of Henry's grant of the Captaincy of
+Terceira to the Fleming Jacques de Bruges.</p>
+
+<p>The facts of the case were these. Jacques came to the Prince one day
+with a little request about the Hawk islands&mdash;that "within the memory of
+man the aforesaid islands had been under the aggressive lordship of none
+other than the Prince, and as the third of these islands called the
+island of Jesu Christ, was lying waste, he the said Jacques de Bruges
+begged that he might colonise the same. Which was granted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> to him with
+the succession to his daughters, as he had no heirs male."</p>
+
+<p>For Jacques was a rich Fleming, who had come into the Prince's service,
+it would seem, with the introduction of the Duchess of Burgundy, Don
+Henry's niece. Since then he had married into a noble house of Portugal,
+and now he was offering to take upon himself all the charges of his
+venture. Such a man was not lightly to be passed over. His design was
+encouraged, and more than this his example was followed. An hidalgo
+named Sodr&eacute;&mdash;Vincent Gil Sodr&eacute;&mdash;took his family and adherents across to
+Terceira, the island of Jesu Christ, and from thence went on and settled
+in Graciosa, while another Fleming, Van der Haager, joining Van der
+Berge or De Bruges in Terceira with two ships "fitted out at his own
+cost and filled with his own people and artisans, whom he had brought to
+work as in a new land," tried though unsuccessfully to colonise the
+island of St. George.</p>
+
+<p>The first Captain Donatory of Fayal was another Fleming&mdash;Job van
+Heurter, Lord of Moerkerke&mdash;and there is a special interest in his name.
+For it is through him that we get in 1492 the long and interesting
+notice of the first settlement of the Azores on the globe of Martin
+Behaim, now at Nuremberg, the globe which was made to play such a
+curious part, as undesigned as it was ungenerous, in the Columbus
+controversy.</p>
+
+<p>"These islands," says the tablet attached to them on the map, "these
+Hawk islands, were colonised in 1466, when they were given by the King
+of Por<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>tugal to his sister Isabel, Duchess of Burgundy, who sent out
+many people of all classes, with priests and everything necessary for
+the maintenance of religion. So that in 1490 there were there some
+thousands of souls, who had come out with the noble knight, Job de
+Heurter, my dear father-in-law, to whom the islands were given in
+perpetuity by the Duchess.</p>
+
+<p>"Now in 1431, Prince Henry provisioned two ships for two years and sent
+them to the lands beyond Cape Finisterre, and they, sailing due west for
+some five hundred leagues, found these islands, ten in number, all
+desert without quadrupeds or men, only tenanted by birds, and these so
+tame that they could be caught by the hand. So they called these 'the
+Islands of the Hawks' (Azores).</p>
+
+<p>"And next year (1432), by the King's orders, sixteen vessels were sent
+out from Portugal with all kinds of tame animals, that they might breed
+there."</p>
+
+<p>Of the first settlement of Flores and Corvo, the two remaining islands
+of the group, still less is known, but in any case it seems not to have
+been fully carried out till the last years of the Prince's life,
+possibly it was the work of his successor in the Grand Mastership of the
+Order of Christ, which now took up a sort of charge to colonise outlying
+and new discovered lands. For among the Prince's last acts was his
+bequest of the islands, which had been granted to himself by his
+brother, King Edward, in 1433, to Prince Ferdinand, his nephew, whom he
+had adopted with a view of making him his successor in aims as well as
+in office, in leading the progress of discovery as well as in the
+headship of the Order of Christ.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header06.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TROUBLES OF THE REGENCY AND THE FALL OF DON PEDRO.</h3>
+
+<h3>1440-9.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/d.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="D"
+title="D" />on Pedro had been nominated sole Regent of Portugal on November 1,
+1439, and by the end of the next year all the unsettlement consequent on
+the change at court seemed to be at an end. But a deep hatred continued
+between the various parties.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, the Count of Barcellos, natural son of John I., created
+Duke of Braganza by Affonso V., had taken up a definite policy of
+supplanting the Regent. The Queen Mother had not forgotten or forgiven
+Don Pedro's action at Edward's death, and the young King himself, though
+engaged to the Regent's daughter, was already distrustful, was fitting
+himself to lead the Barcellos party against the Prince.</p>
+
+<p>On February 18, 1445, died the Queen Leonor, with suspicions of poison,
+diligently fostered by the malcontents. Next year (1446) Affonso, now
+fourteen, came of age, and his uncle proposed at once to resign all
+actual power and retire to his estates as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> Duke of Coimbra. But the King
+was either not yet prepared to part with him, or still felt some
+gratitude to his guardian, "the wisest head in Spain."</p>
+
+<p>He begged him to keep the chief direction of affairs, thanked him for
+the past, and promised to help him in the future. More than this, he
+protested that he wished to be married to his cousin, Pedro's daughter
+Isabel. They had been formally betrothed four years; now Affonso called
+on his nobles and the deputies of Cort&eacute;s to witness the marriage.</p>
+
+<p>In May, 1447, this royal wedding was celebrated, but coldly and poorly,
+as nephew and uncle had now drifted quite apart. The more the younger
+disliked and suspected the elder, the more vehement became his
+protestations of regard. But he bitterly resented the Duke's action in
+holding him to his promise, and he made up his mind before the marriage
+that he would henceforth govern as well as reign.</p>
+
+<p>The Regent just prevented his dismissal by laying down his offices; the
+King seemed almost to relent in parting from his guardian, who had kept
+the kingdom in such perfect peace and now resigned so well discharged a
+duty; but even his wife could not prevent the coming storm. She
+struggled hard to reconcile her father and her husband, but the
+mischief-makers were too hard for her. Persuaded that the Duke was a
+traitor, the King allowed himself to be used to goad him into revolt.
+"Your father wishes to be punished," he said fiercely to the Queen, "and
+he shall be punished."</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus006"></a><img src="./images/illus006.jpg"
+alt="HENRY IN MORNING DRESS, WITH GREAT HAT."
+title="HENRY IN MORNING DRESS, WITH GREAT HAT." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">HENRY IN MORNING DRESS, WITH GREAT HAT.</p>
+
+<p>If Henry, who in the last six years had only once left Sagres, to knight
+Don Pedro's eldest son at Coimbra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> in 1445, had now been able, in
+presence as well as writing, to stand by his brother in this crisis, the
+Regent might have been saved. As it was, Pedro had hardly settled down
+in his exile at Coimbra, when he found himself charged with the secret
+murders of King Edward, Queen Leonor, and Prince John. The more
+monstrous the slander, the more absurd and self-contradictory it might
+be, the more eagerly it was made.</p>
+
+<p>Persecution as petty and grinding as that which hunted Wolsey to death,
+at last drove Pedro to take arms. His son, knighted by Henry himself for
+the high place of Constable of the Realm, had been forced into flight,
+the arms of Coimbra Arsenal seized for the King's use, his letters to
+his nephew opened and answered, it was said by his enemies, who wrote
+back in the sovereign's name, as he would write to an open rebel. All
+this the Prince bore, but when he heard that his bastard brother of
+Braganza, who had betrayed and maligned and ruined him, was on the march
+to plunder his estates, like an outlaw's, he collected a few troops and
+barred his way. At this Affonso was persuaded to declare war.</p>
+
+<p>Only one great noble stood by the fallen Regent, but this was his friend
+Almada, the Spanish Hercules, his sworn brother in arms and in travels,
+one of the Heroes of Christendom, who had been made a Count in France
+and a Knight of the Garter in England. It was he who now escaped from
+honourable imprisonment at Cintra, joined Pedro in Coimbra, and proposed
+to him that they should go together to Court and demand justice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> and a
+fair trial, but sword in hand and with their men at their back. Was it
+not better to die as soldiers than as traitors without a hearing?</p>
+
+<p>So on May 5, 1449, the Duke left Coimbra with his little army of
+vassals, 1000 horse and 5000 foot and passed by Batalha, where he
+stopped to revisit the great church and the tombs of his father and his
+brothers. Thence he marched straight on Lisbon, which the King covered
+from Santarem with 30,000 men. At the rivulet of Alfarrobeira the armies
+met; a lance thrust or a cross-bow shot killed the Infant; a common
+soldier cut off his head and carried it to Affonso in the hope of
+knighthood. Almada, who fought till he could not stand from loss of
+blood, died with his friend. Hurling his sword from him, he threw
+himself on the ground, with a scornful, "Take your fill of me, Varlets,"
+and was cut to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Though at first leave could hardly be got to bury Don Pedro's body, as
+time went on his name was cleared. His daughter bore a son to the King,
+and the proofs of his loyalty, the indignant warnings of foreign Courts,
+the entreaties of the Queen, at last brought Affonso to something like
+repentance and amendment. He buried the Regent at Batalha and pardoned
+his friends, those who were left from the butchery of Alfarrobeira.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer15.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header08.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>CADAMOSTO.</h3>
+
+<h3>1455-6.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/w.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="W"
+title="W" />e have now come to the voyages of the Venetian Cadamosto, in the
+service of Prince Henry. And though these were far from being the most
+striking in their general effect, they are certainly the most famous,
+the best known, of all the enterprises of these fifty years (1415-1460).
+It is true that Cadamosto fairly reached Sierra Leone and, passing the
+farthest mark of the earlier Portuguese caravels, coasted along many
+miles of that great eastern bend of the West African coast which we call
+the Gulf of Guinea. But it is to his general fame as a seaman, his
+position in Italy, and the interest he aroused by his written and
+published story that he owed his greater share of attention.</p>
+
+<p>When I first set my mind, begins his narrative, on sailing the ocean
+between the Strait of Cadiz and the Fortunate Islands, the one man who
+had tried to enter the aforesaid ocean, since the days of our Father
+Adam, was the Infant Don Henry of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> Portugal, whose illustrious and
+almost countless deeds I pass over, excepting only his zeal for the
+Christian faith and his freedom from the bonds of matrimony. For his
+father, King John, had not given up the ghost before he had warned his
+son Henry with saving precepts, that the aforesaid Holy Faith he should
+foster with a dauntless mind and not fail in his vows of warring down
+the foes of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore every year did Don Henry, as it were, challenging and hurling
+defiance at the Moors, persist in sending out his caravels as far as the
+headland called the Cape of Non (Not), from the belief that beyond the
+said Cape there is "<i>No</i>" return possible. And as for a long time the
+ships of the Prince did not dare to pass that point, Henry roused
+himself to accomplish this feat, seeing that his caravels did much excel
+all other sailing ships afloat, and strictly enjoined his captains not
+to return before they had passed the said Cape. Who steadily pressing
+on, and never leaving sight of the shore, did in truth pass near one
+hundred miles beyond, finding nothing but desert land.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this again, for the space of one hundred and fifty miles, the
+Prince then sent another fleet, which fared no better, and finding no
+trace of men or of tillage, returned home. And Don Henry, growing ever
+keener for discovery, and excited by the opposition as it were of
+nature, sent out again and again till his sailors had reached beyond the
+Desert Coast to the land of the Arabs and of those new races called
+Azaneguys, people of a tawny colour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And finally there appeared to these bold mariners the land of &AElig;thiopia,
+which lies upon the shore of the Southern ocean, and here again from day
+to day the explorers discovered new races and new lands.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I, Luigi Ca da Mosto, who had sailed nearly all the Mediterranean
+coasts, once leaving Venice for 'Celtogallia' (France), but being caught
+by a storm off C. St. Vincent, had to take refuge in the Prince's town,
+near the said Cape, and was here told of the glorious and boundless
+conquests of the Prince, whence accrued such gain that from no traffic
+in the world could the like be had.</p>
+
+<p>"The which," continues the candid trader, "did exceedingly stir my soul,
+eager as it was for gain above all things else; and so I made suit to be
+brought before the Prince, if so be that I might gain leave to sail in
+his service, for since the profit of this voyage is subject to his
+pleasure, he doth guard his monopoly with no small care."</p>
+
+<p>With the Prince, at last, Cadamosto made terms: either that he, the
+adventurer, should furnish the ships at his own cost, and take the whole
+risk upon himself, and of the merchandise that he might gain a fourth
+part to go to his lord; or that the Prince should bear the cost of
+equipment and should have half the profits. But in any case, if there
+was no profit, the whole expense should fall upon the trader. The Prince
+added that he would heartily welcome any other volunteers from Venice,
+and on Cadamosto himself he urged an immediate start. "As for me,"
+repeats the sailor, "my age, my vigour, my skill equal to any toil,
+above all my passionate desire to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> see the world and explore the
+unknown, set me all on fire with eagerness. And especially the fact that
+no countryman of mine had ever tried the like, and my certainty of
+winning the highest honour and gain from such a venture, made me forward
+to offer myself. I only stayed to enquire from veteran Portuguese what
+merchandise was the most highly prized among the &AElig;thiopians and people
+of the furthest South, and then went home to find the best light craft
+for the ocean coasting that I had in mind." Meantime the Prince ordered
+a caravel to be equipped, which he gave to one Vincent, a native of
+Lagos, as captain, and caused to be armed to the teeth, as was required,
+and on the 21st of March, 1455, Cadamosto sailed for Madeira. On the
+25th they were off Porto Santo, and the Venetian stops to give us a
+description of the island, which, he says in passing, had been found and
+colonised by the Prince's seamen twenty-seven years before. It was worth
+the settling. Every kind of grain and fruit was easily raised, and there
+was a great trade in dragon's blood, "which is made from the tears of a
+tree."</p>
+
+<p>On March 27th, Cadamosto sailed from Porto Santo to Madeira, forty miles
+distant, and easily seen from the first island when the weather was
+cloudy, and here the narrative stops some time to describe and admire
+sufficiently. Madeira had been colonised under the lead and action of
+the Prince four and twenty years before, and was now thickly peopled by
+the Portuguese settlers. Beyond Portugal its existence was hardly known.
+Its name was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> "from its woodland,"&mdash;here Cadamosto repeats the
+traditional falsehood about the place,&mdash;but the first settlers had
+destroyed most of this in trying to clear an open space by fire. The
+whole island had once been in flames, the colonists only saved their
+lives by plunging into the rivers, and even Zarco, the chief discoverer,
+with his wife and children had to stand in a torrent bed for two whole
+days and nights before they could venture on dry land again.</p>
+
+<p>The island was forty miles round; like Porto Santo, it was without a
+harbour, but not without convenient roads for ships to lie in; the soil
+was fertile, well watered by eight rivers that flowed through the
+island. "Various kinds of carved wood are exported, so that almost all
+Portugal is now adorned with tables and other furniture made from these
+woods."</p>
+
+<p>"Hearing of the great plenty of water in the island, the Prince ordered
+all the open country to be planted with sugar-cane and with vines
+imported from Crete, which do excellent well in a climate so well suited
+to the grape; the vine staves make good bows, and are exported to Europe
+like the wine, red and white alike, but especially the red. The grapes
+are ripe about Easter in each year," and this vintage, as early as
+Cadamosto's day, was evidently the main interest of the islanders, who
+had all the enthusiasm of a new venture in their experiment, "for no one
+had ever tried his hand upon the soil before."</p>
+
+<p>From Madeira the caravel sailed on 320 miles to the Canaries, of which
+says our Venetian, there are ten, seven cultivated and three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> still
+desert; and of the seven inhabited four are Christian, three Heathen,
+even now, fifty years after De B&eacute;thencourt's conquest. Neither wine nor
+grain can be produced on this soil, and hardly any fruit, only a kind of
+dye, used for clothes in Portugal; goat's flesh and cheese can also be
+exported, and something, Cadamosto fancies, might be made of the wild
+asses that swarm in the islands.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these Canary islands being some forty miles from the next, the
+people of one do not understand the speech of their neighbours. They
+have no walls, but open villages; watch towers are placed on the highest
+mountains to guard the people of one village from the attacks of the
+next, for a guerilla warfare, half marauding, half serious civil war, is
+the order of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking of the three heathen islands, "which were also the most
+populous," Cadamosto stops a little over the mention of Teneriffe,
+"wonderful among the islands of the earth, and able to be seen in clear
+weather for a distance of seventy Spanish leagues, which is equal to two
+hundred and fifty miles. And what makes it to be seen from so far, is
+that on the top is a great rock of adamant, like a pyramid, which stone
+blazes like the mountain of &AElig;tna, and is full fifteen miles from the
+plain, as the natives say."</p>
+
+<p>These natives have no iron weapons, but fight with stones and wooden
+daggers; they go naked except for a defensive armour of goat-skins,
+which they wear in front and behind. Houses they have none, not even the
+poorest huts, but live in mountain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> caves, without faith, without God.
+Some indeed worship the sun and moon, and others planets, reverence
+certain idols; in their marriage customs the chiefs have the first right
+by common consent, and at the graves of their dead chiefs are most of
+their religious sacrifices; the islanders have only one art, that of
+stone-slinging, unless one were to count their mountain-climbing and
+skill in running and in all bodily exercises, in which nature has
+created these Canarians to excel all other mortals.</p>
+
+<p>They paint their bodies with the juice of plants in all sorts of colours
+and think this the highest point of perfection, to be decked out on
+their skins like a garden bed.</p>
+
+<p>From the Canaries, Cadamosto sails to the White Cape, C. Blanco, on the
+mainland, some way beyond Bojador, "towards &AElig;thiopia," passing the bay
+and isles of Arguin on the way, where the crews found such quantities of
+sea-birds that they brought home two ship-loads. And here it is to be
+noticed, says the narrative, that in sailing from the parts of Cadiz to
+that &AElig;thiopia which faces to the south, you meet with nothing but desert
+lands till you come to Cape Cantin, from which it is a near course to C.
+Blanco. These parts towards the south do run along the borders of the
+negroes' land, and this great tract of white and arid land, full of
+sand, very low lying at a dead level, it would be a quick thing to cross
+in sixty days. At C. Blanco some hills begin to rise out of the plain,
+and this cape was first found by the Portuguese, and on it is nothing
+but sand, no trace of grass or trees; it is seen from far, being very
+sharply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> marked, three-sided, and having on its crest three pyramids, as
+they may be called, each one a mile from its neighbour. A little beyond
+this great desert tract is a vast sea and a wondrous concourse of
+rivers, where only explorers have reached. At C. Blanco there is a mart
+of Arab traders, a station for the camels and caravans of the interior,
+and those pass by the cape who are coming from Negro-land and going to
+the Barbary of North Africa. As one might expect on such a barren stony
+soil, no wine or grain can be raised; the natives have oxen and goats,
+but very few; milk of camels and others is their only drink; as for
+religion, the wretches worship Mahomet and hate Christians right
+bitterly. What is of more interest to the Venetian merchant, the traders
+of these parts have plenty of camels which carry loads of brass and
+silver, and even of gold, brought from the negroes to the people of our
+parts.</p>
+
+<p>The natives of C. Blanco are black as moles, but dress in white flowing
+robes, after the Moorish fashion, with a turban wound round the head;
+and indeed plenty of Arabs are always hovering off the cape and the bay
+of Arguin for the sake of trade with the Infant's ships, especially in
+silver, grain, and woven stuffs, and above all in slaves and gold. To
+protect this commerce, the Prince some time since (1448), built a fort
+in the bay, and every year the Portuguese caravels that come here lie
+under its protection and exchange the negro slaves that they have
+captured farther south for Arab horses, one horse against ten or fifteen
+slaves, or for silks and woven stuffs from Morocco and Granada, from
+Tunis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> and the whole land of Barbary. The Arabs on their side sell
+slaves, that they have driven from the upland, to the Portuguese at
+Arguin, in all nearly a thousand a year, so that the Europeans, who used
+to plunder all this coast as far as the Senegal, now find it more
+profitable to trade.</p>
+
+<p>The mention of the Senegal brings Cadamosto to the next stage of his
+voyage, to the great river, "which divides the Azaneguys, Tawny Moors,
+from the First Kingdom of the Negroes."</p>
+
+<p>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
+breasts they deform usually, that they may hang out the more, straining
+their bodies (when) at seventeen years of age with ropes.</p>
+
+<p>Ignorant and brutal as they are, they know no other Christian people but
+the Portuguese, who have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> enslaved and plundered them now fourteen
+years. This much is certain, that when they first saw the ships 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 shore, the natives changed their minds and thought they were
+fishes; some, who first saw the ships 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
+shore, stupidly gazing at the new wonder.</p>
+
+<p>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 shore. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+shore 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 shore stretches between the two; up to the
+river the sailor sees from the shore only the wandering Azaneguys,
+tawny, squat, and miserable savages; across the stream to the south are
+the real Blacks, "well built noble-looking men," and after so long a
+stretch of arid and stony desert, there is now a beautiful green land,
+covered with fruit-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>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 &AElig;thiopia.</p>
+
+<p>Now the land of these negroes is at the entering in of &AElig;thiopia, 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 assigned 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.</p>
+
+<p>Of the negroes of these parts most go naked, but the chiefs and great
+men use cotton shirts, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> enough in apparel, vile in life and diet,
+always chattering, great liars, treacherous and deceitful to the last
+degree. Bloody and remorseless are the wars the princes of these
+barbarians carry on against one another. They have no horsemen 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 ships 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 ships had been
+off that coast to trade."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+ships lay, and the captain had to send word to his crews by negro
+swimmers, who could pass any surf, "for that they excel all other living
+men in the water and under it, for they can dive an hour without
+rising."</p>
+
+<p>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 Gods"; 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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 classes have any privileges:
+ministers of religion share with the greatest nobles the sole right of
+access to the person of the "Mortal God."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Of gold after all not much was to be got, and the exploring party was
+not long in returning to the caravels and pushing on beyond Cape Verde.
+To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> the last the ships 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 God himself, above all admiring the different
+tones, and crying loudly that they had never seen anything so wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>The women looked through every part of the ship&mdash;masts, helm, anchors,
+sails, and oars. The eyes painted on the bow excited them: the ship 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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 ships 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.</p>
+
+<p>Cape Verde gets its name from its green grass 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 shell-fish (turtles),
+of twelve pounds' weight.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after passing 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 ships. Many countries have I been in to East and West, but never did
+I see a prettier sight."</p>
+
+<p>From the place the description again changes to the people, and we are
+told once more with wearisome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> repetitions 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, worshipping idols, using poisoned arrows which
+kill at once, even though they drew but little blood,"&mdash;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
+shore, 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 shore 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> river and their manners, polity, King's name and capital, gold
+supply, and other matters of commerce, had no sooner swum ashore than he
+was seized and cut to pieces by some armed savages, while the ships
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 ship 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+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 shield 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 space, 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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> come to rob
+them. As for their king, he was three days' journey from the river,
+which was called Gambra.</p>
+
+<p>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 ships 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&mdash;sunk to "the third part of a
+lance's length above the edge of the water,"&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>So next morning, says Cadamosto, that I might satisfy my own mind, I
+bade ten of my men, armed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 passed 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 shells of such size that they
+could make very good shields for an army."</p>
+
+<p>Here they stayed a couple of days, exploring in the country and fishing
+in the river, which was so broad and deep that it would easily bear a
+ship 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> ran along to
+the Gambra." Up this they at once began to steer.</p>
+
+<p>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 ships 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+them were idolaters, nearly all had implicit faith in charms, some
+worshipped "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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> "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."</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer16.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header01.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>VOYAGES OF DIEGO GOMEZ.</h3>
+
+<h3>1458-60.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/t.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="T"
+title="T" />he 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.</p>
+
+<p>"No long time after, the Prince equipped at Lagos a caravel, called the
+<i>Wren</i>, and set over it Diego Gomez, with two other caravels, of which
+the same Gomez was captain-in-chief. Their orders were to go as far as
+they could.</p>
+
+<p>"But after passing a great river beyond the Rio Grande, we met such
+strong currents in the sea that no anchor could hold. The other captains
+and their men were much alarmed, thinking we were at the end of the
+ocean, and begged me to put back. In the mid-current the sea was very
+clear and the natives came off from the shore and brought us their
+merchandise, cotton cloth, ivory, and a quart measure of malaguette
+pepper, in grain and in its pods as it grows, which delighted us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"As the current prevented our going farther, and even grew stronger, we
+put back and came to a land where there were groves of palms near the
+shore with their branches broken, so tall that from a distance I thought
+they were the masts or spars of negroes' vessels.</p>
+
+<p>"So we went there and found a great plain covered with hay and more than
+five thousand animals like stags, but larger, who shewed no fear of us.
+Five elephants came out of a small river that was fringed by trees,
+three full grown, with two young ones, and on the shore we saw holes of
+crocodiles in plenty. We went back to the ships and next day made our
+way from Cape Verde and saw the broad mouth of a great river, three
+leagues in width, which we entered and guessed to be the Gambia. Here
+wind and tide were in our favour, so we came to a small island in
+mid-stream and rested there the night. In the morning we went farther
+in, and saw a crowd of canoes full of men, who fled at the sight of us,
+for it was they who had killed Nuno Tristam and his men. Next day we saw
+beyond the point of the river some natives on the right-hand bank, who
+welcomed us. Their chief was called Frangazick and he was the nephew of
+Farosangul, the great Prince of the Negroes. There they gave us one
+hundred and eighty pounds worth of gold, in exchange for our goods. The
+lord of the country had a negro with him named Buka, who knew the tongue
+only of Negroland, and finding him perfectly truthful, I asked him to go
+with me to Cantor and promised him all he needed. I made the same
+promise to his chief and kept it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map14"></a><a href="./images/map14.jpg"><img src="./images/map14_th.jpg"
+alt="THE BORGIAN MAP OF 1450."
+title="THE BORGIAN MAP OF 1450." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE BORGIAN MAP OF 1450.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We went up the river as far as Cantor, which is a large town near the
+river-side. Farther than this the ships could not go, because of the
+thick growth of trees and underwood, but here I made it known that I had
+come to exchange merchandise, and the natives came to me in very great
+numbers. When the news spread through the country that the Christians
+were in Cantor, they came from Tambucatu in the North, from Mount Gelu
+in the South, and from Quioquun, which is a great city, with a wall of
+baked tiles. Here, too, I was told, there is gold in plenty and caravans
+of camels cross over there with goods from Carthage, Tunis, Fez, Cairo
+and all the land of the Saracens. These are exchanged for gold, which
+comes from the mines on the other side of Sierra Leone. They said that
+range ran southwards, which pleased me very greatly, because all the
+rivers coming from thence, as far as could be known, ran westward, but
+they told me that other very large rivers ran eastward from the other
+side of the ridge.</p>
+
+<p>"There was also, they said, East of these mountains, a great lake,
+narrow and long, on which sailed canoes like ships. The people on the
+opposite sides of this lake were always at war; and those on the eastern
+side were white. When I asked who ruled in those parts, they answered
+that one chief was a negro, but towards the East was a greater lord who
+had conquered the negroes a short time before.</p>
+
+<p>"A Saracen told me he had been all through that land and had been
+present at the fighting, and when I told this to the Prince, he said
+that a merchant in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> Oran had written him two months before about this
+very war, and that he believed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Such were the things told me by the negroes at Cantor; I asked them
+about the road to the gold country, and who were the lords of that
+country. They told me the King lived in Kukia, and was lord of all the
+mines on the right side of the river of Cantor, and that he had before
+the door of his palace a mass of gold just as it was taken from the
+earth, so large that twenty men could hardly move it, and that the King
+always fastened his horse to it and kept it as a curiosity on account of
+its size and purity. The nobles of his Court wore in their nostrils and
+ears ornaments of gold.</p>
+
+<p>"The parts to the East were full of gold mines, but the men who went
+into the pits to get gold did not live long, because of the foul air.
+The gold sand was given to women to wash the gold from it.</p>
+
+<p>"I enquired the road from Cantor to Kukia and was told the road ran
+eastward; where was great abundance of gold; as I can well believe, for
+I saw the negroes who went by those roads laden with it.</p>
+
+<p>"While I was thus trafficking with these negroes of Cantor, my men
+became worn out with the heat and so we returned towards the ocean.
+After I had gone down the river fifty leagues, they told me of a great
+chief living on the South side, who wished to speak with me.</p>
+
+<p>"We met in a great wood on the bank, and he brought with him a vast
+throng of people armed with poisoned arrows, assegais, swords and
+shields. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> I went to him, carrying some presents and biscuit and some
+of our wine, for they have no wine except that made from the date-palm,
+and he was pleased and extremely gracious, giving me three negroes and
+swearing to me by the one only God that he would never again make war
+against Christians, but that they might trade and travel safely through
+all his country.</p>
+
+<p>"Being desirous of putting to proof this oath of his, I sent a certain
+Indian named Jacob whom the Prince had sent with us, in order that in
+the event of our reaching India, he might be able to hold speech with
+the natives, and I ordered him to go to the place called Al-cuzet, with
+the lord of that country, to find Mount Gelu and Timbuctoo through the
+land of Jaloffa. A knight had gone there with him before.</p>
+
+<p>"This Jacob, the Indian, told me that Al-cuzet was a very evil land,
+having a river of sweet water and abundance of lemons; and some of these
+he brought to me. And the lord of that country sent me elephants' teeth
+and four negroes, who carried one great ivory tusk to the ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Now the houses here are made of seaweed, covered with straw, and while
+I stayed here (at the river mouth) three days, I learned that all the
+mischief that had been done to the Christians had been done by a certain
+king called Nomimansa, who has the country near the great headland by
+the mouth of the river Gambia. So I took great pains to make peace with
+him, and sent him many presents by his own men in his own canoes, which
+were going for salt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> along the coast to his own country, for this salt
+is plentiful there and of a red colour. Now Nomimansa was in great fear
+of the Christians, lest they should take vengeance upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I went on to a great harbour where I had many negroes come to me,
+sent by Nomimansa to see if I should do anything, but I always treated
+them kindly. When the King heard this, he came to the river side with a
+great force and sitting down on the bank, sent for me. And so I went and
+paid him all respect. There was a Bishop there of his own faith who
+asked me about the God of the Christians, and I answered him as God had
+given me to know; and then I questioned him about Mahomet, whom they
+believe. At last the King was so pleased with what I said that he sprang
+to his feet and ordered the Bishop to leave his country within three
+days, and swore that he would kill any one who should speak the name of
+Mahomet from that day forward. For he said he trusted in the one only
+God and there was no other but He, whom his brother Prince Henry
+worshipped.</p>
+
+<p>"Then calling the Infant his brother, he asked me to baptize him and all
+his lords and women. He himself would have no other name than Henry, but
+his nobles took our names, like James and Nuno. So I remained on shore
+that night with the King but did not baptize him, as I was a layman. But
+next day I begged the King with his twelve chief men and eight of his
+wives to dine with me on my caravel; and they all came unarmed and I
+gave them fowls and meat and wine, white and red, as much as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> they could
+drink, and they said to one another that no people were better than the
+Christians.</p>
+
+<p>"Then again on shore the King asked me to baptize him but I said I had
+not leave from the Pope; but I would tell the Prince, who would send a
+priest. So Nomimansa at once wrote to Prince Henry to send him a priest
+and some one to teach him the faith, and begged him to send him a falcon
+with the priest, for he was amazed when I told him how we carried a bird
+on the hand to catch other birds. And with these he asked the Prince to
+send him two rams and sheep and geese and ganders and a pig, and two men
+to build houses and plan out his town. And all these wishes of his I
+promised him that the Prince would grant. And he and all his people made
+a great noise at my going but I left the King at Gambia and started back
+for Portugal. One caravel I sent straight home, but with the others I
+sailed to Cape Verde.</p>
+
+<p>"And as we came near the sea-shore we saw two canoes putting out to sea;
+but we sailed between them and the shore, and so cut them off. Then the
+interpreter came to me and said that Bezeghichi, the lord of the land
+and an evil man, was in one of them.</p>
+
+<p>"So I made them come into the caravel and gave them to eat and drink
+with a double share of presents, and making as if I did not know him to
+be the chief, I said 'Is this the land of Bezeghichi?' He answered 'Yes,
+it is.' And I, to try him, exclaimed 'Why is he so bitter against the
+Christians? He would do far better to have peace with them, so that they
+might trade in his land and bring him horses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> and other things, as they
+do for other lords of the negroes. Go and tell your lord Bezeghichi that
+I have taken you and for love of him have let you go.'</p>
+
+<p>"At this he was very cheerful and he and his men got into their canoes,
+as I bade them, and as they all were standing by the side of the
+caravel, I called out 'Bezeghichi, Bezeghichi, do not think I did not
+know thee. I could have done to thee what I would, and now, as I have
+done to thee, do thou also to our Christians.'</p>
+
+<p>"So they went off, and we came back to Arguin and the Isle of the
+Herons, where we found flocks of birds of every kind, and after this
+came home to Lagos, where the Prince was very glad of our return.</p>
+
+<p>"Then after this for two years no one went to Guinea, because King
+Affonso was at war in Africa and the Prince was quite taken up with
+this. But after he had come back from Alca&ccedil;er, I reminded him of what
+King Nomimansa had asked of him; and the Prince sent him all he had
+promised, with a priest, the Abbot of Soto de Cassa, and a young man of
+his household named John Delgado. This was in 1458.</p>
+
+<p>"Two years afterwards King Affonso equipped a large caravel and sent me
+out as captain, and I took with me ten horses and went to the land of
+the Barbacins, which is near the land of Nomimansa. And these Barbacins
+had two kings, but the King of Portugal gave me power over all the
+shores of that sea, that any ships I might find off the coast of Guinea
+should be under me, for he knew that there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> were those who sold arms to
+the Moors, and he bade me to seize such and bring them bound to
+Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>"And by the help of God I came in twelve days to this land (of the
+Barbacins), and found two ships there,&mdash;one under Gonzalo Ferreira, of
+Oporto, of the Household of Prince Henry, that was conveying horses; the
+other was under Antonio de Noli, of Genoa. These merchants injured our
+trade very much, for the natives used to give twelve negroes for one
+horse, and now gave only six.</p>
+
+<p>"And while we were there, a caravel came from Gambia, which brought us
+news that a captain called De Prado was coming with a richly laden ship,
+and I ordered Ferreira to go to Cape Verde and look for that ship and
+seize it, on pain of death and loss of all his goods. And he did so, and
+we found a great prize, which I sent home with Ferreira to the King. And
+then I and Antonio de Noli left that coast, and sailed two days and one
+night towards Portugal, and we sighted islands in the ocean, and as my
+ship was lighter and faster than the rest, I came first to one of those
+islands, to a good harbour, with a beach of white sand, where I
+anchored. I told all my men and the other captains that I wished to be
+first to land, and so I did.</p>
+
+<p>"We saw no trace of natives, and called the island Santiago, as it is
+still known. There were plenty of fish there and many strange birds, so
+tame that we killed them with sticks. And I had a quadrant with me, and
+wrote on the table of it the altitude of the Arctic Pole, and I found it
+better than the chart, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> though you see your course of sailing on the
+chart well enough, yet if once you get wrong, it is hard by map alone to
+work back into the right course.</p>
+
+<p>"After this we saw one of the Canary islands, called Palma, and so came
+to the island of Madeira; and then adverse winds drove me to the Azores,
+but Antonio de Noli stayed at Madeira, and, catching the right breeze,
+he got to Portugal before me, and begged of the King the captaincy of
+the island of Santiago, which I had found, and the King gave it him, and
+he kept it till his death.</p>
+
+<p>"But De Prado, who had carried arms to the Moors, lay in irons and the
+King ordered him to be brought out. And then they martyrised him in a
+cart, and threw him into the fire alive with his sword and gold."</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer17.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus007"></a><img src="./images/illus007.jpg"
+alt="COIMBRA UNIVERSITY OF WHICH HENRY WAS THE OFFICIAL PATRON."
+title="COIMBRA UNIVERSITY OF WHICH HENRY WAS THE OFFICIAL PATRON." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">COIMBRA UNIVERSITY OF WHICH HENRY WAS THE OFFICIAL PATRON.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header02.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>HENRY'S LAST YEARS AND DEATH.</h3>
+
+<h3>1458-60.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/w.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="W"
+title="W" />hile Cadamosto and Diego Gomez were carrying the Prince's flag farther
+from the shores of Europe "than Alexander or C&aelig;sar had ever ventured,"
+the Prince himself was getting more and more absorbed in the project of
+a new Holy War against the Infidel.</p>
+
+<p>The fall of Constantinople in 1453 into the hands of the Ottoman Turks,
+had at least the effect of frightening and almost of rousing Western
+Christendom at large. In the most miserably divided of Latin states
+there was now a talk about doing great things, though the time, the
+spirit for actually doing them, had long passed by, or was not yet come.
+Spain, the one part of the Western Church and State, which was still
+living in the crusading fervour of the twelfth century, was alone ready
+for action. The Portuguese kingdom in particular, under Affonso V., had
+been keeping up a regular crusade in Marocco, and was willing and eager
+to spend men and treasure in a great Levantine enterprise. So<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> the
+Pope's Legate was welcomed when he came in 1457 to preach the Holy War.
+Affonso promised to keep up an army of twelve thousand men for war
+against the Ottoman, and struck a new gold coinage&mdash;the Cruzado&mdash;to
+commemorate the year of Deliverance.</p>
+
+<p>But Portugal by itself could not deliver New Rome or the Holy Land, and
+when the other powers of the West refused to move, Affonso had to
+content himself with the old crusade in Africa, but he now pushed on
+even more zealously than before his favourite ambition, a land empire on
+both sides of the Straits, and Prince Henry's last appearance in public
+service was in his nephew's camp in the Marocco campaign of 1458. In the
+siege of Alca&ccedil;er the Little, the "Lord Infant" forced the batteries,
+mounted the guns, and took charge of the general conduct of the siege. A
+breach was soon made in the walls, and the town surrendered on easy
+terms, "for it was not," said Henry, "to take their goods or force a
+ransom from them that the King of Portugal had come against them, but
+for the service of God." They were only to leave behind in Alca&ccedil;er their
+Christian prisoners; for themselves, they might go, with their wives,
+their children, and their property.</p>
+
+<p>The stout-hearted veteran Edward Menezes became governor of Alca&ccedil;er, and
+held the town with his own desperate courage against all attempts to
+recover it. When the besiegers offered him terms, he offered them in
+return his scaling ladders that they might have a fair chance; when they
+were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> raising the siege he sent them a message, Would they not try a
+little longer? It had been a very short affair.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Henry, returning to Europe by way of Ceuta, re-entered his own
+town of Sagres for the last time. His work was nearly done, and indeed,
+of that work there only remains one thing to notice. The great Venetian
+map, known as the Camaldolese Chart of Fra Mauro, executed in the
+convent of Murano just outside Venice, is not only the crowning specimen
+of medi&aelig;val draughtsmanship, but the scientific review of the Prince's
+exploration. As Henry himself closes the middle age of exploration and
+begins the modern, so this map, the picture and proof of his
+discoveries, is not only the last of the older type of plan, but the
+first of the new style&mdash;the style which applied the accurate and careful
+methods of Portolano-drawing to a scheme of the whole world. It is the
+first scientific atlas.</p>
+
+<p>But its scale is too vast for anything of a detailed account: it
+measures six feet four inches across, and in every part it is crammed
+with detail, the work of three years of incessant labour (1457-9) from
+Andrea Bianco and all the first coasters and draughtsmen of the time. In
+general, there is an external carefulness as well as gorgeousness about
+the workmanship; the coasts, especially in the Mediterranean and along
+the west coast of Europe, would almost suit a modern Admiralty Chart,
+while its notice, the first notice, of Prince Henry's African and
+Atlantic discoveries is the special point of the whole work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is a certain disposition to exaggerate the size of rivers,
+mountains, towns, and the whole proportion of things, as we get farther
+away from the well-known ground of Europe; Russia and the north and
+north-east of Asia are somewhat too large, but along the central belt,
+it is fair to say that the whole of the country west of the Caspian is
+thoroughly sound, the best thing yet done in any projection.</p>
+
+<p>No one could look at Fra Mauro's map and fail to see at a glance a
+picture of the Old World; and the more it is looked at, the more
+reliable it will prove to be, by the side of all earlier essays in this
+field. No one can look at the Arabic maps and their imitations in
+medi&aelig;val Christendom, whether conscious or unconscious (as in the
+Spanish example of 1109), without despair. It is almost hopeless to try
+and recognise in these anything of the shape, the proportions, or the
+distribution of the parts of the world which are named, and which one
+might almost fancy it was meant to represent at the time.</p>
+
+<p>Place the map of 1459 by the side of the Hereford map of 1300 or of
+Edrisi's scheme of 1130 (made at the Christian Court of Sicily), or in
+fact beside any of the theoretical maps of the thousand years that had
+gone to make the Italy and the Spain of Fra Mauro and Prince Henry, and
+it will seem to be almost absurd to ask the question: Do these belong to
+the same civilisation, in any kind of way? What would the higher
+criticism answer, out of its infallible internal evidence tests? Of
+course, these are quite different. The one is merely a collection of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> scratchings of savages, the other is the prototype of modern maps.
+Yet the Christian world is answerable for both kinds; it had struggled
+through ignorance and superstition and tradition into clearer light and
+truer knowledge.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map15"></a><a href="./images/map15.jpg"><img src="./images/map15_th.jpg"
+alt="WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA MAURO. 1457-9."
+title="WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA MAURO. 1457-9." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA MAURO. 1457-9.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Between Henry's return from Alca&ccedil;er 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 pushing 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&mdash;Madeira, the Azores, the Canaries,&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> jurisdiction of Guinea, Nubia, and Ethiopia, with all rights
+as exercised in Europe and at the Mother house of Thomar.</p>
+
+<p>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
+ships as we have seen could sail beyond Bojador without his permit;
+whoever transgressed this forfeited his ship; and all ships sailing with
+his permit were obliged to pay him one fifth or one tenth of the value
+of their freight.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map16"></a><a href="./images/map16.jpg"><img src="./images/map16_th.jpg"
+alt="SKETCH-MAP OF FRA MAURO'S MAPPE-MONDE."
+title="SKETCH-MAP OF FRA MAURO'S MAPPE-MONDE." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">SKETCH-MAP OF FRA MAURO'S MAPPE-MONDE.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 shirt of horse-hair.
+Well doth the Church repeat 'Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see
+corruption.'</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He was brawny and large of frame, says Azurara, strong of limb as any.
+His complexion was fair by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> 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 passion 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 passed all
+his days in unbroken chastity. He was so generous that no other
+uncrowned Prince in Europe had so noble a household, so large and
+splendid a school for the young nobles of his country.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus008"></a><img src="./images/illus008.jpg"
+alt="THE RECUMBENT STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY. FROM HIS TOMB IN BATALHA CHURCH."
+title="THE RECUMBENT STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY. FROM HIS TOMB IN BATALHA CHURCH." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">THE RECUMBENT STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY.<br />
+<span class="smcap">from his tomb in batalha church</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Only to himself was he severe. All his days were spent in work, and it
+would not easily be believed how often he passed 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 passed 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.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer18.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header03.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RESULTS OF PRINCE HENRY'S WORK.</h3>
+
+
+<p><img src="./images/h.jpg" style="float: left; padding: 5px;"
+alt="H"
+title="H" />enry'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&mdash;in Christendom,
+in Portugal, in Science&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>For it was not merely that his seamen had broken down the middle wall of
+superstitious 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 passed 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 passed 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> and the
+southern Cape of Good Hope, was passed in two voyages, in four years
+(1482-6).</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 assuming&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus009"></a><img src="./images/illus009.jpg"
+alt="COLUMBUS AS S. CHRISTOPHER, CARRYING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, IN THE FORM OF THE INFANT JESUS, ACROSS THE OCEAN."
+title="COLUMBUS AS S. CHRISTOPHER, CARRYING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, IN THE FORM OF THE INFANT JESUS, ACROSS THE OCEAN." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">COLUMBUS AS S. CHRISTOPHER, CARRYING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, IN THE FORM OF THE INFANT JESUS, ACROSS THE OCEAN.</p>
+
+<p>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 passions 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> 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 C&aelig;sar and the founders
+of the great world religions.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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, passed 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, passed the
+whole of the Guinea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>In 1475 Cape St. Catherine, two degrees south of the Line, was reached
+and then after six more years of languishing exploration and flourishing
+trade, King John II. succeeded Affonso V. and took up the work, in the
+spirit of Prince Henry the Navigator.</p>
+
+<p>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 passage to China.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus010"></a><img src="./images/illus010.jpg"
+alt="VASCO DA GAMA. FROM THE PORTRAIT IN POSSESSION OF COUNT OF LAVRADIO."
+title="VASCO DA GAMA. FROM THE PORTRAIT IN POSSESSION OF COUNT OF LAVRADIO." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">VASCO DA GAMA.<br />
+<span class="smcap">from the portrait in possession of count of lavradio</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 ships 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 passed Cape St.
+Catherine, just beyond the Line, which since 1475 had been the limit of
+knowledge, and continuing south, reached the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Cam, by agreement with the natives, took back four hostages to act as
+interpreters and next year returned to and passed the Congo, and sailed
+two hundred leagues beyond, to the site of the modern Walvisch Bay
+(1485).</p>
+
+<p>Here, as the coast seemed to stretch interminably south, though he had
+now really passed 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 embassy 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.</p>
+
+<p>Bartholomew Diaz sailed in August, 1486, with two ships, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> fourth party started to find the way to Cathay by the North-east
+passage.</p>
+
+<p>Camo&euml;ns 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 <i>Lusiads</i> and the very name of the
+discoverer is generally forgotten. Vasco da Gama has robbed him only too
+successfully.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Sailing with "two little friggits," each of fifty tons burden, in the
+belief that ships 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.</p>
+
+<p>Passing 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 passed
+the Orange River, the northern limit of the present Cape Colony. Then
+putting well out to sea Diaz ran thirteen days before the wind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> 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
+ashore 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 ships sailed east, seeking in vain for the land's end, till they
+found the coast tend gradually but steadily towards the north.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="illus011"></a><img src="./images/illus011.jpg"
+alt="AFFONSO D' ALBUQUERQUE."
+title="AFFONSO D' ALBUQUERQUE." /></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">AFFONSO D' ALBUQUERQUE.</p>
+
+<p>While Diaz was still tossing in the storms off the Great Cape, Covilham
+and his friends had started<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 ships 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."</p>
+
+<p>Yet another chapter of discoveries was opened by King John's Cathay
+fleet. He failed to get news of a North-east passage, but beyond the
+north coast of Asia there was found a frozen island whose name of Novaia
+Zemlaia or Nova Zembla still keeps the memory of the first Portuguese
+attempts on the road where so many Dutch and English seamen perished in
+after years.</p>
+
+<p>The great voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497-9), the empire founded by
+Albuquerque (1506-15) in the Indian seas, were the other steps in the
+complete achievement of Prince Henry's ambition. When in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> the early
+years of the sixteenth century a direct and permanent traffic was fairly
+started between Malabar and Portugal, when European settlements and
+forts controlled the whole eastern and western coasts of Africa from the
+mouth of the Red Sea to the mouth of the Mediterranean, and the five
+keys of the Indies&mdash;Malacca, Goa, Ormuz, Aden, and Ceylon&mdash;were all in
+Christian hands, when the Moslem trade between east Africa and western
+India had passed into a possession of the Kings of Lisbon, Don Henry
+might see of the travail of his soul and be well satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>The supposed discovery of Australia about 1530, or somewhat earlier, and
+the travels of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto in Japan and the furthest East,
+the opening of the trade with China in 1517, and the complete
+exploration of Abyssinia, the Prester's kingdom, in 1520, by Alvarez and
+the other Catholic missionaries, the millions converted by Francis
+Xavier and the Jesuit preachers in Malabar, and the union of the old
+native Christian Church of India with the Roman (1599), were other steps
+in the same road. All of them, if traced back far enough, bring us to
+the Court of Sagres, and the same is true of Spanish and French and
+Dutch and English empires in the southern and eastern world. Henry built
+for his own nation, but when that nation failed from the exhaustion of
+its best blood, other peoples entered upon the inheritance of his work.</p>
+
+<p>But though he was not able himself to see the fulfilment of his plans,
+both the method of a South-east passage, and the men who followed it out
+to com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>plete success, were his,&mdash;his workmanship and his building.</p>
+
+<p>Da Gama, Diego Cam, the Diaz family, and most of the great seamen who
+followed the path they had traced, were either "brought up from boyhood
+in the Household of the Infant," as the <i>Chronicle of the Discovery</i>
+tells us of each new figure that comes upon the scene, or looked to him
+as their master, owed to the School of Sagres their training, and began
+their practical seamanship under his leave and protection. Even the
+lines upon which the national expansion and exploration went on were so
+strictly and exclusively the same as he had followed, that when a
+different route to the Indies was suggested after his death by
+Christopher Columbus, the Court of John II. refused to treat it
+seriously. And this brings us to the other, the indirect side of Henry's
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>"It was in Portugal," (says Ferdinand Columbus, in his <i>Life of the
+Admiral</i>, his father,) "that the Admiral began to think, that if men
+could sail so far south, one might also sail west and find lands in that
+quarter." The second great stream of modern discovery can thus be traced
+to the "generous Henry" of Camo&euml;ns' <i>Lusiads</i> no less plainly, though
+more indirectly, than the first; the Western path was suggested by his
+success in the Eastern.</p>
+
+<p>But that success had turned the heads of his own people. When Columbus,
+the son of the Genoese wool-comber, who had been a resident in Lisbon
+since 1470, submitted to the Court of John II. some time before 1484 a
+proposal to find Marco Polo's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> Cipangu by a few weeks' sail west, from
+the Azores, he was treated as a dreamer. John, as Henry's disciple and
+successor, was, like other disciples, narrower than his master in the
+master's own way.</p>
+
+<p>He was ready for any expense and trouble, but no novelty. He would only
+go on as he had been taught. He had reason to be confident, and his
+scientific Junto of four, Martin Behaim of Nuremburg among them, to whom
+Columbus was referred, were too much elated with their new improvements
+in the astrolabe, and the now assured confidence that the Southern Cape
+would soon be passed. They could not endure with patience the vehement
+dogmatism of an unknown theorist.</p>
+
+<p>But as he was too full of his message to be easily shaken off, he was
+treated with the basest trickery. At the suggestion of the Bishop of
+Ceuta, Columbus was kept waiting for his answer, and asked to furnish
+his plans in detail with charts and illustrations. He did so, and while
+the Council pretended to be poring over these for a final decision, a
+caravel was sent to the Cape Verde islands to try the route he had
+suggested,&mdash;a trial with the pickings of Italian brains.</p>
+
+<p>The Portuguese sailed westward for several days till the weather became
+stormy; then, as their heart was not in the venture, they put back to
+Europe with a fresh stock of the legends Henry had so heartily despised.
+They had come to an impenetrable mist, which had stopped their progress;
+apparitions had warned them back; the sea in those parts swarmed with
+monsters; it became impossible to breathe.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><a name="map17"></a><a href="./images/map17.jpg"><img src="./images/map17_th.jpg"
+alt="MAP OF 1492."
+title="MAP OF 1492." /></a></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter caption">MAP OF 1492.<br />
+<span class="smcap"><a href="#maplist">(see list of maps)</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>Columbus learned how he had been used, and his wife's death helped to
+decide him, in his disgust for place and people. Towards the end of
+1484, he left Lisbon. Three years later, when he had become fully as
+much disgusted with the dilatory sloth and tricks of Spain, he offered
+himself again to Portugal. King John had repented of his meanness; on
+March 20, 1488, he wrote in answer to Columbus, eagerly offering on his
+side to guarantee him against any suits that might be taken against him
+in Lisbon. But the Court of Castille now became, in its turn, afraid of
+quite losing what might be infinite advantage; Columbus was kept in the
+service of Ferdinand and Isabella; and at last in August, 1492, the
+"Catholic Kings" sent him out from Palos to discover what he could on
+his own terms.</p>
+
+<p>What followed, the discovery of America, and all the subsequent ventures
+of the Cabots, of Amerigo Vespucci, of Cort&eacute;s and Pizarro, De Soto and
+Raleigh and the Pilgrim Fathers, are not often connected in any way with
+the slow and painful beginnings of European expansion in the Portugal of
+the fifteenth century, but it is a true and real connection all the
+same. The whole onward and outward movement of the great exploring age
+was set in motion by one man. It might have come to pass without him,
+but the fact is simply that through him it did, as a matter of history,
+result. "And let him that did more than this, go before him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a name="Footnote_1_1a" id="Footnote_1_1a"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> From a water-colour.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> From Major's <i>Life of Henry the Navigator</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> From the Hakluyt Society's <i>Select Letters of Columbus</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> From the Hakluyt Society's edition of <i>Three Voyages of
+Vasco da Gama</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> From the Hakluyt Society's edition of Albuquerque's
+<i>Commentaries</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> [Missing] (Please see the <a href="#tn">Transcriber's Note</a>.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Compare Archer and Kingsford, <i>The Crusades</i>, in the
+<i>Stories of the Nations</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Rejecting the old idea of an encircling ocean as the girdle
+or limit of the known world, and replacing it with a new fancy of
+unbounded continent (on all sides except the north-west)&mdash;a fancy which
+the vast extension of Roman Dominion under the Empire may have
+fostered.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> In using the expressions "Chart," or "Map" of Strabo's
+description (<i>c.</i> <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 20), it is not meant to imply that Strabo himself
+left more than a written description from which a plan was afterwards
+prepared: "The world according to Strabo." The same applies to
+Eratosthenes (<i>c.</i> <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 200) and all pre-Ptolemaic Greek geographers.
+Ptolemy's Atlas, probably, and the Peutinger Table, more certainly, are
+maps really drawn by ancient designers; but these are the only ones that
+have survived from a much larger number.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> In which the habitable quarter of the world, situated
+mainly in the Northern Hemisphere, was just about twice as long as it
+was broad.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> In Columbus' letters to Queen Isabella in 1498, we catch,
+as it were, the last echo of the Arabic <i>m&eacute;lange</i> of Moses and Greek
+geography, along with the results of Roger Bacon's corrections of
+Ptolemy. "The Old Hemisphere," he writes "which has for its centre the
+isle of Arim, is spherical, but the other (new) Hemisphere has the form
+of the lower half of a pear. Just one hundred leagues west of the Azores
+the earth rises at the Equator and the temperature grows keener. The
+summit is over against the mouth of the Orinoco."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> "The Obliquity of the Ecliptic, the Eccentricity of the
+Sun, the Precession of the Equinoxes."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> "With the Sinbad story is connected the historical
+extension of the Arab settlements in the East African coast through the
+enterprise of the Emosaid family."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> The school of Persian mathematicians who produced the maps
+of Alestakliry-Ibn-Hankal, the book of latitudes and longitudes,
+ascribed by Abulfeda to Alfaraby the Turk, was the immediate descendant
+of Albyrouny.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> The world he divided by climates in the Greek manner,
+taking no account of political divisions, or of those resting on
+language or religion. Each climate was further subdivided into ten
+sections. In the shape of Africa he followed Ptolemy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Yacout "the ruby," originally a Greek slave, who made a
+brave but fruitless attempt to change his name into Yacoub or Jacob,
+became one of the greatest of Arab encyclop&aelig;dists, was checked by the
+hordes of Genghiz-Khan in his exploration of Central Asia, and died
+1229.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> By some supposed to be S. Carolina, by others the
+Canaries.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> From St. James of Compostella.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Unless White Man's Land and Great Ireland are the
+Canaries. See above, p. 63.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Camo&euml;ns, <i>Lusiads</i>, (Barton's trans.).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> And a certain number of Viking sailors seem to have
+preceded Ohthere on his voyage to the Dwina.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> As completed about <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1000-1040.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> As in 1071, when they crushed Romans and the Byzantines in
+the battle of Manzikert.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> "<i>Tartari fecerunt equos nostros trotare.</i>"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In Xanadu did Kublai Khan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A stately pleasure-dome decree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through caverns measureless to man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down to a sacred sea.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+<span class="smcap">Coleridge</span>: <i>Kublai Khan</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Probably the Andamans.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> This new knowledge had been really gained from the gradual
+spread of the Arab settlements down the south-east coast of Africa,
+during four centuries, from Guardafui, the Cape of spices, to the
+Channel of Mozambique.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Cape Non = Fish Cape. But Latini took it as = Not, "from
+the fact that beyond it there is <i>no</i> return possible." And so the rhyme
+"Who pass Cape Non&mdash;Must turn again, <i>or else begone</i>" (lit. "<i>or not,</i>"
+<i>i.e.</i>, will not be able to return).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Of</i> 1306, 1351, 1367, 1375, 1380, 1436, 1448, 1459.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> See Note 1, page 137.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> W.H. Lecky, <i>Rationalism</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> See Note 2, page 137.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Except the draughtsmen of the Portolani.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> City of "Seven" Hills, as some have derived it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> The attempts of Henry and his family to conquer a
+land-empire in northern Africa are not to be separated from the maritime
+and coasting explorations. They were two aspects of one idea, two faces
+of the same enterprise.
+</p><p>
+In the same way the new bishopric of Ceuta, now founded, was a first
+step towards the organised conversion of the Heathen of the South. The
+Franciscans had founded the See of Fez and Morocco in 1233, but it had
+not till now been followed up.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> In 1418 and 1424-5 Henry purchased and tried to secure
+certain rights of possession in the Canaries, conceded by De
+B&eacute;thencourt; and these attempts were repeated in 1445 and 1446.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Camo&euml;ns' <i>Lusiads</i>, iv., 52.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> The date of this voyage is brought down as late as 1447 by
+Santarem Oliveiro Martins.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/header04.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="index">
+
+<ul>
+<li><b>A</b></li>
+
+<li>Abulfeda, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+<li>Adelard, of Bath, geographical postulates, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+
+<li>Adelard or Athelard, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li>Affonso, comes of age, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">marries his cousin Isabel, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">forces Pedro into revolt, and declares war against him, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sends out Gomez with a large caravel, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">has the body of Prince Henry laid in chapel at Batalha, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">carries on the work of his uncle, Prince Henry, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is succeeded by King John II., <a href="#Page_314">314</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Africa, shape of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+<li>Albateny, determined problems of astronomical geography, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li>Albertus Magnus, geographical postulates, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+<li>Albuquerque, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li>Albyrouny, work of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Alfarrobeira, battle of, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li>Alfred the Great, credit due to, for discoveries, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">efforts in exploration and religious extension, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Al Heravy, life of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+<li>Almada, the Hercules of Portugal, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">stands by Pedro, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">dies, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Almamoun, age of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+<li>Almanack, Arab, Latin translation of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+
+<li>Ant islands discovered, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li>Antoninus the Martyr, an older Mandeville, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">legends of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Arctic colonies checked, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li>Arculf, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">travels of, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Arguin, fort built in the bay of, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+
+<li>Arim, "World's Summit," <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">taken as measure of places, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">twofold, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Armada of Lagos, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>-239;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">"the third," <a href="#Page_247">247</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Athelard, or Adelard, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li>Aviz, House of. <i>See</i> <a href="#john">John, the King of Good Memory</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Azambuga, Diego de, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li>Azaneguys described by Cadamosto, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Azores, colonisation of, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">the entire group found, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Azurara, chronicler of voyages of Henry, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>B</b></li>
+
+<li>Bacon, Roger, geographical postulates, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+<li>Baldaya, Affonso, sent out with Gil Eannes, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his second voyage, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-176</span></li>
+
+<li>Batti, King, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li>Batuta, Ibn, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+<li>Beginnings of the art and science of discovery, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li>Benjamin of Tudela, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+<li>Bernard, "the French monk," route of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li>Bezeghichi, meets Gomez, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">makes a treaty with Azambuga, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Bjarni Herjulfson driven to new country, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li>Blanco, Cape, visited by Cadamosto, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+
+<li>Boa Vista, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li>Bojador, southmost point of Christian knowledge, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">legends concerning, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">doubled by Gil Eannes, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Bruges, Jacques de, receives a grant of Captaincy of Terceira, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>C</b></li>
+
+<li>Cabral, Gonzalo, discovers Formiga group of islands and Santa Maria, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">Captain Donatory in St. Mary's Island, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">settled in Western Isles, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sent in search of land beyond St. Mary, misses it, and is sent again, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">discovers St. Michael, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">returns to St. Michael with Europeans, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Cadamosto, record of his two voyages, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his narrative, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>-<a href="#Page_288">288</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is presented to the Prince, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">visits Madeira, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">goes on to Canaries, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>-267;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">to Cape Blanco, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-269;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">reaches the Senegal, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">describes Azaneguys, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">pushes on to land of Budomel, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>-278;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">reaches Cape Verde, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">describes people beyond, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">explores the Gambra, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">goes back to Portugal, refits, and sails on second voyage, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">explores islands off Cape Verde, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">names Boa Vista and St. James, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sails up the Gambra and names St. Andrew, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">visits Battimansa, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>,</span></li>
+<li><span class="subsubentry">and Gnumimansa, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">returns to Lisbon, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">leaves Portugal, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Camaldolese chart of Fra Mauro, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li>Cam, Diego, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">reaches the Congo and Walvisch Bay, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Canaries, visited by Cadamosto, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+
+<li>Cantor, visited by Gomez, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+<li>Cape Cod, reached by Scandinavian migration, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li>Cape St. Vincent, modern name for "Sacred Cape" and Sagres, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li>Carpini, John de Plano, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his <i>Book of the Tartars</i>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Ceuta, King John plans an attack on, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">situation, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">left in command of Menezes, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">safe in Christian hands, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Chart of Fra Mauro, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li>Christian pilgrimage begins with Constantine, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li>Cintra, Gonsalo de, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sets out for Guinea, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is killed by Moors, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Cintra, Pedro de, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Columbus, influenced by <i>Imago Mundi</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">at Portuguese Court, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">at Spanish Court, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Constantine, Christian pilgrimage begins with, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+<li>Corvo, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li>Cosmas Indicopleustes, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">theory of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">interest to us, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Costa, Sueiro da, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Covilham, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li>Crossness, place called from dead chief, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li>Crusades and land travel, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">results of, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Crusading movement, results of, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+<li>Cruzado, the, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>D</b></li>
+
+<li>Daniel of Kiev, Abbot, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li>Death, Black, in Portugal, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+<li>De Prado, taken captive, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">martyrised, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Diaz, Bartholomew, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">makes greatest discovery in all history before Columbus, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Diaz, Diniz, enters mouth of the Senegal, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">reaches Cape Verde, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">heads a part of the fleet sent from Lagos, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">reaches Cape Verde, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Diaz, Lawrence, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li>Diaz, Vincent, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>E</b></li>
+
+<li>Eannes, Gil, makes a voyage to the Canaries, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">rounds Cape Bojador, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sails with Lagos fleet, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Edrisi, Arabic Ptolemy, the, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">birth and life, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">account of voyage of Lisbon "Wanderers," <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">"Traveller's Doctorate," in time of, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">map superseded, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Edward, eldest son of King John, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">becomes King, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">dies, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Emosaid, family, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">establish themselves as traders, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></span></li>
+
+<li>England, Vikings first landed in, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+<li>English-born travellers, first of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+
+<li>Eratosthenes, geography of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li>Eric the Red, renames Greenland, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">leads colonists, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Esteeves, Alvaro, crosses the equator, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Europe, compacted together in spiritual federation, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li>European development, pilgrim stage of, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li>European expansion, beginnings of, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li>Europeans, first landing of, on coasts of unknown Africa, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">break in upon Moslem trade, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>F</b></li>
+
+<li>Farosangul, King of Gambra, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li>Fayal, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">first Captain Donatory of, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Ferdinand, fourth son of King John, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">revives scheme of African war, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">goes by sea to Tangier, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is left as hostage, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">dies a captive, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Ferdinand the Handsome, last of House of Burgundy to reign in Lisbon, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li>Fernandez, Alvara, commands the caravel of his uncle, Zarco, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is again sent out with the caravel, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">the voyage, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>-245</span></li>
+
+<li>Fernandez, Joan, left as hostage at Bank of Arguin, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">taken home, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his story, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Fernandez, Martin, crosses the equator, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Ferrer, Jayme, explorer, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li>Fidelis, the monk, travels of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li>Flores, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li>Formigas discovered by Cabral, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li>Frangazick, nephew of Farosangul, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li>Freitas, Alvara de, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+<li>Freydis, daughter of Red Eric, tries to colonise Vinland, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>G</b></li>
+
+<li>Gama, Vasco da, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li>Geographical record, last before age of Northmen, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li>Geography, first Christian, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">of Christendom from eighth and ninth centuries, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Gerard of Cremona, geographical postulates, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+
+<li>Gnumi, King, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li>
+
+<li>Gog and Magog, wall to shut off, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+<li>Gold dust, first ever brought by Europeans direct from Guinea coast, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">effect, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Gomez, Diego, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sets out in command of the caravel the <i>Wren</i>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his narrative, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>-298;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">visits Cantor, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">converts Nomimansa, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>-295;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">meets Bezeghichi, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">returns to Lagos, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is sent out by Affonso and goes to the land of the Barbacins, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">discovers Santiago, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">returns to Portugal, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">describes last illness and death of Prince Henry, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Gonsalvez, Antam, sent out by Henry, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his voyage, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-195;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">takes the first captives, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is knighted by Nuno Tristam, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">goes back to Portugal, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">goes back to Africa with the captive prince, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">exchanges two boys for ten prisoners, gold dust, and ostrich eggs, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">applies for command of ships, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Graciosa, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">settled, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Greenland, sighted by Gunnbiorn and renamed by Eric, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">colonised, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Green sea of darkness, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+<li>Gregory X., Pope, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>H</b></li>
+
+<li>Harold Hardrada, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">type of all Vikings, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Helluland, or Slate-land, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li>Henry, the Navigator, special interest of the life and work, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">author of discovering movement, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">preparation for work of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">predecessors of seamen of, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-112;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">first voyage, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">maps used by, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>-122;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">Hero of Portugal, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">inspires his countrymen with love of exploration, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his brother Pedro his right hand man, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">birth, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his aims, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">tries to find a way round Africa to India, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his work of exploration a foundation of an empire for his country, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">a crusader and a missionary, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sets the example for systematic exploration, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">the teacher and master of more successful explorers, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sends out caravels past Cape Non, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">brings Portuguese fleet into harbour at Ceuta, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">anchors off Ceuta, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">leads in the attack on Ceuta and is reported dead, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is made a knight, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">begins coasting voyages, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is sent to relieve Ceuta, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">plans to get possession of Gibraltar, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">returns to Court, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is made Duke of Viseu and Lord of Covilham, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">reasons for exploring Guinea, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">Sagres his chosen home, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is made Governor for life of the Algarves, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his buildings on Sagres, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his scientific work, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">results of settlement on Cape St. Vincent, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sends out men and ships to colonise Porto Santo, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">colonises Madeira, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">directs captains to Azores, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">impatience at superstition and fears of navigators, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">receives charter for Madeira, Porto Santo, and the Desertas, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sends out Gil Eannes, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">despatches Baldaya, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">engaged in politics, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">reverence paid to him, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">plans and organises African war, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sets sail for Ceuta, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">pushes forward along inland routes, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">attacks and blockades Tangier, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">raises the siege, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">signs a truce with Moors, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">shuts himself up in Ceuta, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is recalled to Portugal, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">made one of the guardians of Affonso V., <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">arranges a compromise between Pedro and Leonor, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sends to the Holy Father for treasure to aid in crusades, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">gives grant to sail to coast of Guinea to Lan&ccedil;arote, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his motives in slave trade, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">keeps buccaneers in check, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">differs from West Indian planters, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">gives a caravel to Gonsalo de Cintra, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">permits Lagos to equip and send out a fleet on a Guinea voyage, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">takes special charge of widows and orphans left by Nuno Tristam's expedition, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">gives a reward to explorers, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his wonderful knowledge shown in correcting Cabral's course, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">grants captaincy of Terceira to Jacques de Bruges, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">account of him in narrative of Cadamosto, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">absorbed in new Holy War against the Infidel, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his last appearance in public service, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">makes set of charters, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">makes grants to the Order of Christ and to the Crown of Portugal, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his illness and death, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his body is laid in the chapel at Batalha, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his personal appearance, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his character, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">results of his life, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>-312, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Heravy, Al, life of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+<li>Hereford <i>Mappa Mundi</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li>Heurter, Job van, notice of first settlement of Azores, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>Hippalus, discovery of monsoon, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+<li>Hope, country re-named, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>I</b></li>
+
+<li>Ibn Batuta, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+<li>Iceland, sighted by Nadodd, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">colonised, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Imago Mundi</i>, influence on Columbus, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+<li>Isidore of Seville, belief of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+<li>Italian, merchants, first, who opened Court of Great Khan to Venice and Genoa, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">age of South Atlantic and African voyages, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>J</b></li>
+
+<li>Jacome from Majorca, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li>Japan discovered by Kublai Khan, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li>Jerusalem, loss of, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li>John de Plano Carpini, first papal legate to the Tartars, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">gives first genuine account of Tartary, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">first real explorer of Christian Europe, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></span></li>
+
+<li>John, fourth son of King John I., <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">succeeds Affonso V., adds a new chapter to discovery, dies, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></span></li>
+
+<li><a name="john"></a>John, the King of Good Memory, transition figure, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">personal work and its results, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>-135;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sons of, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">plans attack on Ceuta, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">speech when he hears of death of his two sons, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">dies, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Jordanus, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>K</b></li>
+
+<li>Karlsefne, Thorfinn, greatest of the Vinland sailors, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+
+<li>Keel-Ness (Kjalarness), <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+<li>Kublai Khan, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>-98</li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>L</b></li>
+
+<li>Labrador, possible discovery of, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">reached by Scandinavian migration, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Lagos equips and sends out a fleet, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+<li>La Mina, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li>Lan&ccedil;arote, obtains grant to sail to coast of Guinea, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his voyage, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>-214;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">landing at Lagos and sale of slaves captured by, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">admiral of fleet sent out from Lagos, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">holds a council of his captains, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">decides to go on to the Nile, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Latini, Brunetto, describes the magnet, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li>Leif, a son of Red Eric, starts for discovery, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li>Leonora Telles, evil genius of Ferdinand and Portugal, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">marries King of Portugal, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">people rise against, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Leonor of Aragon, attempts to be regent, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">yields to persuasions of Henry, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">dies, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Lion, first one brought to Portugal, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+
+<li>Lisbon, capture of, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>M</b></li>
+
+<li>Machin, Robert, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+
+<li>Madagascar, first known to Europe, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li>Madeira, discovered and named by the Portuguese, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">nature of island, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">visited by Cadamosto, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Magellan, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li>Magnet, earliest mention of, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li>Magnus the Good, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li>Mandeville, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Mappa Mundi</i>, Hereford, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li>Maps, of fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li>Marabout, or Prophet Bird, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li>Markland (Woodland), <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li>Massoudy, visited various countries, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">discussion of problems, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">greatest name of first age of Arabic geography, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</span></li>
+
+<li>Masts, Cape of, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+
+<li>Mauro, Fra, Camaldolese chart of, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li>Melli, negro empire of, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">salt trade in, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Menezes, Edward, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li>Menezes, Pedro de, is left in command of Ceuta, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li>Meymam, Ahude, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Mythology, geographical, gradual development of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>N</b></li>
+
+<li>Noli, Antonio de, sails with Gomez, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">gets the captaincy of Santiago, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Nomimansa converted by Gomez, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>-295</li>
+
+<li>Norse, discoveries, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">early settlements, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">farthest point of Northern advance in Europe, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">race, type of, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Northern, advance, lines of, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">effects of invasions, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Northmen, countries made known to Europe through, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">definite advances into the unknown, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>O</b></li>
+
+<li>Odjein, Aryn, or Arim, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+<li>Ogane, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li>Ohthere, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">service of, to western geography, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Olaf Trygveson, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>P</b></li>
+
+<li>Pacheco, Gonsalo, unlucky expedition of, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">meets Diaz on homeward voyage and turns back, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Papal Court sends missions to convert Tartars, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li>Payva, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li>Pedro the Traveller, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">joins in attack on Ceuta, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>-153;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is knighted, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is made Duke of Coimbra and Lord of the Principality, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">returns from travels, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">becomes regent, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">gives a charter to Henry, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">gives a reward to explorers, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">resigns the regency, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">takes arms against Affonso, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">marches on Lisbon and is killed, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Philippa, Queen, character and death, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li>Pilgrims, primitive, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">pioneers of growth of Europe and Christendom, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Pilgrim stage of European development, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li>Pires, Gomes, goes on toward the Nile, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">attacks natives, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Po Fernando, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Polo, Marco, makes journey to the East with uncles, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">made commissioner of Imperial Council, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">memoirs of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">heard and wrote of Madagascar and Zanzibar, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">Herodotus of Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</span></li>
+
+<li>Polo, Nicolo and Matteo, traders to Crimea and Southern Russia, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">make second journey to farthest East, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">consulting engineers to Mongol Court, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">dismissed, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Pope, decides question of reviving African war, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li>Portolani, superseded map of Edrisi, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">drawn with aid of compass, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Portolano, Laurentian, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li>Portugal, chief points in story of, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">guide of Europe into larger world, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">medi&aelig;val history of, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>-133</span></li>
+
+<li>Portuguese give a value to the art and science of discovery, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li>Prado De, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+
+<li>Prophet bird, or marabout, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+<li>Ptolemy, chart of, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">"Habitable Quarter" of the world, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>R</b></li>
+
+<li>Rio Grande, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">passed by Gomez, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Rubruquis, William de, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>S</b></li>
+
+<li>St. George, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>St. James, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li>St. Michael, island of, discovered, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+
+<li>St. Silvia, of Aquitaine, travels of, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li>"Sacred Cape" of the Romans or Sagres, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li>S&aelig;wulf of Worcester, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">pilgrimage of, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">classes of pilgrim-crusaders in time of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Sagres, chosen home of Henry, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">systematic study of applied science founded anew at, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Santa Maria discovered, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li>Santiago discovered by Gomez, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+<li>Sanuto, Marino, Venetian map of, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li>Senegal, reached by Cadamosto, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">region about the gulf described by him, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>-275</span></li>
+
+<li>Sinbad Saga, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li>Slate-land or Helluland, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li>Slaves, beginning of trade in, as a part of European commerce, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">description of sale of, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">treatment of, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">excuse for trade in, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Strabo, geography of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>T</b></li>
+
+<li>Tagaza, or the Gold-Market, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li>Tangier, siege of, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+<li>Tarik, the rock of (Gibraltar), <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+<li>Terceira, sighted, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">Jacques de Bruges becomes captain, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Theodosius, early pilgrim, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+<li>Thorfinn Karlsefne, greatest of the Vinland sailors, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+
+<li>Thorstein, third son of Red Eric, puts to sea, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li>Thorvald Ericson, puts to sea, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">voyages of, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">death, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Timbuctoo, inland route of merchants to, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li>Tristam, Nuno, meets Antam Gonsalvez, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">assists in capturing natives, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-199;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">continues voyage and returns to Portugal, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sets out on another voyage, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sails into bay of Arguin, makes captives and returns, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">makes a third voyage, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">reaches Cape Palmar, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">arms a caravel and sets sail, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is killed by Blackmoors, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Trygveson, Olaf, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>V</b></li>
+
+<li>Vallarte, his expedition and fate, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+
+<li>Vaz, Tristam, sets out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">is rewarded, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">heads three ships from Madeira in Lagos fleet, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Vergil, Irish missionary, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+<li>Vikings, highest type of explorers, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">Norse, discoveries, conquests, and colonies, beginning of European expansion, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">voyages of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">struggle with Esquimaux, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">rename places visited, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">work on south and south-west not one of exploration, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">type of all, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">credit due, for discoveries, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">their principalities in time of Alfred, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Vinland, discovery of, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">renamed, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">visited and abandoned by Thorfinn, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">recolonised by Freydis, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">fragmentary notices of, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>W</b></li>
+
+<li>"Wanderers," Lisbon, account of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+<li>William de Rubruquis, sent by St. Louis on errand of conversion and discovery, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">interest of his work, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Willibald, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li>Wulfstan, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">tells of voyages, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">service of, to western geography, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>Y</b></li>
+
+<li>Yacout, the Roman, <i>Dictionary</i> of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+<li>Yang-Tse-Kiang, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><b>Z</b></li>
+
+<li>Zarco, John Gonsalvez, sets out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;</li>
+<li><span class="subentry">his voyages, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>-166;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">returns to Madeira, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">sends his caravel under his nephew with Lagos fleet, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">the voyage, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>-239;</span></li>
+<li><span class="subentry">same caravel sent out again, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></span></li></ul>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="./images/footer19.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+
+<p class="figcenter"><br /><img src="./images/header09.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<h3><b>The Story of the Nations.</b></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Messrs</span>. G. P. Putnam's Sons take pleasure in announcing that they have in
+course of publication, in co-operation with Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, of
+London, a series of historical studies, intended to present in a graphic
+manner the stories of the different nations that have attained
+prominence in history.</p>
+
+<p>In the story form the current of each national life is distinctly
+indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy periods and episodes are
+presented for the reader in their philosophical relation to each other
+as well as to universal history.</p>
+
+<p>It is the plan of the writers of the different volumes to enter into the
+real life of the peoples, and to bring them before the reader as they
+actually lived, labored, and struggled&mdash;as they studied and wrote, and
+as they amused themselves. In carrying out this plan, the myths, with
+which the history of all lands begins, will not be overlooked, though
+these will be carefully distinguished from the actual history, so far as
+the labors of the accepted historical authorities have resulted in
+definite conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>The subjects of the different volumes have been planned to cover
+connecting and, as far as possible, consecutive epochs or periods, so
+that the set when completed will present in a comprehensive narrative
+the chief events in the great <span class="smcap">Story of the Nations</span>; but it is, of
+course not always practicable to issue the several volumes in their
+chronological order.</p>
+
+<p>The "Stories" are printed in good readable type, and in handsome 12mo
+form. They are adequately illustrated and furnished with maps and
+indexes. Price, per vol., cloth, $1.50 Half morocco, gilt top, $1.75</p>
+
+<p>The following volumes are now ready (Jan., 1895):</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="ad1">
+<tr><td>THE</td><td>STORY</td><td>OF</td><td align='left'>GREECE. Prof. <span class="smcap">Jas. A. Harrison</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>ROME. <span class="smcap">Arthur Gilman</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE JEWS. Prof. <span class="smcap">James K. Hosmer</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>CHALDEA. <span class="smcap">Z.A. Ragozin</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>GERMANY. <span class="smcap">S. Baring-Gould</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>NORWAY. <span class="smcap">Hjalmar H. Boyesen</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>SPAIN. Rev. <span class="smcap">E.E. and Susan Hale</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>HUNGARY. Prof. <span class="smcap">A. V&aacute;mb&eacute;ry</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>CARTHAGE. Prof. <span class="smcap">Alfred J. Church</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE SARACENS. <span class="smcap">Arthur Gilman</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE MOORS IN SPAIN. <span class="smcap">Stanley Lane-Poole</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE NORMANS. <span class="smcap">Sarah Orne Jewett</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>PERSIA. <span class="smcap">S.G.W. Benjamin</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. <span class="smcap">Geo. Rawlinson</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. Prof. <span class="smcap">J.P. Mahaffy</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>ASSYRIA. <span class="smcap">Z.A. Ragozin</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE GOTHS. <span class="smcap">Henry Bradley</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>IRELAND. Hon. <span class="smcap">Emily Lawless</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>TURKEY. <span class="smcap">Stanley Lane-Poole</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA. <span class="smcap">Z.A. Ragozin</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>MEDI&AElig;VAL FRANCE. Prof. <span class="smcap">Gustave Masson</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>HOLLAND. Prof. J. <span class="smcap">Thorold Rogers</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>MEXICO. <span class="smcap">Susan Hale</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>PH&OElig;NICIA. Prof. <span class="smcap">Geo. Rawlinson</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE HANSA TOWNS. <span class="smcap">Helen Zimmern</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>EARLY BRITAIN. Prof. <span class="smcap">Alfred J. Church</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE BARBARY CORSAIRS. <span class="smcap">Stanley Lane-Poole</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>RUSSIA. <span class="smcap">W.R. Morfill</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE JEWS UNDER ROME. <span class="smcap">W.D. Morrison</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>SCOTLAND. <span class="smcap">John Mackintosh</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>SWITZERLAND. <span class="smcap">R. Stead and Mrs. A. Hug</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>PORTUGAL. <span class="smcap">H. Morse Stephens</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. <span class="smcap">C.W.C. Oman</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>SICILY. <span class="smcap">E.A. Freeman</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE TUSCAN REPUBLICS. <span class="smcap">Bella Duffy</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>POLAND. <span class="smcap">W.R. Morfill</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>PARTHIA. Prof. <span class="smcap">George Rawlinson</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>JAPAN. <span class="smcap">David Murray</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE CHRISTIAN RECOVERY OF SPAIN. <span class="smcap">H.E. Watts</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>AUSTRALASIA. <span class="smcap">Greville Tregarthen</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>SOUTHERN AFRICA. <span class="smcap">Geo. M. Theal</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>VENICE. <span class="smcap">Alethea Wiel</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"</td><td>"</td><td>"</td><td align='left'>THE CRUSADES. <span class="smcap">T.S. Archer</span> and <span class="smcap">C.L. Kingsford</span>.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+
+<p class="figcenter"><br /><img src="./images/header10.jpg"
+alt="decorative illustration"
+title="decorative illustration" /></p>
+
+<h2>Heroes of the Nations.</h2>
+
+<h3>EDITED BY</h3>
+
+<h3>EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A., <span class="smcap">Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford</span>.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A series of biographical studies of the lives and work of a number of
+representative historical characters about whom have gathered the great
+traditions of the Nations to which they belonged, and who have been
+accepted, in many instances, as types of the several National ideals.
+With the life of each typical character will be presented a picture of
+the National conditions surrounding him during his career.</p>
+
+<p>The narratives are the work of writers who are recognized authorities on
+their several subjects, and, while thoroughly trustworthy as history,
+will present picturesque and dramatic "stories" of the Men and of the
+events connected with them.</p>
+
+<p>To the Life of each "Hero" will be given one duodecimo volume,
+handsomely printed in large type, provided with maps and adequately
+illustrated according to the special requirements of the several
+subjects. The volumes will be sold separately as follows:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="ad2">
+<tr><td align='left'>Cloth extra</td><td align='right'>$1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Half morocco, uncut edges, gilt top</td><td align='right'>1.75</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Large paper, limited to 250 numbered copies for subscribers to the series.
+These may be obtained in sheets folded, or in cloth, uncut edges.</td><td align='right'>3.50</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 85%;" />
+
+<p>The first group of the Series comprises the following volumes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><b>Nelson, and the Naval Supremacy of England.</b> By <span class="smcap">W. Clark</span> Russell,
+author of "The Wreck of the Grosvenor," etc.</p>
+
+<p><b>Gustavus Adolphus, and the Struggle of Protestantism for Existence.</b>
+By <span class="smcap">C.R.L. Fletcher</span>, M.A., late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Pericles, and the Golden Age of Athens.</b> By <span class="smcap">Evelyn Abbott, M.A.</span>,
+Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Theodoric the Goth, the Barbarian Champion of Civilisation.</b> By
+<span class="smcap">Thomas Hodgkin</span>, author of "Italy and Her Invaders," etc.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sir Philip Sidney, and the Chivalry of England.</b> By <span class="smcap">H.R. Fox-Bourne</span>,
+author of "The Life of John Locke," etc.</p>
+
+<p><b>Julius C&aelig;sar, and the Organisation of the Roman Empire.</b> By <span class="smcap">W. Warde
+Fowler</span>, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>John Wyclif, Last of the Schoolmen and First of the English
+Reformers.</b> By <span class="smcap">Lewis Sergeant</span>, author of "New Greece," etc.</p>
+
+<p><b>Napoleon, Warrior and Ruler, and the Military Supremacy of
+Revolutionary France.</b> By <span class="smcap">W. O'Connor Morris</span>, sometime Scholar of
+Oriel College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Henry of Navarre, and the Huguenots in France.</b> By <span class="smcap">P.F. Willert</span>,
+M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Cicero, and the Fall of the Roman Republic.</b> By <span class="smcap">J.L. Strachan
+Davidson</span>, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Abraham Lincoln, and the Downfall of American Slavery.</b> By <span class="smcap">Noah
+Brooks</span>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Prince Henry (of Portugal) the Navigator, and the Age of Discovery.</b>
+By <span class="smcap">C.R. Beazley</span>, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Julian the Philosopher, and the Last Struggle of Paganism against
+Christianity.</b> By <span class="smcap">Alice Gardner</span>, Lecturer on Ancient History in
+Newnham College.</p>
+
+<p><b>Louis XIV., and the Zenith of the French Monarchy</b>. By <span class="smcap">Arthur
+Hassall</span>, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>To be followed by:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><b>Saladin, the Crescent and the Cross.</b> By <span class="smcap">Stanley Lane-Poole</span>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Joan of Arc.</b> By <span class="smcap">Mrs. Oliphant</span>.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Cid Campeador, and the Waning of the Crescent in the West.</b> By
+<span class="smcap">H. Butler Clarke</span>, Wadham College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Charlemagne, the Reorganiser of Europe.</b> By Prof. <span class="smcap">George L. Burr</span>,
+Cornell University.</p>
+
+<p><b>Moltke, and the Founding of the German Empire.</b> By <span class="smcap">Spenser
+Wilkinson</span>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Oliver Cromwell, and the Rule of the Puritans in England.</b> By
+<span class="smcap">Charles Firth</span>, Balliol College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Alfred the Great, and the First Kingdom in England.</b> By <span class="smcap">F. York
+Powell</span>, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Marlborough, and England as a Military Power.</b> By <span class="smcap">C.W.C. Oman</span>, A.M.,
+Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Frederic the Second, the Wonder of the World.</b> By <span class="smcap">A.L. Smith</span>, of
+Balliol College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Charles the Bold, and the Attempt to Found a Middle Kingdom.</b> By <span class="smcap">R.
+Lodge</span>, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p><b>Alexander the Great, and the Extension of Greek Rule and of Greek
+Ideas.</b> By Prof. <span class="smcap">Benjamin I. Wheeler</span>, Cornell University.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="ad3">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='3'>G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>NEW YORK</td><td></td><td align='center'>LONDON</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD ST.</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='center'>24 BEDFORD ST., STRAND</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<div class="boxtext">
+<p><a name="tn"></a><b>Transcriber's Note:</b> A footnote for the anchor next to the "List of Maps"
+was not found in the print edition.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR, THE HERO OF PORTUGAL AND OF MODERN DISCOVERY, 1394-1460 A.D.***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 18757-h.txt or 18757-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/5/18757">http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/7/5/18757</a></p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of
+Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D., by C. Raymond Beazley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D.
+       With an Account of Geographical Progress Throughout the Middle Ages As the Preparation for His Work.
+
+
+Author: C. Raymond Beazley
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2006  [eBook #18757]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR, THE
+HERO OF PORTUGAL AND OF MODERN DISCOVERY, 1394-1460 A.D.***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations and maps.
+      See 18757-h.htm or 18757-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/5/18757/18757-h/18757-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/5/18757/18757-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Heroes of the Nations.
+
+PER VOLUME, CLOTH, $1.50.--HALF MOROCCO, $1.75.
+
+
+I.--Nelson, and the Naval Supremacy of England. By W. CLARK RUSSELL,
+author of "The Wreck of the Grosvenor," etc.
+
+II.--Gustavus Adolphus, and the Struggle of Protestantism for Existence.
+By C.R.L. FLETCHER, M.A., late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
+
+III.--Pericles, and the Golden Age of Athens. By EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A.,
+Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+IV.--Theodoric the Goth, the Barbarian Champion of Civilisation. By
+THOMAS HODGKIN, author of "Italy and Her Invaders," etc.
+
+V.--Sir Philip Sidney: Type of English Chivalry. By H.R. FOX BOURNE.
+
+VI.--Julius Caesar, and the Organisation of the Roman Empire. By WARDE
+FOWLER, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.
+
+VII.--Wyclif, Last of the Schoolmen and First of the English Reformers.
+By LEWIS SERGEANT.
+
+VIII.--Napoleon, Warrior and Ruler; and the Military Supremacy of
+Revolutionary France. By WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS.
+
+IX.--Henry of Navarre, and the Huguenots in France. By P.F. WILLERT,
+M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
+
+X.--Cicero, and the Fall of the Roman Republic. By J.L.
+STRACHAN-DAVIDSON, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+XI.--Abraham Lincoln, and the Downfall of American Slavery. By NOAH
+BROOKS.
+
+XII.--Prince Henry (of Portugal) the Navigator, and the Age of
+Discovery. By C.R. BEAZLEY, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
+
+XIII.--Julian the Philosopher, and the Last Struggle of Paganism against
+Christianity. By ALICE GARDNER, Lecturer on Ancient History, Newnham
+College.
+
+XIV.--Louis XIV., and the Zenith of the French Monarchy. By ARTHUR
+HASSALL, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.
+
+(For titles of volumes next to appear and for further details of this
+Series see prospectus at end of volume.)
+
+G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, PUBLISHERS
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Heroes of the Nations
+
+Edited by Evelyn Abbot, M.A.
+Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford
+
+
+FACTA DUCIS VIVENT, OPEROSAQUE GLORIA RERUM.--OVID, IN LIVIAM, 265.
+
+THE HERO'S DEEDS AND HARD-WON FAME SHALL LIVE.
+
+
+
+PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
+THE HERO OF PORTUGAL AND OF MODERN DISCOVERY
+1394-1460 A.D.
+
+With an Account of Geographical Progress Throughout the Middle Ages As
+the Preparation for His Work
+
+by
+
+C. RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A., F.R.G.S.
+
+Fellow of Merton College, Oxford; Geographical Student in the University
+of Oxford, 1894
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    Venient annis saecula seris
+    Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
+    Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
+    Tethys que novos detegat orbes,
+    Nec sit terris ultima Thule.
+
+SENECA, _Medea_ 376/380.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: GATEWAY AT BELEM. WITH STATUE, BETWEEN THE DOORS, OF
+PRINCE HENRY IN ARMOUR.]
+
+
+
+G. P. Putnam's Sons
+New York
+27 West Twenty-Third Street
+London
+24 Bedford Street, Strand
+The Knickerbocker Press
+1895
+Copyright, 1894
+by
+G. P. Putnam's Sons
+Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
+Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by
+The Knickerbocker Press, New York
+G. P. Putnam's Sons
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                  PAGE
+  PREFACE                                         xvii
+
+
+  INTRODUCTION.
+
+  THE GREEK AND ARABIC IDEAS OF THE WORLD, AS
+  THE CHIEF INHERITANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN
+  MIDDLE AGES IN GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.             1
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+
+  EARLY CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS (CIRCA 333-867)          29
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  VIKINGS OR NORTHMEN (CIRCA 787-1066)              50
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  THE CRUSADES AND LAND TRAVEL (CIRCA 1100-1300)    76
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  MARITIME EXPLORATION (CIRCA 1250-1410)           106
+
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE IN CHRISTENDOM FROM THE
+  FIRST CRUSADES (CIRCA 1100-1460)                 114
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  PORTUGAL TO 1400 (1095-1400)                     123
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  HENRY'S POSITION AND DESIGNS AT THE TIME OF
+  THE FIRST VOYAGES, 1410-15                       138
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  PRINCE HENRY AND THE CAPTURE OF CEUTA (1415)     147
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+
+  HENRY'S SETTLEMENT AT SAGRES AND FIRST DISCOVERIES
+  (1418-28)                                        160
+
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+
+  CAPE BOJADOR AND THE AZORES (1428-41)            168
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+
+  HENRY'S POLITICAL LIFE (1433-41)                 179
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+
+  FROM BOJADOR TO CAPE VERDE (1441-5)              192
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  THE ARMADA OF 1445                               228
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  VOYAGES OF 1446-8                                240
+
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+
+  THE AZORES (1431-60)                             250
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  THE TROUBLES OF THE REGENCY AND THE FALL OF
+  DON PEDRO (1440-9)                               257
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  CADAMOSTO (1455-6)                               261
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  VOYAGES OF DIEGO GOMEZ (1458-60)                 289
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  HENRY'S LAST YEARS AND DEATH (1458-60)           299
+
+
+  CHAPTER XX.
+
+  THE RESULTS OF PRINCE HENRY'S WORK               308
+
+
+  INDEX                                            325
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                          PAGE
+
+  MAIN GATE OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH AT BELEM,      _Frontispiece_
+
+  Built on the site of an old sailor's chapel, existing in
+  Prince Henry's day, and used by his men. In the niche
+  between the two great entrance doors, is a statue of Prince
+  Henry in armour.
+
+
+  THE MONASTERY CHURCH AT BATALHA[1]                       132
+
+  West front of church in which Prince Henry and his
+  House lie buried. This church was founded by the Prince's
+  father, King John, in memory of his victory over Castille
+  at Aljubarrota.
+
+
+  BATALHA CHURCH--PORTUGAL'S WESTMINSTER[1]                136
+
+  The aisle containing the tombs of Prince Henry and his
+  brothers, the Infants of the House of Aviz.
+
+
+  EFFIGIES OF KING JOHN THE GREAT AND QUEEN PHILIPPA       148
+
+  Henry's father and mother, from their tomb in the Abbey
+  of Batalha.
+
+
+  GATEWAY OF THE CHURCH AT THOMAR                          154
+
+  The Mother Church of the Order of Christ, of which
+  Henry was Grand-Master.
+
+
+  HENRY IN MORNING DRESS[2]                                258
+
+  The original forms the frontispiece to the Paris MS. of
+  Azurara's _Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_.
+
+
+  COIMBRA UNIVERSITY                                       298
+
+
+  THE RECUMBENT STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY                     306
+
+  From his tomb in Batalha Church; with his escutcheons (1)
+  as titular King of Cyprus; (2) as Knight of the Garter of
+  England; (3) as Grand Master of the Order of Christ.
+
+
+  ALLEGORICAL PIECE[3]                                     310
+
+  Supposed to represent Columbus, as St. Christopher,
+  carrying across the ocean the Christian faith, in the
+  form of the infant Christ. From the map of Juan de la
+  Cosa, 1500.
+
+
+  VASCO DA GAMA[4]                                         314
+
+  From a portrait in the possession of the Count of
+  Lavradio.
+
+
+  AFFONSO D'ALBUQUERQUE[5]                                 318
+
+[Footnote 1: From a water-colour.]
+
+[Footnote 2: From Major's _Life of Henry the Navigator_.]
+
+[Footnote 3: From the Hakluyt Society's _Select Letters of Columbus_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: From the Hakluyt Society's edition of _Three Voyages of
+Vasco da Gama_.]
+
+[Footnote 5: From the Hakluyt Society's edition of Albuquerque's
+_Commentaries_.]
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF MAPS.[6]
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY                            2
+
+  From Nordenskjoeld's fac-simile atlas
+
+
+  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO EDRISI. _c._ 1150            24
+
+  As reconstructed by M. Reinaud from the written
+  descriptions of the Arabic geographer. This illustrates
+  the extremely unreal and untrue conception of the earth
+  among Moslem students, especially those who followed the
+  theories of Ptolomy--_e.g._, in the extension to
+  Africa eastward, so as practically or actually to join
+  China, making the Indian Ocean an inland sea.
+
+
+  THE MAPPE-MONDE OF ST. SEVER                             48
+
+  (B. Mus., Map room, shelf 35 [5], sheet 6). Of uncertain
+  date, between _c._ 780-980 but probably not later
+  than the 10th century. One of the earliest examples of
+  Christian map-making.
+
+
+  THE ANGLO-SAXON MAP                                      54
+
+  (B. Mus., Cotton mss., Tib. B.V., fol. 59). This gives
+  us the most interesting and accurate view of the world
+  that we get in the pre-Crusading Christian science. The
+  square, but not conventional outline is detailed with
+  considerable care and precision. The writing, though
+  minute, is legible; but the Nile, which, like the Red
+  Sea in Africa, is coloured _red_, in contrast to the
+  ordinary _grey_ of water in this example, is made to
+  wander about Africa from side to side, with occasional
+  disappearances, in a thoroughly mythical fashion. This
+  map, from a ms. of Priscian's _Peviegesis_, appears
+  to have been executed at the end of the 10th century; it
+  is on vellum, highly finished, and has been engraved, in
+  outline, in Playfair's _Atlas_ (Pl. I), and more fully
+  in the _Penny Magazine_ (July 22, 1837). In the reign
+  of Henry II., it appears to have belonged to Battle Abbey.
+
+
+  THE TURIN MAP OF THE 11TH CENTURY                        76
+
+  (B. Mus., Map room. From Ottino's reproduction).
+  One of the oldest and simplest of Christian Mappe-Mondes,
+  giving a special prominence to Paradise, (with the figures
+  of Adam, Eve, and the serpent), to the mountains and
+  rivers of the world, and to the four winds of heaven. It is
+  to be associated with the Spanish map of 1109, and the
+  Mappe-Monde of St. Sever.
+
+
+  THE SPANISH-ARABIC MAP OF 1109                           84
+
+  (B. Mus., Add. mss., 11695). The original, gorgeously
+  coloured, represents the crudest of Christian and Moslem
+  notions of the world. Even more crude than in the Turin
+  map and the Mappe-Monde of St. Sever, both of which offer
+  some resemblances to this. The earth is represented as of
+  quadrangular shape, surrounded by the ocean. At the E.
+  is Paradise with the figures of the Temptation. A part of
+  the S. is cut off by the Red Sea, which is straight (and
+  coloured red), just as the straight Mediterranean, with its
+  quadrangular islands, divides the N.W. quarter, or Europe,
+  from the S.W. quarter, or Africa. The AEgean Sea joins
+  the Mediterranean at a right angle, in the centre of the
+  map. In the ocean, bordering the whole, are square
+  islands, _e.g._, Tile (Thule), Britania, Scocia,
+  Fu(o)rtunarum insula. The Turin map occurs in another
+  copy of the same work--_A Commentary on the Apocalypse_.
+
+
+  THE PSALTER MAP OF THE 13TH CENTURY                      92
+
+  (B. Mus., Add. mss., 28, 681). A good illustration of
+  the circular type of mediaeval map, which is sometimes
+  little better than a panorama of legends and monsters.
+  Christ at the top; the dragons crushed beneath him at the
+  bottom; Jerusalem, the navel of the earth, in the middle
+  as a sort of bull's-eye to a target, all show a "religious"
+  geography. The line of queer figures, on the right side,
+  figuring the S. coast of Africa, suggests a parallel with the
+  still more fanciful Mappe-Monde of Hereford. (For copy
+  see Bevan and Phillott's edition of the Hereford map).
+
+
+  THE S.W., OR AFRICAN SECTION OF THE HEREFORD
+  MAP _c._ 1275-1300                                 106
+
+  (B. Mus., King's Lib., XXIII). The S. coast of Africa,
+  as in the Psalter map, is fringed with monstrous tribes;
+  monstrous animals fill up a good deal of the interior; half
+  of the wheel representing Jerusalem in the middle of the
+  world appears in the N.E. corner; and the designer's idea
+  of the Mediterranean and Atlantic islands is specially noteworthy.
+  The Hereford map is a specimen of the thoroughly
+  traditional and unpractical school of mediaeval geographers
+  who based their work on books, or fashionable collections
+  of travellers' tales--such as Pliny, Solinus, or Martianus
+  Capella--and who are to be distinguished from the scientific
+  school of the same period, whose best works were the
+  Portolani, or coast-charts of the early 14th century.
+
+
+  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MARINO SANUTO. _c._ A.D. 1306   114
+
+  (B. Mus., King's Lib., 149 F. 2 p. 282). The shape of
+  Africa in this map is supposed by some to be valuable in the
+  history of geographical advance, as suggesting the possibility
+  of getting round from the Atlantic into the Indian Ocean.
+
+
+  SKETCH MAP OF DULCERT'S PORTOLANO OF 1339               116
+
+  (From Nordenskjoeld's fac-simile atlas). This illustrates
+  the accuracy of the 14th century coast-charts, especially in
+  the Mediterranean.
+
+
+  THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351                        120
+
+  (From the Medicean Lib. at Florence; reproduced in
+  B. Mus., Map room, shelf 158, 22, 23). This is the most
+  remarkable of all the Portolani of the 14th century, as
+  giving a view of the world, and especially Africa, which is
+  far nearer the actual truth than could be expected. Especially
+  its outline of S. Africa and of the bend of the Guinea
+  coast, is surprisingly near the truth, even as a guess, in
+  a chart made one hundred and thirty-five years before the
+  Cape of Good Hope was first rounded.
+
+
+  N.W. SECTION OF THE CATALAN MAP OF 1375-6               124
+
+  (B. Mus., Map room, 13, 14). This gives the British
+  Islands, the W. coasts of Europe, N. Africa as far as Cape
+  Boyador, and the Canaries and other islands in the Atlantic.
+  The interior of Africa is filled with fantastic pictures of
+  native tribes; the boat load of men off Cape Boyador in the
+  extreme S.W. of the map probably represents the Catalan
+  explorers of the year 1346, whose voyage in search of the
+  "River of Gold" this map commemorates.
+
+
+  CHART OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, BY BARENTSZOON          128
+
+  (Engraved in copper 1595. Almost an unaltered copy of
+  a Portolano from the 14th century. From Nordenskjoeld's
+  fac-simile atlas). This illustrates the remarkable
+  correctness in the drawing of the Mediterranean basin
+  and the coasts of W. Europe, reached by the Italian and
+  Balearic coast-charts, or Portolani, in the 14th century.
+
+
+  THE BORGIAN MAP OF 1450                                 290
+
+  (B. Mus., Map room, shelf 2 [6], 13, 14; copy of 1797).
+  This map was executed just before the fall of Constantinople
+  (1453), and gives a view of the world as imagined
+  in the 15th century. It is very fantastic and
+  unscientific, but remarkable among its kind for its
+  comparative freedom from ecclesiastical influence.
+
+
+  WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA
+  MAURO, 1457-9                                           302
+
+  (_Cf._ reproduction in B. Mus., Add. mss., 11267, and
+  photographic copy in Map room). This map of Fra Mauro
+  of Murano, (near Venice), is usually understood to be a sort
+  of picture, not merely of the world as then known, but of
+  Prince Henry's discoveries in particular on the W. African
+  coast. From this point of view it is perhaps disappointing;
+  the inlet of the Rio d'Ouro(?), to the S. of the Sahara,
+  is exaggerated beyond all recognition; at the S. Cape (of
+  Good Hope) a great island is depicted, separated from the
+  mainland by a narrow channel--possibly Madagascar
+  displaced.
+
+
+  SKETCH-MAP OF FRA MAURO'S MAPPE-MONDE                   304
+
+  As reduced and simplified in Lelewel's _Atlas_.
+  The corners of the table are filled up with four small
+  circles representing: (1) The Ptolemaic System in the
+  Spheres. (2) The lunar influences over the tides. (3) The
+  circles described in the terrestial globe. (4) A picture
+  of the expulsion from Eden, with the four sacred rivers.
+
+
+  MAP OF 1492                                             322
+
+  (B. Mus., Add. mss. 15760). This gives a general view
+  of the Portuguese discoveries along the whole W. coast of
+  Africa, and just beyond the Cape of Good Hope, which
+  was rounded in 1486.
+
+[Footnote 6: **Missing.** Please see the Transcriber's Note
+at the foot of the text.]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This volume aims at giving an account, based throughout upon original
+sources, of the progress of geographical knowledge and enterprise in
+Christendom throughout the Middle Ages, down to the middle or even the
+end of the fifteenth century, as well as a life of Prince Henry the
+Navigator, who brought this movement of European Expansion within sight
+of its greatest successes. That is, as explained in Chapter I., it has
+been attempted to treat Exploration as one continuous thread in the
+story of Christian Europe from the time of the conversion of the Empire;
+and to treat the life of Prince Henry as the turning-point, the central
+epoch in a development of many centuries: this life, accordingly, has
+been linked as closely as possible with what went before and prepared
+for it; one third of the text, at least, has been occupied with the
+history of the preparation of the earlier time, and the difference
+between our account of the eleventh-and fifteenth-century Discovery, for
+instance, will be found to be chiefly one of less and greater detail.
+This difference depends, of course, on the prominence in the later time
+of a figure of extraordinary interest and force, who is the true hero in
+the drama of the Geographical Conquest of the Outer World that starts
+from Western Christendom. The interest that centres round Henry is
+somewhat clouded by the dearth of complete knowledge of his life; but
+enough remains to make something of the picture of a hero, both of
+science and of action.
+
+Our subject, then, has been strictly historical, but a history in which
+a certain life, a certain biographical centre, becomes more and more
+important, till from its completed achievement we get our best outlook
+upon the past progress of a thousand years, on this side, and upon the
+future progress of those generations which realised the next great
+victories of geographical advance.
+
+The series of maps which illustrate this account, give the same
+continuous view of the geographical development of Europe and
+Christendom down to the end of Prince Henry's age. These are, it is
+believed, the first English reproductions in any accessible form of
+several of the great charts of the Middle Ages, and taken together they
+will give, it is hoped, the best view of Western or Christian map-making
+before the time of Columbus that is to be found in any English book,
+outside the great historical atlases.
+
+In the same way the text of this volume, especially in the earlier
+chapters, tries to supply a want--which is believed to exist--of a
+connected account from the originals known to us, of the expansion of
+Europe through geographical enterprise, from the conversion of the
+Empire to the period of those discoveries which mark most clearly the
+transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The chief authorities have been:
+
+For the Introductory chapter: (1) Reinaud's account of the Arabic
+geographers and their theories in connection with the Greek, in his
+edition of Abulfeda, Paris, 1848; (2) Sprenger's Massoudy, 1841; (3)
+Edrisi, translated by Amedee Jaubert; (4) Ibn-Batuta (abridgment),
+translated by S. Lee, London, 1829; (5) Abulfeda, edited and translated
+by Reinaud; (6) Abyrouny's _India_, specially chapters i., 10-14; xvii.,
+18-31; (7) texts of Strabo and Ptolemy; (8) Wappaeus' _Heinrich der
+Seefahrer_, part 1.
+
+I. For Chapter I. (Early Christian Pilgrims): (1) _Itinera et
+Descriptiones Terrae Sanctae_, vols. i. and ii., published by the Societe
+de l'Orient, Latin, Geneva, 1877 and 1885, which give the original texts
+of nearly all the Palestine Pilgrims' memoirs to the death of Bernard
+the Wise; (2) the Publications of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society;
+(3) Thomas Wright's _Early Travels in Palestine_ (Bohn); (4) Avezac's
+_Recueil pour Servir a l'histoire de la geographie_; (5) some recent
+German studies on the early pilgrim records, _e.g._, Gildemeister on
+Antoninus of Placentia.
+
+II. For Chapter II. (The Vikings): (1) Snorro Sturleson's _Heimskringla_
+or Sagas of the Norse Kings; (2) Dozy's essays; (3) the, possibly
+spurious, _Voyages of the Zeni_, with the Journey of Ivan Bardsen, in
+the Hakluyt Society's Publications.
+
+III. For Chapter III. (The Crusades and Land Travel): (1) Publication of
+the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society; (2) Avezac's edition of the
+originals in his _Recueil pour Sevir a l'histoire de la geographie_; (3)
+Yule's _Cathay and the Way Thither_; (4) Yule's Marco Polo; (5) Benjamin
+of Tudela and others in Wright's _Early Travels in Palestine_; (6)
+Yule's _Friar Jordanus_; (7) Sir John Mandeville's _Travels_.
+
+IV. For Chapter IV. (Maritime Exploration): (1) The Marino Sanuto Map of
+1306; (2) the Laurentian Portolano of 1351; (3) The Catalan Map of
+1375-6; (4) scattered notices collected in early chapters of R.H.
+Major's _Prince Henry the Navigator_; (5) Bethencourt's _Conquest of the
+Canaries_ (Hakluyt Society, ed., Major); (6) Wappaeus' _Heinrich der
+Seefahrer_, part 2.
+
+V. For Chapter V. (Geographical Science): (1) Neckam's _De Naturis
+Rerum_; (2) the seven chief Mappe-Mondes of the fourteenth and early
+fifteenth centuries; (3) the leading Portolani; (4) scattered notices,
+_e.g._, from Guyot de Provins' "Bible," Brunetto Latini, Beccadelli of
+Palermo, collected in early chapters of Major's _Henry the Navigator_;
+(5) Wauwerman's _Henri le Navigateur_.
+
+VI. For Chapter VI. (Portugal to 1400): (1) _The Chronicle of Don John
+I._; (2) Oliveiro Martins' _Sons of Don John I._; (3) A. Herculano's
+_History of Portugal_; (4) Osbernus de Expugnatione Lixbonensi.
+
+VII. For Chapter VII. (Henry's position in 1415): Azurara's _Discovery
+and Conquest of Guinea_.
+
+VIII. For Chapter VIII. (Ceuta): (1) Azurara's _Chronicle of the
+Conquest of Ceuta_; (2) Azurara's _Discovery of Guinea_.
+
+IX. For Chapter IX. (Henry's Settlement at Sagres): (1) Azurara's
+_Guinea_; (2) De Barro's _Asia_; (3) Wauwerman's _Henri le Navigateur et
+l'Ecole Portugaise de Sagres_.
+
+X. For Chapter X. (Cape Bojador and the Azores): (1) Azurara's _Guinea_;
+(2) O. Martins' _Sons of Don John I._
+
+XI. For Chapter XI. (Henry's Political Life, 1433-41): (1) Pina's
+_Chronicle of King Edward_; (2) O. Martins' _Sons of Don John I._; (3)
+Azurara's _Chronicle of John I._; (4) Pina's _Chronicle of Affonso V._
+
+XII. For Chapter XII. (From Boyador to Cape Verde).--(1) Azurara's
+_Guinea_; (2) De Barros; (3) Pina's _Chronicle of Affonso V._; (4) O.
+Martins' _Sons of Don John I._
+
+For Chapters XIII. to the end.--(1) Azurara's _Discovery and Conquest of
+Guinea_; (2) Narratives of Cadamosto and Diego Gomez; (3) Pina's
+_Chronicle of Affonso V._; (4) Prince Henry's Charters.
+
+The three modern lives of Prince Henry which I have chiefly consulted
+are:
+
+R.H. Major's _Henry the Navigator_, Wappaeus' _Heinrich der Seeffahrer_,
+and De Weer's _Prinz Heinrich_, with O. Martins' _Lives of the Infants
+of the House of Aviz_ in his _Sons of Don John I._
+
+The maps and illustrations have been planned in a regular series.
+
+I. As to the former, they are meant to show in an historical succession
+the course of geographical advance in Christendom down to the death of
+Prince Henry (1460). Setting aside the Ptolemy, which represents the
+knowledge of the world at its height in the pre-Christian civilisation,
+and the Edrisi which represents the Arabic followers of Ptolemy, whose
+influence upon early Christian geography was very marked, all the maps
+reproduced belong to the science of the Christian ages and countries.
+The two Mappe-mondes above referred to are both placed in the
+introductory chapter, and are treated only as the most important
+examples of the science which the Graeco-Roman Empire bequeathed to
+Christendom, but which between the seventh and thirteenth centuries was
+chiefly worked upon by the Arabs. Among early Christian maps, that of
+St. Sever, possibly of the eighth century, the Anglo-Saxon map of the
+tenth century, the Turin Map of the eleventh, and the Spanish map of the
+twelfth (1109), represent very crude and simple types of sketches of the
+world, in which within a square or oblong surrounded by the ocean a few
+prominent features only, such as the main divisions of countries, are
+attempted. The Anglo-Saxon example, though greatly superior to the
+others given here, essentially belongs to this kind of work, where some
+little truth is preserved by a happy ignorance of the travellers' tales
+that came into fashion later, but where there is only the vaguest and
+most general knowledge of geographical facts.
+
+On the other hand, in the next group, to which the Psalter map is
+allied, and in which the Hereford map is our best example, mythical
+learning--drawn from books like Pliny, Solinus, St. Isidore, and
+Martianus Capella, which collected stories of beasts and monsters,
+stones and men, divine, human, and natural marvels on the principle
+_Credo quia impossible_--has overpowered every other consideration, and
+a map of the world becomes a great picture-book of curious objects, in
+which the very central and primary interest of geography is lost. But by
+the side of and almost at the same time as these specimens of
+geographical mythology, geographical science had taken a new start in
+the coast charts or portolani of Balearic and Italian seamen, some
+specimens of which form our next set of maps.
+
+Dulcert's portolano of 1339 and the Laurentian of 1351 are two of the
+best examples of this kind of work, which gave us our first really
+accurate map of any part of the globe, but which for some time was
+entirely confined to coast drawing, and was meant to supply the
+practical wants of captains, pilots, and seamen. The Catalan atlas of
+1375-6 shows the portolano type extended to a real Mappa Mundi; the
+elaborate carefulness and sumptuousness of this example prepares us for
+the still higher work of Andrea Bianco and of Benincasa in the fifteenth
+century. As the Laurentian portolano of 1351 commemorates the voyage of
+1341 and marks its discoveries in the Atlantic islands, so the Catalan
+map of 1375-6 commemorates the Catalan voyage of 1346, and gives the
+best and most up-to-date picture of the N.W. African coast as it was
+known before Prince Henry's discoveries.
+
+Last of these groups of maps is that of examples from Henry's own age,
+such as the Fra Mauro map of 1459 or the maps of Andrea Bianco and
+Benincasa (_e.g._, 1436, 1448, 1468), among which the first-named is the
+only one we have been able to give here.
+
+The Borgian map of 1450 is given as an extraordinary specimen of what
+could be done as late as 1450, not as an example of geographical
+progress; and the map of 1492, recording Portuguese discoveries down to
+the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, is added to illustrate the
+advance of explorers in the years closely following Henry's death, as it
+was realised at the time.
+
+The maps have in most cases been set from the modern standpoint, but, as
+will readily be seen by the position of the names, the normal mediaeval
+setting was quite different, with the S. or E. at the top.
+
+II. The illustrations aim at giving portraits or pictures of the chief
+persons and places connected with the life of Prince Henry. There are
+three of the Prince himself; one from the Paris MS. of Azurara, one from
+the gateway of the great convent church of Belem, one from the recumbent
+statue over his tomb at Batalha. Two others give: (1) The whole group of
+the royal tombs of Henry's house,--of his father, mother, and brothers
+in the aisle at Batalha, and (2) the recumbent statues of his father and
+mother, John and Philippa, in detail; the exterior and general effect of
+the same church--Portugal's Westminster, and the mausoleum of the
+Navigator's own family of Aviz--comes next, in a view of this greatest
+of Portuguese shrines.
+
+Coimbra University, with which as rector or chancellor or patron Prince
+Henry was so closely connected, for which he once provided house room,
+and in which his benefactions earned him the title of "Protector of the
+studies of Portugal" is given to illustrate his life as a student and a
+man of science; the mother church of the order of Christ at Thomar may
+remind us of another side of his life--as a military monk, grand master
+of an order of religious chivalry which at least professed to bind its
+members to a single life, and which under his lead took an active part
+in the exploration and settlement of the African coasts and the Atlantic
+islands.
+
+The portraits of Columbus, Da Gama, and Albuquerque, which conclude this
+set of illustrations, are given as portraits of three of Prince Henry's
+more or less conscious disciples and followers, of three men who did
+most to realise his schemes. The first of these, who owed to Portuguese
+advance towards the south the suggestion of corresponding success in the
+west, and who found America by the western route to India,--as Henry had
+planned nearly a century before to round Africa and reach Malabar by the
+eastern and southern way,--was the nearest of the Prince's successful
+imitators in time, the greatest in achievement; he was not a mere
+follower of the Portuguese initiative, for he struck out a new line or
+at least a neglected one, made the greatest of all geographical
+additions to human knowledge, and took the most daring plunge into the
+unknown that has ever been taken--but Columbus, beside his independent
+position and interest, was certainly on one side a disciple of Henry the
+Navigator, and drew much of his inspiration from the impulse that the
+Prince had started. Da Gama, the first who sailed direct from Lisbon to
+India round Africa, and Albuquerque, the maker, if not the founder, of
+the Portuguese empire in the East, were simply the realisers of the vast
+ambitions that take their start from the work and life of Prince Henry,
+and he has a right to claim them as two leading champions of his plans
+and policy. In many points Albuquerque, like Columbus, is more than a
+follower; but in the main outline of his achievement he follows upon the
+work of other men, and, among these men, of none so much as the Hero of
+Portugal and of modern discovery.
+
+Lastly. I have to thank many friends generally for their constant
+kindness and readiness to assist in any way, and in particular several
+for the most generous and valuable help in certain parts.
+
+Mr. T.A. Archer, besides the benefit of his suggestions throughout, has
+given special aid in Chapters I., III., V., and the Introductory
+Chapter, especially where anything is said of the connection of
+geographical progress with the Crusades.[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Compare Archer and Kingsford, _The Crusades_, in the
+_Stories of the Nations_.]
+
+Mr. F. York Powell has revised Chapter II. on the Vikings, and Professor
+Margoliouth has done the same for the Introductory Chapter on Greek and
+Arabic geography; Mr. Coote has not only given me every help in the map
+room of the British Museum, but has read the proofs of Chapter V. Mr.
+H. Yule-Oldham in Chapter XVIII. on the Voyage of Cadamosto, and Mr.
+Prestage in Chapters VIII. and IX. on Prince Henry's capture of Ceuta
+and settlement at Sagres, have been most kind in offering suggestions.
+For several hints useful in Chapter I.--the early Christian pilgrims--I
+have also to thank Professor Sanday; and for revision of a great part of
+the proof-sheets of the entire book, Mr. G.N. Richardson and the Rev.
+W.H. Hutton.
+
+As to the illustrations, of portraits and monuments, etc., I am
+especially obliged to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University (Dr.
+Boyd), who has allowed his water-colour paintings of Portuguese subjects
+to be reproduced; and to the Rev. R. Livingstone of Pembroke, and Sir
+John Hawkins of Oriel, for their loan of photographs.
+
+
+
+
+PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR.
+
+    The Lusitanian Prince who, heaven-inspired,
+    To love of useful glory roused mankind,
+    And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.
+
+THOMSON: _Seasons, Summer, 1010-2._
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+THE GREEK AND ARABIC IDEAS OF THE WORLD, AS THE CHIEF INHERITANCE OF THE
+CHRISTIAN MIDDLE AGES IN GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.
+
+
+Arabic science constitutes one of the main links between the older
+learned world of the Greeks and Latins and the Europe of Henry the
+Navigator and of the Renaissance. In geography it adopted in the main
+the results of Ptolemy and Strabo; and many of the Moslem travellers and
+writers gained some additional hints from Indian, Persian, and Chinese
+knowledge; but, however much of fact they added to Greek cartography,
+they did not venture to correct its postulates.
+
+And what were these postulates? In part, they were the assumptions of
+modern draughtsmen, but in some important details they differed. And
+first, as to agreement. Three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, an
+encircling ocean, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Caspian, the Red
+Sea and Persian Gulf, the South Asiatic, and North and West European
+coasts were indicated with more or less precision in the science of the
+Antonines and even of Hannibal's age. Similarly, the Nile and Danube,
+Euphrates and Tigris, Indus and Ganges, Jaxartes and Oxus, Rhine and
+Ebro, Don and Volga, with the chief mountain ranges of Europe and
+Western Asia, find themselves pretty much in their right places in
+Strabo's description, and are still better placed in the great chart of
+Ptolemy. The countries and nations from China to Spain are arranged in
+the order of modern knowledge. But the differences were fundamental
+also. Never was there a clearer outrunning of knowledge by theory,
+science by conjecture, than in Ptolemy's scheme of the world (_c._ A.D.
+130). His chief predecessors, Eratosthenes and Strabo, had left much
+blank space in their charts, and had made many mistakes in detail, but
+they had caught the main features of the Old World with fair accuracy.
+Ptolemy, in trying to fill up what he did not know from his inner
+consciousness, evolved a parody of those features. His map, from its
+intricate falsehood, backed as it was by the greatest name in
+geographical science, paralysed all real enlargement of knowledge till
+men began to question, not only his facts, but his theories. And as
+all modern science, in fact, followed the progress of world-knowledge,
+or "geography," we may see how important it was for this revolution to
+take place, for Ptolemy to be dethroned.
+
+[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+The Arabs, commanding most of the centres of ancient learning (Ptolemy's
+own Alexandria above all), riveted the pseudo-science of their
+predecessors on the learned world, along with the genuine knowledge
+which they handed down from the Greeks. In many details they corrected
+and amplified the Greek results. But most of their geographical theories
+were mere reproductions of Ptolemy's, and to his mistakes they added
+wilder though less important confusions or inventions of their own. The
+result of all this, by the tenth century A.D., was a geography, based
+not on knowledge, but on ideas of symmetry. It was a scheme fit for the
+_Arabian Nights_.
+
+And how did Ptolemy lend himself to this?
+
+His chief mistakes were only two;--but they were mistakes from which at
+any rate Strabo and most of the Greek geographers are free. He made the
+Indian Ocean an inland sea, and he filled up the Southern Hemisphere
+with Africa, or the unknown Antarctic land in which he extended
+Africa.[8] The Dark Continent, in his map, ran out on the one side to
+the south-east of China, and on the other to the indefinite west, though
+there was here no hint of America or an Atlantic continent. It was a
+triumph of learned imagination over humdrum research. Science under
+Hadrian was ambitious to have its world settled and known; it was not
+yet settled or fully known; and so a great student constructed a
+_melange_ of fact and fancy mainly based on a guess-work of imaginary
+astronomical reckonings. On the far east, Ptolemy joined China and
+Africa; and on this imaginary western coast, fronting Malacca and
+Further India, he placed various gratuitous towns and rivers. Coming to
+smaller matters, he cut away the whole of the Indian peninsula proper,
+though preserving the Further or "Golden" Chersonesus of the Malays, and
+he enlarged Taprobane, or Ceylon, to double the size of Asia Minor. Thus
+the southern coast of Asia from Arabia to the Ganges ran almost due
+east, with a strait of sea coming through the modern Carnatic, between
+the continent and the Great Spice Island, which included most of the
+Deccan. The Persian Gulf, much greater on this map than the Black Sea,
+was made equal in length and breadth; the shape of the Caspian was, so
+to say, turned inside out and its length given as from east to west,
+instead of from north to south; while the coast line, even of the
+familiar Euxine, AEgean, and Southern Mediterranean, was anything but
+true. Scandinavia was an island smaller than Ireland; Scotland
+represented a great eastern bend of Britain, with the Shetlands and
+Faeroes (Thule) lying a short distance to the north, but on the left-hand
+side of the great island. The Sea of Azov, hardly inferior to the
+Euxine, stretched north half way across Russia. All Central Africa and
+the great Southern or Antarctic continent was described as pathless
+desert--"a land uninhabitable from the heat"; and the sources of the
+Nile were accounted for by the marshes and Mountains of the Moon.
+
+[Footnote 8: Rejecting the old idea of an encircling ocean as the girdle
+or limit of the known world, and replacing it with a new fancy of
+unbounded continent (on all sides except the north-west)--a fancy which
+the vast extension of Roman Dominion under the Empire may have
+fostered.]
+
+Thus all the problems of ancient geography were explained: where
+Ptolemy's knowledge failed him altogether, no Western of that time had
+ever been, or was likely to go. The whole realised and unrealised world
+was described with such clearness and consistency, men thought, that
+what was lacking in Aristotle was now supplied.
+
+Yet it is worth while observing how, centuries before Ptolemy, in the
+ages nearer to Aristotle himself, the geography of Eratosthenes and
+Strabo, by a more balanced use of knowledge and by a greater restraint
+of fancy, had composed a far more reliable chart.[9]
+
+[Footnote 9: In using the expressions "Chart," or "Map" of Strabo's
+description (_c._ A.D. 20), it is not meant to imply that Strabo himself
+left more than a written description from which a plan was afterwards
+prepared: "The world according to Strabo." The same applies to
+Eratosthenes (_c._ B.C. 200) and all pre-Ptolemaic Greek geographers.
+Ptolemy's Atlas, probably, and the Peutinger Table, more certainly, are
+maps really drawn by ancient designers; but these are the only ones that
+have survived from a much larger number.]
+
+This earlier and discredited map avoided all the more serious
+perversions of Ptolemy. Africa was cut off at the limit of actual
+knowledge, about Cape Non on the west and Cape Guardafui on the east;
+and the "Cinnamon-bearing Coast," between these points, was fringed by
+the Mountains of AEthiopia, where the Nile rose. This was the theory
+which revived on the decline of the Ptolemaic, and which encouraged the
+Portuguese sailors with hopes of a quick approach to India round Africa,
+as the great eastern bend of the Guinea coast seemed to suggest.
+Further, on this pre-Ptolemaic map the Southern Ocean was left untouched
+by a supposed Southern Continent, and except for an undue shrinkage of
+the Old World in general as an island in the midst of the vast
+surrounding ocean, a reliable description of Western Asia and Central
+Europe and North Africa was in the hands of the learned world two
+hundred years before Christ.
+
+It is true that Strabo's China is cramped and cut short; that his Ceylon
+(Taprobane) is even larger than Ptolemy's; that Ireland (Ierne) appears
+to the _north_ of Britain; and that the Caspian joins the North Sea by a
+long and narrow channel; but the true shape of India, of the Persian
+Gulf and the Euxine, of the Sea of Azov and the Mediterranean, is marked
+rightly enough in general outline. This earlier chart has not the
+elaborate completeness of Ptolemy's, but it is free from his enormous
+errors, and it has all the advantage of science, however imperfect, over
+brilliant guessing.
+
+Of course, even in Ptolemy, this guess-work pure and simple only comes
+in at intervals and does not so much affect the central and, for his
+day, far more important tracts of the Old World, but we have yet to see
+how, in the mediaeval period and under Arabic imagination, all geography
+seemed likely to become an exercise of fancy.
+
+The chief Greek descriptions of the world, we must clearly remember,
+were before the mediaeval workers, Christian and Moslem, from the first;
+these men took their choice, and the point is that they, and specially
+the Arabs, chose with rare exceptions the last of these, the Ptolemaic
+system, because it was the more ambitious, symmetrical, and pretty.
+
+Let us trace for a moment the gradual development of this geographical
+mythology.
+
+Starting with the notion of the world as a disc, or a ball, the centre
+of the universe, round which moved six celestial circles, of the
+Meridian, the Equator, the Ecliptic, the two Tropics, and the Horizon,
+the Arab philosophers on the side of the earth's surface worked out a
+doctrine of a Cupola or Summit of the world, and on the side of the
+heavens a pseudo-science of the Anoua or Settings of the Constellations,
+connected with the twelve Pillars of the Zodiac and the twenty-eight
+Mansions of the Moon.
+
+With Arabic astrology we are not here concerned; it is only worth noting
+in this connection as the possible source of early Christian knowledge
+of the Southern Cross and other stars famous in the story of
+exploration, such as Dante shows in the first canto of his _Purgatorio_.
+But the geographical doctrines of Islam, compounded from the Hebrew
+Pentateuch and the theoretical parts of Ptolemy, had a more immediate
+and reactionary effect on knowledge. The symmetrical Greek divisions of
+land into seven zones or climates; and of the world's surface,[10] into
+three parts water and one part _terra firma_; the Indian fourfold
+arrangement of "Romeland" and the East; the similar fourfold Chinese
+partition of China, India, Persia, and Tartary: all these reappeared
+confusedly in Arabic geography. From India and the Sanscrit "Lanka,"
+they seem to have got their first start on the myth of Odjein, Aryn, or
+Arim, "the World's Summit"; from Ptolemy the sacred number of 360
+degrees of longitude was certainly derived, beautifully corresponding to
+the days of the year, and neatly divided into 180 of land or habitable
+earth and 180 of sea, or unharvested desert. With the seven climates
+they made correspond the great Empires of the world--chief among which
+they reckoned the Caliphate (or Bagdad), China, Rome, Turkestan, and
+India.
+
+[Footnote 10: In which the habitable quarter of the world, situated
+mainly in the Northern Hemisphere, was just about twice as long as it
+was broad.]
+
+The sacred city of Odjein had been the centre of most of the earlier
+Oriental systems; in the Arabic form of Arim ("The Cupola of the
+Earth"), it became the fixed point round which circled mediaeval theories
+of the world's shape. "Somewhere in the Indian Ocean between Comorin and
+Madagascar," became the compromise when the mountain could not be found
+off any of the known coast-lines; it was mixed up with notions of the
+Roc, and the Moon Mountains in Africa, of the Magnet Island and of the
+Eastern Kingdom made out of one vast pearl; and even in Roger Bacon it
+serves as an algebraic sign for a mathematical centre of the world.
+
+The enlargement of knowledge, though forcing upon Arabic science a
+conviction of Ptolemy's mistake in over-extending the limits of the
+world known to him, only led to the invention of a scholastic
+distinction between the real and the traditional East and West, while
+the confusion was made perfect by the travestied history always so
+popular among Orientals. The "Gades of Alexander and Hercules," the
+farthest points east and west, were named after the mythical conquests
+of the real Iskander and the mythical hero of Greeks and Phoenicians.
+Arim in the middle, with the pillars of Hercules and Alexander, and the
+north and south poles at equal distance from it--the centre and the four
+corners of the world as neatly fixed as geometry could define--this was
+the map, first of the Arabs, and then of their Christian scholars.
+
+To form any idea of the complete spell thus cast over thought both in
+Islam and Christendom, we may look at the words of European scholars of
+the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, living far from Islam, long after
+its intellectual glory had begun to decay, and at a time when Christian
+scholastic philosophy had reached an independent position. Gerard of
+Cremona and Adelard of Bath (the translator of the great Arabic
+geographer, Mohammed Al-Kharizmy) in the twelfth century, Roger Bacon
+and Albertus Magnus in the later thirteenth, are all as clear about
+their geographical postulates as about their theological or ethical
+rules. And what concerns us here is that they exactly reflect the mind
+of the Arabic science or pseudo-science of the time just preceding, so
+that their words may represent to us the state of Mohammedan thought
+between the eighth and twelfth centuries, between the writers at the
+Court of Caliph Almamoun (813-833) and Edrisi at the Court of King Roger
+of Sicily (1150).
+
+(1.) _Adelard_, summarising Mohammed Al-Kharizmy with the results of his
+Paris education, tells us of the Arabic "Examination of planets and of
+time, starting from the centre of the world, called _Arim_, from which
+place to the four ends of the earth the distance is equal, viz., ninety
+degrees, answering to the fourth part of the world's circumference. It
+is tedious and unending to attempt to place all the countries of the
+world and to fix all the marks of time. So the meridian is taken as the
+measure of the latter and _Arim_ of the former, and from this
+starting-point it is not hard to fix other countries." "Arim," he
+concludes, "is under the equator, at the point where there is no
+latitude," and he plainly implies that there were then existing among
+the Arabs tables calculating all the chief places of every country from
+the meridian of _Arim_.
+
+(2.) _Gerard_ of Cremona, who, though for some time a resident at
+Toledo, is essentially an Italian, tells us about the "Middle of the
+World," from which longitudes were calculated, "called Arim," and "said
+to be in India," whose longitude from west to east or from east to west
+is ninety degrees.
+
+In his _Theory of the Planets_ Gerard tells us still more wonderful
+things. Arim was a geographical centre known and used by Hermes
+Trismegistus and by Ptolemy, as well as by the great Arab geographers;
+Alexander of Macedon marched just as far to the east of Arim as Hercules
+to the west; both reached the encircling ocean, and accordingly "Arim
+is equidistant from both the Gades, 90 degrees; likewise from each pole,
+north and south, the same, 90 degrees." This all recurs in the tables of
+Alphonso the Wise of Castille about A.D. 1260, and two of the greatest
+of mediaeval thinkers, Albert and Roger Bacon, reproduced the essential
+points of this doctrine, its false symmetry, and its balance of the true
+and the traditional, with variations of their own.
+
+(3.) _Albert the Great_, Albertus Magnus, second only to Aquinas among
+the Continental Schoolmen, in his _View of Astronomy_, repeats Adelard
+upon the question of Arim, "where there is no latitude," while (4)
+_Roger Bacon_ discusses not only the true and the traditional East and
+West, but even a twofold Arim, one "under the solstice, the other under
+the equinoctial zone." Arim he finds not to be in the centre of the real
+world, but only of the traditional. In another passage of the _Opus
+Majus_, Bacon, our first English worker in the exact sciences, allows
+the world-summit not to be exactly 90 degrees from the east, although so
+placed by mathematicians. Yet there is no contradiction, he urges,
+because the men of theory are "speaking of the habitable world known to
+them, according to the true understanding of latitude and longitude,"
+and this "true understanding" is "not as great as has been realised in
+travel by Pliny and others." "The longitude of the habitable world is
+more than half of the whole circuit." This, reproduced in the _Imago
+Mundi_ of Cardinal Peter Ailly (1410), fell into the hands of Columbus
+and helped to fix his doctrines of the shape of the world ("in the form
+of a pear") of the terrestrial paradise, and of the earth's
+circumference,--so enormously contracted as practically to abolish the
+Pacific.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: In Columbus' letters to Queen Isabella in 1498, we catch,
+as it were, the last echo of the Arabic _melange_ of Moses and Greek
+geography, along with the results of Roger Bacon's corrections of
+Ptolemy. "The Old Hemisphere," he writes "which has for its centre the
+isle of Arim, is spherical, but the other (new) Hemisphere has the form
+of the lower half of a pear. Just one hundred leagues west of the Azores
+the earth rises at the Equator and the temperature grows keener. The
+summit is over against the mouth of the Orinoco."]
+
+To return to the Arabs: We have seen how they not merely followed Greek
+theories, which their own experience as conquerors in the Further East
+went to discredit, but, in the great outlines of geography, added to
+earlier errors, put prejudice in the place of knowledge, and handed on
+to Christendom a half-fanciful map of the world. It only remains for us
+to illustrate their leading fault, of a too vivid fancy, with a few
+details on minor points.
+
+(1.) Ptolemy's "Habitable Quarter" of the world, amounting to just half
+the longitude of the globe, was literally accepted by the Moslem world,
+as it accepted the Pentateuch from the moment when it began its study of
+science at the Court of Almamoun (813-833). But, as the conquests of the
+Caliphs disclosed districts in the east far beyond Ptolemy's limits, it
+was necessary, in case of keeping his data for the whole, to compress
+the part which alone was to be found fully described in his chart: "On
+the west, unhappily, there were no countries newly discovered to
+compensate for this abridgment." By Massoudy's time,--by the tenth
+century,--fact and theory were thus hopelessly at variance.
+
+(2.) On the shape of Africa, the mass of Arabic opinion confirmed
+Ptolemy, but among the more enlightened there is traceable from
+Massoudy's time a tendency either to react towards Strabo's partly
+agnostic position, or to invent some new theory rather more in harmony
+with the known facts. That is, either their later map-makers cut off
+Africa at Cape Non or Bojador and Cape Guardafui, and gave away the rest
+to the "Green Sea of Darkness," or, like Massoudy, they sketched a great
+Southern Continent, divided from Africa by a narrow channel, which
+connected the Western Ocean with the Sea of Habasch--of Abyssinia or
+India. In either case Africa was left an island.
+
+(3.) The words "Gog and Magog" from Jeremiah, describing the nomades of
+Central Asia, appear in the Koran as Yadjoudj and Madjoudj. The complete
+story, in the tenth century and in Edrisi's day, connects them with
+Alexander the Great, who is also found in the Koran as Doul-Carnain, and
+with the Wall of China. "When the Conqueror," said the Arabs, "reached
+the place near where the sun rose, he was implored to build a wall to
+shut off the marauders of Yadjoudj and Madjoudj from the rich countries
+of the South." So he built a rampart of iron across the pass by which
+alone Touran joined Iran, and henceforth Turks and Tartars were kept
+outside. Till the Arabs reached the Caucasus, they generally supposed
+this to answer to Alexander's wall; when facts dispelled this theory,
+the unknown Ural or Altai Mountains served instead; finally, as the
+Moslems became masters of Central Asia, the Wall of China, beyond the
+Gobi desert, alone satisfied the conditions of shadowy but historic
+grandeur, beyond all practical danger of verification.
+
+(4.) In striking contrast with the steady advance of Arabic exploration
+and trade in the Eastern Sea is the Moslem horror of the Western Ocean
+beyond Europe and Africa, the "Green Sea of Darkness" or the Atlantic.
+And what we have to note is that they imparted much of this paralysing
+cowardice to the Christian nations. Only the Northmen of Scandinavia,
+living a life apart, and forced to make their way over the wild North
+Sea, were untouched by this southern superstition, and ventured across
+the ocean by the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland, to the coast of
+Labrador.
+
+The doctors of the Koran indeed thought that a man mad enough to embark
+for the unknown, even on a coasting voyage, should be deprived of civil
+rights. Ibn Said goes further, and says no one has ever done this:
+"whirlpools always destroy any adventurer." As late as the generation
+immediately before Henry the Navigator, about A.D. 1390, another light
+of Moslem science declared the Atlantic to be "boundless, so that ships
+dare not venture out of sight of land, for even if the sailors knew the
+direction of the winds, they would not know whither those winds would
+carry them, and as there is no inhabited country beyond, they would run
+a risk of being lost in mist, fog, and vapour. The limit of the West is
+the Atlantic Ocean."
+
+This was the final judgment of the Arabic race and its subject allies
+upon the western limits of the world, and in two ways they helped to fix
+this belief, derived from the timid coasting-traders of the Roman Empire
+on Greek and Latin Christendom. First, the Spanish Caliphate cut off all
+access to the Western Sea beyond the Bay of Biscay, from the eighth to
+the twelfth centuries. Not till the capture of Lisbon in 1147, could
+Christian enterprise on this side gain any basis, or starting-point. Not
+till the conquest of the Algarve in the extreme south-west of the
+peninsula, at the end of the twelfth century, was this enterprise free
+to develop itself. Secondly, in the darkest ages of Christian
+depression, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth centuries,
+when only the brief age of Charlemagne offered any chance of an
+independent and progressive Catholic Empire in the west, the Arabs
+became recognised along with the Byzantines as the main successors of
+Greek culture. The science, the metaphysic, the abstract ideas of these
+centuries came into Germany, France, and Italy from Cordova and from
+Bagdad, as much as from Byzantium. And on questions like the South
+Atlantic or Indian Ocean, or the shape of Africa,--where Islam had all
+the field to itself, and there was no positive and earlier discovery
+which might contradict a natural reluctance to test tradition by
+experiment--Christendom accepted the Arabic verdict with deference.
+
+In the same way, on still more difficult points, such as the theory of
+a canal from the Caspian to the Black Sea, or from the Caspian to the
+Arctic circle, or from the Black Sea to the Baltic, Paris and Rome and
+Bologna and Oxford accepted the Arabic descriptions.
+
+It has been necessary for us to attend to the defects of Arabic
+geography, in order to understand how in the long Saracen control of the
+world's trade routes and of geographical tradition, science and
+seamanship were so little advanced. Between Ptolemy and Henry of
+Portugal, between the second and the fifteenth centuries, the only great
+extension of men's knowledge of the world was: (1) in the extreme north,
+where the semi-Christian, semi-Pagan Vikings reached perhaps as far as
+the present site of New York and founded, on another side, the Mediaeval
+Kingdom of Russia; (2) on the south-east coast of Africa, from Cape
+Guardafui to Madagascar, which was opened up by the trading interest of
+the Emosaid family (800-1300); (3) in the far east, in Central and
+Further Asia, by the discoveries of Marco Polo and the Friar preachers
+following on the tracks of the earlier Moslem travellers. The first of
+these was a Northern secret, soon forgotten, or an abortive development,
+cut short by the Tartars; the second was an Arabic secret, jealously
+guarded as a commercial right; the third alone added much direct new
+knowledge to the main part of the civilised world.
+
+But throughout their period of commercial rule from the eighth to the
+twelfth centuries, the Arabs took a keen interest in land traffic,
+conquest, and exploration. They were of small account at sea; it took
+them some time to turn to their own purposes Hippalus' discovery (in the
+second century A.D.) of the monsoon in the Indian Ocean; but, on land,
+Moslem travellers and writers--generally following in the wake of their
+armies, but sometimes pressing on ahead of them--did not a little to
+enlarge the horizon of the Mohammedan world, though it was not till
+Marco Polo and the Franciscan missionaries of the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries, that Christian Europe shared in this gain.
+
+As the early Caliphs conquered, they made surveys of their new
+dominions. Thus after Tarik and Mousa had overrun Spain, Walid at
+Damascus required from them an account of the land and its resources.
+The universal obligation of the Mecca pilgrimage compelled every Moslem
+to travel once in his life; and many an Arab, after the Caliphate was
+settled in power from the Oxus to the Pyrenees, journeyed to and fro
+with the joy of a master going over vast estates, shewing his dreaded
+turban to subjects of every nation.
+
+This, however, was not geographical science, or even pseudo-science.
+Before Mohammed the Arabs had possessed some knowledge of the stars and
+used it for astrology; but it was at the Court of Almamoun (813-833)
+that their inquiring spirits first set themselves to answer the great
+question of geography--Where? Through the ninth and tenth centuries
+there arose a succession of travellers and thinkers who, with all their
+wild dreamings, preserved the best results of Greek maps and would have
+made much greater advances but for their helplessness in original work.
+As they could not recast Aristotle in philosophy, so they could not with
+all their new knowledge of the Further East recast the geography of
+Ptolemy and Strabo.
+
+A few great ages, the age for instance of Almamoun in Bagdad (A.D. 830),
+of Mahmoud in Ghazneh (A.D. 1000), of Abderrahman III. in Cordova (A.D.
+950), give us the history of Arabic geography.
+
+Beginning in the latter years of the eighth century, Moslem science was
+reformed and organised, in the New Empire, by the patronage of the
+Caliphs of the ninth. Itineraries of victorious generals, plans and
+tables prepared by governors of provinces, and a freshly acquired
+knowledge of Greek and Indian and Persian thought, made up the
+subject-matter of study. The barbarism of the first believers was
+passing away, and Mohammed's words were recalled: "Seek knowledge, even
+in China." By the end of the eighth century Ptolemy's Geography and the
+now lost work of Marinus of Tyre had already been translated. Almamoun
+drew to his Court all the chief "mathematicians" or philosophers of
+Islam, such as Mohammed Al-Kharizmy, Alfergany, and Solyman the
+merchant. Further he built two observatories, one at Bagdad, one at
+Damascus, and procured a chart fixing the latitude and longitude of
+every place known to him or his savants. Al-Kharizmy interpolated the
+new Arabic Ptolemy with additions from the Sanscrit, and made some use
+of Indian trigonometry. Alfergany wrote the first Arab treatise on the
+Astrolabe and adopted the Greek division of the seven Climates to the
+new learning. Solyman, at the time of closest intercourse between
+China, India, and the Caliphate, travelled in every country of the
+Further East, sailed in the "Sea of Pitchy Darkness" on the east coast
+of Asia, and by his voyages became the prototype of Sinbad the Sailor.
+
+The impulse given by Almamoun did not die with him. About 850 Alkendy
+made a fresh version of Ptolemy; as early as 840 the Caliph Vatek-Billah
+sent to explore the countries of Central Asia, and his results have been
+preserved by Edrisi. A few years later (_c._ 890) Ibn-Khordadbeh, "Son
+of the Magi," described the principal trade-routes, the Indian by the
+Red Sea from Djeddah to Scinde, the Russian by the Volga and North
+Caspian, the Persian by way of Balkh to China. It was by this last that
+some have thought the envoys of the English King Alfred went in 883,
+till they turned south to seek India and the Christians of San Thome.
+
+The early scientific movement in Islam reached its height in Albateny
+and Massoudy at the beginning of the tenth century. The former
+determined, more exactly than before, various problems of astronomical
+geography.[12] The latter visited every country from Further India to
+Spain;--even China and Madagascar seem to have been within the compass
+of his later travels; and his voyages in the Indian Ocean bring us to
+the real Sinbad Saga of the tenth century.
+
+[Footnote 12: "The Obliquity of the Ecliptic, the Eccentricity of the
+Sun, the Precession of the Equinoxes."]
+
+Sinbad, as his story appears in the _Arabian Nights_, has been traced to
+an original in the Indian tales of _The Seven Sages_, in the voyages of
+the age of Chosroes Nushirvan or of Haroun-Al-Rashid, but the tale
+appears to be an Arabic original, the real account, with a little more
+of mystery and exaggeration than usual, of the ninth-and tenth-century
+travellers, from Solyman to Massoudy, reproduced in form of a series of
+novels.[13]
+
+[Footnote 13: "With the Sinbad story is connected the historical
+extension of the Arab settlements in the East African coast through the
+enterprise of the Emosaid family."]
+
+With Massoudy begins also the formal discussion of geographical problems
+affecting Islam. Was the Caspian a land-locked sea? Did it connect with
+the Euxine? Did either or both of these join the Arctic Ocean? Was
+Africa an island? If so, was there also an unknown Southern Continent?
+What was the shape of South-Eastern Asia? Was Ptolemy's longitude to be
+wholly accepted, and if not, how was it to be bettered? By a use of
+Strabo and of Albateny rather than of Ptolemy, Massoudy arrived at
+fairly accurate and very plausible results. His chief novelties were the
+long river channel from the Sea of Azov to the North Sea, and the strait
+between South Africa and the shadowy Southern Continent. On his scheme
+the Indian Ocean, or Sea of Habasch, contains most of the water surface
+of the world, and the Sea of Aral appears for the first time in Moslem
+geography. Lastly his account of the Arab coasting voyages from the
+Persian Gulf to Socotra and Madagascar proves, implicitly, that as yet
+there was no use of the compass.
+
+Massoudy cut down the girth of the world even more than Ptolemy. The
+latter had left an ocean to the west of Africa: the former made the
+Canaries or Fortunate Islands, the limit of the known Western world,
+abut upon India, the limit of the Eastern.
+
+The first age of Arabic geography ends with Massoudy, its greatest name,
+in the middle of the tenth century. The second age is summed up in the
+work of the Eastern sage Albyrouny and of Edrisi, the Arabic Ptolemy
+(A.D. 1099-1154), who found a home at the Christian Court of Roger of
+Sicily. In the far East and West alike, in Spain and Morocco, in
+Khorassan and India, Moslem science was now driven to take refuge among
+strangers on the decay of the Caliphates of Bagdad and Cordova. The
+Ghaznevides Mahmoud and Massoud in the first half of the eleventh
+century, attracted to their Court not only Firdusi and Avicenna, but
+Albyrouny, whose "Canon" became a text-book of Mohammedan science, and
+who, for the range of his knowledge and the trained subtlety of his
+mind, stands without a rival for his time.[14] The Spanish school, as
+resulting directly in Edrisi, half Moslem, half Christian, like his
+teachers, is of still more interest. One of its first traces may be
+found in the Latin translation of the Arab _Almanack_ made by Bishop
+Harib of Cordova in 961. It was dedicated and presented to Caliph
+Hakem--one of our clearest proofs of the conscious interworking of
+Catholic and Mahometan philosophy in the age of Pope Sylvester II. and
+of our own St. Dunstan. A century later, on the recapture of Toledo by
+Alfonso VI. (1084), an observatory was built, served by Jews and
+Moslems, who had been steadily producing, through the whole of the
+eleventh century, astronomical and geographical tables and dictionaries.
+A whole tribe of commentators on place-names, on the climates and
+constellations, and on geographical instruments was at work in this last
+age of the Spanish Caliphate, and their results are brought together by
+Abou Hamid of Granada and by Edrisi.
+
+[Footnote 14: The school of Persian mathematicians who produced the maps
+of Alestakliry-Ibn-Hankal, the book of latitudes and longitudes,
+ascribed by Abulfeda to Alfaraby the Turk, was the immediate descendant
+of Albyrouny.]
+
+Born at Ceuta in 1099, this great geographer travelled through Spain,
+France, the Western Mediterranean, and North Africa before settling at
+the Norman Court of Palermo. Roger, the most civilised prince in
+Christendom, the final product of the great race of Robert Guiscard and
+William the Conqueror, valued Edrisi at his proper worth, refused to
+part with him, and employed men in every part of the world to collect
+materials for his study. Thus the Moor gained, not only for the Moslem
+world but for Southern Europe as well, an approximate knowledge even of
+Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the coasts of the White Sea. His work,
+dedicated to Roger and called after him, _Al-Rojary_, was rewarded with
+a peerage, and it was as a Sicilian Count that he finished his Celestial
+Sphere and Terrestrial Disc of silver, on which "was inscribed all the
+circuit of the known world and all the rivers thereof."
+
+Each of his great Arabic predecessors, along with Eratosthenes, Ptolemy,
+and Strabo, was welded into his system--the result of fifteen years of
+abstract study, following some thirty of practical activity in
+travel.[15]
+
+[Footnote 15: The world he divided by climates in the Greek manner,
+taking no account of political divisions, or of those resting on
+language or religion. Each climate was further subdivided into ten
+sections. In the shape of Africa he followed Ptolemy.]
+
+A special note may be made on Edrisi's account of the voyage of the
+Lisbon "Wanderers" ("Maghrurins") some time before 1147, the date of the
+final Christian capture of the Portuguese capital. For this is the
+earliest recorded voyage, since the rise of Islam, definitely undertaken
+on the Western Ocean to learn what was on it and what were its limits.
+The Wanderers, Edrisi tells us, were eight in number, all related to one
+another. They built a transport boat, took on board water and provisions
+for many months, and started with the first east wind. After eleven
+days, they reached a sea whose thick waters exhaled a fetid odour,
+concealed numerous reefs, and were but faintly lighted. Fearing for
+their lives, they changed their course, steered southwards twelve days,
+and so reached an island, possibly Madeira,--which they called El Ghanam
+from the sheep found there, without shepherd or anyone to tend them. On
+landing, they found a spring of running water and some wild figs. They
+killed some sheep, but found the flesh so bitter that they could not eat
+it, and only took the skins. Sailing south twelve more days, they found
+an island with houses and cultivated fields, but as they neared it they
+were surrounded, made prisoners, and carried in their own boats to a
+city on the sea-shore, to a house where were men of tall stature and
+women of great beauty. Here they stayed three days, and on the fourth
+came a man, the King's interpreter, who spoke Arabic, and asked them who
+they were and what they wanted. They replied they were seeking out the
+wonders of the ocean and its limits. At this the King laughed heartily,
+and said to the interpreter: "Tell them my father once ordered some of
+his slaves to venture out on that sea and after sailing across the
+breadth of it for a month, they found themselves deprived of the light
+of the sun and returned without having learnt anything." Then the
+Wanderers were sent back to their prison till a west wind arose, when
+they were blindfolded and put on board a boat, and after three days
+reached the mainland of Africa. Here they were put ashore, with their
+hands tied, and so left. They were released by the Berbers, and after
+their reappearance in Spain, a "street at the foot of the hot bath in
+Lisbon," concludes Edrisi, "took the name of Street of the Wanderers."
+
+On the other extremity of the Moslem world, on the south-east coast of
+Africa, there was more real progress. By Edrisi's day that important
+addition of Arabic travellers and merchants to the geographical
+knowledge of the world, by the remarkable trade-ventures of the
+Emosaids, had been already made.
+
+It had taken long in the making.
+
+[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO EDRISI. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+About A.D. 742, ten years after the battle of Tours, the Emosaid family,
+descended from Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Mahomet, tried to make
+Said, their clan-chieftain, Ali's great-grandson, Caliph at Damascus.
+The attempt was foiled, and the whole tribe fled, sailed down the Red
+Sea and African coast, and established themselves as traders in the Sea
+of India. First of all, Socotra seems to have been their mart and
+capital, but before the end of the tenth century they had founded
+merchant colonies at Melinda, Mombasa, and Mozambique, which, in their
+turn, led to settlements on the opposite coasts of Asia. Thus the trade
+of the Indian Ocean was secured for Islam, the first Moslem settlements
+arose in Malabar, and when the Portuguese broke into this _mare
+clausum_, in 1497-8, they found a belt of "Moorish" coast towns, from
+Magadoxo to Quiloa, controlling both the Indian and the inland African
+trades, as Ibn Batuta had found in 1330.
+
+By Edrisi's day, moreover, the steady persistence and self-evident
+results of Arabic overland exploration had become recognised by a sort
+of "Traveller's Doctorate." It was not enough for the highest knowledge
+to study the Koran, and the Sunna, and the Greek philosophers at home;
+for a perfect education, a man must have travelled at least through the
+length and breadth of Islam. All the successors of Edrisi, in the
+twelfth and thirteenth centuries, shew this mingling of science and
+religion, of practical and speculative energy.
+
+Tradition still governed Moslem thought, but there had come into being a
+sort of half-acknowledged appendix to tradition, made up of real
+observations on men and things. And in these observations, geographical
+interest was the main factor.
+
+The Life of Al Heravy of Herat (1173-1215), the "Doctor Ubiquitus" of
+Islam in the age of the Crusades, gives us a picture of another
+Massoudy. The friend of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, the "first man
+among Christians," Heravy seems able in his own person to break down the
+partition wall of religious feud by the common interest of science. In
+1192 he was offered the patronage of the Crusading princes, and Richard
+Coeur de Lion begged for the favour of an interview, and begged in
+vain. Heravy, who had been on one of his exploring journeys, angrily
+refused to see the King whose men had broken his quiet and wasted his
+time. Before his death, he had run over the world (men said) from China
+to the Pyrenees and from Abyssinia to the Danube, "scribbling his name
+on every wall," and his survey of the Eastern Empire was the single
+matter in which Turks and "Romans" made common cause,--for Greeks and
+Latins at Byzantium alike read Heravy, like a Christian doctor. Another
+example of the same catholic spirit is "Yacout the Roman,"[16] whose
+_Dictionary_, finished in the earlier half of the thirteenth century,
+was a summary of geographical advance since Edrisi, like the similar
+work of Ibn Said, of the same period.
+
+[Footnote 16: Yacout "the ruby," originally a Greek slave, who made a
+brave but fruitless attempt to change his name into Yacoub or Jacob,
+became one of the greatest of Arab encyclopaedists, was checked by the
+hordes of Genghiz-Khan in his exploration of Central Asia, and died
+1229.]
+
+But as a matter of fact, the balance both of knowledge and power was now
+shifting from Islam to Christendom. The most daring and successful
+travellers after the rise of the Mongols were the Venetian Marco Polo
+and the Friar Preachers who revived Chinese Christianity (1270-1350);
+Madeira and the Canaries (off Moslem Africa) were finally rediscovered
+not by Arabic enterprise, but by the Italian Malocello in 1270, by the
+English Macham in the reign of our Edward III., and by Portuguese ships
+under Genoese captains in 1341; in 1291 the Vivaldi ventured beyond Cape
+Bojador, where no Moor had ever been, except by force of storm, as in
+the doubtful story of Ibn Fatimah, who "first saw the White Headland,"
+Cape Blanco, between Cape Bojador and Cape Verde.
+
+In the fourteenth century the map of Edrisi was superseded by the new
+Italian plans and coast-charts, or Portolani. As the Moslem world fell
+into political disorder, its science declined. "Judicial astrology"
+seemed gaining a stronger and stronger hold over Islam, and the
+irruption of the Turks gradually resulted in the ruin of all the higher
+Moslem culture. Superstition and barbarism shared the honour and the
+spoils of this victory.
+
+But two great names close the five hundred years of Arab learning.
+
+1. Ibn Batuta (_c._ 1330), who made himself as much at home in China as
+in his native Morocco, is the last of Mohammedan travellers of real
+importance. Though we have only abridgments of his work left to us,
+Colonel Yule is well within his rights in his deliberate judgment, "that
+it must rank at least as one of the four chief guide books of the
+Middle Ages," along with the _Book of Ser Marco Polo_ and the journals
+of the two Friar-travellers, Friar Odoric and Friar William de
+Rubruquis.
+
+2. With _Abulfeda_ the Eastern school of Moslem geography comes to an
+end, as the Western does with Ibn Batuta. In the early years of the
+fourteenth century he rewrote the "story and description of the Land of
+Islam," with a completeness quite encyclopaedic. But his work has all the
+failings of a compilation, however careful, in that, or any, age. It is
+based upon information, not upon inspection; it is in no sense original.
+As it began in imitation, so it ended. If it rejects Ptolemy, it is only
+to follow Strabo or someone else; on all the mathematical and
+astronomical data its doctrine is according to the Alexandrians of
+twelve hundred years before, and this last _precis_ of the science of a
+great race and a great religion can only be understood in the light of
+its model--in Greek geography.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+EARLY CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS.
+
+CIRCA 333-867.
+
+
+The special interest of the life and work of Henry the Navigator
+(1394-1460) lies in the relation it bears to the general expansion
+of Europe and Christendom--an expansion that had been slowly gathering
+strength since the eleventh century. But even before the tide had
+turned in the age of Hildebrand and the First Crusade, even from the
+time that Constantine founded the Christian Empire of Rome, the Christian
+Capital on the Bosphorus, and the State Church of the Western
+World,--pilgrimage, trade, conquest, and colonisation had been
+successively calling out the energies of the moving races, "the motor
+muscles" of Europe. It is through the "generous Henry, Prince of
+Portugal," that this activity is brought to its third and triumphant
+stage--to the time of Columbus and Da Gama and Magellan,--but it is only
+by tracing the earlier progress of that outward movement, which has made
+Europe the ruling civilisation of the world, that we can fairly grasp
+the import of that transition in which Henry is the hero.
+
+More than any other single man he is the author of the discovering
+movement of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries,--and by
+this movement India has been conquered, America repeopled, the world
+made clear, and the civilisation which the Roman Empire left behind has
+conquered or utterly overshadowed every one of its old rivals and
+superiors--Islam, India, China, Tartary.
+
+But before the fifteenth century, before the birth of Prince Henry,
+Christendom, Greek and Latin, was at best only one of the greater
+civilising and conquering forces struggling for mastery; before the age
+of the Crusades, before the eleventh century, it was plainly weaker than
+the Moslem powers; it seemed unable to fight against Slav or
+Scandinavian Heathendom; it was only saved by distance from becoming a
+province of China; India, the world's great prize, was cut off from it
+by the Arabs. Even before the rise of Islam, under Constantine or
+Theodosius or Justinian, the Church-State of the Byzantine Caesars,
+though then ruling in almost every province of Trajan's empire, was in a
+splendid but sure decline from the exhaustion of the southern races. Our
+story then begins naturally with the worst time and climbs up for a
+thousand years, from the Heathen and Mohammedan conquests of the fifth
+and seventh centuries, to the reversal of that judgment, of those
+conquests, in the fifteenth. The expansion of Europe is going on all
+this time, but at our beginning, in the years before and after Pope
+Gregory the Great, even the legacy of Greece and Rome, in wide knowledge
+of the world and practical exploring energy, seemed to have passed from
+sight.
+
+And in the decline of the old Empire, while Constantine and Justinian
+are said to receive and exchange embassies with the Court of China,
+there is no real extension of geographical knowledge or outlook.
+Christian enterprise in this field is mainly one of pilgrimage, and the
+pilgrims only cease to be important when the Northmen, first Heathen,
+then Christian, begin to lead, in a very different manner, the expansion
+of Europe. Into this folk-wandering of the Vikings, the first great
+outward movement of our Europe in the Middle Ages, is absorbed the
+reviving energy of trade, as well as the ever-growing impulse of
+pilgrimage. The Vikings are the highest type of explorers; they do not
+merely find out new lands and trade with them, but conquer and colonise
+them. They extend not merely the knowledge, but the whole state and
+being of Europe, to a New World.
+
+Lastly, the partial activity of commerce and religion made universal and
+"political" by the leading western race--for itself only--is taken up by
+all Christendom in the Crusades, borrowed in idea from Spain, but
+borrowed with the spirit of the Norse rovers, and made universal for the
+Latin world, for the whole federation of Rome. In the eleventh, twelfth,
+and thirteenth centuries we have the preparation for the discovery and
+colonisation of the outside world by Europeans in the fifteenth,
+sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries of the Christian era.
+
+From the conversion of Constantine to the Reformation the story of
+Christendom is unbroken; the later Roman Empire is the Church-State of a
+Christian Prince, as modern Europe is the Church-State of a nominally
+Christian society. Mediaeval Europe thought of itself as nothing but the
+old world-state under religion; from Spain to Russia men were living
+under a Holy Roman Empire of an Italian, or Teutonic, or Byzantine, or
+independent type. England and Russia were not parts of the Germanic
+revival of Charlemagne, but they had just the same two elements dominant
+in their life: the classical tradition and the Christian Church.
+
+And so throughout this time, the expansion of this society--by whatever
+name we may call it, discovery, exploration, geographical knowledge--has
+a continuous history. But before the rise of Islam, in the seventh
+century, throws Christendom into its proper mediaeval life, before the
+new religion begins the really new age, at the end of which lived Henry
+himself, we are too far from our subject to feel, for instance in the
+fourth and fifth-century pilgrims and in Cosmas Indicopleustes, anything
+but a remote preparation for Henry's work. It is only with the seventh
+century, and with the time of our own Bede and Wilfrid, that the
+necessary introduction to our subject really begins.
+
+Yet as an illustration of the general idea, that discovery is an early
+and natural outlet of any vigorous society and is in proportion to the
+universal activity of the State, it is not without interest to note that
+Christian Pilgrimage begins with Constantine. This, the first
+department of exploring energy, at once evidences the new settlement of
+religion and politics. Helena, the Emperor's mother, helped, by her
+visit to Palestine, her church at Bethlehem, and her discoveries of
+relics in Jerusalem, to make a ruling fashion out of the custom of a few
+devotees; and eight years after the council of Nicaea, in 333, appeared
+the first Christian geography, as a guide-book or itinerary, from
+Bordeaux to the Holy Places of Syria, modelled upon the imperial survey
+of the Antonines. The route followed in this runs by North Italy,
+Aquileia, Sirmium, Constantinople, and Asia Minor, and upon the same
+course thousands of nameless pilgrims journeyed in the next three
+hundred years, besides some eight or nine who have left an account
+mainly religious in form, but containing in substance the widest view of
+the globe then possible among Westerns.
+
+Most of the pilgrims, like Jerome's friend Paula, Bishop Eucherius, and
+Melania, tread the same path and stop at the same points, but three or
+four of them distinctly add some fresh knowledge to the ordinary
+results.
+
+St. Silvia, of Aquitaine (_c._ 385), not only travels through Syria, she
+visits Lower Egypt and Stony or Sinaitic Arabia, and even Edessa in
+Northern Mesopotamia, on the very borders of hostile and heathen Persia.
+"To see the monks" she wanders through Osrhoeene, comes to Haran, near
+which was "the home of Abraham and the farm of Laban and the well of
+Rachel," to the environs of Nisibis and Ur of the Chaldees, lost to the
+Roman Empire since Julian's defeat; thence by "Padan-aram" back to
+Antioch. When crossing the Euphrates the pilgrims saw the river "rush
+down in a torrent like the Rhone, but greater," and on the way home by
+the great military road, then untravelled by Saracens, between Tarsus
+and the Bosphorus, Silvia makes a passing note on the strength and
+brigand habits of the Isaurian mountaineers, who in the end saved
+Christendom from the very Arabs with whom our pilgrim couples them.
+
+Again, Cosmas Indicopleustes, in the time of Justinian, is at the end,
+as Silvia is at the beginning, of a definite period, the period of the
+Christian empire of Rome, while still "Caesarean" and not merely
+Byzantine, "patrician" and not papal, "consular" and not Carolingian.
+
+And contemporary with Cosmas are two of the chief among the earlier or
+primitive pilgrims, Theodosius and Antoninus the Martyr. The first-named
+indulges in a few excursions--in fancy--beyond his known ground of
+Palestine, going as far east as Susa and Babylon, "where no one can live
+for the serpents and hippo-centaurs," and south to the Red Sea and its
+two arms, "of which the eastern is called the Persian Gulf," and the
+western or Arabian runs up to the "thirteen cities of Arabia destroyed
+by Joshua,"--but, for the rest, his knowledge is not extensive or
+peculiar. Antoninus of Placentia, on the other hand, is very
+interesting, a sort of older Mandeville, who mixes truth and its
+opposite in fairly even proportions and with a sort of resolute
+partiality to favourite legends.
+
+He tells us how Tripolis has been ruined by the late earthquake (July 9,
+551); how silk and various woven stuffs are sold at Tyre; how the
+pilgrims scratched their names on the relics shewn in Cana of
+Galilee--"and here I, sinner that I am, did inscribe the names of my
+parents"; how Bethshan, the metropolis of Galilee, "is placed on a
+hill," though really in the plain; how the Samaritans hate Christians
+and will hardly speak to them; "and beware of spitting in their country,
+for they will never forgive it"; how "the dew comes down upon Hermon the
+Little, as David says, 'The dew of Hermon that fell upon the hill of
+Zion'"; how nothing can live or even float in the Dead Sea, "but is
+instantly swallowed up"--as exact an untruth as was ever told by
+traveller; how the Jordan opens a way for pilgrims "and stands up in a
+heap every year at the Epiphany during the baptism of Catechumens, as
+David told, 'The sea saw that and fled, Jordan was driven back'"; how at
+Jericho there is a Holy Field "sown by the Lord with his own hand." A
+report had been spread that the salt pillar of Lot's wife had been
+"lessened by licking"; "it was false," said Antoninus, the statue was
+just the same as it had always been.
+
+In Jerusalem the pilgrims first went up the Tower of David, "where he
+sang the Psalter," and into the Basilica of Sion, where among other
+marvels they saw the "Corner-stone that the builders rejected," which
+gave out a "sound like the murmuring of a crowd."
+
+We come back again to fact with rather a start when told in the next
+section of the Hospitals for 3000 sick folk near the Church of St. Mary,
+close to Sion; then with the footprints and relics of Christ, and the
+miraculous flight of the Column of Scourging--"carried away by a cloud
+to Caesarea," we are taken through a fresh set of "impressions."
+
+The same wild notions of place and time and nature follow the Martyr
+through Galilee to Gilboa, "where David slew Goliath and Saul died,
+where no dew or rain ever falls, and where devils appear nightly,
+whirled about like fleeces of wool or the waves of the sea"--to
+Nazareth, where was the "Beam of Christ the Carpenter"--to Elua, where
+fifteen consecrated virgins had tamed a lion and trained it to live with
+them in a cell--to Egypt, where the Pyramids become for him the
+"_twelve_ Barns of Joseph," for the legend had not yet insisted that the
+actual number should be made to fit the text of the seven years of
+plenty.
+
+But with all this Antoninus now and then gives us glimpses of a larger
+world. In Jerusalem he meets AEthiopians "with nostrils slit and rings
+about their fingers and their feet." They were so marked, they told him,
+by the Emperor Trajan "for a sign."
+
+In the Sinai desert he tells us of "Saracen" beggars and idolaters; in
+the Red Sea ports he sees "ships from India" laden with aromatics; he
+travels up the Nile to the Cataracts and describes the Nilometer at
+Assouan, and the crocodiles in the river; Alexandria he finds "splendid
+but frivolous, a lover of pilgrims but swarming with heresies."
+
+But far more wonderful than the practical jumble of Antoninus Martyr is
+the systematic nonsense of Cosmas, who invented or worked out a theory
+and scheme of the world, a "Christian topography," which required
+nothing more than a complete disuse of human reason. His assurance was
+equal to his science.
+
+It may have been his voyage to India, or his monastic profession, or his
+study of Scripture, or something unknown that made him take up the part
+of a Christian Aristotle; in any case he felt himself called into the
+field to support the cause of St. Augustine against infidelity, and to
+refute the "anile fable" of the Antipodes. Cosmas referred men back to
+Revelation on such matters, and his system was "demonstrated from
+Scripture, concerning which a Christian is not allowed to doubt." Man by
+himself could not understand the world, but in the Bible it was all
+clear enough. And from the Bible this much was beyond dispute.
+
+The universe is a flat parallelogram; and its length is exactly double
+of its breadth. In the centre of the universe is our world surrounded by
+the ocean, and by an outer world or ring where men lived before the
+Flood. Noah and his Ark came over sea from this to the present earth.
+
+To the north of our world is a great hill, like the later Moslem and
+older Hindu "Cupola of the Earth," which perhaps was Cosmas' own
+original. Round this the sun and moon revolve, making day and night as
+they appear or disappear behind it.
+
+The sky consists of four walls meeting in the "dome of heaven" over the
+floor on which we live, and this sky is "glued" to the edges of the
+outer world, the world of the Patriarchs.
+
+But this heaven is also cut in two by the firmament, lying between our
+atmosphere and that "New Heaven and New Earth wherein dwelleth
+Righteousness"; and the floor of this upper world is covered by the
+"waters that be above the firmament"; above this is Paradise, and below
+the firmament live the angels, as "ministers" and "flaming fires" and
+"servants of God to men."
+
+The proofs of this are simple, mainly resting on some five texts from
+the Old Testament and two passages of St. Paul.
+
+First the Book of Genesis declared itself to be the "Book of the
+Generation of the Heaven and the Earth"--that is, of everything in the
+heavens, and the earth. But the "old wives' fable of the Antipodes"
+would make the heaven surround and contain the earth, and God's word
+would have to be changed "These are the generations of the sky." For the
+same truth--the twofold and independent being of heaven and
+earth--Cosmas quotes the additional testimony of Abraham, David, Hosea,
+Isaiah, Zachariah, and Melchisedek, who clenched the case against the
+Antipodes. "For how indeed could even rain be said to 'fall' or to
+'descend,' as in the Psalms and the Gospels, in those regions where it
+could only be said to 'come up'?"
+
+Again, the world cannot be a globe, or sphere, or be suspended in
+mid-air, or in any sort of motion, for what say the Scriptures? "Earth
+is fixed on its foundations"; "Thou hast laid the foundations of the
+earth and it abideth"; "Thou hast made the round world so sure, that it
+cannot be moved"; "Thou hast made all men to dwell upon the face of the
+whole earth"--not "upon every face," or upon any more than one
+face--"upon _the_ face," not the back or the side, but the broad flat
+face we know. "Who then with these passages before him, ought even to
+speak of Antipodes?"
+
+So much against false doctrine; to establish the truth is simpler still.
+For the same St. Paul, who disposes of science falsely so called, does
+not he speak, like David, like St. Peter and St. John, of our world as a
+tabernacle? "If our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved," "We
+that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened," which points to
+the natural conclusion of enlightened faith, that Moses' tabernacle was
+an exact copy of the universe. "See thou make all things according to
+the pattern shewn thee in the Mount." So the four walls, the covered
+roof, the floor, the proportions of the Tent of the Wilderness, shewed
+us in small compass all that was in nature.
+
+If any further guidance were needed, it was ready to hand in the Prophet
+Isaiah and the Patriarch Job. "That stretcheth out the heavens as a
+curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in"; "Also can any
+understand the spreadings of the clouds or the noise of his tabernacle?"
+
+The whole reasoning is like the theological arguments on the effects of
+man's fall upon the stars and the vegetable world, or the atmospheric
+changes due to angels.
+
+But though Cosmas states his system with the claims of an article of
+faith, there were not wanting men, and even saints, who stood out on the
+side of reason in geography in the most traditional of times. Isidore of
+Seville, and Vergil, the Irish missionary of the eighth century, both
+maintained the old belief of Basil and Ambrose, that the question of the
+Antipodes was not closed by the Church, and that error in this point was
+venial and not mortal. For the positive tabernacle-system of "the man
+who sailed to India" there was never much support; his work was soon
+forgotten, though it has been called by some paradox-makers "the great
+authority of the Middle Ages"--in the face of the known facts, that this
+was the real position of Ptolemy and Strabo, that no one can speak of
+the "Middle Ages" in this unqualified way any more than of the Modern or
+Ancient worlds; and that Cosmas is almost unnoticed in the great age of
+mediaeval science, from the twelfth century.
+
+And whatever we may think of Cosmas and his _Christian System of the
+Whole World, Evolved out of Holy Scripture_, he is of interest to us as
+the last of the old Christian geographers, closing one age which,
+however senile, had once been in the truest sense civilised, and
+preparing us to enter one that in comparison is literally dark. From the
+age of Justinian, and from the rise of Islam in the early years of the
+seventh century, the geographical knowledge of Christendom is on a par
+with its practical contraction and apparent decline. There are
+travellers; but for the next five hundred years there are no more
+theorists, cosmographers, or map-makers of the Universe or Habitable
+Globe.
+
+From the time that Islam, after a century of world-conquest, began to
+form itself into an organised state, or federation of states, in the
+later eighth and earlier ninth centuries A.D.,--thus making itself until
+the thirteenth century the principal heir of the older Eastern
+culture,--Christendom was content to take its geography, its ideas of
+the world in general, from the Arabs, who in their turn depended upon
+the pre-Christian Greeks.
+
+The relation of Ptolemy and Strabo to modern knowledge is best seen
+through the work of the Arabic geographers, but the Saracens did much to
+destroy before they began to build up once more. As the northern
+barbarians of the fifth century interrupted the hope of a Christian
+revival of Pagan literature and science, so the Moslems of the seventh
+and eighth cut short the Catholic and Roman revival of Justinian and
+Heraclius, in which the new faith and the old state had found a working
+agreement.
+
+Between Cosmas and the Viking-Age, "Christian," "Roman," "Western"
+exploration falls within very narrow limits: the few pilgrims whose
+recollections represent to us the whole literature of travel in the
+seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, add nothing fresh even of
+practical discovery; theory and theoretical work has ceased altogether,
+and the first stirrings of the new life in the commerce and voyages of
+Amalphi, and in the sudden and splendid outburst of Norse life in its
+age of piracy, are not yet, are not really before the world until the
+time of Alfred of England, of Charles the Bald, of Pope Nicholas I. "the
+Great." Yet such as it is, this pilgrim stage of European development
+stands for something. Religion, as it is the first agent in forming our
+modern nations, is the first impulse towards their expansion. And to us
+there is a special interest.
+
+For the best known of western travellers in this darkest of the
+Christian ages (600-870 A.D.), Arculf and Willibald, are both connected
+with England and the beginnings of English science in the age of Bede.
+
+Arculf, a Frank or Gallican Bishop, who about 690 visited, first of
+"Latin" writers since the Mohammedan conquest, Jerusalem, the Jordan
+valley, Nazareth, and the other holy places of Syria, was driven by
+storms on his return to the great Irish monastery of Iona. There he
+described his wonders to the Abbot Adamnan, who then sat in the seat of
+the Irish Apostles Patrick and Columba, and by Adamnan this narrative
+was presented and dedicated to Aldfrith the Wise, last of the great
+Northumbrian Kings, in his Court at York (_c._ A.D. 701). Not only does
+the original remain to us, but we have also two summaries of it, one
+longer, another shorter, made by Baeda, the Venerable Bede, as a useful
+manual for Englishmen, _Concerning the Holy Sites_. We are again
+reminded by this how constantly fresh life is growing up under an
+appearance of death. The conversion of England, which Gregory the Great,
+Theodore, and the Irish monks had carried through in the seventh, that
+darkest of Christian centuries, was now bearing its fruit in the work
+of Bede, who was really the sign of a far more permanent intellectual
+movement than his own, and in that of Boniface, Wilbrord, and Willibald,
+who began to win for Christendom in Germany more than a counterpoise for
+her losses in the South and East, from Armenia to Spain.
+
+Arculf is full of the mystical unscientific spirit of the time. He notes
+in Jerusalem "a lofty column, which at mid-day casts no shadow, thus
+proving itself to be the centre of the earth for as David says, 'God is
+my king of old, working salvation _in the midst of the_ earth.'"
+
+"At the roots of Lebanon" he comes to the place "where the Jordan has
+its rise from two fountains Jor and Dan, whose waters unite in the
+single river Jordan." In the Dead Sea a lighted lamp would float safely,
+and no man could sink if he tried; the bitumen of this place was almost
+indissoluble; the only fruit here about were the apples of Sodom, which
+crumbled to dust in the mouth.
+
+The three churches on the top of Tabor were "according to the three
+tabernacles described by Peter."
+
+From Damascus Arculf made for the port of Tyre, and so came by Jaffa to
+Egypt. Alexandria he found so great that he was one entire day in merely
+passing through. Its port he thought "difficult of access and something
+like the human body in shape, with a narrow mouth and neck, then
+stretching out far and wide."
+
+The great Pharos tower was still lit up every night with torches. Here
+was the "Emporium of the whole world"; "countless merchants from all
+parts": the "country rainless and very fertile."
+
+The Nile was navigable to the Town of Elephants; beyond this, at the
+Cataracts, the river "runs in a wild ruin down a cliff." Its
+embankments, its canals, and even its crocodiles, "not so large as
+ravenous," are all described, and Arculf, returning home by
+Constantinople, concludes with an account of the capital of Christendom,
+"beyond doubt the metropolis of the Roman Empire, and by far the
+greatest city therein"; lastly, as the pilgrim sails by Sicily he sees
+the "isle of Vulcan vomiting smoke by day and flame by night, with a
+noise like thunder, which is always fiercer on Fridays and Saturdays."
+
+Willibald, a nephew of St. Boniface and related through his mother to
+King Ina of Wessex, started for the East about 721, passed ten years in
+travel, and on his return followed his countrymen to mission work and to
+death among the heathen of Upper Germany. He went out by Southampton and
+Rouen, by Lucca and the Alps, to Naples and Catania, "where is Mount
+Etna; and when this volcano casts itself out they take St. Agatha's veil
+and hold it towards the fire, which ceases at once." Thence by Samos and
+Cyprus to Antaradus and Emesda, "in the region of the Saracens," where
+the whole party, who had escaped the Moslem brigands of Southern Gaul,
+were thrown into prison on suspicion of being spies. A Spaniard made
+intercession for them and got their release; but Willibald went up
+country one hundred miles, and cleared himself of all suspicion before
+the Caliph at Damascus. "We have come from the West, where the sun has
+his setting, and we know of no land beyond--nothing but water." This was
+too far for spies, he pleaded, and the Caliph agreed, and gave him a
+pass for all the sites of Palestine, with which he traversed the length
+and breadth of the Holy Land four times, finding the same trouble in
+leaving as he had found in entering. Like Arculf, he saw the fountains
+of Jor-Dan, the "glorious church" of Helena at Bethlehem, the tombs of
+the Patriarchs at Hebron, the wonders of Jerusalem. Especially was he
+moved at the sight of the columns in the Church of the Ascension on
+Olivet, "for that man who can creep between those columns and the wall
+is freed from all his sins." Tyre and Sidon he passed again and again
+"on the coast of the Adriatic Sea (as he calls the Levant), _six_ miles
+from one another"; at last he got away to Constantinople, with some
+safely smuggled trophies of pilgrimage, and some "balsam in a calabash,
+covered with petroleum," but the customs officers would have killed all
+of them if the fraud had been found out--so Willibald believed. After
+two years of close intercourse with the Greek Christians of New Rome,
+living in a "cell hollowed out of the side of a church" (possibly Saint
+Sophia), the first of English-born travellers returned to Old Rome, as
+Arculf had done, by sea, noticing, like him, "Theodoric's Hell" in the
+Liparis. He could not get up the mountain, though curious to see "what
+sort of a hell it was" where the Gothic "Tyrant" was damned for the
+murder of Boeethius and Symmachus, and for his own impenitent Arianism.
+But though he could not be seen or heard, all the pilgrims remarked how
+the "pumice that writers use was thrown up by the flame from the hell,
+and fell into the sea, and so was cast upon the shore and gathered up."
+
+Such was the philosophy of Catholicism about the countries of the known
+world in the eighth century, for Willibald's account was published with
+the imprimatur of Gregory III., and, with Arculf's, took rank as a
+satisfactory comment on the old Bordeaux Itinerary of four hundred years
+ago.
+
+Again, the impression given by our two chief Guide-Books, Arculf and
+Willibald, is confirmed by the monk Fidelis, who travelled in Egypt
+about 750, and by Bernard the Wise of Mont St. Michel, who went over all
+the pilgrim ground a century later (867). Fidelis, sailing up the Nile,
+was astonished at the sight of the "Seven Barns of Joseph, (the
+Pyramids) looking like mountains, but all of stone, square at the base,
+rounded in the upper part and twisted at the summit like a spire. On
+measuring a side of one of them, it was found to be four hundred feet."
+From the Nile Fidelis sailed by the freshwater canal of Necho, Hadrian,
+and Amrou, not finally blocked up till 767, direct to the Red Sea, "near
+where Moses crossed with the Israelites." The pilgrim wanted to go and
+look for Pharaoh's chariot-wheels, but the sailors were obstinate, and
+took him round the Peninsula of Sinai, down one arm of the sea and up
+another, to Eziongeber and Edom.
+
+Bernard, "the French Monk" of Mont St. Michel, took the straight route
+overland by Rome to Bari, then a Saracen city, whose Emir forwarded the
+pilgrims in a fleet of transports carrying some nine thousand Christian
+slaves to Alexandria. Here, like Willibald, Bernard found himself
+"suspect"--thrown into prison till Backsheesh had been paid, then only
+allowed to move stage by stage as fees were prompt and sufficient, for a
+traveller must pay, as an infidel, not only the ordinary tribute of the
+subject Christians of Egypt, but the "money of the road" as well. Islam
+has always made of strangers a fair mark for extortion.
+
+Safe at last in Jerusalem, the party (Bernard himself and two friends,
+one a Spaniard, the other a monk of Beneventum) were lodged "in the
+Hostel of the glorious Emperor Charles, founded for all the pilgrims who
+speak the Roman tongue," and after making the ordinary visits of
+devotion, and giving us their account of the Easter Miracle of the Holy
+Fire at the Church of the Sepulchre, they took ship for Italy, and
+landed at Rome after sixty days of misery at sea.
+
+Bernard's account closes with the Roman churches--the Lateran, where the
+"keys of the whole city are given every night into the hands of the
+Apostolic Pope," and St. Peter's on the "West side of Rome, that for
+size has no rival in the world."
+
+At the same time, or a little earlier than the Breton traveller (_c._
+808-850), another Latin had written a short tract _On the Houses of God
+in Jerusalem_, which, with Bernard's note-book, is our last geographical
+record before the age of the Northmen.
+
+A new time was coming--a time not of timid creeping pilgrims only, but
+of sea-kings and seamen, who made the ocean their home, and, for the
+North of Europe at least, broke the tradition of land journeys and
+coasting voyages.
+
+But the early pilgrims after all have their place. It is of no use
+insisting that the mental outlook of these men is infantile;--that is
+best proved by their own words, their own scale of things; but it is
+necessary to insist that in these travellers we have comparatively
+enlarged experience and knowledge; and as comparison is the only test of
+any age, or of any man therein, the very blunders and limitations of the
+past, as we see them to be, have a constant, as well as an historical,
+value to us. That is, we are always being reminded, first, how we have
+come to the present mastery over nature, over ourselves, over all being;
+and, secondly, how imperfect, how futile, our work is still, and seems
+always doomed to be, if judged from a really final standpoint, or rather
+from our own dreams of the ultimately possible.
+
+So if in the case of our mediaeval travellers their interests are the
+very reverse of ours; if they take delight in brooding over thoughts
+which to us do not seem worth the thinking; if their minds seem to rest
+as much on fable implicitly accepted as on the little amount of
+experienced fact necessary for a working life, it will not be for us to
+judge, or to pity, or to despise the men who were making our world for
+us, and through whose work we live.
+
+[Illustration: THE MAPPE-MONDE OF ST. SEVER. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+Especially we cannot afford to forget this as we reach the lowest point
+of the fortunes, the mental and material work and position and
+outlook, of Europe and Christendom. A half-barbarised world had entered
+upon the inheritance of a splendid past, but it took centuries before
+that inheritance was realised by the so altered present. In this time of
+change we have men writing in the language of Caesar and Augustine, of
+Alexander and Plato and Aristotle, who had been themselves, or whose
+fathers had been, pirates, brigands, nomades,--"wolves of the land or of
+the sea"--to Greeks or Romans of the South; who had been even to the
+Romanised provincials of the North, as in Britain, mere "dogs," "whelps
+from the kennel of barbarism," the destroyers of the order of the world.
+The boundless credulity and servile terror, the superstition and feudal
+tyranny of the earlier Middle Ages, mark the first stage of the
+reconstruction of society, when savage strong men who had conquered were
+set down beside the overworked and outworn masters of the Western world,
+to learn of them, and to make of them a more enduring race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+VIKINGS OR NORTHMEN.
+
+CIRCA 787-1066.
+
+
+The discoveries and conquests and colonies of the Norse Vikings, from
+the White Sea to North America, are the first glimpses of light on the
+sea of darkness round the little island of the known world that made up
+Christendom. And from the needs of the time these were the natural, the
+only natural beginnings of European expansion. From the rise of Islam,
+Saracens controlled the great trade-routes of the South and East. It was
+only on the West and North that the coast was clear--of all but natural
+dangers.
+
+In the Moslem Caliphate men were now busy in following up the old lines
+of trade, the immemorial traditions of the East, or as in southern
+Africa, extending the sphere of commercial activity and so of
+civilisation; men of science were commenting on the ancient texts of
+Greeks and Latins, or adapting them to enlarged knowledge.
+
+But in Christendom, in the atrophy both of mental and physical
+activity, broken for short periods and in certain lands by the revivals
+of Charles the Great, of the Isaurian Emperors, of Otto I., of Alfred
+and his House, the practical energy of Heathen enemies,--for the
+Northmen were not seriously touched by Christianity till about the end
+of the first millennium,--was the first sign of lasting resurrection.
+After the material came the spiritual revival; the whole life of the
+Middle Ages awoke on the conversion of the Northern nations and of
+Hungary; but in the abundant and brilliant energy of the eleventh, the
+twelfth, the thirteenth centuries, we must recognise the offspring of
+the irrepressible Norsemen as well as of the Irish and Frank and English
+missionaries, who in the Dark Ages of Christendom were working out the
+empire of Innocent III.
+
+In exploration, especially, it was true that theory followed
+achievement. Flavio Gioja, of Amalphi, did not apply the magnet to
+navigation--did not "give sailors the use of the magnet"--till
+navigation itself had begun to venture into the unknown Atlantic. The
+history of geographical advance in the earlier Middle Ages is thus
+rather a chronicle of adventure than of science.
+
+But the Norse discoveries are not only the first, they are the leading
+achievements of Western travel and enterprise in the true Unknown,
+between the time of Constantine and the Crusades. The central fact of
+European expansion in the Dark Ages (from the seventh to the eleventh
+century) is the advance of the Vikings to the Arctic Continent and to
+America about the year 1000. All that precedes this on the same line is
+doubtful and unimportant. For, of the other voyages to the West in the
+sixth, the eighth, the tenth centuries, which, on Columbus' success,
+turned into prior claims to the finding of the New World, there is not
+one that deserves notice.
+
+St. Brandon in 565, the Seven Spanish Bishops in 734, the Basques in 990
+may or may not have sighted their islands of "Antillia," of "Atlantis,"
+of the "Seven Cities." They cannot be verified or valued, any more than
+the journeys of the Enchanted Horse or the Third Calendar. We only know
+for certain a few unimportant, half-accidental facts, such as the visits
+of Irish hermits to Iceland and the Faeroes during the eighth century,
+and the traces of their cells and chapels--in bells and ruins and
+crosses--found by the Northmen in the ninth.
+
+It was in 787 that the Vikings first landed in England; by the opening
+of the next century they were threatening the whole coast line of
+Christendom, from Gallicia to the Elbe; in 874 they began to colonise
+Iceland; in 877 they sighted Greenland; in 922 Rolf the Ganger won his
+"Normandy" from Charles the Simple, by the Treaty of Clair-sur-Epte; as
+early as 840 was founded the first Norse or Ostman kingdom in Ireland,
+and in 878 the Norse earldom of the Orkneys, while about the same time
+the first Vikings seem to have reached the White Sea and the extreme
+North of Europe.
+
+This advance is almost as rapid as that of the early Saracens; within a
+hundred years from the first disturbance of Danes and Northmen by the
+growing, all-including power of the new national kingdoms,--within three
+generations from Halfdan the Black,--first the flying rebels, and then
+the royalists in pursuit of them, had reached the farthest western and
+northern limits of the known world, from Finisterre in "Spanland" to
+Cape Farewell in Greenland, from the North Cape in Finland to the
+Northwest Capes of "Irland," from Novgorod or "Holmgard" in Russia to
+"Valland," between the Garonne and the Loire.
+
+The chief lines of Northern advance were three--by the north-west,
+south-west, and north-east, but each of these divided, after a time,
+with important results.
+
+The first sea-path, running by Caithness, Orkneys, Shetlands, and
+Faeroes, reached Iceland, Greenland, and at last Vinland on the North
+American Continent; but from the settlements on the coasts and islands
+of northern Scotland, a fresh wave of pirate colonists swept down
+south-west into the narrow seas of St. George's Channel and beat upon
+the east and north and south of Ireland and the western coasts of
+England and of "Bretland."
+
+The second invasion ran along the North German coast, and on reaching
+the Straits of Dover, fell upon both sides of the English Channel,
+according as the resistance was stronger or weaker in Wessex or in
+Frankland. The advanced guard reunited with Ostmen and Orkneyers in the
+Scilly Isles, and in Cornwall, and pressed on to the plunder of the Bay
+of Biscay and its coasts. The most restless of all were not long in
+finding out the wealth of the Moslem Caliphate of Cordova, and trying to
+force their way up the Douro and the Tagus.
+
+The expansion on this side was not to stop till it had founded, from the
+Norman colony on the Seine, a Norman kingdom of England, and a dominion
+in the Two Sicilies, but this was the work of the eleventh century, the
+time of organisation and settled empire.
+
+On the third side of northern expansion, to east and north-east, there
+were two separate roads from the first; one taking the Baltic for its
+track, and dividing northwards to Finland, up the Gulf of Bothnia,
+eastwards to Russia and Novgorod ("Gardariki" and "Holmgard"), the other
+coasting along "Halogaland" to Biarmaland, along Lapland to Perm and the
+Archangel of later time.
+
+Of these three lines of movement by far the most vital to our subject is
+the first, which is also the earliest; the second, to south and
+south-west, hardly gives any direct results for our story; and the
+third, to east and north, is mainly concerned with Russian history.
+While King Alfred was yet unborn, Norse settlements had been permanently
+founded in the outlying points, coasts, and islands of Scotland and
+Ireland, and in the years of his boyhood, about 860, Nadodd the Faeeroe
+Jarl sighted Iceland, which had been touched at by the Irish monks in
+795 but was now to be first added as a lasting gain to Europe, as a new
+country, "Snowland"--something more than a hermitage for religious
+exiles from the world. Four years later (in 864) Gardar the Swede
+reached this new Ultima Thule, and re-named it from himself "Gardar's
+Holm." Yet another Viking, Raven Floke, followed the track of the first
+explorer in 867, before Iceland got its final name and earliest
+colonisation from the Norsemen Ingolf and Leif and the sheep-farmers of
+the Faeroes in 874, the third year of Alfred's reign in Wessex.
+
+[Illustration: THE ANGLO-SAXON MAP. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+Three years later, 877-8, at the very time of the farthest Danish
+advance in England, when Guthrum had driven the English King into the
+Isle of Athelney, the Norsemen reached their farthest point of northern
+advance in Europe; Gunnbiorn sighted a new land to the north-west, which
+he called "White Shirt," from its snow-fields, and which Red Eric a
+century later re-named Greenland--"for there is nothing like a good name
+to attract settlers." By this the Old World had come nearer than ever
+before to the discovery of a new one.
+
+Geographically, this side of the Arctic Continent falls to the share of
+North America, and once its fiords had been made in their turn centres
+of colonisation and of further progress, the actual reaching of
+Newfoundland and Cape Cod was natural enough. The real voyage lay
+between Cape Farewell and the European mainland; it was a stormy and
+dangerous passage from the Greenland Bays to Labrador, but not a long
+one, and, as far as can be judged from scanty records, neither so cold
+nor so icebound as at present.
+
+But exploration had outrun settlement. It was not till 986, more than
+one hundred years after Gunnbiorn's discovery, that Eric the Red, one of
+the chiefs of the Iceland colonists, led a band of followers and
+friends into a permanent exile in the unknown land. The beginnings of
+several villages were made in the next few years, and the first American
+discoveries followed at once. About 989 one Bjarni Herjulfson, following
+his father from Iceland to Eric's Fiord in Greenland, was driven west by
+storms first to a flat, well-wooded country, then to a mountainous
+island, covered with glaciers. He bore away with a fresh breeze and
+reached his home in Eric's Fiord in four days.
+
+But his report aroused great interest; the time had come, and the men,
+and Norse rovers, who after so much in the past were ready to dare
+anything in the future, eagerly volunteered to follow up the new route;
+Bjarni himself visiting Norway and telling his story, was blamed for his
+slackness, and when he went back to Greenland there was "much talk of
+finding unknown lands." In the year 1000 Leif, a son of Red Eric,
+started with a definite purpose of discovery. He bought Bjarni's ship,
+manned it with five and twenty men and put out. First they came to the
+land Bjarni had sighted last, and went on shore. There was no grass to
+be seen, but great snowy ridges far inland, "and all the way from the
+coast to these mountains was one field of snow, and it seemed to them a
+land of no profit,"--so they left, calling it Helluland, or Slate-land,
+perhaps the Labrador of the sixteenth century.
+
+They put to sea again and found another land, flat and wooded, with a
+white sand shore, low-lying towards the sea. This, said Leif, we will
+call after its nature, Markland (Woodland). Thence driving for two days
+before a north-east wind, they came to an island, where they landed to
+wait for good weather. They tasted the dew on the grass and thought they
+had never known anything so sweet. Sailing on again into a sound between
+the island and a ness, they reached a place where a river came out of a
+lake; into this they towed the ship and anchored, carrying their beds
+out on the shore and setting up their tents, with a large hut in the
+middle, and made all ready for wintering there.
+
+There was no want of fish food--"the largest salmon in the lake they had
+ever seen"--and the country seemed to them so good that they would need
+no fodder for cattle in the winter. There was no frost; the grass seemed
+fresh enough all the year round, and day and night were more equal than
+in Iceland or in Greenland. The crew were divided in two parts: one
+worked at the huts and the other explored the country, returning every
+night to the camp. From the wild vines found by the foragers, the whole
+district was called Vinland, and samples of these, enough to fill the
+stern boat, and of the trees and "self-sown wheat" found in the fields
+were taken back to Eric's Fiord. Thereafter Leif was called the Lucky,
+and got much wealth and fame, but Thorwald Ericson, his brother, thought
+he had not explored enough, and "determined to be talked about" even
+more than the first settler of Vinland.
+
+He put to sea with thirty men and came straight to Leif's Booths in
+Vinland, where he stayed the winter. On the first signs of spring
+Thorwald ordered his vessel to be rigged, and sent his longboat on
+ahead to explore.
+
+All alike thought the land beautiful and well-wooded; they noticed that
+the distance was small between the forest and the sea, that the beach
+was all of white sand, and that there were many islands off the shore
+and very shallow water; but they saw no trace of man or beast, except a
+wooden corn-barn on an island far to the west. After coasting all the
+summer they came back in the autumn to the booths.
+
+The next spring Thorwald went eastwards, and "towards the north along
+the land they drove upon a cape and broke their keel and stayed long to
+repair, and called the place Keel-Ness (Kjalarness) from this." Then
+they sailed away eastwards along the country, everywhere thickly wooded,
+till at one place Thorwald drew up his ships to the land and laid out
+gangways to the shore, saying, "I would gladly set up my farm here."
+
+But now they came upon the first traces of other men; far off upon the
+white sandy beach three specks were sighted--three skin boats of the
+Skraelings or Esquimaux, with three men hiding under each. Thorwald's men
+captured and killed eight of them, but one escaped "to where within the
+fiord were several dwellings like little lumps on the ground." A heavy
+drowsiness now fell upon the Norsemen, in the Saga, till a "sudden
+scream came to them, and a countless host from up the fiord came in skin
+boats and laid themselves alongside."
+
+The Vikings put up their shield-wall along the gunwale and kept off the
+arrows of the Esquimaux till they had shot them all away, and "fled off
+as fast as they could," leaving Thorwald with a mortal wound under the
+arm. He had time just to bid his men "carry him to the point he had
+wished to dwell at, for it was true that he would stay there awhile, but
+with a cross at head and feet; and so died and was buried as he had
+said." The place was called Crossness from the dead chief, but the crew
+stayed all the winter and loaded the ship with vines and grapes, and in
+the spring came back to Eric in Greenland.
+
+And now, after the first mishap, discovery became more serious--not to
+be undertaken but by strong and well-armed fleets. It was this that
+checked the expansion of these Arctic colonies; at their best they were
+too small to do more than hold their own against nature and the Skraeling
+savages in their tiny settlements along the coast, where the ice-fields
+have long since pushed man slowly but surely into the sea, with his
+painfully won patches of hay and corn and pasturage.
+
+But the colonists would never say die till they were utterly worn out;
+now they only roused themselves to conquer the new lands they had found,
+and found disputed.
+
+First a third son of Red Eric, Thorstein, bethought him to go to Vinland
+for his brother Thorwald's body. He put to sea and lost all sight of
+land, beating about in the ocean the whole summer, till he came back to
+Greenland in the first week of winter. (1004-6.)
+
+He was followed by the greatest of the Vinland sailors, Thorfinn
+Karlsefne, who really took in hand the founding of a new settlement over
+the Western Sea. He came from Norway to Iceland soon after Thorwald's
+death in 1004, passed on to Greenland about 1005, "when, as before, much
+was talked about a Vinland voyage," and in 1006 made ready to start with
+one hundred and sixty men and five women, in three ships. They had with
+them all kinds of cattle, meaning to settle in the land if they could,
+and they made an agreement, Karlsefne and his people, that each should
+have an equal share in the gain. Leif lent them his houses in Vinland,
+"for he would not give them outright," and they sailed first to
+Helluland (Labrador), where they found a quantity of foxes, then to
+Markland, well-stocked with forest animals, then to an island at the
+mouth of a fiord, unknown before, covered with eyder ducks. They called
+the new discoveries Stream Island and Stream Fiord, from the current
+that here ran out into the sea, and sent off a party of eight men, in
+search of Vinland, in a stern boat. This was driven by westerly gales
+back to Iceland, but Thorfinn, with the rest, sailed south till he came
+to Leif Ericson's "river that fell into the sea from a lake, with
+islands lying off the mouth of the stream, low grounds covered with
+wheat growing wild, and rising grounds clad with vines."
+
+Here they settled, re-named the country "Hope, from the good hope they
+had of it," and began to fell the wood, to pasture their cattle in the
+upland, and to gather the grapes.
+
+After the first winter the Skraelings came upon them, at first to traffic
+with furs and sables against milk and dairy produce, and then to fight;
+for as neither understood the other, and the natives tried to force
+their way into Thorfinn's houses, and to get hold of his men's weapons,
+a quarrel was bound to come.
+
+Fearing this, Karlsefne put a fence round the settlement and made all
+ready for battle, "and at this very time was a child born to him in the
+village, called Snorre, of Gudrid his wife, the widow of Thorstein
+Eric-son, whom he had brought with him." Then the Esquimaux came down
+upon them, "many more than before, and there was a battle, and
+Thorfinn's men won the day and saved the cattle," and their enemies fled
+into the forest.
+
+Thorfinn stayed all the winter, but towards spring he grew tired of his
+enterprise, and returned to Greenland, "taking much goods," vines, wood
+for timber, and skin-wares, and so came back to Eric's Fiord in the
+summer of 1008.
+
+Thus ends the story of the last serious effort to colonise Vinland, and
+the Saga, while giving no definite cause for this failure upon failure,
+seems to show that even the trifling annoyance of the Skraelings was
+enough to turn the scale. Natural difficulties were so immense, men were
+so few, that a pigmy enemy had all the power of the last straw in a
+load, the odd man in a council. The actual resistance of American
+natives to European colonists was never very serious in any part of the
+continent, but the distance from the starting-point and the
+difficulties of life in the new country were able, even in the time of
+Raleigh and De Soto, to keep in check men who far more readily founded
+and kept up European empires in the Indian seas.
+
+So now, though on Thorfinn's return the "talk began to turn again upon a
+Vinland voyage, as both gainful and honourable," and a daughter of Red
+Eric, named Freydis, talked men over--especially two brothers, Helge and
+Finnboge--to a fresh attempt in the country where all the House of Eric
+had tried and failed; though Leif lent his booths as before, and sixty
+able-bodied men, besides women, were found willing to go, the colony
+could never be firmly planted. Freydis and her allies sailed in 1011,
+reached the settlement, which was now for the third time recolonised,
+and wintered there;--but jealousies soon broke up the camp, Helge and
+Finnboge were murdered with all their followers, and the rest came back
+in 1013 to Greenland, "where Thorfinn Karlsefne was just ready for
+sailing back to Norway, and it was common talk that never did a richer
+ship leave Eric's Fiord than that which he steered." It was that same
+Karlsefne who gave the fullest account of all his travels, concludes the
+Saga, but whether Thorfinn ever returned to Vinland, whether there were
+any more attempts to settle at Leif's Booths or elsewhere, whether the
+account we have of these voyages is really an Eric Saga, only telling
+the deeds of Red Eric and his House--for after Bjarni, almost every
+Vinland leader is of this family--we cannot tell. We can only fancy that
+all these suggestions are probable, by the side of the few additional
+facts known to the Norse Skalds or Bards. The first of these is, that in
+983-4, Are Marson of Reykianes in Iceland was driven by storms far West
+to White Man's Land, where he was followed by Bjarni Asbrandson in 999,
+and by Gudleif Gudlangson in 1029. This was the tale of his friend Rafn,
+"the Limerick trader," and of Are Frode, his great-great-grandson, who
+called the unknown land Great Ireland.[17] True or untrue, in whatever
+way, this would be a later discovery than those of Eric and his sons, if
+the news of it did not come into Iceland or Norway till after Thorfinn
+Karlsefne's voyage, as is generally supposed. Again, the length of the
+voyage is a difficulty, and the whole matter has a doubtful look--an
+attempt to start a rival to the Eric Saga, by a far more brilliant
+success a few years earlier.
+
+[Footnote 17: By some supposed to be S. Carolina, by others the
+Canaries.]
+
+We seem to be on more certain ground in our next and last chapter of
+Viking exploration in the north-west, in the fragmentary notices of
+Greenland and Vinland voyages to the middle of the fourteenth century,
+and in the fairly clear and continuous account of the two Greenland
+settlements of the western and the eastern Bays.
+
+We hear, for instance, of Bishop Eric going over from Eric's Fiord to
+Vinland in 1121; of clergy from the Eastern Bay diocese of Gardar
+sailing to lands in the West, far north of Vinland, in 1266; of the two
+Helgasons discovering a country west of Iceland in 1285; of a voyage
+from Greenland to Markland in 1347 by a crew of seventeen men, recorded
+in 1354.
+
+Unless these are pure fabrications, they would seem to prove something
+of constant intercourse between the mother and daughter colonies of
+north-west Europe and north-east America, and something of a permanent
+Christian settlement of Northmen in the New Continent is made probable
+by assuming such intercourse. Between 981-1000, both Iceland and
+Greenland had become "Catholic in name and Christian in surname"; in
+1126 the line of Bishops of Gardar begins with Arnold, and the clergy
+would hardly have ventured on the Vinland voyage to convert Skraelings in
+an almost deserted country.
+
+The later story of the Greenland colonies, interesting as it is, and
+traceable to the year 1418, is not part of the expansion but of the
+contraction of Europe and Christendom. And the voyages of the Zeni in
+1380-95 to Greenland and the Western islands Estotiland and Drogeo,
+belong to another part; they are the last achievements of mediaeval
+discovery before Henry of Portugal begins his work, and form the natural
+end of an introduction to that work.
+
+But it is curious to notice that just as the ice and the Esquimaux
+between them were bringing to an end the last traces of Norse settlement
+in the Arctic Continent, and just as all intercourse between Vinland,
+Greenland, Iceland, and Norway entirely ceases--at any rate to record
+itself--the Portuguese sailors, taking up the work of Eric and Leif and
+Thorfinn, on another side, were rounding Cape Verde and nearing the
+southern point of Africa, and so providing for the mind of Columbus
+suggestions which resulted in the lasting discovery of the world that
+the Vikings had sighted and colonised, but were not able to hold.
+
+The Venetian, Welsh, and Arabic claims to have followed the Norsemen in
+visits to America earlier than the voyage of 1492, belong rather to the
+minute history of geographical controversy. It is a fairly certain fact
+that the north-west line of Scandinavian migration reached about A.D.
+1000 to Cape Cod and the coasts of Labrador. It is equally certain that
+on this side the Norsemen never made any further advance, lasting or
+recorded. Against all other mediaeval discoveries of a Western Continent,
+one only verdict can stand:--Not Proven.
+
+The other lines of Northern advance, though marked by equal daring and
+far greater military exploits, have less of original discovery. There
+was fighting in plenty, the giving and taking of hard knocks with every
+nation from Archangel to Cordova and from Limerick to Constantinople;
+and the Vikings, as they reached fresh ground, re-named most of the
+capes and coasts, the rivers and islands and countries of Europe, of
+North Africa, of Western Asia. Iberia became "Spanland"; Gallicia,
+"Jacobsland"[18]; Gallia, "Frankland"; Britannia, "England," "Scotland,"
+"Bretland"; Hibernia, "Irland"; Islam, outside "Spanland," passed into
+"Serkland" or Saracenland. Greece was "Grikland"; Russia, "Gardariki";
+the Pillars of Hercules, the Straits of Gibraltar, were "Norva's Sound,"
+which later days derived from the first Northman who passed through
+them. The city of Constantine was the Great Town--"Miklagard"; Novgorod
+was "Holmgard," the town of all others that most touched and influenced
+the earlier, the Viking age, of Northern expansion. For was it not their
+own proudest and strongest city-state, and "Who can stand before God, or
+the Great Novgorod?" except the men who had built it, and would rush to
+sack it if it turned against them?
+
+[Footnote 18: From St. James of Compostella.]
+
+But all this was only the passing of a more active race over ground
+which had once been well known to Rome and to Christendom, even if much
+of this was now being forgotten. It was only in upland Russia and in the
+farthest North that the Norsemen sensibly enlarged the Western world to
+east or north-east, as they did through their Iceland settlements on the
+north-west.
+
+On the south and south-west no Vikings or Royalist followers of Vikings,
+like Sigurd the Crusader, sailed the seas beyond Norva's Sound and
+Serkland,[19] and as pilgrims, traders, travellers, and conquerors in
+the Mediterranean, their work was of course not one of exploration. They
+bore a foremost share in breaking down the Moslem incubus on southern
+Europe; they visited the Holy sites
+
+    "When sacred Hierosolyma they'd relieved
+    And fed their eyes on Jordan's holy flood
+    Which the dear body of Lord God had laved";[20]
+
+they fought as Varangian body-guards in the armies of the great
+Byzantines, Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes, Basil II. or Maniakes;
+but in all this they discovered for themselves rather than for Europe.
+
+[Footnote 19: Unless White Man's Land and Great Ireland are the
+Canaries. See above, p. 63.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Camoens, _Lusiads_, (Barton's trans.).]
+
+But Russia, that is, Old Russia round Novgorod and Kiev, the White Sea,
+the North Cape and Finland coasts, as well as the more outlying parts of
+Scotland and Ireland, were first clearly known to Europe through the
+Northmen. The same race did much to open up the modern Lithuania and
+Prussia, and the conversion of the whole of Scandinavia, mother country
+and colonies alike, in the tenth and eleventh centuries added our
+Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, with all the Viking settlements, to the
+civilised world and church of Rome.
+
+First, on the eastern side, it was in 862 that the Russians invited help
+from their less dreaded neighbours around Upsala against their more
+vexatious neighbours around Kiev, and in September of the same year
+Ruric arrived at Novgorod and founded the Mediaeval Kingdom of Russia,
+which in the tenth century under Oleg, Igor, and Vladimir was first the
+plunderer, then the open enemy, and finally the ally in faith and in
+arms of the Byzantine Empire.
+
+All through this time and afterwards, till the time of the Tartar
+deluge, the intercourse of Swedes, Danes, and Northmen with Gardariki
+was constant and close, and not least in the time of the Vinland
+voyages, when Vladimir and Jaroslav reigned at Novgorod, and the two
+Olafs, the son of Trygve and the Saint, found refuge at their court
+before and after their hard rule in Norway.
+
+Olaf Trygveson's uncle had grown old in exile at Novgorod when young
+Olaf and his mother fled from Norway to join him there and were captured
+by Vikings in the Baltic and kept six years in the Gulf of Riga before
+they got to Holmgard (972).
+
+In 1019 Ingigerd of Sweden was married to Jaroslav; ten years later St.
+Olaf was driven from Norway by revolt, and flying into Russia, was
+offered a Kingdom called Volgaria--the modern Casan, whose old
+metropolis of Vulghar was known to the Arab travellers of the ninth
+century, and whose ruins can still be seen. Olaf hesitated between this
+and a pilgrim's death in Jerusalem and at last preferred to fight his
+way back to Norway.
+
+The next King of the Norsemen, Magnus the Good, came from Novgorod by
+Ladoga to Trondhjem, when Olaf's son Harold Hardrada fled back to his
+father's refuge, to the court of Jaroslav; while Magnus had been in
+exile, men had asked news of him from all the merchants that traded to
+Novgorod.
+
+Last of these earlier kings, Harold Hardrada, during all the time of his
+wild romance in East and South, before he went to Miklagard, and after
+his flight, and all the time of his service in the Varangian Guard of
+the Empress Zoe, made Novgorod his home. His pilgrim relics from Holy
+Land and his war spoils from Serkland--Africa and Sicily--were all sent
+back to Jaroslav's care till their master could come and claim them, and
+when he came at last, flying from Byzantine vengeance across the Black
+Sea into the Sea of Azov and "all round the Eastern Realm" of Kiev, he
+found his wealth untouched and Princess Elizabeth ready to be his wife
+and to help him with Russian men and money to win back Norway and to die
+at Stamford Bridge for the Crown of England (1066).
+
+Harold is the type of all Vikings, of the Norse race in its greatest,
+most restless energy. William the Conqueror, or Cnut the Great, or
+Robert Guiscard, or Roger of Sicily, are all greater and stronger men,
+but there is no "ganger," no rover, like the man who in fifty years,
+after fighting in well-nigh every land of Christians or of the
+neighbours and enemies of Christendom, yet hoped for time to sail off to
+the new-found countries and so fulfil his oath and promise to perfect a
+life of unmatched adventure by unmatched discovery. He had fought with
+wild beasts in the Arena of Constantinople; he had bathed in the Jordan
+and cleared the Syrian roads of robbers; he had stormed eighty castles
+in Africa; he had succoured the Icelanders in famine and lived as a
+prince in Russia and Northumberland; by his own songs he boasts that he
+had sailed all round Europe; but he fell, the prototype of sea-kings
+like Drake or Magellan, without one discovery. Men of his own nation and
+time had been before him everywhere, but he united in himself the work
+and adventures, the conquests and discoveries of many. He was the
+incarnation of Northern spirit, and it was through the lives and records
+of such as he that Europe became filled with that new energy of thought
+and action, that new life and knowledge, which was the ground and
+impulse of the movement led by Henry the Navigator, by Columbus, and the
+Cabots.
+
+Harold's wars kept him from becoming a great explorer, but Norse
+captains who took service under peaceful kings did something of what he
+aimed at doing.
+
+We must retrace our steps to the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan under
+King Alfred about the year 890, about the time when a Norse King, Harold
+Fair-hair, was first seen in the Scotch and Irish seas. Their discovery
+of the White Sea, the North Cape, and the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland
+was followed up by many Norsemen, such as Thorer Hund under St. Olaf, in
+the next one hundred and fifty years,[21] but Ohthere's voyage was the
+first and chief of these adventures both in motive and result.
+
+[Footnote 21: And a certain number of Viking sailors seem to have
+preceded Ohthere on his voyage to the Dwina.]
+
+"He told his lord King Alfred that he dwelt northmost of all Northmen on
+the land by the Western Sea and he wished to find how far the land lay
+right north, or whether any man dwelt north of the waste. So he went
+right north near the land;--for three days he left the waste land on the
+right and the wide sea on the left, as far as the whale hunters ever
+go"; and still he kept north three days more (to the North Cape of
+Europe).
+
+"Then the land bent right east, and with a west wind he sailed four days
+till the land bent south, and he sailed by it five days more to a great
+river--the Dwina--that lay up into the land, and where beyond the river
+it was all inhabited"--the modern country of Perm and Archangel.
+
+Here he trafficked with the people, the first he had met, except the
+Finn hunters, since leaving his fiord. Besides his wish to see the
+country, he was looking for walrus-ivory and hides.
+
+The Finns and Biarma-men (men of Archangel), it seemed to him, spoke
+nearly the same language, but between his home and this Biarmaland no
+human being lived in any fixed dwelling, and all the Northman's land was
+long and narrow and thinly peopled, decreasing in breadth as it
+stretched northward, from sixty to three days' journey.
+
+Again Alfred told how Ohthere, sailing south for a month from his house,
+having _Ireland_ on his right and coasting Norway all the time on his
+left, came to Jutland, "where a great sea runs up into the land, so vast
+that no man can see across it," whence in five days more he reached the
+coast, "from which the English came to Britain."
+
+Wulfstan, in the service of the same king, told him how he sailed in
+seven days from Sleswick to Truso and the Vistula, having Wendland (or
+Pomerania and Prussia) on his right all the way. He described "Witland
+near the Vistula and Estland and Wendland and Estmere and the Ilfing
+running from the Truso lake into Eastmere," but neither the king nor his
+captains knew enough to contradict the old idea, found in Ptolemy and
+Strabo, of Scandinavia as one vast island.
+
+Thus it was for the satisfaction of their Saxon Lord that Wulfstan and
+Ohthere, by their voyages along the coasts of Norway and Lapland, of
+Pomerania and Prussia, round the White Sea and the Gulf of Riga and
+southern Finland, added a more coherent view of north-east Europe, and
+specially of the Baltic Gulf, to Western geography; but these Norse
+discoveries, though in the service of an English king, were scarcely
+used save by Norsemen, and they must partly go to the credit of Vikings,
+as well as of Alfred the Great. Thus in 965 King Harold Grayskin of
+Norway "went and fought with the folk on the banks of the Dwina," and
+plundered them, and in 1026 Thorer Hund joined himself to a fleet sent
+by St. Olaf to the White Sea, pillaged the temple of the idol Jomala,
+and destroyed his countrymen by treachery on their way home. Where two
+expeditions are recorded they may well stand for twenty unknown and
+uneventful ones, and the same must be equally granted as to the gradual
+advance of knowledge through the unceasing attacks of the Norse kings
+and pirates on the lands to the south of the Baltic, where lived the
+Wends.
+
+Thus on the west and east, north-west and north-east, the Northmen could
+and did make a definite advance into the unknown; even the south-west
+lines of Northern invasion and settlement, though they hardly yield any
+general results to discovery, certainly led to a more thorough inclusion
+of every part of the British isles in the civilised West, through the
+Viking earldoms in Caithness, in the Orkneys and the Shetlands, in Man
+and the Hebrides, and on the coast of Ireland, where the Ostman colonies
+grew into kingdoms. From about 840, when the first of these settlements
+was fairly and permanently started, to the eleventh century, when a
+series of great defeats,--by Brian Boru at Clontarf in 1014, by Godwine
+and Harold in England from 1042 to 1066, and by the Norman and Scottish
+kings in the next generation,--practically destroyed the Norse dominion
+outside the Orkneys,--for those two hundred years, Danes and Northmen
+not only pillaged and colonised, but ruled and reorganised a good half
+of the British isles.
+
+By the time of Alfred the Viking principalities were scattered up and
+down the northern and western coasts of the greater of our two islands,
+and were fringing three sides of the lesser. About A.D. 900 the pioneer
+of the Norse kings, Harold Fair-hair, pursued his traitors, first to
+Shetlands and Orkneys, then to Caithness, the Hebrides, and Man. His son
+Eric, who followed him, ranged the Northern seas from Archangel to
+Bordeaux, and so Hakon the Good in 936 and other Norse princes in 946,
+961, 965, above all, the two great Kings Olaf in 985-9 and 1009-14,
+fought and triumphed through most of the world as known to the Northmen.
+Thus, Frankland, England, Ireland, Scotland were brought into a closer
+unity through the common danger, while as the sea-kings founded settled
+states, and these grew by alliance, first with one another and then with
+their older Christian victims, as the Norse kingdoms themselves became
+parts of Latin Christendom, after Latin Christendom had itself been
+revived and re-awakened by their attacks, the full value of the time of
+trial came out on both sides, to conquered and to conquerors.
+
+For the effects--formative, invigorative, provocative,--of the Northern
+invasions had a most direct bearing on the expansion that was to come in
+the next age even for those staid and sober Western countries, England
+and France and Italy, which had long passed through their time of
+migration, and where the Vikings could not, as in the far north-east and
+north-west, extend the area of civilisation or geographical knowledge.
+
+Lastly, the new start made by England in exploration, and trade, and
+even in pilgrimage, is plainly the result--in action and reaction--of
+the Norse and Danish attacks, waking up the old spirit of a kindred
+race, of elder cousins that had sunk into lethargy and forgotten their
+seamanship.
+
+But from the Peace of Wedmore (878) Alfred first of all began to build
+an English navy able to meet and chase and run down the Viking keels;
+then established a yearly pilgrimage and alms-giving at the Threshold of
+the Apostles in Rome; then sent out various captains in his service to
+explore as much of the world as was practicable for his new description
+of Europe. His crowning effort in religious extension was in 883, when
+Sigehelm and Athelstan bore Alfred's gifts and letters to Jerusalem and
+to India, to the Christians of San Thome; the corresponding triumph of
+the King's scientific exploration, the discoveries in the White Sea and
+the Baltic, seem to have happened nearer the end of the reign, somewhere
+before 895.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE CRUSADES AND LAND TRAVEL.
+
+CIRCA 1100-1300.
+
+
+The pilgrims were the pioneers of the growth of Europe and of
+Christendom until Charlemagne, in one sense, in another and a broader
+sense until the Crusades.
+
+Their original work, as far as it can be called original at all, was
+entirely overshadowed by the Vikings, who made real discoveries of the
+first importance in hunting for new worlds to conquer; but when first
+the Viking rovers themselves, and then the Northmen, settled in the
+colonies and the old home, took up Christianity as the Arabs had taken
+up Islam, the pilgrim spirit was translated, as it were, into new and
+more powerful forms. Through the conversion of Hungary and of
+Scandinavia,[22]--Europe, Christian Europe, was compacted together in a
+stronger Empire than that of Constantine or of Charlemagne--a spiritual
+federation, not a political unity--one and undivided not in visible
+subordination, but in a common zeal for a common faith. This was the
+state of the Latin world, and in a measure of the Greek and Russian
+world as well, by the middle of the eleventh century, when the Byzantine
+Emperors had broken the strength of the Eastern Caliphate, and recovered
+most of the realm of Heraclius; when the Roman Papacy under Leo IX.,
+Hildebrand, and Urban began its political stage, aiming, and in great
+part successfully aiming, at an Imperial Federation of Europe under
+religion; when on every side, in Spain, in France, in England, in
+Germany, and in Italy, the nations that had been slowly built into that
+_Domus Dei_ were filled with fresh life and purpose from the Norsemen,
+who, as pirates, or conquerors, or brothers, had settled among them. The
+long crusade that had gone on for four hundred years in Spain and in
+southern Italy and in the Levant, which had raged round the islands of
+the Mediterranean, or the passes of the Alps and Pyrenees, or the banks
+of the Loire and the Tiber,--was now, on the eve of the first Syrian
+Crusade of 1096, rapidly tending to decisive victory. Toledo was won
+back in 1084; the Norman dominion in the Two Sicilies had already taken
+the place of a weak and halting Christian defence against Arab emirs;
+pilgrims were going in thousands where there had been tens or units by
+the reopened land route through Hungary; only in the far East the first
+appearance of the Turks as Moslem champions,[23] threatened an ebb of
+the tide. Christendom had seen a wonderful expansion of the Heathen
+North; now that it had won the Northmen to itself, it was ready to
+imitate their example. The deliberate purpose of the Popes only gave
+direction to the universal feeling of restless and abundant energy
+longing for wider action. But it was not the crusading movement itself
+which brought so much new light, so much new knowledge of the world, to
+Europe, as the _results_ of that impulse in trade, in travel, and in
+colonisation.
+
+[Footnote 22: As completed about A.D. 1000-1040.]
+
+[Footnote 23: As in 1071, when they crushed Romans and the Byzantines in
+the battle of Manzikert.]
+
+[Illustration: THE TURIN MAP OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+(1) From the eleventh century, from the beginning of this period, all
+the greater pilgrims, Saewulf the English-merchant, King Sigurd of
+Norway, Abbot Daniel of Kiev, and their followers, have something more
+in view than piety; they have a general interest in travel; some of them
+a special interest in trade; most of them go to fight as well as to
+pray.
+
+(2) But as the warlike spirit of the Church Militant seems to grow
+tired, and its efforts at founding new kingdoms--in Antioch, in
+Jerusalem, in Cyprus, in Byzantium--more and more fruitless, the direct
+expansion of European knowledge, begins in scientific travel. Vinland
+and Greenland and the White Sea and the other Norse discoveries were
+discoveries made by a great race for itself; unconnected as they were
+with the main lines of trade or with religious sentiment, they were
+unrealised by the general consciousness of the West. A full account of
+the Norse voyages to America was lying at the Vatican when Columbus was
+searching for proofs of land within reach,--of India, as he expected, in
+the place where he found an unknown continent and a new world. But no
+one knew of these; even the Greenland colony had been lost and
+forgotten in the fifteenth century; in 1553 the English sailors reached
+the land of Archangel without a suspicion that Ohthere or Thorer Hund
+had been there six hundred years before; Russia from the thirteenth to
+the sixteenth centuries was almost out of sight and mind under the
+Tartar and Moslem rule; but the missionaries and merchants and
+travellers who followed the crusading armies to the Euphrates, and crept
+along the caravan routes to Ceylon and the China Sea, added Further and
+Central Asia--"Thesauri Arabum et divitis Indiae"--to the knowledge of
+Christendom.
+
+And as this knowledge was bound up with gain; as the Polos and their
+companions had really opened to the knowledge of the West those great
+prizes of material wealth which even the Rome of Trajan had never fully
+grasped, and which had been shared between Arabs and natives without a
+rival for so long; it was not likely to be easily forgotten. From that
+time, at the end of the thirteenth century, to the success of the
+Portuguese on another road, at the end of the fifteenth, European
+interest was fairly engaged in pressing in upon the old land-routes and
+getting an ever larger share of their profits.
+
+(3) There was another side of the same problem, a still brighter hope
+for men who could dare to try it. By finding a sea-path to the Indian
+store-house, mariners like the Venetians and Genoese, or their Spanish
+pupils, might cut into the treasuries of the world at their very source,
+found a trade-empire for their country, and gain the sole command of
+heaven on earth, of the true terrestrial paradise.
+
+Then masters of the wealth of the East and of the fighting power of the
+West, the Christian nations might crush their old enemy, Islam, between
+two weights, hammer and anvil; might fairly strike for the rule of the
+entire habitable globe.
+
+It was with thoughts of this kind, vaguely inspired by the Crusades and
+their legacy of discovery from Bagdad to Cathay, that the Vivaldi left
+Genoa to find an ocean way round Africa in 1281-91, "with the hope of
+going to the parts of the Indies"; that Malocello reached the Canary
+Islands about 1270; and that volunteers went on the same quest nearly
+twenty times in the next four generations before their spasmodic efforts
+were organised and pressed on to achievement by Henry and his Portuguese
+(1412-1497).
+
+(4) Lastly, the renaissance of Europe in the crusading age was not only
+practical but spiritual. Science was at last touched and changed by the
+new life scarcely less than the art of war, or the social state of the
+towns, or the trade of the commercial republics. And geography and its
+kindred were not long in feeling some change, though it was very slowly
+realised and made useful. The first notice of the magnet in the West is
+of about 1180; the use of this by sailors is perhaps rightly dated from
+the thirteenth century and the discoveries of Amalphi.
+
+But to return. We must trace more definitely the preparation which has
+been generally described for the work of Prince Henry first in the
+pilgrim-warriors, and the travellers of the New Age, merchants or
+preachers or sight-seers, who follow out the Eastern land-routes; next
+in the seamen who begin to break the spell of the Western Ocean and to
+open up the high seas, the true high-roads of the world; lastly in the
+students who most of all, in their maps and globes and instruments and
+theories, are the trainers and masters and spiritual ancestors of the
+Hero of Discovery.
+
+The first of these classes supplied the matter, the attractions and
+rewards of the exploring movement; the others may be said to provide the
+form by which success was reached, genius in seamanship.
+
+And the one was as much needed as the other.
+
+Human reason did its work so well because of a reasonable hope; men
+crept round Africa in face of the Atlantic storms because of the golden
+East beyond.
+
+It was as we have seen the land travellers of the twelfth and thirteenth
+and fourteenth centuries who laid open that golden East to Europe, and
+added inspiring knowledge to a dream and a tradition. And of these land
+travellers the first worth notice are Saewulf of Worcester, Adelard of
+Bath, and Daniel of Kiev, three of that host of peaceful pilgrims who
+followed the conquerors of the First Crusade (1096-9). All of these left
+their recollections and all of them are of the new time, in sharp
+contrast with the hordes of earlier pilgrims, even the most recent, like
+Bishop Ealdred of Worcester and York, who crowned William the Conqueror,
+or Sweyn Godwineson or Thorer Hund, whose visits are all mere visits of
+penitence. Every fresh conversion of the Northern nations brought a
+fresh stream of devotees to Italy and to Syria, a fresh revival of the
+fourth century habit of pilgrimage; but when mediaeval Christendom had
+been formed, and religious passion was more steady and less unworldly,
+the discoverer and observer blends with the pilgrim in all the records
+left to us.
+
+Saewulf was a layman and a trader, who went on a pilgrimage (1102), and
+became a monk at the instance of his confessor, Wulfstan, Bishop of
+Worcester. But though his narrative has been called an immense advance
+on all earlier guide-books, it ends with the Holy Land and does not
+touch even the outlying pilgrim sites, in Mesopotamia or Egypt, visited
+and described by Silvia or Fidelis.
+
+Starting some three years after the Latin capture of Jerusalem in 1099,
+the English traveller takes us up six different routes from Italy to
+Syria, evidence of the vast development of Mediterranean intercourse and
+of practical security against pirates, gained very largely since the
+second millennium began.
+
+His own way, by Monopoli, Corfu, Corinth, and Athens, took him to Rhodes
+"which once had the Idol called Colossus, one of the Seven Wonders of
+the World, but destroyed by the Persians, with nearly all the land of
+Roumania, on their way to Spain. These were the Colossians to whom St.
+Paul wrote."
+
+Thence to Myra in Lycia, "the port of the Adriatic as Constantinople is
+of the AEgean."
+
+Landing at Jaffa, after a sail of thirteen weeks, Saewulf was soon among
+the wonders of Jerusalem, that had not grown less since Arculf's day. At
+the head of the Sepulchre Church was the famous Navel of the Earth,
+"now called Compas, which Christ measured with his own hands, working
+salvation in the midst, as say the Psalms." For the same legends were
+backed by the same texts as in the sixth or seventh century.
+
+Going down to the Jordan, "four leagues east of Jericho," Arabia was
+seen beyond "hateful to all who worship God, but having the Mount whence
+Elias was carried into Heaven in a chariot of fire."
+
+Eighteen days journey from the Jordan is Mount Sinai, by way of Hebron,
+where "Abraham's Holm Oak" was still standing, and where, as pilgrims
+said, he "sat and ate with God," but Saewulf himself did not go outside
+Palestine, on this side. After travelling through Galilee and noting the
+House of Saint Archi-Triclin (Saint "Ruler-of-the-Feast"), at Cana, he
+made his way to Byzantium by sea, escaping the Saracen cruisers and
+weathering the storms that wrecked in the roads of Jaffa before his eyes
+some twenty of the pilgrim and merchant fleet then lying at anchor. But
+not only can we see from this how the religious and commercial traffic
+of the Mediterranean had been increased by the Crusades; the main lines
+of that traffic had been changed. Since the Moslem conquest, visitors
+had mostly come to Palestine through Egypt; the Christian conquest of
+Syria re-opened the direct sea route as the conversion of Hungary and
+north-east Europe had re-opened the direct land route one hundred years
+before (_c._ 1000-1100). The lines of the Danube valley and of the
+"Roman Sea" were both cleared, and the West again poured itself into the
+East as it had not done since Alexander's conquest, since the Oriental
+reaction had set in about the time of the Christian era, rising higher
+and higher into the full tide of the Persian and Arabian revivals of
+Asiatic Empire.
+
+Among the varied classes of pilgrim-crusaders in Saewulf's day were
+student-devotees like Adelard and Daniel from the two extremes of
+Christendom, England and Russia, Bath and Kiev; northern sea-kings like
+Sigurd, or Robert of Normandy; even Jewish travellers, rabbis, or
+merchants like Benjamin of Tudela. All these, as following in the wake
+of the First Crusade, and for the most part stopping at the high-water
+mark of its advance, belong to the same group and time and impulse as
+Saewulf himself, and are clearly marked off from the great thirteenth
+century travellers, who acted as pioneers of the Western Faith and
+Empire rather than as camp-followers of its armies.
+
+But except Abbot Daniel (_c._ 1106) and Rabbi Benjamin (_c._ 1160-73)
+who stand apart, none of our other pilgrim examples of twelfth century
+exploration have anything original or remarkable about them.
+
+Adelard or Athelard, the countryman of Saewulf and Willibald, is still
+more the herald of Roger Bacon and of Neckam. He is a theorist far more
+than a traveller, and his journey through Egypt and Arabia (_c._
+1110-14) appears mainly as one of scientific interest. "He sought the
+causes of all things and the mysteries of Nature," and it was with "a
+rich spoil of letters," especially of Greek and Arab manuscripts, that
+he returned to England to translate into Latin one of the chief works of
+Saracen astronomy, the Kharizmian tables. We have already met with him
+in trying to follow the transmission of Greek and Indian geography or
+world-science through the Arabs to Europe and to Christendom.
+
+[Illustration: THE SPANISH-ARABIC MAP OF 1109. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+Abbot Daniel of Kiev in himself is a very ordinary and rather mendacious
+traveller, a harmless, devout pilgrim, as careless in all matters of
+fact as Antonine the Martyr. But, as representing the beginnings of
+Russian expansion, he is of almost unique interest and value. His tract
+upon the Holy Road is one of the first proofs of his people's interest
+in the world beyond their steppes, and of that nation's readiness and
+purpose to expand Christian civilisation in the East as the Franks,
+after breaking through the Western Moslems, were now doing. Mediaeval
+Russia, Russia before the Tartars, after the Northmen, was now a very
+different thing from the "people fouler than dogs" of the Arab
+explorers. The House of Ruric had guided and organised a nation second
+to none in Europe, till it had fallen into the general lines of
+Christian development. Jury trial and justices in assize it had taken
+from the West; its church and faith and architecture, its manners and
+morals came to it from the court of the Roman Empire on the Bosphorus.
+Daniel and the other Russians, who passed through that Empire in the age
+of Nestor for trade or for religion, were the vanguard of a great
+national and race expansion that is now just beginning to "bestride the
+world."
+
+In 1022 and 1062 two monks of Kiev are recorded, out of a crowd of the
+unknown, as visitors to Syria, and about 1106, probably through the news
+of the Frankish conquest, Daniel left his native river, the Snow, in
+Little Russia, and passed through Byzantium and by way of the
+Archipelago and Cyprus to Jaffa and Jerusalem, describing roughly in
+versts or half-miles the whole distance and that of every stage.
+
+His tone is much like Saewulf's and his mistakes are quite as bad, though
+he tells of "nothing but what was seen with these self-same eyes." The
+"Sea of Sodom exhales a burning and fetid breath that lays waste all the
+country, as with burning sulphur, for the torments of Hell lie under
+it." This, however, he did not see; Saracen brigands prevented him, and
+he learnt that "the very smell of the place would make one ill."
+
+His measurements of distance are all his own. Capernaum is "in the
+desert, not far from the Great Sea (Levant) and eight versts (four
+miles) from Caesarea," half the distance given in the next chapter as
+between Acre and Haifa, and less than half the breadth of the Sea of
+Tiberias. The Jordan reminds Daniel of his own river, the Snow,
+especially in its sheets of stagnant water.
+
+Samaria, or "Sebastopol," he confuses with Nablous; Bethshan with
+Bashan; Lydda with Ramleh; Caesarea Philippi with the greater Caesarea on
+the coast. Not far from Capernaum and the Jordan is "another large river
+that comes out of the Lake of Gennesaret, and falls into the Sea of
+Tiberias, passing by a large _town_ called Decapolis." From Mt. Lebanon
+"six rivers flow east into the Lake of Gennesaret and six west towards
+great Antioch, so that this is called Mesopotamia, or the land between
+the rivers, and Abraham's Haran is between these rivers that feed the
+Lake of Gennesaret."
+
+Daniel has left us also an account of his visits to Mar Saba Convent in
+the Kedron gorge near the Dead Sea, to Damascus in the train of Prince
+Baldwin, and to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, to
+witness the miracle of the Holy Fire, noticed by Bernard the Wise, as a
+sort of counterpart to the wonder of Beth-Horon, also retold by Daniel
+"when the sun stood still while Joshua conquered King Og of Bashan."
+
+It is not in outlook nor in knowledge nor even in the actual ground
+traversed that these later pilgrims shew any advance on the chief of the
+earlier travellers; it is in the new life and movement, in the new hope
+they give us of greater things than these. This is the interest--to
+us--in King Sigurd of Norway (1107-11), a Crusader-Norseman in the new
+age that owed so much of its very life to the Northmen, but who is only
+to be noticed here as a possible type of the explorer-chief--possible,
+not actual--for his voyage added nothing definite to the knowledge or
+expansion of Christendom. His campaign in Jacob's Land or Gallicia, and
+his attack on Moslem Lisbon, some forty years before it became the head
+and heart of Portugal, like his exploits in the Balearics, shew us a
+point in the steady decline of western Islam, and so far may be called a
+preparation for Prince Henry's work, but properly as a chapter of
+Portuguese, not of general European, growth.
+
+There were many others like Sigurd,--Robert of Normandy, Godric the
+English pirate, who fought his way through the Saracen fleets with a
+spear-shaft for his banner, Edgar the AEtheling, grandson of Edmund
+Ironside, the Dartmouth fleet of 1147 which retook Lisbon,--but the
+Latin conquest of Syria has now brought us past the Crusades, in the
+narrower sense, to their results, in the exploration of the Further
+East.
+
+The first great name of this time, of our next main chapter of
+Preparation, is Benjamin of Tudela, but standing as he does well within
+the earlier age, when the primary interest was the Holy War itself, he
+is also the last of the Palestine travellers--of those Westerns whose
+real horizon was the sacred East of Syria. He is a little before the
+awakening of universal interest in the unknown world, for the Christian
+Northmen lost with the new definiteness of the new faith much of their
+old infinite unrest and fierce inquisitive love of wandering, and their
+spirit, though related to the whole Catholic West by the crusading
+movement, was not fully realised till the world had been explored and
+made known, till the men of Europe were at home in every country and on
+every sea.
+
+Benjamin, as a Jew and a rabbi, has the interest of a sectary, and his
+work was not of a kind that would readily win the attention of the
+Christian world. So the value of his travels was hidden till religious
+divisions had ceased to govern the direction of progress. He visited the
+Jewish communities from Navarre to Bagdad, and described those beyond
+from Bagdad to China, but he wrote for his own people and none but they
+seem to have cared about him. What he discovered (_c._ 1160-73) was for
+himself and for Judaism, and only his actual place in the twelfth
+century makes him a fore-runner of the Polos or of Prince Henry. We may
+see this from his hopeless strangeness and confusion in Rome, like a
+Frank in Pekin or Delhi. "The Church of St. Peter is on the site of the
+great palace of Julius Caesar, near which are eighty Halls of the eighty
+Kings called Emperors from Tarquin to Pepin the father of Charles, who
+first took Spain from the Saracens.... In the outskirts of the city is
+the palace of Titus, who was deposed by three hundred senators for
+wasting three years over the siege of Jerusalem which he should have
+finished in two."
+
+And so on--with the "Hall of Galba, three miles round and having a
+window for each day in the year," with St. John Lateran and its Hebrew
+trophies, "two copper pillars from the temple of Solomon, that sweat at
+the anniversary of the burning of the Temple," and the "statues of
+Samson and of Absalom" in the same place. So with Sorrento, "built by
+Hadarezer when he fled before King David," with the old Roman tunnel
+between Naples and Pozzuoli, "built by Romulus who feared David and
+Joab," with Apulia, "which is from King Pul of Assyria"--in all this we
+have as it were Catholic mythology turned inside out, David put into
+Italy when the West put Trajan at the sources of the Nile. It was not
+likely that writing of this sort would be read in the society of the
+Popes and the Schoolmen, the friars and the crusaders, any more than the
+Buddhist records of missionary travel from China one thousand years
+before. The religious passion which had set the crusaders in motion,
+would keep Catholics as long as it might from the Jews, Turks, infidels,
+and heretics they conquered and among whom they settled.
+
+But with the final loss of Jerusalem by the Latins, and the overthrow of
+the Bagdad Caliphate by the Mongol Tartars (1258), the barrier of
+fanatic hatred was weakened, and Central Asia became an attraction to
+Christendom instead of a dim horror, without form and void, except for
+Huns and Turks and demons. The Papal court sent mission after mission to
+convert the Tartars, who were wavering, as men supposed, between Islam
+and the Church, and with the first missionaries to the House of Ghenghiz
+went the first Italian merchants who opened the court of the Great Khan
+to Venice and to Genoa.
+
+As early as 1243 an Englishman is noticed as living among the Western
+Horde, the conquerors of Russia; but official intercourse begins in 1246
+with John de Plano Carpini. This man, a Franciscan of Naples, started in
+1245 as the Legate of Pope Innocent IV. to the Tartars, took the
+northern overland route through Germany and Poland, reached Kiev, "the
+metropolis of Russia," through help of the Duke of Cracow, and at last
+appeared in the camp of Batou, on the Volga. Hence by the Sea of Aral,
+"of moderate size with many islands," to the court of Batou's brother,
+the Great Khan "Cuyuc" himself, where the Christian stranger found
+himself one of a crowd of four thousand envoys from every part of Asia
+(1246).
+
+After sixteen months Carpini made his way back by the same route, "over
+the plains" and through Kiev, to give at Rome the first genuine account
+of Tartary, in its widest sense, from the Dnieper to China (1247).
+
+The great rivers and lakes and mountains of Russia and Turkestan, the
+position and distribution of the land and its peoples, "even from the
+Caspian to the Northern Ocean, where men are said to have dogs' faces,"
+are now first described by an honest and clear-headed and keen-eyed
+observer, neither timid nor credulous.
+
+Carpini really begins the reliable western map of Further Asia. His
+personal knowledge did not reach China or India, but in his _Book of the
+Tartars_, Europe was told nearly the whole truth, and almost nothing but
+the truth, about the vast tract and the great races between the
+Carpathians and the Gobi Desert. In the same was included the first fair
+account of the manners and history of the "Mongols whom we call
+Tartars," and the simple truthfulness of the Friar stands out in all the
+allusions that make his work so human;--his interviews with the Tartar
+Chiefs and with brother-travellers, his dangers and difficulties from
+Lettish robbers and abandoned or guarded ferries, his passage of the
+Dnieper on the ice, his last three weeks on "trotting"[24] hacks over
+the steppes.
+
+[Footnote 24: "_Tartari fecerunt equos nostros trotare._"]
+
+We have gone a good way from Abbot Daniel, for in John de Plano Carpini
+Christian Europe has at last a real explorer, a real historian, a
+genuine man of science, in the service of the Church and of discovery.
+
+Carpini was followed after six years by William de Rubruquis, a Fleming
+sent by St. Louis of France on the same errand of conversion and
+discovery (1253), but by a different route, through the Black Sea, and
+Cherson, over the Don "at the Head of Azov, that divides Europe and
+Asia, as the Nile divides Asia and Africa," to the great camp on the
+Volga, "the greatest river I had ever seen, which comes from Great
+Bulgaria in the north and falls into a lake (the Caspian Sea), that
+would take four months to journey round." Higher in their course the Don
+and the Volga "are not more than ten days' journey apart, but diverge as
+they run south." The Caspian is "made out of the Volga and the rivers
+that flow into it from Persia." Thence through the Iron Gates of
+Derbend, between the Caspian and the Caucasus, "which Alexander made to
+shut the barbarians out of Persia." Helped by a Nestorian, who possessed
+influence at the Tartar Court, like so many of his Church, Rubruquis
+reached the "Alps" of the Altai country, where he found a small
+Nestorian lordship, governed like the Papal States, by a priest, who was
+at least one original of the great mediaeval phantom--Prester John.
+
+Crossing the great steppes of eastern "Tartary," "like the rolling sea
+to look at," Rubruquis at last reached the Mongol headquarters at
+Caracorum, satisfied on the way that the Caspian had no northern
+outlet, as Strabo and Isidore had imagined. Thence he made his way home
+without much fresh result.
+
+[Illustration: THE PSALTER MAP OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. (SEE LIST
+OF MAPS)]
+
+Though Rubruquis is well called the most brilliant and literary of the
+mediaeval travellers, his mission was fruitless, and the interest of his
+work lay rather in recording custom and myth--in sociology--than in
+adding anything definite to the geographical knowledge of the West. John
+de Plano had already been over the ground to Caracorum, and recorded all
+the main characteristics of the lands west of the Gobi Desert. The
+further advance, east to China, south to India, was yet to come.
+
+But while Rubruquis was still among the Tartars, Nicolo and Matteo Polo,
+the uncles of the more famous Marco, were trading (1255-65) to the
+Crimea and the districts of southern Russia that were now under the
+Western Horde,--and soon after, following the caravans to Bokhara, they
+were drawn on to the court of Kublai Khan, then somewhere near the wall
+of China. After a most friendly reception they were sent back to Europe
+with presents and a letter to Pope Clement IV., offering a welcome and
+maintenance to Christian teachers. Kublai "had often questioned the
+Polos of the Western lands," and now he asked for one hundred "Latins,
+to shew him the Christian faith, for Christ he held to be the only God."
+Furnished with the imperial passport of the Golden Tablet, our merchants
+made their way back to Acre in April, 1269.
+
+They found the old pope dead, Gregory X. in his place, and he shewed a
+coolness in answering the Khan's requests, but in 1271 they set out on
+their second journey to the furthest East, taking with them two friar
+preachers and their nephew Marco, now nineteen years of age.
+
+In Armenia the friars took alarm at the troubled state of the nearer
+East and turned back, just as Augustine of Canterbury tried to find a
+way out of the mission to the English that Pope Gregory I. laid upon him
+in 597. For the Church it was perhaps as momentous a time now as then;
+the thirteenth century, if it had ended in the Christianising of the
+Mongol Empire, would have turned the Catholic victory of the fourth and
+sixth centuries in the West, the victory that had been worked out in the
+next seven hundred years to fuller and fuller realisation, into a world
+empire,--which did come at last for European civilisation, but not for
+Christendom.
+
+The Polos however kept on their way north-east for more than "one
+thousand days," three years and a half, till they stood in the presence
+of Kublai Khan; beyond Gobi and the Great Wall and the mountain barriers
+of China, in Cambaluc or Pekin, "princess encrowned of cities capital."
+
+Their journey was first through Armenia Lesser and Greater, then through
+Mosul (Nineveh) to Bagdad, where the last "Caliph and Pope of the
+Saracens" had been butchered by Holgalu and his Tartars, sewn in a sack
+and thrown into the Tigris by one account, walled up alive by another,
+in 1258. But though the stories in Marco's journal are a main interest
+of his work, as a summary and reflection of the science and history and
+general culture of the Christian world of his time, we must not here
+look outside his geography. And his first place-note of value is on the
+Caspian, "which containeth in circuit twenty-eight hundred miles and is
+like a lake, having no union with other seas and in which are many
+islands, cities, and castles." The extent of the Nestorian missions,
+"through all parts of India and to Cairo and Bagdad, and wherever
+Christians dwell," strikes him even now at the beginning of his
+travels--much more when he finds their churches on the Hoang Ho and the
+Yang-Tse-Kiang--declining indeed, but still living to witness to the
+part which that great heresy had played as an intermediary between the
+further and the nearer East--a part which history has never yet worked
+out. Entering Persia as traders, the Polos went naturally to Ormuz,
+already the great mart of Islam for the Indian trade, where Europeans
+really entered the third, and, to them, unknown belt of the world, after
+passing from a zone of known home-land through one of enemies' country,
+known and only known as such. Failing to take the sea route at Ormuz for
+China, as they had hoped, our Italians were obliged to strike back
+north-east, through Persia and the Pamir, the Kashgar district and the
+Gobi steppes, to Cathay and the pleasure domes of Kublai, visiting
+Caracorum and the Altai country on the way, by a turn due north. In 1275
+they were in Shang-tu, the Xanadu[25] of Coleridge--the summer capital
+of Kublai Khan--and not till 1292 did they get leave to turn their faces
+to the West once more.
+
+[Footnote 25:
+
+    In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
+    A stately pleasure-dome decree,
+    Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
+    Through caverns measureless to man,
+    Down to a sacred sea.
+
+COLERIDGE: _Kublai Khan_.]
+
+Here the Polos became what may be called consulting engineers to the
+Mongol Court; Marco was even made in 1277 a commissioner of the Imperial
+Council, and soon after sent upon government missions to Yunnan in
+extreme south-west China and to Yangchow city.
+
+The greater part of Marco's own memoirs is taken up with his account of
+the thirty-four provinces of the Tartar Empire that centred round the
+"six parts of Cathay and the nine parts of Mangi," the districts of
+northern and southern China as we know them,--an account of the roads,
+rivers, and towns, the trade, the Court and the Imperial Ports, the
+customs and manner of life among the subject peoples in that Empire,
+perhaps the largest ever known. Especially do the travellers dwell on
+the public roads from Pekin or Cambaluc through all the provinces, the
+ten thousand Royal inns upon the highways, the two hundred thousand
+horses kept for the public service, the wonderful speed of transit in
+the Great Khan's embassages, "so that they could go from Pekin to the
+wall of China in two days."
+
+But scarcely less is said about the great rivers--the arteries of
+Chinese commerce, even more than the caravan routes,--above all, the
+Yang-Tse-Kiang, "the greatest stream in the world, like an arm of the
+sea, flowing above one hundred days' journey from its source into the
+ocean, and into which flow countless others, making it so great that
+incredible quantities of merchandise are brought by this river. It
+flows," exclaims Marco, "through sixteen provinces, past the quays of
+two hundred cities, at one of which I saw at one time five thousand
+vessels, and there are other marts that have more."
+
+The breadth and depth and length and merchandise of the Pulisangan and
+the Caramaran are only less than the Kiang's; from the point where Marco
+crossed the second of these, there was not another bridge till it
+reached the ocean, hundreds of miles away, "by reason of its exceeding
+greatness."
+
+Lastly Pekin, the capital of the Empire, with Quinsai and the other
+provincial capitals of Mangi and Cathay, call out the unbounded
+admiration of the Polos as of every other Western traveller, from the
+Moslem Ibn Batuta to the Christian friars of the fourteenth century.
+
+Pekin, two days' journey from the ocean, the residence of the Court in
+December, January, and February, in the extreme north-east of Cathay,
+had been lately rebuilt in a "central square of twenty-four miles in
+compass, and twelve suburbs, three or four miles long, adjoining each of
+the twelve gates," where merchants and strangers lived, each nation with
+separate "burses" or store-houses, where they lodged. From this centre
+to the land of Gog and Magog and the champaign-land of Bargu, the Great
+Khan travelled every year in midsummer for the fresh air of the plateau
+country of central Asia, as well as for a better view of the great
+Russian and Bactrian sub-kingdoms of his House. The six months of spring
+and autumn were spent in slow progresses through central and southern
+China to Thibet on one side, and to Tonquin on the other. But greater
+even than Pekin, Quinsai, or Kansay, the City of Heaven, in southern
+China, though no longer the capital even of a separate Kingdom of Mangi,
+was the crowning work of Chinese civilisation. It surpassed the other
+cities of Kublai, as much as these overshadowed the Rome or Venice of
+the thirteenth century.
+
+"In the world there is not its like, for by common report it is one
+hundred miles in circuit, with a lake on one side and a river on the
+other, divided in many channels and upon these and the canals adjoining
+twelve thousand bridges of stone; there are ten market places, each half
+a mile square; great store-houses of stone, where the Indian merchants
+lay by their goods; palaces and gardens on both sides of the main
+street, which, like all the highways in Mangi, is paved with stone on
+each side, and in the midst full of gravel, with passages for the water,
+which keeps it always clean." Salt, silk, fruit, precious stones, and
+cloth of gold are the chief commodities; the paper money of the Great
+Khan is used everywhere; all the people, except a few Nestorians and
+Moslems, are "idolaters, so luxurious and so happy that a man would
+think himself in Paradise."
+
+It was only in recent years that Kublai, or his general, Baian, had
+captured Quinsai and driven out the King of Mangi with his seraglio and
+his friends. The exile till then had only thought of pleasure, of wine,
+women, and song, the "sweet meat which cost him the sour sauce ye have
+heard," on the approach of danger, had fled on board the ships he had
+prepared to "certain impregnable isles in the ocean," and if these
+impregnable islands may be identified with Zipangu or Japan, the
+conquerors pursued him even here. There is nothing more interesting in
+Polo's book than his story of the Mongol failure in the Eastern islands,
+fifteen hundred miles from the coast of Mangi, now first discovered to
+Christian knowledge.
+
+This country of Japan, "very great, the people white, of gentle manners,
+idolaters in religion, under a King of their own," was attacked by
+Kublai's fleet in 1264 for the gold they had, and had in such plenty
+that "the King's house, windows, and floors were covered with it, as
+churches here with lead, as was reported by merchants--but these were
+few and the King allowed no exportation of the gold."
+
+The expedition was as disastrous a failure as the old Athenian attack
+upon Sicily, and was not repeated, although fleets were sent by the
+Great Khan after this into the Southern Seas, which were supposed to
+have made a discovery of Papua, if not of the Australian Continent. "In
+this Sea of China, over against Mangi," Marco reported, from hearsay "of
+mariners and expert pilots, are 7440 islands, most of them inhabited,
+whereon grows no tree that yields not a pleasant smell--spices,
+lignum-aloes, and pepper, black and white." The ships of Zaitum (the
+great Chinese mart for Indian trade) knew this sea and its islands, "for
+they go every winter and return every summer, taking a year on the
+voyage, and all this though it is far from India and not subject to the
+Great Khan."
+
+But not only did Polo in these sections of his Guide Book or Memories of
+Travel, record the main features of a coast and ocean scarcely guessed
+at by Europeans, and flatly denied by Ptolemy and the main traditional
+school of Western geography. In his service under Kublai, and in his
+return by sea to Aden and Suez, he opened up the eight provinces of
+Thibet, the whole of south-east Asia from Canton to Bengal, and the
+great archipelago of further India.
+
+Four days' journey beyond the Yang-Tse-Kiang, Marco entered "the wide
+country of Thibet, vanquished and wasted by the Khan for the space of
+twenty days' journey, and become a wilderness wanting inhabitants, where
+wild beasts are excessively increased." Here he tells us of the Yak-oxen
+and great Thibetan dogs as great as asses, of the musk deer, and spices,
+"and salt lakes having beds of pearls," and of the cruel and bestial
+idolatry and social customs of the people.
+
+Still farther to the south-west, Commissioner Polo came to the Cinnamon
+river, called Brius, on the borders of the province of Caindu, to the
+porcelain-making districts of Carazan, governed by Kublai's son, and so
+to Bengal, "which borders upon India," and where Marco laughs at the
+tattoo customs of "flesh embroidery for the dyeing of fools' skins."
+
+Thence back to China, the richest and most famous country of all the
+East, where was "peace so absolute that shops could be left open full of
+wares all night and travellers and strangers could walk day and night
+through every part, untouched and fearing none."
+
+But the Polos wearied even of the Court favours and their celestial
+home; they longed to come back to earth, to Frankland and Christendom,
+where life was so rough, and poor, and struggling, but for whose sake
+they had come so far and braved so much. But the Khan was hurt at the
+least hint of their wishes, and it was only a fortunate chance that
+restored them to Europe. Twenty years after their outward start, they
+were dismissed for a time and under solemn promise of return, as the
+guides of an embassy in charge of a Mongol bride for a Persian Khan,
+living at Tabrez and related to Kublai himself. So, in 1292, they
+embarked for India at Zaitum, "one of the fairest ports in the world,
+where is so much pepper that what comes by Alexandria to the West is
+little to it, and, as it were, one of a hundred." Then striking across
+the Gulf of Cheinan, for fifteen hundred miles, and passing "infinite
+islands, with gold and much trade,"--a gulf "seeming in all like another
+world"--they reached Ziambar and, after another run of the same
+distance, Java, then supposed by mariners to be the greatest island in
+the world, "above three thousand miles round and under a king who pays
+tribute to none, the Khan himself not offering to subject it, because of
+the length and danger of the voyage."
+
+One hundred miles south-east the fleet touched at Java the Less "in
+compass about two thousand miles, with abundance of treasure and spices,
+ebony, and brazil, and so far to the south that the North Star cannot be
+seen, and none of the stars of the Great Bear." Here they were in great
+fear of "those brutish man eaters," with whom they traded for victuals
+and camphire and spices and precious stones, being forced to stay for
+five months by stress of weather--till they got away into the Bay of
+Bengal, the extreme point of European knowledge until this time, "where
+there are savages living in the deep sea islands with dogs' heads and
+teeth, as I was told, all naked, both men and women, and living the life
+of beasts (Andamans)."[26]
+
+[Footnote 26: Probably the Andamans.]
+
+Sailing hence a thousand miles to the west, adds Marco, is Ceylon, "the
+finest island in the world, 2400 miles in circuit, and once 3600, as is
+seen in old maps, but the north winds have made great part of it sea."
+
+Again west for sixty miles, to Malabar, "which is firm continent in
+India the Greater," and where the Polos re-entered as it were the
+horizon of Western knowledge, at the shrine of St. Thomas, the Apostle
+of India.
+
+Here we must leave the Venetians, with only a bare mention of their
+homeward route from Malabar by Murfili and the Valley of Diamonds, by
+Camari, where they had a glimpse of the Pole-Star once more, and by
+Guzerat and Cambay to Socotra, where Marco, in his stay, heard and wrote
+down the first news ever brought to Europe of the "great isle Magaster,"
+or Madagascar, and of Zensibar or Zanzibar.[27]
+
+[Footnote 27: This new knowledge had been really gained from the gradual
+spread of the Arab settlements down the south-east coast of Africa,
+during four centuries, from Guardafui, the Cape of spices, to the
+Channel of Mozambique.]
+
+Of Polo's account of Hindu customs,--self-immolation and especially
+Suttee, of Caste, of the Brahminical "thread with one hundred and four
+beads by which to pray"; of their etiquette in eating, drinking, birth,
+marriage, and death--only the simple fact can be noticed here, that the
+first serious and direct Christian account of India, as of China, is
+also among the most accurate and well judged, and that both in what he
+says and what he leaves unsaid, Messer Marco is a true Herodotus of the
+Middle Ages.
+
+But not only does his account discover for Europe the extreme east and
+south of Asia; in his last chapter he returns to the Tartars, and after
+adding a few words on the nomades of the central plains, gives us our
+first "Latin" account of Siberia, "where are found great white bears,
+black foxes, and sables; and where are great lakes, frozen except for a
+few months in the year, and crossed in sledges by the fur-traders."
+
+Beyond this the Obscure Land reaches to the furthest North, "near which
+is Russia, where for the most of winter the sun appears not, and the air
+is thick and dark as betimes in the morning with us, where the men are
+pale and squat and live like the beasts, and where on the East men come
+again to the Ocean Sea and the islands of the Falcons."
+
+The work of Marco Polo is the high-water mark of mediaeval land travel;
+the extension of Christendom after him was mainly by the paths of the
+sea; the Roman missions to the Tartars and to Malabar, vigorously and
+stubbornly pressed as they were, ended in unrelieved collapse; only by
+the revolt and resurrection of the Russian kingdom did the European
+world permanently and markedly expand on the side of Asia. But a crowd
+of missionaries followed the first traders to Cathay and to Mangi--Friar
+Odoric, John de Monte Corvino, John de Cora; statesmen like Marignolli
+the Papal Legate, sight-seers like Mandeville followed these; Bishop
+Jordanus of Capua worked for years in Coulam near Cape Comorin (_c._
+1325-35); the martyrdom of four friars on April 1, 1322, at Tana, in
+India, became one of the great commemorations of the Latin Church; there
+seemed no cause why Christian missions which had won north and
+north-east Europe should not win central and eastern Asia, whose peoples
+seemed as indifferent, as agnostic, as our own Norse or English pagans.
+
+"The fame of the Latins," says Jordanus, about 1330--and he is borne out
+by Marino Sanuto--"is greater in India than among ourselves. Here our
+arrival is always looked for, and said to be predicted in their books.
+Once gain Egypt and launch a fleet even of two galleys on this sea and
+the battle is won." As Egypt could not be gained by arms, it was turned
+by seamanship. Before Polo returned from China, the coasting of Africa
+had begun, and Italian mariners were already in search of the longer way
+to the East.
+
+But there is no work of land travel after that of Messer Marco which
+really adds anything decisive to European knowledge before the fifteenth
+century; the advance of trade intercourse between India and the Italian
+Republics, the gradual liberation of Russia the use made of the caravan
+routes by some of the most active of the Western clergy, are the chief
+notes of the time between the Polos and Prince Henry; and the flimsy
+fabrications of Mandeville--"of all liars that type of the first
+magnitude"--would be fairly left without a word even in a minute history
+of discovery, if he had not, like Ktesias with Herodotus, won a hearing
+for himself and drawn men's minds away from the truth-telling original
+that he travestied, by the sheer force of impudence.
+
+The Indian travels of the Italian Nicolo Conti and the Russian merchant
+Athanasius Nikitin belong to a later time, to the age of the Portuguese
+voyages; they are not part of the preparation for our central subject,
+they are only a somewhat obscure parallel to that subject.
+
+For in the later Middle Ages the chief interest lies elsewhere. The
+expansion of Christendom in the fourteenth century, and still more in
+the fifteenth (Prince Henry's own), is the story of the ventures and the
+successes, not so much of landsmen, as of mariners.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MARITIME EXPLORATION.
+
+CIRCA 1250-1410.
+
+
+Italian, Catalan, French, and English sailors were the forerunners of
+the Portuguese in the fourteenth century, and the latter years of the
+thirteenth. And as in land travel, so in maritime, the republics of
+Italy, Amalphi, Pisa, Venice, and Genoa, were the leaders and examples
+of Europe. Just as the Italian Dante is the first great name in the new
+literatures of the West, so the Italian Dorias and Vivaldi and Malocelli
+are the first to take up again the old Greek and Phoenician enterprise
+in the ocean. Since Hanno of Carthage and Pharaoh Necho's Tyrians, there
+had been nothing in the nature of a serious trial to find a way round
+Africa, and even the knowledge of the Western or Fortunate Islands, so
+clear to Ptolemy and Strabo, had become dim. The Vikings and their
+crusader-followers had done nothing south of Gibraltar Straits.
+
+[Illustration: THE S.W., OR AFRICAN SECTION OF THE HEREFORD MAP. C.
+1275-1300. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+But while the Crusades were still dragging along a weary and hopeless
+warfare under St. Louis of France and Prince Edward of England,
+discovery began again in the Atlantic. In 1270 Lancelot Malocello found
+the Canaries; in 1281 or 1291 the Genoese galleys of Tedisio Doria and
+the Vivaldi, trying to "go by sea to the ports of India to trade there,"
+reached Gozora or Cape Non in Barbary, the southern Ultima Thule, and
+according to a later story "sailed the Sea of Ghinoia (Guinea) to a city
+of AEthiopia," where even legend lost sight of them, for in 1312 nothing
+more had been heard. From the frequent and emphatic references to this
+attempt in the literature of the later Middle Ages, it is clear that the
+daring Genoese drew upon themselves the attention of the learned and
+mercantile worlds, as much as one would naturally expect. For these men
+are the pioneers of Christian explorations in the southern world--the
+precursors of all the ocean voyages that led to the discoveries of
+Prince Henry, Da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan,--the first who directly
+challenged the disheartening theories of geographers, such as Ptolemy,
+the inaction and traditionalism of the Arabs, and the elaborate
+falsities of story tellers, who, in the absence of real knowledge, had a
+grand opening for terrible fairy tales.
+
+The first age, if so it may be called, of South Atlantic and African
+voyages was purely Italian; the second was chiefly marked by the efforts
+of the Spanish States to equip fleets and send out explorers under
+Genoese captains. In 1317 the Genoese Emmanuel Pessanha became Admiral
+of Portugal; in 1341 three ships manned by Portuguese and "other
+Spaniards" with some Italians put out from Lisbon in search of
+Malocello's "Rediscovered" islands, granted by the Pope to Don Luis of
+Spain in a Bull of November 15, 1334, and now described, from the
+original letters of Florentine merchants and partners in the venture of
+1341, by Boccaccio. "Land was found on the fifth day after leaving the
+Tagus" (July 1); the fleet stayed till November, and then brought back
+four natives and products of the islands. The chief pilot thought these
+were near nine hundred miles from Seville, and we may fully suppose that
+the archipelago of thirteen, now first explored and described,
+represents the Fortunate Islands of Greek geography, the Canaries of
+modern maps, and that the five chief islands with their naked but not
+quite savage people, with excellent wood houses, and flocks of goats,
+palms, and figs, gardens and corn patches, rocky mountains and pine
+forests, were our Ferro, Palma, Gomera, Grand Canary, and Teneriffe. The
+last they took to be thirty thousand feet high, with its white scarped
+sides looking like a fortress, but terrified at signs of enchantment
+they did not dare to land, and returned to Spain, leaving the Islands of
+the Rediscovered to be visited as a convenient slave depot by merchants
+and pirates from the Peninsula till the Norman Conquest of Bethencourt
+in 1402.
+
+The voyage of 1341 gained much by attempting little; the Catalan voyage
+of 1346, which followed close upon it, was something of a return to the
+wilder and larger schemes of the first Genoese. On August 10, 1346,
+Jayme Ferrer left Majorca "to go to the River of Gold," but of the said
+galley, says the Catalan map of 1375, no news has since been heard. On
+the same map, however, the explorers' boat is sketched off the "Cape
+Finisterre of west Africa," and there is, after all, some ground for
+supposing this to be nothing more than a mercantile venture to the Gold
+Coast of Guinea, which was becoming known to the traders of Nismes,
+Marseilles, and the Christian Mediterranean by the caravan traffic
+across the Sahara. Even Prince Henry began in the same way; Guinea was
+his half-way house for India.
+
+About the same date (_c._ 1350) as the Catalan voyage is the Book of the
+Spanish Friar, "of the voyage south to the River of Gold," which gives a
+more than half fabulous story of travel, first by sea beyond Capes Non
+and Bojador, then by land across the heart of Africa to the Mountains of
+the Moon, the city of Melli, where dwelt Prester John, and "the
+Euphrates, which comes from the terrestrial Paradise," where behind some
+real notes of Barbary coasting, perhaps gained from the Catalans of
+1346, there is little but a confused transcript of Edrisi's geography.
+Yet this was one of the books which helped to fix the notion of a double
+Nile, Northern and Western, a Nile of Egypt and a Nile of the Blacks,
+with a common source in the Mountains of the Moon, upon the Christian
+science of the time, as the Arab geographers had fixed it upon Islam.
+
+The next piece of Atlantic exploration was a romantic accident. In the
+reign of Edward III., an Englishman named Robert Machin eloped with Anne
+d'Arfet from Bristol (_c._ 1370), was driven from the coast of France by
+a north-east wind, and after thirteen days sighted an island, Madeira,
+where he landed. His ship was swept away by the storm, his mistress died
+of terror and exhaustion, and five days after Machin was laid beside her
+by his men, who had saved the ship's boat and now ran her upon the
+African coast. They were enslaved, like other Christian captives of the
+Barbary corsairs, but in 1416 a fellow-prisoner, one Morales of Seville,
+an old pilot, was ransomed with others and sent back to Spain. On his
+way Morales was captured by a Portuguese captain, Zarco, the servant of
+Prince Henry, the rediscoverer of Madeira, and through this the full
+story of Machin and his island, came to be known in the court of the
+Navigator Prince, who promptly made his gain of the new knowledge a
+lasting one, by the voyage of Zarco in 1420.
+
+Last among the immediate predecessors of Prince Henry's seamen come the
+French. In the seventeenth century it was claimed, on newly found
+evidence, that between 1364 and 1410 the men of Dieppe and Rouen opened
+a regular trade in gold, ivory, and malaguette pepper with the coast of
+Guinea, and built stations at Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, and La Mine,
+which they named from the precious metal found there. But all this is
+more than doubtful, and the genuine Norman voyage of De Bethencourt in
+1402 shows us nothing but the Canaries and the north-west coast of
+Morocco. Cape Non, or Cape Bojador, was still the European Furthest on
+the African coast.
+
+The French Seigneur was stirred up to attack the Fortunate Islands by
+two events. First in 1382 one Lopez, a captain of Seville sailing to
+Gallicia, was driven by a tempest to Grand Canary, and lived among the
+natives seven years till he and his men were denounced for writing home
+and inviting rescue. To stop this intrigue they, the "thirteen Christian
+brothers" whose testament reached Bethencourt twelve years later, were
+all massacred. News of this and of the voyage of a Spaniard named
+Becarra to the same islands at the same time, reached Rochelle about
+1400, and found several French adventurers ready for a trial. The chief
+of these, Jean de Bethencourt, Lord of Grainville, and Gadifer de la
+Salle, a needy knight, started in July, 1402, to conquer in the sea a
+new kingdom for themselves. Though the leaders quarrelled and Grand
+Canary beat off all attacks, the enterprise was successful in the main,
+and several of the islands became Christian colonies,--a first step
+towards the colonial empires of the great European expansion, as the
+record of Bethencourt's chaplains is the first chapter of modern
+colonial history.
+
+But nothing is clearer in this tract than its limitations. The French
+colonists as late as 1425 seem to know nothing of the African coast
+beyond Cape Bojador; they look upon the Canaries rather as an extension
+of Spain and of Europe than as the beginning of a new world. They are
+anxious to get to the River of Gold and traffic there, but they do not
+know the way, save by report. De Bethencourt had been to Bojador
+himself, and "if things in that country are such as they are described
+in the Book of the Spanish Friar," he meant to open a way to the River
+of Gold, for, the Friar says, "it is only one hundred and fifty leagues
+from Cape Bojador, and the map proves the same--which is only a three
+days' voyage for sailing boats--whereby access would be gained to the
+land of Prester John, whence come so many riches." But as yet our
+Normans are only "eager to know the state of the neighbouring countries,
+both islands and _terra firma_:" they do not know the coast beyond the
+"Utmost Cape" of Bojador, which had taken the place of the first Arab
+Finisterre, Cape Non,[28] Nun, or Nam, as the limit of navigation.
+
+[Footnote 28: Cape Non = Fish Cape. But Latini took it as = Not, "from
+the fact that beyond it there is _no_ return possible." And so the rhyme
+"Who pass Cape Non--Must turn again, _or else begone_" (lit. "_or not_,"
+_i.e._, will not be able to return).]
+
+We are now at the very time of Prince Henry himself; his first voyage
+was in 1412. De Bethencourt died in 1425, and it is quite needless to
+follow out at length the stories, however interesting, of sporadic
+navigation in other parts of the European Seas. Between 1380-95 the
+Venetian Zeni sailed in the service of Henry Sinclair, Earl of the
+Orkneys, to Greenland, and brought back fisher stories, which read like
+those of Central America, of its man-eating Caribs and splendid
+barbarism. Somewhat earlier, about 1349, Ivar Bardsen of Norway paid one
+of the last of Christian visits to the Arctic colonies of Greenland, the
+legacy of the eleventh century, now sinking into ruin; but neither of
+these voyages gives us any new knowledge of the Unknown which was now
+being pierced, not from the North and East, but from the South and West.
+
+Both in land travel and sea voyages we have traced the progress of
+Western exploration and discovery up to its Hero, the real central
+figure both in the history of Portugal and of the European expansion. A
+little remains to be said on the other lines of preparation for his work
+in scientific theory and national development from the Age of the
+Crusades.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE IN CHRISTENDOM FROM THE FIRST CRUSADES.
+
+CIRCA 1100-1460.
+
+
+Before the Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
+scientific geography of Christendom, as we have seen, was mainly a
+borrowed thing. From the ninth century to the time of the Mediaeval and
+Christian Renaissance, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
+centuries, the Arabs were the recognised heirs of Greek science, and
+what Franks or Latins knew of Ptolemy or Strabo was either learnt or
+corrected in the schools of Cordova and Bagdad.
+
+But when the Northmen and the Holy War with Islam had once thoroughly
+aroused the practical energies of Christendom, it began to expand in
+mind as well as in empire, and in the time of Prince Henry, in the
+fifteenth century, a Portuguese could say: "Our discoveries of coasts
+and islands and mainland were not made without foresight and knowledge.
+For our sailors went out very well taught, and furnished with
+instruments and rules of _astrology_ and geometry, things which all
+mariners and map-makers must know."
+
+[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MARINO SANUTO. C. 1306.
+(SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+In fact, compass, astrolabe, timepiece, and charts, were all in use on
+the Mediterranean about 1400, just as they were to be found among the
+Arab traders of the Indian Ocean.
+
+In this section it will be enough to glance hastily at the later and
+growingly independent science of Christendom, from the time that it
+ceased merely to follow the lead of Islam, and thought and even invented
+for itself. In another chapter we have seen something of the lasting and
+penetrating influence of Greek and Moslem and Hindu tradition upon the
+Western thought, which has conquered by absorbing all its rivals; we
+must not forget that some original self-reliant work in geographical
+theory not less than in practical exploration is absolutely needed to
+explain the very fact of Prince Henry and his life--a student's life,
+far more even than a statesman's. And after all, the invention of
+instruments, the drawing of maps and globes, the reckoning of distances,
+is not less practical than the most daring and successful travel. For
+navigation, the first and prime demand is a means of safety, some power
+of knowing where you stand and where to go, such as was given to sailors
+by the use of the magnet.
+
+"Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis," says Beccadelli of Palermo,
+but the earliest mention of the "Black ugly stone" in the West is traced
+to an Englishman. Alexander Neckam, a monk of St. Albans, writing about
+1180 on "The Natures Of Things," tells us of it as commonly used by
+sailors, not merely as the secret of the learned. "When they cannot see
+the sun clearly in cloudy weather, or at night, and cannot tell which
+way their prow is tending, they put a Needle above a Magnet which
+revolves till its point looks North and then stops." So the satirist,
+Guyot de Provins, in his _Bible_ of about 1210, wishes the Pope were as
+safe a point to steer by in Faith as the North Star in sailing, "which
+mariners can keep ahead of them, without sight of it, only by the
+pointing of a needle floating on a straw in water, once touched by the
+Magnet."
+
+It might be supposed from this not merely that the magnet was in use at
+the end of the twelfth century, but that it had been known to a few
+_savants_ much earlier; yet when Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini, visits
+Roger Bacon at Oxford about 1258, and is shown the black stone, he
+speaks of it as new and wonderful, but certain, if used, to awake
+suspicion of magic. "It has the power of drawing iron to it, and if a
+needle be rubbed upon it and fastened to a straw so as to swim upon
+water, the needle will instantly turn towards the Pole-Star. But no
+master mariner could use this, nor would the sailors venture themselves
+to sea under his command if he took an instrument so like one of
+infernal make."
+
+[Illustration: SKETCH-MAP OF DULCERT'S PORTOLANO OF 1339. (SEE
+LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+It was possibly after this that the share of Amalphi came in; it may
+have been Flavio Gioja, or some other citizen of that earliest
+commercial republic of the Middle Ages, which filled up so large a
+part of the gap between two great ages of progress, who fitted the
+magnet into a box, and by connecting it with the compass-card, made it
+generally and easily available. This it certainly was before Prince
+Henry's earliest voyages, where he takes its use for granted even by
+merchant coasters, "who, beyond hugging the shore, know nothing of chart
+or needle." In any case it would seem that prejudice was broken down,
+and the mariner's compass taken into favour, at least by Italian seamen
+and their Spanish apprentices, in the early years of the fourteenth
+century, or the last years of the thirteenth, and that when the Dorias
+set out for India by the ocean way in 1291, and the Lisbon fleet sailed
+for the western islands in 1341, they had some sort of natural guide
+with them, besides the stories of travellers and their own imaginings.
+About the same time (_c._ 1350) mathematics and astronomy began to be
+studied in Portugal, and two of Henry's brothers, King Edward and the
+Great Regent Pedro, left a name for observations and scientific
+research. Thus Pedro, in his travels through most of Christendom,
+collected invaluable materials for discovery, especially an original of
+Marco Polo and a map given him at Venice, "which had all the parts of
+the earth described, whereby Prince Henry was much furthered."
+
+Good maps indeed were almost as valuable to him as good instruments, and
+they are far clearer landmarks of geographical knowledge. There are at
+least seven famous charts (either left to us or described for us) of
+the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, which give a pretty clear
+idea of what Henry's own age and his father's thought and knew of the
+world--some of which we believe to have been used by the Prince himself,
+and each of which follows some advance in actual exploration.
+
+First of all comes the Venetian map of Marino Sanuto, drawn about 1306,
+and putting into map-form the ideas that inspired the first Italian
+voyages in the Atlantic. On this the south of Africa is washed by the
+sea as the Vivaldi had hoped to find it, but the old story of a central
+zone "uninhabitable from the heat" still finds a place, helping to keep
+up the notion of the Tropical Seas, "always kept boiling by the sun,"
+that held its own so long. Besides this, in Sanuto's map there is no
+evidence that anyone had really been coasting Africa; Henry is not
+anticipated and can hardly have been much helped by this very
+hypothetical leap in the dark.
+
+But the Florentine map of 1351, called the Laurentian Portolano, is to
+all appearance a record of the actual discoveries of 1341 and 1346, and
+a wonderful triumph of guess-work if it is nothing better. For Africa is
+not only made an island, but the main outline of its coast is fairly
+drawn; in its western corner the headlands, bays, and rivers are laid
+down as far as Bojador, and the three groups of Atlantic islands,
+Azores, Canaries, and Madeira, appear together for the first time.
+Beyond this names grow scarce, and on the great indent of the Gulf of
+Guinea, enormously exaggerated as it is, there is nothing to show for
+certain any past discovery, which suggests that this map was made for
+two purposes. First, to record the results of recent travel; secondly,
+and chiefly, to put forward geographical theories based upon tradition
+and inference, what men of old had told and what men of the present
+could fancy.
+
+Long after the Italian leadership in exploration had passed westward,
+Italian science kept control of geographical theory; the Venetian maps
+of the brothers Pizzigani in 1367, and of the Camaldolese convent at
+Murano in 1380 and 1459, and the work of Andrea Bianco in 1436 and 1448,
+are the most important of mediaeval charts, after the Laurentian, and
+along with these must be reckoned that mentioned above as given in
+1425-8 to Henry's brother, Don Pedro, on his visit to Venice. This
+treasure has disappeared, but it was said by men of Henry's day and
+aftertime, who saw it in the monastery of Alcobaca, to show "as much or
+more discovered in time past than now." If their account is even an
+approach to the truth, it was in itself proof sufficient of the
+supremacy and almost monopoly of Italians in geographical theory.
+
+With 1375 and the Catalan map of that year, which specially refers to
+the Catalan voyage of 1346 and may be taken as one result of the same,
+we come to Spanish parallels; but until the death of Henry in 1460,
+Italian draughtsmen were in possession, and Fra Mauro's great map of
+1459, the evidence and result, in great measure, of the Navigator's
+work, could only be drawn by Venetians for the men whose discoveries it
+recorded.
+
+But there is one other point in Italian map-science which is worth
+remembering. At a time when most schemes of the world were covered with
+monsters and legends, when cartography was half mythical and half
+miscalculated, the coasting voyagers of the Mediterranean had brought
+their _Portolani_ or sea charts to a very different result. And how was
+this? Did they get right, as it were, by chance? "They never had for
+their object," says the great Swedish explorer and draughtsman, Baron
+Nordenskjold, "to illustrate the ideas of some classical author, of some
+learned prelate, or the legends and dreams of feats of Chivalry within
+the Court circle of some more or less lettered feudal lord." They were
+simply guides to mariners and merchants in the Mediterranean seaports;
+they were seldom drawn by learned men, and small enough, in return, was
+the attention given them by the learned geographers, the men of theory,
+in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+
+But these plans of practical seamen are a wonderful contrast in their
+almost present-day accuracy to the results of theory let loose, as we
+see them in Ptolemy and the Arabian geographers, and in such fantastics
+as the Hereford Mappa Mundi, so well known in England. Map-sketches of
+this sort, were unknown to Greeks and Romans, as far as we can tell. The
+old Peripli were sailing directions, not drawn but written, and the only
+Arabian coast-chart known to us was copied from an Italian one. But from
+the opening of the twelfth century, if not before, the western
+Mediterranean was known to Christian seamen--to those at least concerned
+in the trade and intercourse of the great inland sea,--by the help of
+these practical guides.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+From the middle of the thirteenth century, when the use of the compass
+began on the coasts of southern Europe, the Portolani began to be drawn
+with its aid, and by the end of the same century, by the time of our
+Hereford map (_c._ 1300), these charts had reached the finish that we
+see and admire in those left to us from the fourteenth century. For, of
+the 498 specimens of this kind of practical map now left to us, there is
+not one of earlier date than the year 1311. Among these specimens not
+merely the mass of materials, but the most important examples, not
+merely 413 out of 498, but all the more famous and perfect of the 498
+are Italian. The course begins with Vesconte's chart, of the year 1311,
+and with Dulcert's of 1339, and the outlines of these two are faithfully
+reproduced, for instance, in the great Dutch map of the Barentszoons
+(_c._ 1594), for the type once fixed in the fourteenth century, recurs
+steadily throughout the fifteenth, and sixteenth. The type was so
+permanent because it was so reliable; every part of the Mediterranean
+coast was sketched without serious mistake or disproportion, even from a
+modern point of view, while the fulness and detail of the work gave
+everything that was wanted by practical seamen. Of course this detail
+was in the coast lines, river mouths, and promontories; it only touched
+the land features as they touched the seas. For the Portolani were never
+meant to be more than mariners' charts, and became less and less
+trustworthy if they tried to fill up the inland spaces usually left
+blank. For this, we must look to the highest class of mediaeval
+theoretical maps, those founded on Portolani, but taking into their view
+land as well as water and coast line. And such were the celebrated
+examples[29] we have noticed already.
+
+[Footnote 29: _Of_ 1306, 1351, 1367, 1375, 1380, 1436, 1448, 1459.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTE.--It was a man of theory, Raymond Lulli (1235-1315), of Majorca,
+the famous Alchemist, who is credited with the first suggestion of the
+idea of seeking a way to India by rounding Africa on the West and South.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PORTUGAL TO 1400.
+
+1095-1400.
+
+
+Henry the Navigator is the Hero of Portugal, as well as of discovery,
+the chief figure in his country's history, as well as the first leader
+of the great European expansion; and the national growth of three
+hundred years is quite as much a part of his life, quite as much a cause
+of his forward movement, as the growth of Christendom towards a living
+interest in the unknown or half-known world around.
+
+The chief points of interest in the story of Portugal are first the
+stubborn restless independence of the people, always rising into fresh
+vigour after a seeming overthrow, and secondly their instinct for
+seamanship, which Henry was able to train into exploring and colonising
+genius. There was no physical justice in the separate nationality of the
+Western Kingdom of Lisbon any more than of the Eastern Kingdom of
+Barcelona. Portugal[30] was essentially part of Spain, as the United
+Provinces of William of Orange were essentially part of the
+Netherlands; in both cases it was only the spirit and endurance of the
+race that gave to some provincials the right to become a people, while
+that right was denied to others.
+
+[Footnote 30: See Note 1, page 137.]
+
+And Portugal gained that right by a struggle of three hundred years,
+which was first a crusade against Islam; then a war of independence
+against brother Christians of Castille; last of all a civil strife
+against rebels and anarchists within.
+
+In the twelfth century the five kingdoms of Spain were clearly marked
+off from the Moslem States and from one another; by the end of the
+fifteenth there is only the great central Realm of Ferdinand and
+Isabella, and the little western coast-kingdom of Emanuel the Fortunate,
+the heir of Prince Henry. Nations are among our best examples of the
+survival of the fittest, and by the side of Poland and Aragon we may
+well see a meaning in the bare and tiresome story of the mediaeval
+kingdom of Portugal. The very fact of separate existence means something
+for a people which has kept on ruling itself for ten generations. Though
+its territory was never more than one fourth of the peninsula, nor its
+numbers more than one third of the Spanish race--from the middle of the
+twelfth century, Portugal has stood alone, with less right to such
+independence from any distinction of place or blood, than Ireland or
+Navarre, fighting incessantly against foes without, from north, east,
+and south, and keeping down the still worse foes of its own household.
+
+[Illustration: N.W. SECTION OF THE CATALAN MAP OF 1375-6. (SEE LIST
+OF MAPS)]
+
+But the meaning of the growth of the Portuguese power is not in its
+isolation, its stubbornly defended national distinction from all other
+powers, but in its central and as it were unifying position in modern
+history--as the guide of Europe and Christendom into that larger world
+which marks the real difference between the Middle Ages and our own day.
+
+For Henry the Navigator breathed into his countrymen the spirit of the
+old Norse rovers, that boundless appetite for new knowledge, new
+pleasures, new sights and sounds, which underlay the exploration of the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--the exploration of one half of the
+world's surface, the finding of a new continent in the south and in the
+west, and the opening of the great sea-routes round the globe. The
+scientific effects of this, starting from the new proof of a round world
+won by a Portuguese seaman, Magellan; and the political effects, also
+beginning with the first of modern colonial empires, founded by Da Gama,
+Cabral, and Albuquerque, are too widespread for more than a passing
+reference in this place, but this reference must be connected with the
+true author of the movement. For if the industrial element rules modern
+development; if the philosophy of utility, as expressing this element,
+is now our guide in war and peace; and if the substitution of this for
+the military spirit[31] is to be dated from that dominion in the Indian
+seas which realised the designs of Henry--if this be so, the Portuguese
+become to us, through him, something like the founders of our commercial
+civilisation, and of the European empire in Asia.
+
+[Footnote 31: W.H. Lecky, _Rationalism_.]
+
+By the opening years of the fifteenth century, Portugal--in a Catholic
+rather than a Classical Renaissance--had already entered upon its modern
+life, some three generations before the rest of Christendom. But its
+mediaeval history is very much like that of any other of the Five Spanish
+Kingdoms. Like the rest, Portugal had joined in driving the Moors from
+the Asturias to Andalusia, in the two hundred years of successful
+Western Crusade (1001-1212). In the same time, between the death of the
+great vizier Almanzor, the last support of the old Western Caliphate
+(1001), and the overthrow of the African Moors, who had supplanted that
+Western Caliphate,--between those two points of Moslem triumph and
+Christian reaction, the Portuguese kingdom had been formed out of the
+County granted in 1095 by Alfonso VI. of Leon to the free-lance Henry of
+Burgundy.
+
+For the next three hundred years (1095-1383), under his descendants who
+reigned as kings in Guimaraens or Lisbon, we may trace a gradual but
+chequered national rise, to the Revolution of 1383 with two prominent
+movements of expansion and two relapses of contraction and decline.
+
+First comes the formation of a national spirit by Count Henry's widow
+Donna Theresa and her son Affonso Henriquez, who from a Lord of Coimbra
+and Oporto, dependent on the Kingdom of Gallicia or of Leon, becomes the
+first free King of Portugal. His victories over the Moors in taking
+Lisbon (1147) and winning the day of Ourique (1139), are followed by the
+first wars with Castille and by the time of quiet organisation in his
+last years under the regency of his son Sancho, the City Builder. The
+building and planting of Sancho is again followed by the first relapse,
+into the weakness of Affonso II., and the turbulent minority of Sancho
+II. Constitutional troubles begin with the First Sancho's quarrel with
+Innocent III. and with the appearance of the first national Cortes under
+Chancellor Julian.
+
+The second forward movement starts with Affonso III., "of Boulogne," who
+saves the kingdom from anarchy and conquers the Algarves, on the south
+coast, from Islam; who first organises the alliance of Crown and people
+against nobles and clergy, and, in the strength of this, defies the
+interdict of Urban IV.
+
+Diniz, his bastard son, for whose legitimation he had made this same
+struggle with Rome, follows Affonso III., in 1279, and with him begins
+the wider life of Portugal, her navy and her literature, her
+agriculture, justice, and commerce.
+
+The second relapse may be dated from the Black Death (1348), which
+threatened the very life of the nation, and left behind a sort of
+chronic weakness. National spirit seemed worn out; Court intrigue and
+political disaster the order of the day; the Church and Cortes alike
+effete and useful only against themselves.
+
+But in the revival under a new leader, John, the father of Prince Henry,
+and a new dynasty--the House of Aviz--and its "Royal Race of Famous
+Infants," in the years that follow the Revolution of 1383, the older
+religious and crusading fervour is joined with the new spirit of
+enterprise, of fierce activity, and the Portugal thus called into being
+is a great State because the whole nation shares in the life and energy
+of a more than recovered liberty.
+
+Before the age of King Diniz, before the fourteenth century, there is
+little enough in the national story to suggest the first
+state-profession of discovery and exploration in Christian history. But
+we must bring together a few of the suggestive and prophetic incidents
+of the earlier time, if we are to be fully prepared for the later.
+
+(1.) Oporto, the "port" of Gallicia, from the formation of the county or
+"march" of Henry of Burgundy, seems to have given the district its name
+of "Portugallia," at one time as a military frontier against Islam, then
+as an independent State, lastly as an imperial Kingdom. Also, as the
+earliest centre of Portugal was a harbour, and its earliest border a
+river, there was a sort of natural, though slumbering, fitness for
+seamanship in the people.
+
+(2.) Again, in the alliance of the Crown with the towns, first formed by
+Count Henry's wife Theresa in her regency after his death, 1114-28, and
+renewed by her grandson Sancho, the City Builder, and by Affonso III.,
+the "Saviour of the Kingdom," we have an early example of the power of
+that class, which was the backbone of the great movement of expansion,
+when the meaning of this was fairly brought home to them.
+
+(3.) In the capture of Lisbon, in 1147, by Affonso Henriquez, Theresa's
+son, at the head of the allied forces of native militia and northern
+Crusaders--Flemish, French, German, and English--we have brought
+clearly before us, not merely the facts of the gain of a really great
+city by a rising Christian State, not merely the result of this in the
+formation of a kingdom out of a county, but the more general connection
+of the crusading spirit with the new nations of Europe. Portugal is the
+most lasting monument of crusading energy; it was this that strengthened
+the "Lusitanians" to make good their stand both against the Moors and
+against Castille; and it was this which brought out the maritime bent of
+the little western kingdom, and drew out its interest on the one and
+only side where that could be of great and general usefulness. The
+Crusades without and the policy of statesmen within, we may fairly say,
+made the Portuguese ready to lead the expansion of Christendom, made
+possible the work of Henry the Navigator. The foreign help given at
+Lisbon in 1147 was only a repetition on a grand scale of what had long
+been done on a smaller, and it was offered again and again till the
+final conquest of the southern districts, between Cape St. Vincent and
+the Guadiana (_c._ 1250), left the European kingdom fully formed, and
+the recovery of Western Spain from the Moslem had been achieved.
+
+[Illustration: Chart of the Mediterranean Sea by WILLEM BARENTSZOON.
+Engraved in copper 1595. Almost unaltered copy of a Portolano from the
+14th century. (Orig. size 418 x 855 m.m.). (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+(4.) And when the Crusading Age passed away, it left behind an
+intercourse of Portugal with England, Flanders, and the North Sea
+coasts, which was taken up and developed by Diniz and the kings of the
+fourteenth century, till under the new Royal House of Aviz, in the
+boyhood of Henry the Navigator, this maritime and commercial element
+had clearly become the most important in the State, the main interest
+even of Government.
+
+So, from the first mercantile treaty of 1294, between the traders of
+Lisbon and London, we feel ourselves beyond the mere fighting period,
+and before the death of Diniz (1325), there is a good deal more progress
+in the same direction. The English treaty of exchange is followed by
+similar ones with France and with Flanders, while for the protection of
+this commerce, as well as to prove his fellowship or his rivalry with
+the maritime republics of Italy, Diniz,[32] the "Labourer King," built
+the first Portuguese navy, founded a new office of state for its
+command, and gave the post to a great Genoese sailor, Emanuel Pessanha,
+1317. With the new Lord High Admiral begins the Spanish-Italian age of
+ocean voyages, and the rediscovery of the Canaries in 1341 is the first
+result of the alliance. In 1353 the old treaty of 1294 is enlarged and
+safeguarded by fresh clauses signed in London, as if to guard against
+future trouble in the dark days then hanging over Portugal.
+
+[Footnote 32: See Note 2, page 137.]
+
+For the next generation (1350-1380), the national politics are bound up
+with Spanish intrigues and lose nearly all reference to that larger
+world, to which the kingdom was recalled by the Revolution of 1383, the
+overthrow of Castille on the battle-field of Aljubarrota, and the
+accession of John of Aviz. Once more intensely, narrowly national, one
+might almost say provincial, in peninsular matters, Portugal then
+returned to its older ambition of being, not a make weight in Spanish
+politics, but a part of the greater whole of commercial and maritime
+Europe. Almost ceasing to be Spanish, she was, by that very transfer of
+interest from land to sea, fitted for her special part,--
+
+    "to open up those wastes of tide
+    No generation opened before."
+
+It was through a love affair that the crisis came about. Ferdinand the
+Handsome, the last of the House of Burgundy to reign in Lisbon, became
+the slave of the worst of his subjects, the evil genius of himself and
+his kingdom, Leonora Telles. For her sake he broke his marriage treaty
+with Castille (1372), and brought down the vengeance of Henry of
+Trastamara, whom the Black Prince of England had fought and seemed to
+conquer at Navarette, but who in the end had foiled all his
+enemies--Pedro the Cruel, Ferdinand of Portugal, and Prince Edward of
+Crecy and Poictiers.
+
+For Leonor's sake Ferdinand braved the great riot of the Lisbon mob,
+when Fernan Vasquez the Tailor led his followers to the palace, burst in
+the gates, and forced from the King an oath to stand by the Castilian
+marriage he had contracted. For her sake he broke his word to his
+artisans, as he had broken it to his nobles and his brother monarch.
+
+Leonor herself the people hunted for in vain through the rooms and
+corridors of the palace; she escaped from their lynch law to Santarem.
+The same night Ferdinand joined her. Safe in his strongest fortress, he
+gathered an army and forced his way back into the capital. The mob was
+scattered; Vasquez and the other leaders beheaded on the spot. Then at
+Oporto, without more delay, the King of Portugal married his paramour,
+in the face of her husband, of Castille, and of his own people.
+
+"Laws are nil," said the rhyme, "when kings will," but though nobles and
+people submitted in the lifetime of Ferdinand, the storm broke out again
+on his death in October, 1383. During the last ten years the Queen had
+practically governed, and the kingdom seemed to be sinking back into a
+province of Spain. Ferdinand's bastard brother, John, Master of the
+Knights of Aviz, and father of Henry the Navigator, was the leader of
+the national party, and Leonor had in vain tried to get rid of him,
+silent and dangerous as he was. She forged some treasonable letters in
+his name, and procured his arrest; then as the King would not order him
+to execution without trial, she forged the warrant, too, and sent it
+promptly to the Governor of Evora Castle, where the Master lay in
+prison. But he refused to obey without further proof, and John escaped
+to lead the national restoration.
+
+On the death of Ferdinand his widow took the regency in the name of her
+daughter Beatrice, just married to the King of Castille. It was only a
+question of time, this coming subjection of Portugal, unless the whole
+people rose and made monarchy and government national once more. And in
+December, 1383, they did so. Under John of Aviz the patriots cut to
+pieces the Queen's friends, and made ready to meet her allies from
+Castille. On the battle field of Aljubarrota (August 14, 1385), the
+struggle was decided. Castille was finally driven back, and the new
+age, of the new dynasty, was fairly started. The Portuguese people under
+King John I. and his sons Edward, Pedro, Henry, and Ferdinand, passed
+out of the darkness of their slavery into the light and life of their
+heroic age.
+
+[Illustration: WEST FRONT OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH OF BATALHA WHERE
+PRINCE HENRY LIES BURIED.]
+
+The founder of the House of Aviz, John, the King of Good Memory, is the
+great transition figure in his country's history, for in his reign the
+age of the merely European kingdom is over, and that of discovery and
+empire begins. That is, the limits of territory and of population, as
+well as the type of government and of policy, both home and foreign,
+secured by his victory and his reign, are permanent in themselves, and
+as the conditions of success they lie at the root of the development of
+the next hundred years.
+
+Even the drift of Portuguese interests, seawards and southwards, is
+decided by his action, his alliance with England, his encouragement of
+trade, his wars against the Moors. For, by the middle of his reign, by
+the time of the Ceuta conquest (1415), his third son, Prince Henry, had
+grown to manhood.
+
+Yet, King John's personal work (1383-1433) is rather one of settlement
+and the providing of resources for future action than the taking of any
+great share in that action. His mind was practical rather than
+prophetic, common-sense rather than creative; but in his regeneration of
+the Court and trade and society and public service of the kingdom, he
+fitted his people to play their part, to be for a time the "very
+foremost men of all this world."
+
+First of all, he founded a strong centralised monarchy, like those which
+marked the fifteenth century in France and England and Russia. The
+spirit, the aim of Louis XI., of the Tudors, of Ivan III., was the same
+as that of John I. of Portugal--to rule as well as govern in every
+department, "over all persons, in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as
+civil, within their dominions supreme." The Master of Aviz had been the
+people's choice; the Lisbon populace and their leaders had been among
+the first who dared to fight for him; but he would not be a simple King
+of Parliaments. He preferred to reign with the help of his nobles. For
+though he distrusted feudalism, he dreaded Cortes still more. So, while
+in most of the new monarchies of Europe the subjection or humiliation of
+the baronage was a primary article of policy, John tried to win his way
+by lavish gifts of land, while resolutely checking feudalism in
+government, curtailing local immunities, and guarding the liberties of
+the towns against noble usurpers.
+
+We shall see the results of this in the life of Prince Henry; at present
+there is only space to notice the general fact. The other lines of
+John's home government--his reform of criminal procedure, his sanction
+of the vernacular in legal and official business in place of Latin, his
+attempt to publish the first collection of Portuguese laws, his
+settlement of the Court in the true national capital of Lisbon--are only
+to be linked with the life of his son, as helping one and all of them
+towards that conscious political unity on which Henry's work was
+grounded.
+
+The same was the result of his foreign policy, which was nothing more
+than the old state-rules of Diniz. Systematic neutrality in Spain and a
+commercial alliance with England and the northern nations, were but the
+common-sense securities of the restored kingdom; but they played another
+part than one of mere defence, in drawing out the seamanship and worldly
+knowledge, and even the greed of Portuguese traders. In the marts of
+Bruges and London, "the Schoolmasters of Husbandry to Europe," Henry's
+countrymen met the travellers and merchants of Italy and Flanders and
+England and the Hanse Towns, and gained some inkling of the course and
+profits of the overland trade from India and the further East, first as
+in Nismes and Montpellier they saw the Malaguette pepper and other
+merchandise of the Sahara and Guinea caravans.
+
+The Windsor and Paris treaties of 1386 and 1389; the marriage of John
+himself with Philippa, daughter of old "John of Gaunt, time-honoured"
+and time-serving "Lancaster," and the consequent alliance between the
+House of Aviz and the House of our own Henry IV., are proofs of an
+unwritten but well understood Triple Alliance of England, Flanders, and
+Portugal, which had been fostered by the Crusades and by trade and
+family politics. And through this friendship had come into being what
+was now the chief outward activity of Portuguese life, an interest in
+commerce, which was the beginning of a career of discovery and
+colonisation. Lastly, besides good government, besides saving the
+kingdom and keeping it safely in the most prosperous path, Portugal owed
+to King John and his English wife the training of their five sons,
+Edward the Eloquent, Pedro the Great Regent, Henry the Navigator, John
+the Constable, Ferdinand the Saint--the cousins of our own Henry V.,
+Henry of Azincourt.
+
+Edward, the heir of John the Great and his unfortunate successor
+(1433-8), unlucky as most literary princes, but deserving whatever
+courage and honesty and the best gifts can deserve, was a good ruler, a
+good son, a good brother, a good lawyer, and one of the earliest writers
+in his own Portuguese. As a pupil of his father's great Chancellor, John
+of the Rules, he has left a tract on the _Ordering of Justice_; as a
+king, two others, on _Pity_ and _A Loyal Councillor_; as a cavalier, _A
+Book of Good Riding_. Still more to our purpose, he was always at the
+side of his brother Henry, helped him in his schemes and brought his
+movement into fashion at a critical time, when enterprise seemed likely
+to slacken in the face of unending difficulties.
+
+But the Navigator's right-hand man was his next brother Pedro the
+Traveller, who, after visiting all the countries of Western Europe and
+fighting with the Teutonic knights against the heathen Prussians,
+brought back to Portugal for the use of discovery that great mass of
+suggestive material, oral and written, in maps and plans and books,
+which was used for the first ocean voyages of Henry's sailors.
+
+On his judgment and advice, more than of any other man, Henry relied,
+and after Edward's death it was due to him as Regent that the generous
+support of the past was more than kept up, that so many ships and men
+were found for the rounding of Cape Verde, and that Edward's son and
+heir Affonso V., was trained in the mind of his father and his uncle, to
+be their successor in leading the expansion of Portugal and of
+Christendom.
+
+[Illustration: AISLE IN BATALHA CHURCH CONTAINING THE TOMBS OF HENRY AND
+HIS BROTHERS.]
+
+John and Ferdinand, Henry's two younger brothers, are not of much
+importance in his work, though they were both of the same rare quality
+as the elder Infantes, and the worst disaster of Henry's life, the
+Tangier campaign, is closely bound up with the fate of "Fernand the
+Constant Prince," but as we pass from the earlier story of Portugal to
+the age of its great achievements, it would be hard to doubt or to
+forget that the mother of the Navigator was also of some account in the
+shaping of the heroes of her house. Through her at least the Lusitanian
+Prince of Thomson's line is half an Englishman:
+
+    "The Lusitanian prince, who, Heaven-inspired,
+    To love of useful glory roused mankind,
+    And in unbounded commerce mixed the world."
+
+[NOTE 1.--The Old Roman Lusitania, but with a wider stretch on the
+North, and a narrower stretch on the East. So the Portuguese are
+"Lusians," "Lusitanians," etc., in poetry. _Cf._ Camoens, _Lusiads_.]
+
+[NOTE 2.--
+
+    What Diniz willed
+    He ever fulfilled
+
+--said the popular rhyme.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HENRY'S POSITION AND DESIGNS AT THE TIME OF THE FIRST VOYAGES, 1410-15.
+
+
+    Then from ancient gloom emerged
+    The rising world of trade: the genius then,
+    Of Navigation, held in hopeless sloth,
+    Had slumbered on the vast Atlantic deep
+    For idle ages, starting, heard at last
+    The Lusitanian Prince, who, Heaven-inspired,
+    To love of useful glory roused mankind,
+    And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.
+
+THOMSON, _Seasons, Summer, 1005-1012_.
+
+
+The third son of John the Great and of Philippa was the Infant Henry,
+Duke of Viseu, Master of the Order of Christ, Governor of the Algarves,
+born March 4, 1394, who might have travelled from Court to Court like
+his brother Pedro, but who refused all offers from England, Italy, and
+Germany, and chose the life of a student and a seaman,--retiring more
+and more from the known world that he might open up the unknown.
+
+After the capture of Ceuta, in 1415, he planted himself in his Naval
+Arsenal at Sagres, close to Lagos town and Cape St. Vincent, and for
+more than forty years, till his death in 1460, he kept his mind upon the
+ocean that stretched out from that rocky headland to the unknown West
+and South. Twice only for any length of time did he come back into
+political life; for the rest, though respected as the referee of
+national disputes and the leader and teacher of the people, his time was
+mainly spent in thinking out his plans of discovery--drawing his maps,
+adjusting his instruments, sending out his ships, receiving the reports
+of his captains. His aims were three: to discover, to add to the
+greatness and wealth of Portugal, and to spread the Christian Faith.
+
+(1.) First of all, he was trying to find a way round Africa to India for
+the sake of the new knowledge itself and for the power which that
+knowledge would give. As his mind was above all things interested in the
+scientific question, it was this side which was foremost in his plans.
+He was really trying to find out the shape of the world, and to make men
+feel more at home in it, that the dread of the great unknown round the
+little island of civilised and habitable world might be lightened. He
+was working in the mist that so long had hung round Christendom,
+chilling every enterprise.
+
+Thus the whole question of the world and its shape, its countries and
+climates, its seas and continents, on every side of practical
+exploration, was bound to be before Prince Henry as a theorist; the
+practical question which he helped to solve was only a part of this
+wider whole. Did this Africa stretching opposite to him in his retreat
+at Sagres never end till it reached the Southern pole, or was it
+possible to get round into the Eastern ocean? Since Ptolemy's map had
+held the field, it had been heresy to suppose this; but in the age of
+Greek and Phoenician voyages it had been guessed by some, and perhaps
+even proved by others.
+
+The Tyrians whom Pharaoh Necho sent down the Red Sea more than six
+hundred years before Christ, brought back after three years a story of
+their finding Africa an island, and so returning by the west and north
+through the Straits of Gibraltar.
+
+The same tradition, after a long time of discredit, was now reviving
+upon the maps of the fourteenth century, and, in spite of the terrible
+stories of the Arabs, Henry was able in the first years of the fifteenth
+to find men who would try the forlorn hope of a direct sea-route from
+Europe to the Indies. We have seen how far the charts and guide-books of
+the time just before this had advanced Christian knowledge of the world;
+how the southern coastline of Asia is traced by Marco Polo, and how even
+Madagascar is named, though not visited, by the same traveller; the
+Florentine map of 1351 proves that a fairly true guess of the shape of
+Africa could be made even before persistent exploration began with Henry
+of Portugal; the Arab settlements on the east coast of Africa and their
+trade with the Malabar coast, though still kept as a close monopoly for
+Islam, had thoroughly opened up a line of navigation, that was ready, as
+it were, for the first Europeans who could strike into it and press the
+Moorish pilots into a new service. Discovery was thus anticipated when
+the coasts of West and South had once been rounded.
+
+Beyond this, the vague knowledge of the Guinea coast already gained
+through the Sahara Caravan Trade was improved by the Prince himself,
+during his stay at Ceuta, into the certainty that if the great western
+hump of Africa beyond Bojador could be passed, his caravels would come
+into an eastern current, passing the gold and ivory coast, which might
+lead straight to India, and at any rate would be connected by an
+overland traffic with the Mediterranean.
+
+(2.) Again, Henry was founding upon his work of exploration an empire
+for his country. At first perhaps only thinking of the straight
+sea-passage as the possible key of the Indian trade, it became clearer
+with every fresh discovery that the European kingdom might and must be
+connected by a chain of forts and factories with the rich countries for
+whose sake all these barren coasts were passed. In any case, and in the
+eyes of ordinary men, the riches of the East were the plain and primary
+reason of the explorations. Science had its own aims, but to gain an
+income for its work it must promise some definite gain. And the chief
+hope of Henry's captains was that the wealth now flowing by the overland
+routes to the Levant would in time, as the prize of Portuguese daring,
+go by the water way, without delay or fear of plunder or Arab middlemen,
+to Lisbon and Oporto. This would repay all the trouble and all the cost,
+and silence all who murmured. For this Indian trade was the prize of the
+world, and for the sake of this Rome had destroyed Palmyra, and
+attacked Arabia and held Egypt, and struggled for the mastery of the
+Tigris. For the same thing half the wars of the Levant had been waged,
+and by this the Italian republics, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, had grown to
+greatness.
+
+(3.) Lastly, Henry was a Crusader with Islam and a missionary with the
+heathen. Of him fully as much as of Columbus, it may be said, that if he
+aimed at an empire, it was a Christian one, and from the time of the
+first voyages his captains had orders not merely to discover and to
+trade, but to convert. Till his death he hoped to find the land of
+Prester John, the half-true, half-fabulous Christian Priest-King of the
+outer world, so long cut off from Christendom by the Mohammedan states.
+
+At this time many things were drawing western Europe towards the East
+and towards discovery. The progress of science and historic knowledge,
+the records and suggestions of travellers, the development of the
+Christian nations, the position of Portugal and the spirit of her
+people,--all these lines met, as it were, in Henry's time and nation and
+person, and from that meeting came the results of Columbus and Da Gama
+and Magellan.
+
+In the earlier chapters we have tried to trace the preparation along
+these slowly converging paths, for the discoveries of the fifteenth
+century. We started with that body of knowledge and theory about the
+world which the Roman Empire bequeathed to Christendom, and which in the
+earlier Middle Ages was worked upon by the Arabs, and we gained some
+idea, from the sayings of Moslem geographers and from the doings of
+Moslem warriors, of the hindrance as well as of the help that Islam gave
+to European expansion. We saw that during the great struggle of
+Christianity and of the old Order with barbarism, the chief energy of
+our Western world in discovery or extension of any sort took the shape
+of pilgrimage. Then, as time went on, it was possible to see that the
+Saracens, who had begun as destroyers in the South, were acting as
+teachers and civilisers upon Europe, and that the Vikings, who as
+pirates in the North seemed raised up to complete the ruin of Latin
+civilisation, were really waking it into a new activity.
+
+In the Crusades this activity, which had already founded the kingdom of
+Russia on one side and touched America on the other, seemed to pass from
+the Northern seamen into every Christian nation and every class of
+society, and with the conversion of the Northmen their place as the
+discoverers and leaders of the Christian world fitted in with the other
+movements of Mediterranean commerce and war and devotion. Even the
+pilgrims of the Crusading Age were now no longer distinctive: they were
+often, as individuals, members of other classes, traders, fighters, or
+travellers who, after gaining a firm foothold in Syria, began the
+exploration of the further East.
+
+The three great discovering energies of the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries--in land-travel, navigation, and science--were all seen to be
+results, in whole or in part, of the Crusades themselves, and in
+following the more important steps of European travel and trade and
+proselytism from the Holy Land to China, it became more and more evident
+that this practical finding out of the treasures of Cathay and the
+Indies was the necessary preparation for the attempts of Genoese and
+Portuguese to open up the sea route as another and a safer way to the
+source of the same treasures.
+
+Lastly, the intermittent and uncertain ventures of the
+fourteenth-century seamen, Italian, Spanish, French, or English, to
+coast round Africa or to find the Indies by the Southern route--to reach
+a definite end without any clear plan of means to that end--and the
+revival in theoretical geography, which was trying at the same time to
+fill up the gaps of knowledge by tradition or by probability--seemed to
+offer a clear contrast and a clear foreshadowing also of Prince Henry's
+method. Even his nearest forerunners, in seamanship or in map-making[33]
+were strikingly different from himself. They were too much in the spirit
+of Ptolemy and of ancient science; they neglected fact for hypothesis,
+for clever guessing, and so their work was spasmodic and unfruitful, or
+at least disappointing.
+
+[Footnote 33: Except the draughtsmen of the Portolani.]
+
+It was true enough that each generation of Christian thought was less in
+fault than the one before it; but it was not till the fifteenth century,
+till Henry had set the example, that exploration became systematic and
+continuous. To Marco Polo and men like him we owe the beginnings of the
+art and science of discovery among the learned; to the Portuguese is
+due at least the credit of making it a thing of national interest, and
+of freeing it from a false philosophy. To find out by incessant and
+unwearying search what the world really was, and not to make known facts
+fit in with the ideas of some thinker on what the world ought to be,
+this we found to be the main difference between Cosmas or even Ptolemy
+and any true leader of discovery. For a real advance of knowledge, fancy
+must follow experiment, and no merely hypothetical system or Universe as
+shewn in Holy Scripture, would do any longer. We have come to the time
+when explorers were not Ptolemaics or Strabonians or Scripturists, but
+Naturalists--men who examined things afresh, for themselves.
+
+These various objects are all involved in the one central aim of
+discovery, but they are not lost in it. To know this world we live in
+and to teach men the new knowledge was the first thing, which makes
+Henry what he is in universal history; his other aims are those of his
+time and his nation, but they are not less a part of his life.
+
+And he succeeded in them all; if in part his work was for all time and
+in part seemed to pass away after a hundred years, that was due to the
+exhaustion of his people. What he did for his countrymen was realised by
+others, but the start, the inspiration, was his own. He persevered for
+fifty years (1412-60) till within sight of the goal, and though he died
+before the full result of his work was seen, it was none the less his
+due when it came.
+
+We find these results put down to the credit of others, but if Columbus
+gave Castille and Leon a new world in 1492, if Da Gama reached India in
+1498, if Diaz rounded the Cape of Tempests or of Good Hope in 1486, if
+Magellan made the circuit of the globe in 1520-2, their teacher and
+master was none the less Henry the Navigator.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+PRINCE HENRY AND THE CAPTURE OF CEUTA.
+
+1415.
+
+
+We have seen how the kingdom of Portugal itself was almost an offspring
+of the Crusades. They had left behind them a thirst for wealth and for a
+wider life on one side, and a broken Moslem power on the other, which
+opened the way and stirred the enterprise of every maritime state. We
+know that Lisbon had long been an active centre of trade with the Hanse
+Towns, Flanders, and England. And now the projected conquest of Ceuta
+and the appeal of the conqueror of Aljubarrota for a great national
+effort found the people prepared. A royal prince could do what a private
+man could not; and Portugal, more fully developed than any other of the
+Christian kingdoms, was ready to expand abroad without fear at home.
+
+Even before the conquest of Ceuta, in 1410 or 1412, Henry had begun to
+send out his caravels past Cape Non, which had so long been with C.
+Bojador the Finisterre of Africa. The first object of these ships was
+to reach the Guinea coast by outflanking the great western shoulder of
+the continent. Once there, the gold and ivory and slave trade would pass
+away from the desert caravans to the European coasters. Then the eastern
+bend of Africa, along the bights of Benin and Biafra, might be followed
+to the Indies, if this were possible, as some had thought; if not, the
+first stage of the work would have to be taken up again till men had
+found and had rounded the Southern Cape. The outflanking of Guinea
+proved to be only a part of the outflanking of Africa, but it was far
+more than half the battle; just as India was the final prize of full
+success, so the Gold Coast was the reward of the first chapter in that
+success.
+
+But of these earlier expeditions nothing is known in detail; the history
+of the African voyages begins with the war of 1415, and the new
+knowledge it brought to Henry of the Sahara and the Guinea Coast and of
+the tribes of tawny Moors and negroes on the Niger and the Gambia.
+
+In 1414, when Edward was twenty-three, Pedro twenty-two, and Henry
+twenty, King John planned an attack on Ceuta, the great Moorish port on
+the African side of the Straits of Gibraltar. The three princes had all
+asked for knighthood; their father at first proposed to celebrate a year
+of tournaments, but at the suggestion of the Treasurer of Portugal, John
+Affonso de Alemquer, he decided on this African crusade instead. For the
+same strength and money might as well be spent in conquests from the
+Moslem as in sham-fights between Christians. So after reconnoitring the
+place, and lulling the suspicions of Aragon and Granada by a pretence
+of declaring war against the Count of Holland, King John gained the
+formal consent of his nobles at Torres Vedras, and set sail from Lisbon
+on St. James' Day, July 25, 1415, as foretold by the dying Queen
+Philippa, twelve days before.
+
+[Illustration: KING JOHN THE GREAT AND QUEEN PHILIPPA.
+FROM THEIR TOMB AT BATALHA.]
+
+That splendid woman, who had shared the throne for eight and twenty
+years, and who had trained her sons to be fit successors of her husband
+as the leaders of Portugal and the "Examples of all Christians," was now
+cut off by death from a sight of their first victories. Her last thought
+was for their success. She spoke to Edward of a king's true vocation, to
+Pedro of his knightly duties in the help of widows and orphans, to Henry
+of a general's care for his men. On the 13th, the last day of her
+illness, she roused herself to ask "What wind was blowing so strong
+against the house?" and hearing it was the north, sank back and died,
+exclaiming, "It is the wind for your voyage, that must be about St.
+James' Day." It would have been false respect to delay. The spirit of
+the Queen, the crusaders felt, was with them, urging them on.
+
+By the night of the 25th of July the fleet had left the Tagus; on the
+27th the crusaders anchored in the bay of Lagos and mustered all their
+forces: "33 galleys, 27 triremes, 32 biremes, and 120 pinnaces and
+transports," carrying 50,000 soldiers and 30,000 mariners. Some nobles
+and merchant adventurers from England, France, and Germany took part. It
+was something like the conquest of Lisbon over again; a greater Armada
+for a much smaller prey.
+
+On the 10th of August they were off Algeziras, still in Moorish hands,
+as part of the kingdom of Granada, and on the 12th the lighter craft
+were over on the African coast; a strong wind nearly carried the heavier
+into Malaga.
+
+Ceuta, the ancient Septa,[34] once repaired by Justinian, was the chief
+port of Morocco and a centre of commerce for the trade routes of the
+South and East, as well as a centre of piracy for the Barbary corsairs.
+It had long been an outpost of Moslem attack on Christendom; now that
+Europe was taking the offensive, it would be an outpost of the Spanish
+crusade against Islam.
+
+[Footnote 34: City of "Seven" Hills, as some have derived it.]
+
+The city was built on the ordinary model, in two parts: a citadel and a
+port-town, which together covered the neck of a long peninsula running
+out some three miles eastward from the African mainland, and broadening
+again beyond the eastern wall of Ceuta into a hilly square of country.
+
+It was here, just where the land began to spread and form a natural
+harbour, that the Portuguese had planned their landing, and to this
+point Prince Henry, with great trouble, brought up the heavier craft.
+The strong currents that turned them off to the Spanish coast, proved
+good allies of the Europeans after all. For the Moors, who had been
+greatly startled at the first signs of attack, and had hurried to get
+all the help they could from Fez and the upland, now fancied the
+Christian fleet to be scattered once for all, and dismissed all but
+their own garrison; while the Portuguese had been roused afresh to
+action by the fiery energy of King John, Prince Henry, and his brothers.
+On the night of the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, the
+whole armada was at last brought up to the roads of Ceuta; Henry
+anchored off the lower town with his ships from Oporto, and his father,
+though badly wounded in the leg, rowed through the fleet in a shallop,
+preparing all his men for the assault that was to be given at daybreak.
+Henry himself was to have the right of first setting foot on shore,
+where it was hoped the quays would be almost bared of defenders. For the
+main force was brought up against the castle, and every Moor would rush
+to the fight where the King of Portugal was leading.
+
+While these movements were being settled in the armada, all through that
+night Ceuta was brilliantly lighted up, as if _en fete_. The Governor in
+his terror could think of nothing better than to frighten the enemy with
+the show of an immensely populous city, and he had ordered a light to be
+kept burning in every window of every house. As the morning cleared and
+the Christian host saw the beach and harbour lined with Moors, shouting
+defiance, the attack was begun by some volunteers who forgot the
+Prince's claim. One Ruy Gonsalvez was the first to land and clear a
+passage for the rest. The Infantes, Henry and Edward, were not far
+behind, and after a fierce struggle the Moslems were driven through the
+gate of the landing-place back to the wall of the city. Here they
+rallied, under a "negro giant, who fought naked, but with the strength
+of many men, hurling the Christians to the earth with stones." At last
+he was brought down by a lance-thrust, and the crusaders forced their
+way into Ceuta. But Henry, as chief captain on this side, would not
+allow his men to rush on plundering into the heart of the town, but kept
+them by the gates, and sent back to the ships for fresh troops, who soon
+came up under Fernandez d'Ataide, who cheered on the Princes. "This is
+the sort of tournament for you; here you are getting a worthier
+knighthood than you could win at Lisbon."
+
+Meantime the King, with Don Pedro, had heard of Henry's first success
+while still on shipboard, and ordered an instant advance on his side.
+After a still closer struggle than that on the lower ground, the Moors
+were routed, and Pedro pressed on through the narrow streets, just
+escaping death from the showers of heavy stones off the house tops, till
+he met his brothers in a mosque, or square adjoining, in the centre of
+Ceuta.
+
+Then the conquerors scattered for plunder, and came very near losing the
+city altogether. But for the dogged courage of Henry, who twice broke up
+the Moslem rally with a handful of men, at last holding a gate on the
+inner wall between the lower town and the citadel, "with seventeen,
+himself the eighteenth," Ceuta would have been lost after it had been
+gained. Both Henry and Pedro were reported dead. "Such is the end a
+soldier must not fear," was all their father said, as he stayed by the
+ships under the lee of the fortress, waiting, like Edward III. at Crecy,
+for what his sons would do. But towards evening it was known throughout
+the army that the Princes were safe, that the port-town had been gained,
+and that the Moors were slipping away from the citadel.
+
+Henry, Edward, and Pedro held a council, and settled to storm the castle
+next morning; but after sunset a few scouts, sent out to reconnoitre,
+reported that all the garrison had fled.
+
+It was true. The Governor, who had despaired all along of holding out,
+was no sooner beaten out of the lower city than he set the example of a
+strategic movement up the country, and when the Portuguese appeared at
+the fortress gate with axes and began to hew it down, only two Moors
+were left inside. They shouted out that the Christians might save
+themselves that trouble, for they would open it themselves, and the
+standard of St. Vincent, Patron of Lisbon, was planted, before dark
+came, upon the highest tower of Ceuta.
+
+King John offered Henry, for his gallant leadership, the honours of the
+day and the right to be knighted before his brothers, but the Prince,
+who had offered at the beginning of the storm to resign his command to
+Edward, as the eldest, begged that "those who were before him in age
+might have their right, to be first in dignity as well," and the three
+Infantes received their knighthood in order of birth, each holding in
+his hands the bare sword that the Queen had given him on her deathbed.
+
+It was the first Christian rite held in the great Mosque of Ceuta, now
+purified as the Cathedral, and after it the town was thoroughly and
+carefully sacked from end to end. The plunder, of gold and silver and
+gems, stuffs and drugs, was great enough to make the common soldiers
+reckless of other things. The "great jars of oil and honey and spices
+and all provisions" were flung out into the streets, and a heavy rain
+swept away what would have kept a large garrison in plenty.
+
+The great nobles and the royal Princes took back to Portugal some
+princely spoils. Henry's half-brother, now Count of Barcellos,
+afterwards more famous and more troublesome as Duke of Braganza, chose
+for his share some six hundred columns of marble and alabaster from the
+Governor's palace. Henry himself gained in Ceuta a knowledge of inland
+Africa, of its trade routes and of the Gold Coast, that encouraged him
+to begin from this time the habit of coasting voyages. His earlier
+essays in exploration had been attempts, like the unconnected and
+occasional efforts of Spanish and Italian daredevils. It is from this
+year that continuous ocean sailing begins; from the time of his stay in
+Ceuta, Henry works steadily and with foresight towards a nearer goal
+well foreseen, a first stage in his wider scheme which had been
+traversed by men he had known and talked with. They had come into Ceuta
+from Guinea over the sea of the desert; he would send his sailors to
+_their_ starting-point by the longer way, over the desert of the sea.
+
+Thus the victory at Ceuta is not without a very direct influence on our
+subject; and for the same reason, it was important that the conquerors,
+instead of razing the place, decided to hold it. When most of the
+council of war were for a safe and quick return to Portugal, one
+noble, Pedro de Menezes, a trusted friend of Henry's, struck upon the
+ground impatiently a stick of orange-wood he had in his hands. "By my
+faith, with this stick I would defend Ceuta from every Morisco of them
+all." He was left in command, and thus kept open, as it were, to Europe
+and to the Prince's view, one end of a great avenue of commerce and
+intercourse, which Henry aimed at winning for his country. When his
+ships could once reach Guinea, the other end of that same line was in
+his hands as well.
+
+[Illustration: GATEWAY OF THE CHURCH OF THE ORDER OF CHRIST AT THOMAR.]
+
+The King and the Princes left Ceuta in September of the same year (Sept.
+2, 1415), but Henry's connection with his first battle-field was not yet
+over. Menezes found after three years' sole command, that the Moors were
+pressing him very hard. The King of Granada had sent seventy-four ships
+to blockade the city from the sea, and the troops of Fez were forcing
+their way into the lower town. Henry was hurriedly sent from Lisbon to
+its relief, while Edward and Pedro got themselves ready to follow him,
+if needed, from Lagos and the Algarve coast. But Ceuta had already saved
+itself. As the first succours were sailing through the Straits of
+Gibraltar, Menezes contrived to send them word of his danger; the
+Berbers on the land side had mastered Almina, or the eastern part of the
+merchant town, while the Granada galleys had closed in upon the port
+itself. At this news Henry made the best speed he could, but he was only
+in time to see the rout of the Moors. Menezes and the garrison made a
+desperate sally directly they sighted the relief coming through the
+straits; the same appearance struck a panic into the enemy's fleet, and
+only one galley stayed on the African coast to help their landsmen, who
+were thus left alone and without hope of succour on the eastern hills of
+the Ceuta peninsula, cut off by the city from their Berber allies. When
+Henry landed, Almina had been won back and the last of the Granada
+Moslems cut to pieces. From that day Ceuta was safe in Christian hands.
+
+But the Prince, after spending two months in the hope that he might find
+some more work to do in Africa, planned a daring stroke in Europe. Islam
+still owned in Spain the kingdom of Granada, too weak to reconquer the
+old Western Caliphate, but too strong, as the last refuge of a conquered
+and once imperial race, to be an easy prey of the Spanish kingdoms. And
+in that kingdom, Gibraltar, the rock of Tarik, was the most troublesome
+of Moorish strongholds. The Mediterranean itself was not fully secured
+for Christian trade and intercourse while the European Pillar of the
+Western straits was a Saracen fort. If Portugal was to conquer or
+explore in northern Africa, Gibraltar was as much to be aimed at as
+Ceuta. Both sides of the straits, Calpe and Abyla, must be in her hands
+before Christendom could expand safely along the Atlantic coasts.
+
+So Henry, in the face of all his council, determined to make the trial
+on his voyage back to Lisbon. But a storm broke up the fleet, and when
+it could be refitted and re-formed, the time had gone by, and the Prince
+obeyed his father's repeated orders and returned at once to Court. For
+his gallantry and skill in the storm of Ceuta, he had been made Duke of
+Viseu and Lord of Covilham, when King John first touched his own
+kingdom--after the African campaign--at Tavira, on the Algarve coast.
+With his brother Pedro, who shared his honours as Duke of Coimbra and
+Lord of the lands henceforward known as the Infantado or Principality,
+Henry thus begins the line of Dukes in Portugal, and among the other
+details of the war, his name is specially joined with that of an English
+fleet which he had enrolled as a contingent of his armada while
+recruiting for ships and men in the spring of 1415. In the same way as
+English crusaders had passed Lisbon just in time to aid in its conquest
+by Affonso Henriquez, the "great first King" of Portugal in 1147, so now
+twenty-seven English ships on their way to Syria were just in time to
+help the Portuguese make their first conquest abroad.
+
+Lastly, the results of the Ceuta campaign in giving positive knowledge
+of western and inland Africa to a mind like Henry's already set on the
+finding of a sea-route to India, have been noticed by all contemporaries
+and followers, who took any interest in his plans, but it was not merely
+caravan news that he gained in these two visits of 1415 and 1418. Both
+Azurara, the chronicler of his voyages and Diego Gomez, his lieutenant,
+the explorer of the Cape Verde Islands and of the Upper Gambia, are
+quite clear about the new knowledge of the coast now gained from Moorish
+prisoners.
+
+Not only did the Prince get "news of the passage of merchants from the
+coasts of Tunis to Timbuctoo and to Cantor on the Gambia, which
+inspired him to seek the lands by the way of the sea," but also "the
+Tawny Moors (or Azanegues) his prisoners told him of certain tall palms
+growing at the mouth of the Senegal or western Nile, by which he was
+able to guide the caravels he sent out to find that river." By the time
+Henry was ready to return from Ceuta to Portugal for good and all, in
+1418, there were clearly before his mind the five reasons for exploring
+Guinea given by his faithful Azurara:
+
+First of all was his desire to know the country beyond Cape Bojador,
+which till that time was quite unknown either by books or by the talk of
+sailors.
+
+Second was his wish that if any Christian people or good ports should be
+discovered beyond that cape, he might begin a trade with them that would
+profit both the natives and the Portuguese, for he knew of no other
+nation in Europe who trafficked in those parts.
+
+Thirdly, he believed the Moors were more powerful on that side of Africa
+than had been thought, and he feared there were no Christians there at
+all. So he was fain to find out how many and how strong his enemies
+really were.
+
+Fourthly, in all his fighting with the Moors he had never found a
+Christian prince to help him from that side (of further Africa) for the
+love of Christ, therefore he wished, if he could, to meet with such.
+
+Last was his great desire for the spread of the Christian Faith and for
+the redemption of the vast tribes of men lying under the wrath of God.
+
+Behind all these reasons Azurara also believed in a sixth and deeper
+one, which he proceeds to state with all gravity, as the ultimate and
+celestial cause of the Prince's work.
+
+"For as his ascendant was Aries, that is in the House of Mars and the
+Exaltation of the Sun, and as the said Mars is in Aquarius, which is the
+House of Saturn, it was clear that my lord should be a great conqueror,
+and a searcher out of things hidden from other men, according to the
+craft of Saturn, in whose House he was."[35]
+
+[Footnote 35: The attempts of Henry and his family to conquer a
+land-empire in northern Africa are not to be separated from the maritime
+and coasting explorations. They were two aspects of one idea, two faces
+of the same enterprise.
+
+In the same way the new bishopric of Ceuta, now founded, was a first
+step towards the organised conversion of the Heathen of the South. The
+Franciscans had founded the See of Fez and Morocco in 1233, but it had
+not till now been followed up.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+HENRY'S SETTLEMENT AT SAGRES AND FIRST DISCOVERIES.
+
+1418-28.
+
+
+Whatever the Prince owed to his stay at Ceuta beyond the general
+suggestion and encouragement to take up a life-profession of discovery,
+it was at any rate put into practice on his second and last return
+(1418). From that time to the end of his life he became a recluse from
+the Court life of Lisbon, though he soon gathered round himself a rival
+Court, of science and seamanship.
+
+The old "Sacred Cape" of the Romans, then called Sagres, now the "Cape
+St. Vincent" of Nelson and modern maps, was his chosen home for the next
+forty years, though he seems to have passed a good deal of his time in
+his port of Lagos, close by.
+
+In 1419 King John made him Governor for life of the Algarves (the
+southern province of Portugal) and the new governor at once began to
+rebuild and enlarge the old naval arsenal, in the neck of the Cape, into
+a settlement that soon became the "Prince's Town." In Lagos, his ships
+were built and manned; and there, and in Sagres itself, all the schemes
+of discovery were thought out, the maps and instruments corrected, and
+the accounts of past and present travellers compared by the Prince
+himself. His results then passed into the instructions of his captains
+and the equipment of his caravels. The Sacred Cape, which he now
+colonised, was at any rate a good centre for his work of ocean voyaging.
+Here, with the Atlantic washing the land on three sides, he was well on
+the scene of action. There were buildings on Sagres headland as old as
+the eleventh century; Greek geography had made this the starting-point
+of its shorter and continental measurements for the length of the
+habitable world, and the Genoese, whose policy was to buy up points of
+vantage on every coast, were eager to plant a colony there, but Portugal
+was not ready to become like the Byzantine Empire, a depot for Italian
+commerce, and Henry had his own reasons for securing a desolate
+promontory.
+
+On this he now built himself a palace, a chapel, a study, an
+observatory--the earliest in Portugal--and a village for his helpers and
+attendants. "In his wish to gain a prosperous result for his efforts,
+the Prince devoted great industry and thought to the matter, and at
+great expense procured the aid of one Master Jacome from Majorca, a man
+skilled in the art of navigation and in the making of maps and
+instruments, and who was sent for, with certain of the Arab and Jewish
+mathematicians, to instruct the Portuguese in that science." So at
+least, says De Barros, the "Livy of Portugal." At Sagres was thus
+founded anew the systematic study of applied science in Christendom; it
+was better than the work of the old Greek "University" at Alexandria
+with which it has been compared, because it was essentially practical.
+From it "our sailors," says Pedro Nunes, "went out well taught and
+provided with instruments and rules which all map-makers should know."
+We would gladly know more of Henry's scientific work; a good many
+legends have grown up about it, and even his foundation of the Chair of
+Mathematics in the University of Lisbon or Coimbra, our best evidence of
+the unrecorded work of his school, has been doubted by some modern
+critics, even by the national historian, Alexander Herculano. But to
+Prince Henry's study and science two great improvements on this side may
+be traced: first in the art of map-making, secondly in the building of
+caravels and ocean craft.
+
+The great Venetian map of Fra Mauro of the Camaldolese convent of
+Murano, finished in 1459, one year before the Navigator's death, is
+evidence for the one; Cadamosto's words, as a practical seaman, of
+Italian birth, in Henry's service, that the "caravels of Portugal were
+the best sailing ships afloat," may be proof sufficient of the other.
+
+On both these lines, Henry took up the results of Italians and worked
+towards success with their aid. As Columbus and the Cabots and Verazzano
+in later times represented the intellectual leadership of Italy to other
+nations--Spain, England, and France; but had to find their career and
+resources not in their own commercial republics, but at the Courts of
+the new centralised kingdoms of the West, where a paternal despotism
+gave the best hope of guiding any popular movement, social or religious
+or political or scientific,--so in the earlier fifteenth century,
+mariners like Cadamosto and De Nolli, scientific draughtsmen like Fra
+Mauro and Andrea Bianco, looked from Venice and Genoa to the Court of
+Sagres and to the service of Prince Henry as their proper sphere, where
+they would find the encouragement and reward they sought for at home and
+often sought in vain.
+
+Henry's settlement on Cape St. Vincent was not long without results. The
+voyage of his captain, John de Trasto, to the "fruitful" district of
+Grand Canary in 1415 was not in any sense a discovery, as the conquest
+of John de Bethencourt in 1402 had made these "Fortunate" islands
+perfectly well known, but the finding of Porto Santo and Madeira in
+1418-20 was a real gain. For the Machin story of the English landing in
+Madeira was a close secret, which by good fortune passed into the
+Prince's keeping, but not beyond, so that as far as general knowledge
+went, the Portuguese were now fairly embarked upon the Sea of Darkness.
+
+First came the sighting of the "Holy Haven" in 1418. In this year, says
+Azurara, two squires of the Prince's household, named John Gonsalvez
+Zarco and Tristam Vaz, eager for renown and anxious to serve their lord,
+had set out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea, but they were
+caught by a storm near Lagos and driven to the island of Porto Santo.
+This name they gave themselves "at this very time in their joy at thus
+escaping the perils of the tempest."
+
+Zarco and Vaz returned in triumph to Sagres and reported the new-found
+island to be well worth a permanent settlement. Henry, always
+"generous," took up the idea with great interest and sent out Zarco and
+Vaz with another of his equerries, one Bartholomew Perestrello, to
+colonise, with two ships and products for a new country; corn, honey,
+the sugar cane from Sicily, the Malvoisie grape from Crete, even the
+rabbit from Portugal.
+
+On his first return voyage Zarco had captured the pilot Morales of
+Seville, and from him the Prince had gained certain news of the English
+landing in Madeira. So it was with a definite purpose of further
+discovery that his captains returned to Porto Santo in 1420, with
+Morales as their guide. Now, as before, Zarco appears as chief in
+command; he had won himself a name at Ceuta, and if the tradition be
+true, had just brought in the first use of ship-artillery; the finding
+of Porto Santo was mainly credited to him.
+
+Sailing from Lagos in June, 1420, he had no sooner reached once again
+the "Fair Haven" of his first success, than he was called to note a dark
+line, like a mark of distant land, upon the south-west horizon. The
+colonists he had left on his earlier visit had watched this day by day
+till they had made certain of its being something more than a passing
+appearance of sea or sky, and Morales was ready with his suggestion that
+this was Machin's island. The fog that hung over this part of the ocean
+would be natural to a thick and dank woodland like that on the island
+of his old adventure.
+
+Zarco resolved to try: After eight days' rest in Porto Santo he set
+sail, and, observing that the fog grew less toward the east of the cloud
+bank, made for that point and came upon a low marshy cape, which he
+called St. Lawrence Head. Then, creeping round the south coast, he came
+to the high lands and the forests of Madeira,--so named here and now,
+either as De Barros says, "from the thick woods they found there," or,
+in the form of Machico, from the first discoverer, luckless Robert
+Machin. For on landing the Portuguese, guided by Morales, soon found the
+wooden cross and grave of the Englishman and his mistress, and it was
+there that Zarco, with no human being to dispute his title, "took
+seizin" of the island in the name of King John, Prince Henry, and the
+Order of Christ.
+
+Embarking once more, he then coasted slowly round from the "River of the
+Flint" to "Jackdaw Point," and the "Chamber of the Wolves," where his
+men started a herd of sea-calves. So he came to the vast plain overgrown
+with fennel or "Funchal," where the chief town of after days grew up. A
+party sent inland to explore, reported that on every side the ocean
+could be seen from the hills; and Zarco, after taking in some specimens
+of the native wood and plants and birds at Funchal, put back in the last
+days of August to Portugal.
+
+He was splendidly received at Court, made a count--"Count of the Chamber
+of the Wolves,"--and granted the command of the island for his own
+life. A little later, the commandership was made hereditary in his
+family. Tristam Vaz, the second in the Prince's commission, was rewarded
+too: the northern half of Madeira was given him as a captaincy, and in
+1425 Henry began to colonise in form. Zarco, as early as May, 1421, had
+returned with wife and children and attendants, and begun to build the
+"port of Machico," and the "city of Funchal," but this did not become a
+state affair until four years more had gone by.
+
+But from the first, the island, by its export of wood and dragon's blood
+and wheat, began to reward the trouble of discovery and settlement.
+Sugar and wine were brought to perfection in later years, after the
+great "Seven years' fire" had burnt down the forests and enriched the
+soil of Madeira. It was soon after Zarco's return to Funchal that he
+first set fire to the woods behind the fennel fields of the coast, to
+clear himself a way through the undergrowth into the heart of the
+island; the fire blazed and smouldered till it had taken well hold of
+the entire mass of timber that covered the upper country, nothing in the
+feeble resources of the first settlers could stop it, and Madeira
+lighted the ships of Henry on their way to the south, like a volcano,
+till 1428. This was at least the common story as told in Portugal, and
+it was often joined with another--of the rabbit plague, which ate up all
+the green stuff of the island in the first struggling years of Zarco's
+settlement, and so prevented the export of anything but timber. So much
+of this was brought into Portugal that Henry's lifetime is a landmark in
+the domestic architecture of Spain, and from the trade of the "Wood
+Island" is derived the lofty style of building that now began to replace
+the more modest fashion of the Arabs.
+
+A charter of Henry's, dated 1430, ten years after the rediscovery of
+Madeira, and reciting the names of some of the first settlers, and his
+bequest of the island, or rather of its "spiritualties," to the Order of
+Christ on September 18, 1460, just before his death, are the chief links
+between this colony and the home country in the next generation--but in
+the history of institutions there are few more curious facts than the
+insistence of the Prince on a census for his little "Nation." From the
+first, the family registers of the colonists were carefully kept, and
+from these we see something of the wonder of men who were beginning
+human life, as it were, in a new land. The first children born in
+Madeira--a son and daughter of Ayres Ferreira, one of Zarco's
+comrades--were christened Adam and Eve.[36]
+
+[Footnote 36: In 1418 and 1424-5 Henry purchased and tried to secure
+certain rights of possession in the Canaries, conceded by De
+Bethencourt; and these attempts were repeated in 1445 and 1446.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CAPE BOJADOR AND THE AZORES.
+
+1428-1441.
+
+
+But in spite of Zarco's success, Cape Bojador had not yet been passed,
+though every year, from 1418, caravels had left Sagres, "to find the
+coasts of Guinea."
+
+In 1428, Don Pedro, Henry's elder brother, had come home from his
+travels, with all the books and charts he had collected to help the
+explorers--and it is practically certain that the Mappa Mundi given him
+in Venice acted as a direct suggestion to the next attempts on west and
+south--westward to the Azores, southward towards Guinea.
+
+Kept in the royal monastery of Alcobaca till late in the sixteenth
+century, though now irrecoverably lost, this treasure of Don Pedro's,
+like his "manuscripts of travel," would seem to have been used at the
+Sagres school till Prince Henry's death, and at least as early as 1431
+its effect was seen in the first Portuguese recovery of the Azores. All
+the West African islands, plainly enough described in the map of 1428,
+were half within, half without the knowledge of Christendom, ever and
+anon being brought back or rediscovered by some accident or enterprise,
+and then being lost to sight and memory through the want of systematic
+exploration. This was exactly what the Portuguese supplied. The Azores,
+marked on the Laurentian Portulano of 1351, were practically unknown to
+seamen when, after eighty years had passed, Gonzalo Cabral was sent out
+from Sagres to find them (1431). He reached the Formiga group--the Ant
+islands,--and next year (1432) returned to make further discoveries,
+chiefly of the island Santa Maria. But the more important advances on
+this side were made between 1444-50, after the first colony had been
+planted twelve or fourteen years, and were the result of the Prince's
+theoretical correction of his captains' practical oversight. From a
+comparison of old maps and descriptions with their accounts, he was able
+to correct their line of sail and so to direct them to the very islands
+they had searched for in vain.
+
+But as yet these results were far distant, and the slow and sure
+progress of African coasting towards Cape Bojador was the chief outcome
+of Pedro's help. In 1430, 1431, and 1432, the Infant urged upon his
+captains the paramount importance of rounding the Cape, which had
+baffled all his caravels by its strong ocean currents and dangerous
+rocks. At last this became the Prince's one command: Pass the Cape if
+you do nothing beyond; yet the years went by, King John of good memory
+died in 1433, and Gil Eannes, sent out in the same year with strong
+hopes of success, turned aside at the Canaries and only brought a few
+slaves back to Portugal. A large party at Court, in the Army, and among
+the nobles and merchant classes, complained bitterly of the utter want
+of profit from Henry's schemes, and there was at this time a danger of
+the collapse of his movement. For though as yet he paid his own
+expenses, his treasury could not long have stood the drain without any
+incoming.
+
+Bojador, the "paunch" or "bulging Cape," 180 miles beyond Cape Non, had
+been, since the days of the Laurentian Portulano (1351), and the Catalan
+and Portuguese voyages of 1341 and 1346, the southmost point of
+Christian knowledge. A long circuit was needed here, as at the Cape of
+Good Hope, to round a promontory that stretched, men said, fully one
+hundred miles into the ocean, where tides and shoals formed a current
+twenty miles across. It was the sight or the fancy of this furious surge
+which frightened Henry's crews, for it plainly forbade all coasting and
+compelled the seamen to strike into the open sea out of sight of land.
+And though the discovery of Porto Santo had proved the feasibility and
+the gain of venturing boldly into the Sea of Darkness, and though since
+that time (1418) the Prince had sent out his captains due west to the
+Azores and south-west to Madeira, both hundreds of miles from the
+continent, yet in rounding Bojador there were not only the real terrors
+of the Atlantic, but the legends of the tropics to frighten back the
+boldest.
+
+Most mariners had heard it said that any Christian who passed Bojador
+would infallibly be changed into a black, and would carry to his end
+this mark of God's vengeance on his insolent prying. The Arab tradition
+of the Green Sea of Night had too strongly taken hold of Christian
+thought to be easily shaken off. And it was beyond the Cape which
+bounded their knowledge that the Saracen geographers had fringed the
+coast of Africa with sea-monsters and serpent rocks and water unicorns,
+instead of place names, and had drawn the horrible giant hand of Satan
+raised above the waves to seize the first of his human prey that would
+venture into his den. If God made the firm earth, the Devil made the
+unknown and treacherous ocean--this was the real lesson of most of the
+mediaeval maps, and it was this ingrained superstition that Henry found
+his worst enemy, appearing as it did sometimes even in his most trusted
+and daring captains.
+
+And then again, the legends of Tropical Africa, of the mainland beyond
+Bojador, were hardly less terrible than those of the Tropical Ocean. The
+Dark Continent, with its surrounding Sea of Darkness, was the home of
+mystery and legend. We have seen how ready the Arabs were to write
+Uninhabitable over any unknown country--dark seas and lands were simply
+those that were dark to them, like the Dark Ages to others, but nowhere
+did their imagination revel in genies and fairies and magicians and all
+the horrors of hell, with more enthusiastic and genial interest than in
+Africa. Here only the northern parts could be lived in by man. In the
+south and central deserts, as we have heard from the Moslem doctors
+themselves, the sun poured down sheets of liquid flame upon the ground
+and kept the sea and the rivers boiling day and night with the fiery
+heat. So any sailors would of course be boiled alive as soon as they got
+near to the Torrid Zone.
+
+It was this kind of learning, discredited but not forgotten, that was
+still in the minds of Gil Eannes and his friends when they came home in
+1433, with lame excuses, to Henry's Court. The currents and south winds
+had stopped them, they said. It was impossible to get round Bojador.
+
+The Prince was roused. He ordered the same captain to return next year
+and try the Cape again. His men ought to have learned something better
+than the childish fables of past time. "And if," said he, "there were
+even any truth in these stories that they tell, I would not blame you,
+but you come to me with the tales of four seamen who perhaps know the
+voyage to the Low Countries or some other coasting route, but, except
+for this, don't know how to use needle or sailing chart. Go out again
+and heed them not, for by God's help, fame and profit must come from
+your voyage, if you will but persevere."
+
+The Prince was backed by the warm encouragement of the new King, Edward,
+his eldest brother, who had only been one month upon the throne when he
+bestirred himself to shew his favour to a national movement of
+discovery. King John had died on August 14, 1433 (the anniversary of
+Aljubarrota), and on September 26th, of the same year, by a charter
+given from Cintra, King Edward granted the islands of Madeira and Porto
+Santo, with the Desertas, to Henry as Grand Master of the Order of
+Christ.
+
+With this encouragement the Infant sent out Gil Eannes in 1434 under the
+strongest charge not to return without a good account of the Cape and
+the seas beyond. Running far out into the open, his caravel doubled
+Bojador, and coming back to the coast found the sea "as easy to sail in
+as the waters at home," and the land very rich and pleasant. They landed
+and discovered no trace of men or houses, but gathered plants, "such as
+were called in Portugal St. Mary's roses," to present to Don Henry. Not
+even the southern Cape of Tempests or Good Hope was so long and
+obstinate a barrier as Bojador had been, and the passing of this
+difficulty proved the salvation of the Prince's schemes. Though again
+and again interrupted by political troubles between 1437 and 1449, the
+advance at sea went on, and never again was there a serious danger of
+the failure of the whole movement through general opposition and
+discontent.
+
+In 1435 Gil Eannes was sent out again to follow up his success with
+Affonso Baldaya, the Prince's cupbearer, in a larger vessel than had yet
+been risked in exploration, called a varinel, or oared galley. The two
+captains passed fifty leagues--one hundred and fifty miles--beyond the
+Cape, and found traces of caravans, reached as far as an inlet they
+named Gurnet Bay, from its shoals of fish, and again put back to Lagos,
+early in the year.
+
+There were still several months left for ocean sailing in 1435, and
+Henry at once despatched Baldaya again in his varinel, with orders to go
+as far as he could along the coast, at least till he could find some
+natives. One of these he was to bring home with him. Baldaya accordingly
+sailed 130 leagues--390 miles--beyond Cape Bojador, till he reached an
+estuary running some twenty miles up the country and promising to lead
+to a great river. This might prove to be the western Nile of the
+Negroes, or the famous River of Gold, Baldaya thought, and though it
+proved to be only an inlet of the sea, the name of Rio d'Ouro, then
+given by the first hopes of the Portuguese, has outlasted the
+disappointment that found only a sandy reach instead of a waterway to
+the Mountains of the Moon and the kingdom of Prester John.
+
+Baldaya anchored here, landed a couple of horses which the Infant had
+given him to scour the country, and set "two young noble gentlemen" upon
+them to ride up country, to look for signs of natives, and if possible
+to bring back one captive to the ship. Taking no body-armour, but only
+lance and sword, the boys followed the "river" to its source, seven
+leagues up the country, and here came suddenly upon nineteen savages,
+armed with assegais. They rode up to them and drove them out of the open
+up to a loose mound of stones; then as evening was coming on and they
+could not secure a prisoner, they rode back to the sea and reached the
+ship about the dawn of day. "And of these boys," says the chronicler, "I
+myself knew one, when he was a noble gentleman of good renown in arms.
+His name was Hector Homen, and you will find him in our history well
+proved in brave deeds. The other, named Lopez d'Almeida, was a nobleman
+of good presence, as I have heard from those who knew him."
+
+This first landing of Europeans on the coasts of unknown Africa, since
+the days of Carthaginian colonies, is one of the great moments in the
+story of Western expansion and discovery. For it means that Christendom
+on her Western side has at last got beyond the first circle of her
+enemies, the belt of settled Moslem ground, and has begun to touch the
+wider world outside, on the shore of the ocean as well as along the
+Eastern trade routes. And it almost seemed to be of little practical
+value that Marco Polo and the friars and traders who followed him had
+passed Islam in Asia, and reached even furthest Tartary, for it only
+made more clear that Asia was not Christian, and that there would have
+to be a deadly struggle before European influence could be restored on
+this side to what it had been under Alexander; but on the west, by the
+Atlantic coasts, once Morocco had been passed, there were only scattered
+savage tribes to be dealt with. Baldaya had now reached the pagans
+beyond Islam; the rival civilisation of the Arabs and their converts had
+been almost outflanked by Don Henry's ships; and the boys who rode up
+the Rio d'Ouro beach in 1435 were the first pickets of a great army.
+Their charge upon a body of grown men ten times their number, was a
+prophecy of the coming conquests of Christian Europe in the new worlds
+it was now in search of, in south and east and west.
+
+Now Baldaya instantly followed up his pioneers. He took a party in his
+ship's boat and rode up the stream to the scene of the fight, with the
+boys on horseback riding by the bank and shewing him the stone-heap
+where the natives had rallied on the day before. But in the night they
+had all fled farther up country, leaving most of their miserable goods
+behind. All these were carried off, and the Portuguese left the Bay of
+the Horses, as they called this farthest reach of the Rio d'Ouro, and
+pulled back to the varinel, without any further success than a wholesome
+disappointment. They must go farther southward if they were to find the
+western Nile and the way round Africa.
+
+Still Baldaya was not content. He wished to carry back a prisoner, as
+Henry had charged him, and so he coasted along fifty leagues more, from
+the Rio d'Ouro to the Port of Gallee, a rock that looked like a galley,
+where there was a more prominent headland than he had passed since
+Bojador. Here he landed once again, and found some native nets, made of
+the bark of trees, but none of the natives who made them.
+
+In the early months of 1436 he and his varinel were again in Portuguese
+waters; but the land had now been touched that lay three hundred miles
+beyond the old African Finisterre, and in two years (1434-6) Portugal
+and all the Christian nations, through Henry's work, had entered on a
+new chapter of history. The narrower world of the Roman Empire and the
+Mediaeval Church was already growing into the modern globe in the break
+up of that old terror of the sea which had so long fixed for men the
+bounds that they must not pass. The land routes had been cleared to
+Western knowledge, though not mastered, by the Crusades; now the far
+more dreaded and unknown water-way was fairly entered. For up to this
+time there is no fair evidence that either Christian or Moorish
+enterprise had ever rounded Bojador, and the theoretical marking of it
+upon maps was a very different thing from the experience that it was
+just like any other cape, and no more an end of the world than Cape St.
+Vincent itself. Neither Genoese, nor Catalans, nor Normans of Dieppe,
+nor the Arab wanderers of Edrisi and Ibn Said were before Don Henry now.
+His discoveries of the Atlantic islands were findings, rediscoveries;
+his coast voyages from the year 1433 are all ventures in the true
+unknown.
+
+But from 1436 to 1441, from Baldaya's second return to the start of Nuno
+Tristam and Antam Gonsalvez for Cape Blanco, exploration was not
+successful or energetic. The simple cause of this was the Infant's other
+business. In these years took place the fatal attempt on Tangier, the
+death of King Edward, and the troubles of the minority of his child,
+Affonso V.--Affonso the African conqueror of later years.
+
+True it is, we read in our _Chronicle of the Discovery of Guinea_, that
+in these years there went to those parts two ships, one at a time, but
+the first turned back in the face of bad weather, and the other only
+went to the Rio d'Ouro for the skins and oil of sea wolves, and after
+taking in a cargo of these, went back to Portugal. And true it is, too,
+that in the year 1440 there were armed and sent out two caravels to go
+to that same land, but in that they met with contrary fortune, we do not
+tell any more of their voyage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+HENRY'S POLITICAL LIFE. 1433-1441.
+
+
+The Prince's exile from politics in his hermitage at Sagres could not be
+absolutely unbroken. He was ready to come back to Court and to the
+battle field when he was needed. So he appeared at the deathbed of his
+father in 1433 and of his brother in 1438, at the siege of Tangier in
+1437, and during the first years of the Regency (1438-40) he helped to
+govern for his nephew, Edward's son Affonso. From 1436 till 1441 he did
+not seriously turn his attention back to discovery.
+
+What is chiefly interesting in the story of these years is the
+half-religious reverence paid to Henry by his brothers, by Cortes, and
+the whole people. He was above and beyond his age, but not so much as to
+be beyond its understanding. He was not a leader where there are no
+followers; he was one of the fortunate beings who are most valued by
+those who have lived on the closest terms with them, by father and by
+brothers.
+
+It was believed throughout the kingdom that King John's last words were
+"an encouragement to the Infant to persevere in his right laudable
+purpose of spreading the Christian faith in the lands of darkness";
+whether true or not, at any rate it was felt to fit the place and the
+man, and Henry's brothers, Pedro and Edward, took up loyally their
+father's commission to keep peace at home and sailing ships on the sea.
+
+But the new reign was short and full of trouble. King Edward had
+scarcely been crowned when the scheme of an African war was revived by
+Don Ferdinand, the fourth of the "Famous Infants" of the House of Aviz
+(1433). Ferdinand, always a Crusader at heart, had refused a Cardinal's
+hat, that he might keep his strength for killing the enemies of Christ,
+and in Henry he found a ready listener. It was the Navigator, in fact,
+who planned and organised the scheme of campaign now pressed upon the
+King and the country. It was perfectly natural that he should do so. The
+war of Ceuta had been of the first importance to his work of discovery;
+it had been largely his own achievement, and his wish to conquer
+Heathens and Saracens and to make good Christians of them was hardly
+less strong than his natural bent for discovery and exploring
+settlement. He now took up Ferdinand's suggestion, made of it a definite
+project--for a storm of Tangier--and wrung a reluctant consent from
+Edward and from Cortes. The chief hindrance was lack of money; even the
+popularity of the Government could not prevent "sore grudging and
+murmuring among the people." Don Pedro himself was against the whole
+plan, and from respect to his wishes the question was referred to the
+Pope. Are we to make war on the infidels or no?
+
+If the infidels in question, answered the Curia, were in Christian land
+and used Christian churches as mosques of Mohammed, or if they made
+incursions upon Christians, though always returning to their own land,
+or if doing none of these things they were idolaters or sinned against
+nature, the Princes of Portugal would do right to levy war upon them.
+But this should be done with prudence and piety, lest the people of
+Christ should suffer loss. Further, it was only just to tax a Christian
+people for support of an infidel war, when the said war was of necessity
+in defence of the kingdom. If the war was voluntary, for the conquering
+of fresh lands from the Heathen, it could only be waged at the King's
+own cost.
+
+But before this answer arrived, the armament had been made ready, and
+things had gone too far to draw back; the Queen was eager for the war,
+and had brought King Edward to a more willing consent. So in the face of
+bad omens, an illness of Prince Ferdinand's, and the warning words of
+Don Pedro, the troops were put on board ship, August 17, 1437. On August
+22d they set sail, and on the 26th landed at Ceuta, where Menezes still
+commanded. The European triumphs of 1415 and 1418 were still fresh in
+the memories of the Moors, and Don Henry was remembered as their hero.
+So it was to him that the tribes of the Beni Hamed sent offers of
+submission and tribute on the first news of the invasion. The Prince
+accepted their presents of gold and silver, cattle and wood, and left
+them in peace during the war, for the forces he had with him were barely
+sufficient for the siege of Tangier. Out of fourteen thousand men levied
+in Portugal, only six thousand answered the roll-call in Ceuta. A great
+number had shirked the dangers of Africa; and the room on shipboard had
+in itself been absurdly insufficient. The transports provided were just
+enough for the battalions that actually crossed, and for a fresh supply
+they must be sent back to Lisbon. In the council of war most were agreed
+upon this as the best thing on paper, but the practical difficulties
+were so great that Henry decided not to wait for reinforcements, but to
+push forward with the troops in hand.
+
+The direct road to Tangier by way of Ximera was now found impassable,
+and it was determined to march the army round by Tetuan, while the fleet
+was brought up along the coast. Ferdinand, who was still suffering and
+unequal to the land journey, was to go by sea, while his elder brother,
+as chief captain of the whole armament, undertook to force his way along
+the inland routes. In this he was successful. In three days he came
+before Tetuan, which opened its gates at once, and on September 23d,
+without losing a single man, he appeared before Old Tangier, where
+Ferdinand was already waiting his arrival.
+
+A rumour was now spread that the Moors were flying from Tangier as they
+had fled from Ceuta castle two and twenty years before, but Zala ben
+Zala, who commanded here as he had done there, now knew better how to
+defend a town, with the desperate courage of his Spanish foes. The
+attack instantly ordered by Henry on the gates of Tangier was roughly
+repulsed, and for the next fortnight the losses of the crusaders were so
+heavy that the siege was turned into a blockade. On September 30th,
+10,000 horse and 90,000 foot came down from the upland to the coast for
+the relief of Tangier. Henry promptly led his little army into the open
+and ordered an attack, and the vast Moorish host which had taken up its
+station on a hill within sight of the camp, not daring to accept the
+challenge, wavered, broke, and rushed headlong to the mountains. But
+after three days they reappeared in greater numbers and even ventured
+down into the plain. Again Henry drove them back; again--next day--they
+returned; at last, after their force had been swollen to 130,000 men,
+and by overwhelming numbers had compelled the Christians to keep within
+their trenches, they threw themselves upon the Portuguese outposts.
+After a desperate struggle they were repulsed and a sally from the town
+was beaten back at the same time; the Europeans seemed ready to meet any
+odds. With these victories, Henry was confident that Tangier must soon
+fall; he ordered another escalade, but all his scaling ladders were
+burnt or broken and many of his men crushed beneath the overhanging
+parts of the wall, that were pushed down bodily upon the storming
+parties. In this final assault of the 5th of October, two Moors were
+taken who told Henry of immense succours now coming up under the Kings
+of Fez, of Morocco, and of Tafilet. They had with them, said the
+captives, at least 100,000 horse; their infantry was beyond count. Sure
+enough; on the 9th of October, the hills round Tangier seemed covered
+with the native armies, and it became clear that the siege must be
+raised. All that was left for Henry was to bring off his soldiers in
+safety. He tried his best. With quiet energy he issued his orders for
+all contingents; the marines and seamen were to embark at once; the
+artillery was given in charge of the Marshal of the Kingdom; Almada, the
+Hercules of Portugal, was to draw up the foot in line of battle; the
+Infant himself took his station with the cavalry on a small piece of
+rising ground.
+
+When the Moors charged, they were well received. In spite of all their
+strength, one army being held ready to take another's place, as men grew
+tired, the Portuguese held their own. Henry had a horse killed under
+him; Cabral, his Master of Horse, fell at his side with five and twenty
+of his men; the cowardice of one regiment, who fled to the ships, almost
+ruined the defence; but when night fell, the Moorish columns fell
+sullenly back and left the Infant one more chance of flight and safety.
+It was the only hope, and even this was lost through the desertion of a
+traitor. Martin Vieyra, the apostate priest, once Henry's chaplain, now
+gave up to the enemy's generals the whole plan of escape.
+
+After a long debate, it was determined, not to massacre the Christian
+army, but to take sureties from them that Ceuta should be restored with
+all the Moorish captives in the Prince's hands. These terms were
+accepted, for it was soon known that escape was hopeless.
+
+But next morning a large party of Moors, with more than the ordinary
+Moslem treachery, made a last fierce attempt to surprise the camp. For
+eight hours, eight separate attacks went on; when all had failed, the
+retreating Berbers tried to set fire to the woodwork of the
+entrenchments. With the greatest trouble, Henry saved his timbers, and
+under cover of night fortified a new and smaller camp close to the
+shore. Food and water had both run short, and the besiegers, who were
+now become the besieged, had to kill their horses and cook them, with
+saddles for fuel. They were saved from a fatal drought by a lucky shower
+of rain, but their ruin was only a matter of time, for it was hopeless
+to try an embarkation under the walls of the city with all the hosts of
+Morocco waiting for the first chance of a successful storm; but the
+losses of the native kings and chiefs had been so great that they were
+ready to sign a written truce and to keep their cut-throats to the terms
+of it.
+
+On the 15th of October, Don Henry, for the Portuguese, agreed that
+Ceuta, with all the Moorish prisoners kept in guard by Menezes, should
+be given up and that no further attack should be made by the King of
+Portugal on any side of Barbary for one hundred years. The arms and
+baggage of the crusaders were to be surrendered at once: directly this
+was done they were to embark, with none of the honours of war, and to
+sail back at once to Europe. Don Ferdinand was left with twelve nobles
+as hostages for the treaty till Ceuta was restored; on the other side
+Zala ben Zala's eldest son was all the security given. Even after this,
+a plot was laid to massacre the "Christian dogs" as they passed through
+the streets of Tangier, on their free passage to the harbour which the
+treaty secured them. Henry got wind of this just in time, and instantly
+embarked his men by boats from the shore outside the walls, but his
+rearguard was set upon just as they were leaving the land and about
+sixty were killed.
+
+It was a terrible disaster. Although his losses were but some five
+hundred killed and disabled, Henry was overcome with the disgrace. As he
+thought of his brother among the Moors, he refused to show his face in
+Portugal and shut himself up in Ceuta. Here, as he worried himself to
+find some means of saving Ferdinand, he fell dangerously ill, till fresh
+hope came to him with the arrival of Don John, whom Edward had sent to
+the help of his brothers with some reserves from Algarve. Henry and John
+consulted about Ferdinand's ransom and at last offered their chief
+hostage, Zala ben Zala's boy, as an exchange for the Infant. It was the
+only ransom, they told the Moors, that would ever be thought of; Ceuta
+would never be surrendered.
+
+Don John's mission was a failure, as might have been expected, and both
+the Princes were now recalled to Portugal, where Henry steadily refused
+to go to Court, staying at Sagres in an almost complete retirement from
+his usual interests, till King Edward's death forced him again into
+action. It was the unavoidable shame of the only choice given to
+himself and the kingdom that paralysed his energy, and made him moody
+and helpless through this time of inaction and disgrace.
+
+    "Captive he saw his brother, bright Fernand
+    The Saint, aspiring high with purpose brave,
+    Who as a hostage in the Saracen's hand
+    Betrayed himself his 'leagured host to save.
+    Lest bought with price of Ceita's potent town
+    To public welfare be preferred his own."[37]
+
+[Footnote 37: Camoens' _Lusiads_, iv., 52.]
+
+The mere failure to storm Tangier was brilliantly atoned for by the
+bravery of the army and the repeated victories over immensely superior
+force. But now either Ceuta must be exchanged for Ferdinand, or the
+youngest and favourite brother of the House of Aviz must be left to die
+among the Berbers. Many, if not most of the Cortes, summoned in 1438 to
+Leiria to discuss the ransom, were in favour of letting Ceuta go; but
+all the chiefs of the Government, except the King himself, "thought it
+not just to deliver a whole people to the fury of the infidels for the
+liberty of one man." Even Henry at last agreed in this with Don Pedro
+and Don John.
+
+Edward was in despair; he was willing to pay almost any price to recover
+Ferdinand, and in hope of finding support he now appealed from his own
+royal house and his nobles to the Pope, the cardinals, and the crowned
+heads of Europe. All agreed that a Christian city must not be bartered
+even for a Christian Prince; Edward's offers of money and "perpetual
+peace" were scornfully rejected by the Moors, who held to their bond
+"Ceuta or nothing"--and their wretched captive, treated to all the
+filthy horrors of Mussulman imprisonment and slavery and torture, died
+under his agony in the sixth year of his living death and the
+forty-first of his age, 5th June, 1443.
+
+Before this his loss had dragged down to the same fate his eldest
+brother, King Edward, and but for the inspiration of a great purpose,
+which again put meaning into his life, Henry might have died of the same
+"illness of soul." Every Portuguese burned to revenge the Constant
+Prince; the Pope was called upon to approve a new crusade, levies were
+made and vessels built, when the plague broke out with terrible
+violence, and ravaged every class and every district as it had not since
+the days of the Black Death. The King, seized by it in his misery and
+weakness and bitter disappointment, fell a victim. The wreck of all his
+hopes left him with hardly a wish to live, and on September 9, 1438, at
+the age of forty-seven, and after a reign of five years, he died at
+Thomar, in the act of breaking open a letter, but not before Henry had
+come to his side.
+
+To the last he kept on working for his people, and it was in the fatigue
+of travelling from one plague-stricken town to another that he caught
+the pest. Among all the kings of Christendom there was never a better,
+or nobler, or more luckless, an Alfred with the fortune of "Unready"
+Ethelred.
+
+By his last will there was fresh trouble provided for Don Henry and Don
+Pedro and the Cortes. His successor--the child Affonso V., now six years
+of age--was strictly charged to rescue Ferdinand even at the price of
+Ceuta; this was nothing to practical politics; but in naming his wife,
+Leonor of Aragon, along with Don Pedro and Don Henry, as guardian of his
+children and regent of the kingdom, he put power in the wrong place.
+
+The Portuguese were always intensely suspicious of foreign government,
+and after the age of Leonora Telles they might well refuse a female
+Regent. On the other side King Edward's Queen, who had won his absolute
+trust as a wife and a mother, was not willing to stand aside for Pedro
+or for Henry. She began to organise a party, and she worked on her side,
+the nobles and the patriots counterworked on theirs. Don John was the
+first of her husband's brothers to take his natural place as a leader of
+the national opposition; Henry for a time seemed to waver between
+friendship and loyalty; all who knew the Queen loved her, but the people
+hated the very notion of a foreign female reign. Like John Knox they
+could not be fair to the Monstrous Regiment of Women, and their voices
+grew clearer and clearer for Don Pedro and his rights, real or supposed.
+The eldest of the young King's uncles, the right-hand man of the State
+since his return from travel in 1428, he was the proper guardian of the
+kingdom; Henry was a willing exile from most of Court life, though his
+support was the greatest moral strength of any government; John had
+begun the movement of discontent, but no one thought of him before his
+brothers; while they lived his only part was in helping them on their
+way.
+
+Donna Leonor recognised her chief danger in Don Pedro, and tried to win
+him over. When she summoned Cortes, she pressed him to sign the royal
+writs; then she offered to betroth his daughter Isabel to her son; Pedro
+secured a written promise, and waited for the opening of the National
+Assembly in 1439. Here a fierce outcry was raised by a party of the
+nobles against the marriage-settlement of their King, but Don Pedro was
+too strong to be put down. He moved on by slow and steady intrigue
+towards the Regency he claimed. Henry had now appeared as peacemaker,
+and in his brother's interests arranged a compromise. The Queen was to
+keep the actual charge of her children, and to train the little King for
+his duties; Pedro was to govern the state as "Defender of the Kingdom
+and of the King"; the Count of Barcellos, soon to be Duke of Braganza,
+the leader of the factious and fractious party, was to be bought off
+with the Administration of the Justice of the Interior.
+
+The Queen at first struggled on against this dethronement; fortified
+herself in Alemquer, and sent for help from her old home in Aragon. At
+this the mob rose in fury and only Henry was able to prevent a massacre
+and a war that would have stopped the expansion of Portugal abroad for
+many a day. He went straight to Alemquer (1439), talked Queen Leonor
+into reason, and brought her back with him to Lisbon, where she
+introduced Affonso to his people and his Parliament. For another year
+Henry stayed at Court, completing his work of settlement and
+reconciliation, and towards the end of 1440 that work seemed fairly
+safe. The fear of civil war was over; Don Pedro's government was well
+started; Henry could now go back to Sagres to his other work of
+discovery.
+
+It was time to do something on this side. For in the past five years
+scarcely any progress had been made to Guinea and the Indies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+FROM BOJADOR TO CAPE VERDE.
+
+1441-5.
+
+
+But with the year 1441 discovery begins again in earnest, and the
+original narratives of Henry's captains, which old Azurara has preserved
+in his chronicle, become full of life and interest. From this point to
+the year 1448, where ends the _Chronica_, its tale is exceedingly
+picturesque, as it was written down from the remembrance of
+eye-witnesses and actors in the discoveries and conquests it records.
+And though the detail may be wearisome to a modern reader as a wordy and
+emotional and unscientific history, yet the story told is delightfully
+fresh and vivid, and it is told with a simple naivete and truth that
+seems now almost lost in the self-consciousness of modern literature.
+
+"It seems to me, says our author" (Azurara's favourite way of alluding
+to himself), "that the recital of this history should give as much
+pleasure as any other matter by which we satisfy the wish of our Prince;
+and the said wish became all the greater, as the things for which he
+had toiled so long, were more within his view. Wherefore I will now try
+to tell of something new," of some progress "in his wearisome seedtime
+of preparation."
+
+"Now it was so that in this year 1441, as the affairs of the kingdom had
+now some repose, though it was not to be a long one, the Infant caused
+them to arm a little ship, which he gave to Antam Gonsalvez, his
+chamberlain, a young captain, only charging him to load a cargo of skins
+and oil. For because his age was so unformed, and his authority of needs
+so slight, he laid all the lighter his commands upon him and looked for
+all the less in performance."
+
+But when Antam Gonsalvez had performed the voyage that had been ordered
+him, he called Affonso Goterres, another stripling of the Infant's
+household and the men of his ship, who were in all twenty-one, and said
+to them, Brothers and friends, it seems to me to be shame to turn back
+to our Lord's presence, with so little service done; just as we have
+received the lest strict orders to do more than this, so much more ought
+we to try it with the greater zeal. And how noble an action would it be,
+if we who came here only to take a cargo of such wretched merchandise as
+these sea wolves, should be the first to bring a native prisoner before
+the presence of our Lord. In reason we ought to find some hereabout, for
+it is certain there are people, and that they traffic with camels and
+other beasts, who bear their merchandise; and the traffic of these men
+must be chiefly towards the sea and back again; and since they have yet
+no knowledge of us, they will be scattered and off their guard, so that
+we can seize them; with all which our Lord the Infant will be not a
+little content, as he will thus have knowledge of who and what sort of
+people are the dwellers in this land. Then what shall be our reward, you
+know well enough from the great expense and trouble our Prince has been
+at, in past years, only to this one end.
+
+The crew shouted a hearty "Do as you please; we will follow," and in the
+night following Antam Gonsalvez set aside nine men, who seemed to him
+most fit, and went up from the shore about three miles, till they came
+on a path, which they followed, thinking that by this they might come up
+with some man or woman, whom they might catch. And going on nine miles
+farther they came upon a track of some forty or fifty men and boys, as
+they thought, who had been coming the opposite way to that our men were
+going. Now the heat was very great and by reason of that, as well as of
+the trouble they had been at, the long tramp they had on foot and the
+failure of water, Antam Gonsalvez saw the weariness of his men, that it
+was very great. So let us turn back and follow after these men, said he,
+and turning back toward the sea, they came upon a man stark naked,
+walking after and driving a camel, with two spears in his hand, and of
+our men, as they rushed on after him, there was not one who kept any
+remembrance of his great weariness. As for the native, though he was
+quite alone, and saw so many coming down upon him, he stood on his
+defence, as if wishing to show that he could use those weapons of his,
+and making his face by far more fierce than his courage was warrant
+for. Affonso Goterres struck him with a dart and the Moor, frightened by
+his wounds, threw down his arms like a conquered thing and so was taken,
+not without great joy of our men. And going on a little farther they saw
+upon a hill the people whose track they followed. And they did not want
+the will to make for these also, but the sun was now very low and they
+very weary, and thinking that to risk more might bring them rather
+damage than profit, they determined to go back to their ship.
+
+But as they were going, they came upon a blackamoor woman, a slave of
+the people on the hill, and some were minded to let her alone, for fear
+of raising a fresh skirmish, which was not convenient in the face of the
+people on the hill, who were still in sight and more than twice their
+number. But the others were not so poor-spirited as to leave the matter
+thus, Antam Gonsalvez crying out vehemently that they should seize her.
+So the woman was taken and those "on the hill made a show of coming down
+to her rescue; but seeing our men quite ready to receive them, they
+first retraced their steps and then made off in the opposite direction."
+And so Antam Gonsalvez took the first captives.
+
+And for that the philosopher saith, resumes the next chapter of the
+chronicle, "that the beginning is two parts of the whole matter," great
+praise should be given to this noble squire, who now received his
+knighthood, as we shall tell. For now we have to see how Nuno Tristam, a
+noble knight, valiant and zealous, who had been brought up from boyhood
+at the Infant's Court, came to that place where was Antam Gonsalvez,
+bringing with him an armed caravel with the express order of his lord
+that he was to go to the port of Gallee and as far beyond as he could,
+and that he should try and make some prisoners by every means in his
+power. And you may imagine what was the joy of the two captains, both
+natives of one and the self-same realm and brought up in one and the
+self-same household, thus to meet so far from home. And now Nuno Tristam
+said that an Arab he had brought with him, a servant of the Infant,
+should speak with Gonsalvez' prisoners, and see if he understood their
+tongue, and that if he understood it, it would profit them much thus to
+know all the state and conditions of the people of that land. But the
+tongue of the Arab was very different from that of the captives, so that
+they could not understand each other.
+
+And when Nuno Tristam perceived that he could not learn any more of the
+manner of that land, he would fain be gone, but envy made him wish to do
+something before the eyes of his fellows that should be good for all.
+
+You know, he said to Antam Gonsalvez, that for fifteen years the Infant
+has been seeking in vain for certain news of this land and its people,
+in what law or lordship they do live. Now let us take twenty men, ten
+from each of the crews, and go up country in search of those that you
+found. Not so, said the other, for those whom we saw will have warned
+all the others, and peradventure when we are looking out to capture
+them, we may in our turn become their prisoners. But where we have
+gained a victory let us not return to suffer loss. Nuno Tristam said
+this counsel was good, but there were two squires whose longing to do
+well outran all besides. Gonsalo de Cintra was the first of these, whose
+valour we shall know more of in the progress of this history, and he
+counselled that as soon as it was night they should set out in search of
+the natives, and so it was determined. And such was their good fortune
+that they came early in the night to where the people lay scattered in
+two dwellings; now the place between the two was but small, and our men
+divided themselves in three parties and began to shout at the top of
+their voice "Portugal," "St. James for Portugal," the noise of which
+threw the enemy into such confusion, that they began to run without any
+order, as ours fell upon them. The men only made some show of defending
+themselves with assegais, especially two who fought with Nuno Tristam
+till they received their death. Three others were killed and ten were
+taken, of men, women, and children. But without question, many more
+would have been killed or taken if all our men had rushed in together at
+the first. And among those who were taken was one of their chiefs, named
+Adahu, who shewed full well in his face that he was nobler than the
+rest.
+
+Then, when the matter was well over, all came to Antam Gonsalvez and
+begged him to be made a Knight, while he said it was against reason that
+for so small a service he should have so great an honour, and that his
+age would not allow it, and that he would not take it without doing
+greater things than these, and much more of that sort. But at last, by
+the instant demand of all others, Nuno Tristam knighted Antam Gonsalvez,
+and the place was called from that time "Port of the Cavalier."
+
+When the party got back to the ships, Nuno Tristam's Arab was set to
+work again, with no better success, "for the language of the captives
+was not Moorish but Azaneguy of Sahara," the tongue of the great desert
+zone of West Africa, between the end of the northern strip of fertile
+country round Fez and Morocco, and the beginning of the rich tropical
+region at the Senegal, where the first real blacks were found. The
+Portuguese were in despair of finding a prisoner who could "tell the
+lord Infant what he wanted to know," but now the chief, "even as he
+shewed that he was more noble than the other captives, so now it
+appeared that he had seen more than they, and had been to other lands
+where he had learnt the Moorish tongue so that he understood our Arab
+and answered to whatever was asked of him."
+
+And so to make trial of the people of the land and to have of them more
+certain knowledge, they put that Arab on shore and one of the Moorish
+women their captives with him, who were to speak to the natives if they
+could, about the ransom of those they had taken and about exchange of
+merchandise.
+
+And at the end of two days there came down to the shore quite one
+hundred and fifty Moors on foot, and thirty-five mounted on camels and
+horses, and though they seemed to be a race both barbarous and bestial,
+there was not wanting in them a certain sharpness, with which they
+could cheat their enemies, for at first there only appeared three of
+them on the beach, and the rest lay in ambush till our men should land
+and they could rush out and master them, which thing they could easily
+have done, so many were they, if our men had been a whit less sharp than
+themselves. But when the Moors saw that our boats did not land, but
+turned back again to the ship, they discovered their treachery, and all
+came down in a body upon the beach, hurling stones and making gestures
+of defiance, shewing us the Arab we had sent to them as a captive in
+their hands.
+
+So our men came back to the ship and made their division of the
+prisoners, according to the lot of each. And Antam Gonsalvez turned back
+because he had now loaded his caravel with the cargo that the Infant had
+ordered him, but Nuno Tristam went on, as he for his part had in charge.
+But as his vessel was in need of repair, he put to shore and careened
+and refitted it as well as he could, keeping his tides as if he were
+before the port of Lisbon, at which boldness of his many wondered
+greatly. And sailing on again, he passed the port of "Gallee," and came
+to a cape which he called "The White" (Cape Blanco), where the crew
+landed to see if they could make any captures. But after finding only
+the tracks of men and some nets, they turned back, seeing that for that
+time they could not do any more than they had already done.
+
+Antam Gonsalvez came home first with his part of the booty and then
+arrived Nuno Tristam, "whose present reception and future reward were
+answerable to the trouble he had borne, like a fertile land that with
+but little sowing answers the husbandman."
+
+The chief, or "cavalier" as he is called, whom Antam Gonsalvez brought
+home was able to "make the Infant understand a great deal of the state
+of that land where he had been," though as for the rest, they were
+pretty well useless, except as slaves, "for their tongue could not be
+understood by any other Moors who had been in that land." But the Prince
+was so encouraged by the sight of the first captives that he at once
+began to think "how it would be necessary to send to those parts many a
+time his ships and crews well armed, where they would have to fight with
+the infidels. So he determined to send at once to the Holy Father and
+ask of him that he should give him of the treasures of Holy Church, for
+the salvation of the souls of those who in this conquest should meet
+their end."
+
+Pope Eugenius IV., then reigning, if not governing, in the great
+Apostolic See of the West, answered this appeal "with great joy" and
+with all the rhetoric of the Papal Register. "As it hath now been
+notified to us by our beloved son Henry, Duke of Viseu, Master of the
+Order of Christ, that trusting firmly in the aid of God, for the
+confusion of the Moors and enemies of Christ in those lands that they
+have desolated, and for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith,--and
+because that the Knights and Brethren of the said Order of Christ
+against the said Moors and other enemies of the Faith have waged war
+with the Grace of God, under the banner of the said Order,--and to the
+intent that they may bestir themselves to the said war with yet greater
+fervour, we do to each and all of those engaged in the said war, by
+Apostolic authority and by these letters, grant full remission of all
+those sins of which they shall be truly penitent at heart and of which
+they have made confession by their mouth. And whoever breaks,
+contradicts, or acts against the letter of this mandate, let him lie
+under the curse of the All-Mighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter
+and Paul."
+
+And besides, adds the chronicle, rather quaintly, of more temporal and
+material benefits, the Infant D. Pedro, then Regent of the kingdom, gave
+to his brother Henry a charter, granting him the whole of the fifth of
+the profits which appertained to the King, and, considering that it was
+by him alone that the whole matter of the discovery was carried out at
+infinite trouble and expense, he ordered further that no one should go
+to those parts without D. Henry's licence and express command.
+
+The chronicle, which has told us how Antam Gonsalvez made the first
+captives, now goes on to say how the same one of the Prince's captains
+made the first ransom. For the captive chief, "that cavalier of whom we
+spoke," Henry's first prize from the lands beyond Bojador, pined away in
+Europe, "and many times begged of Antam Gonsalvez that he would take him
+back to his own land, where, as he said, they would give for him five or
+six blackamoors, and he said, too, that there were two boys among the
+other captives for whom they would get a like ransom." So the Infant
+sent him back with Gonsalvez to his own people, "as it was better to
+save ten souls than three, for though they were black, yet had they
+souls like others, all the more as they were not of Moorish race, but
+Heathen and so all the easier to lead into the way of salvation. From
+the negroes too it would be possible to get news of the land beyond
+them. For not only of the Negro land did the Infant wish to know more
+certainly, but also of the Indies and of the land of Prester John."
+
+So Gonsalvez sailed with his ransom, and in his ship went a noble
+stranger, like Vallarte the Dane, whom we shall meet later on, one of a
+kind which was always being drawn to Henry's Court. This was Balthasar
+the Austrian, a gentleman of the Emperor's Household, who had entered
+the Infant's service to try his fortune at Ceuta, where he had got his
+knighthood, and who now "was often heard to say that his great wish was
+to see a storm, before he left that land of Portugal, that he might tell
+those who had never seen one what it was like.
+
+"And certainly his fortune favoured him. For at the first start, they met
+with such a storm that it was by a marvel they escaped destruction."
+
+Again they put out to sea, and this time reached the Rio d'Ouro in
+safety, where they landed their chief prisoner, "very well vested in the
+robes that the Infant had ordered to be given him," under promise that
+he would soon come back and bring his tribe with him.
+
+"But as soon as he got safely off, he very soon forgot his promises,
+which Antam Gonsalvez had trusted, thinking that his nobility would
+hold him fast and not let him break his word, but by this deceit all our
+men got warning that they could not trust any of the natives save under
+the most certain security."
+
+The ships now went twelve miles up the Rio d'Ouro, cast anchor, and
+waited seven days without a sign of anybody, but on the eighth there
+came a Moor, on top of a white camel, with fully one hundred others who
+had all joined to ransom the two boys. Ten of the tribe were given in
+exchange for the young chiefs, "and the man who managed this barter was
+one Martin Fernandez, the Infant's own Ransomer of Captives, who shewed
+well that he had knowledge of the Moorish tongue, for he was understood
+by those people whom Nuno Tristam's Arab, Moor though he was by nation,
+could not possibly get speech with, except only the one chief, who had
+now escaped."
+
+With the "Blackamoors," Antam Gonsalvez got as ransom what was even more
+precious, a little gold dust, the first ever brought by Europeans direct
+from the Guinea Coast, which more thoroughly won the Prince's cause at
+home and brought over more enemies and scoffers and indifferentists to
+his side than all the discoveries in the world.
+
+"Many ostrich eggs, too," were included in the native ransom, "such that
+one day men saw at the Infant's table three dishes of the same, as fresh
+and as good as those of any other domestic fowls." Did the Court of
+Sagres suppose the ostrich to be some large kind of hen?
+
+What was still more to the Prince's mind, "those same Moors related,
+that in those parts there were merchants who trafficked in that gold
+that was found there among them"--the same merchants, in fact, whose
+caravels Henry had already known on the Mediterranean coast, and whose
+starting-point he had now begun to touch. Ever since the days of the
+first Caliphs, this Sahara commerce had gone on under the control of
+Islam; for centuries these caravans had crossed the valleys and plains
+to the south of Morocco and sold their goods--pepper, slaves, and gold
+dust--in Moslem Ceuta and Moslem Andalusia; now, after seven hundred
+years of monopoly, this Moslem trade was broken in upon by the
+Europeans, who, in fifty years' time, broke into the greater monopoly of
+the Indian Seas, when Da Gama sailed from Lisbon to Malabar (1497-9).
+
+Next year (1443) came Nuno Tristam's turn once more. People were now
+eager to sail in the Infant's service, after the slaves, and still more
+the gold dust, had been really seen and handled in Portugal, and "that
+noble cavalier," for each and all of the three reasons of his
+fellows--"to serve his lord," "to gain honour," "to increase his
+profit,"--was eager to follow up his first successes.
+
+Commanding a caravel manned in great part from the Prince's household,
+he went out straight to Cape Blanco, the white headland, which he had
+been the first to reach in 1441. Passing twenty-five leagues,
+seventy-five miles beyond, into the bank or bight of Arguin, he saw a
+little island, from which twenty-five canoes came off to meet him, all
+hollowed out of logs of wood, with a host of native savages, "naked not
+for swimming in the water, but for their ancient custom." The natives
+hung their legs over the sides of their boats, and paddled with them
+like oars, so that "our men, looking at them from a distance and quite
+unused to the sight, thought they were birds that were skimming so over
+the water." As for their size, the sailors expected much greater marvels
+in those parts of the world, where every map and traveller's tale made
+the sea swarm with monsters as big as a continent.
+
+"But as soon as they saw they were men, then were their hearts full of a
+new pleasure, for that they saw the chance of a capture." They launched
+the ship's boat at once, chased them to the shore, and captured
+fourteen; if the boat had been stronger, the tale would have been
+longer, for with a crew of seven they could not hold any more prisoners,
+and so the rest escaped.
+
+With this booty they sailed on to another island, "where they found an
+infinite number of herons, of which they made good cheer, and so
+returned Nuno Tristam very joyfully to the Prince."
+
+This last piece of discovery was of much more value than Nuno thought.
+He saw in it a first-rate slave hunting-ground, but it became the
+starting-point for trade and intercourse with the Negro States of the
+Senegal and the Gambia, to the south and east. It was here, in the bay
+of Arguin, where the long desert coast of the Sahara makes its last bend
+towards the rich country of the south,--that Henry built in 1448 that
+fort which Cadamosto found, in the next ten years, had become the centre
+of a great European commerce, which was also among the first permanent
+settlements of the new Christian exploration, one of the first steps of
+modern colonisation.
+
+And now the volunteer movement had fairly begun. Where in the beginning,
+says Azurara, people had murmured very loudly against the Prince's
+enterprise, each one grumbling as if the Infant was spending some part
+of _his_ property, now when the way had been fairly opened and the
+fruits of those lands began to be seen in Portugal in much greater
+abundance, men began, softly enough, to praise what they had so loudly
+decried. Great and small alike had declared that no profit would ever
+come of these ventures, but when the cargoes of slaves and gold began to
+arrive, all were forced to turn their blame into flattery, and to say
+that the Infant was another Alexander the Great, and as they saw the
+houses of others full of new servants from the new discovered lands and
+their property always increasing, there were few who did not long to try
+their fortune in the same adventures.
+
+The first great movement of the sort came after Nuno's return at the end
+of 1443. The men of Lagos took advantage of Henry's settlement so near
+them in his town of Sagres, to ask for leave to sail at their own cost
+to the Prince's coast of Guinea. For no one could go without his
+licence.
+
+One Lancarote, a "squire, brought up in the Infant's household, an
+officer of the royal customs in the town of Lagos, and a man of great
+good sense," was the spokesman of these merchant adventurers. He won his
+grant very easily, "the Infant was very glad of his request, and bade
+him sail under the banner of the Order of Christ," so that six caravels
+started in the spring of 1444 on the first exploring voyage that we can
+call national since the Prince had begun his work.
+
+So, as the beginning of general interest in the Crusade of Discovery
+which Henry had now preached to his countrymen for thirty years, as the
+beginning of the career of Henry's chief captain, the head of his
+merchant allies, as the beginning, in fact, of a new and bright period,
+this first voyage of Lancarote's, this first Armada sent out to find and
+to conquer the Moors and Blacks of the unknown or half-known South, is
+worth more than a passing notice.
+
+And this is not for its interest or importance in the story of discovery
+pure and simple, but as a proof that the cause of discovery itself had
+become popular, and as evidence that the cause of trade and of political
+ambition had become thoroughly identified with that of exploration. The
+expansion of the European _nations_, which had languished since the
+Crusades, had begun again. What was more unfortunate, from a modern
+standpoint, the African slave trade, as a part of European commerce,
+begins here too. It is useless to try to explain it away.
+
+Henry's own motives were not those of the slave-driver; it seems true
+enough that the captives, when once brought home to Spain, were treated,
+under his orders, with all kindness; his own wish seems to have been to
+use this man-hunting traffic as a means to Christianise and civilise the
+native tribes, to win over the whole by the education of a few
+prisoners. But his captains did not always aim so high. The actual
+seizure of the captives--Moors and Negroes--along the coast of Guinea,
+was as barbarous and as ruthless as most slave-drivings. There was
+hardly a capture made without violence and bloodshed; a raid on a
+village, a fire and sack and butchery, was the usual course of
+things--the order of the day. And the natives, whatever they might gain
+when fairly landed in Europe, did not give themselves up very readily to
+be taught; as a rule, they fought desperately, and killed the men who
+had come to do them good, whenever they had a chance.
+
+The kidnapping, which some of the Spanish patriot writers seem to think
+of as simply an act of Christian charity, "a corporal work of mercy,"
+was at the time a matter of profit and money returns. Negro bodies would
+sell well, Negro villages would yield plunder, and, like the killing of
+wild Irish in the sixteenth century, the Prince's men took a Black-Moor
+hunt as the best of sport. It was hardly wonderful, then, that the later
+sailors of Cadamosto's day (1450-60) found all the coast up in arms
+against them, and that so many fell victims to the deadly poisoned
+arrows of the Senegal and the Gambia. Every native believed, as they
+told one of the Portuguese captains in a parley, that the explorers
+carried off their people to cook and eat them.
+
+In most of the speeches that are given us in the chronicle of the time,
+the masters encourage their men to these slave-raids by saying, first,
+what glory they will get by a victory; next, what a profit can be made
+sure by a good haul of captives; last, what a generous reward the
+Prince will give for people who can tell him about these lands.
+Sometimes, after reprisals had begun, the whole thing is an affair of
+vengeance, and thus Lancarote, in the great voyage of 1445, coolly
+proposes to turn back at Cape Blanco, without an attempt at discovery of
+any sort, "because the purpose of the voyage was now accomplished." A
+village had been burnt, a score of natives had been killed, and twice as
+many taken. Revenge was satisfied.
+
+It was only here and there that much was said about the Prince's purpose
+of exploration, of finding the western Nile or, Prester John, or the way
+round Africa to India; most of the sailors, both men and officers, seem
+to know that this, or something towards this, is the "will of their
+Lord," but it is very few who start for discovery only, and still fewer
+who go straight on, turning neither to right hand nor left, till they
+have got well beyond the farthest of previous years, and added some
+piece of new knowledge to the map of the known world out of the blank of
+the unknown.
+
+What terrified ignorance had done before, greed did now, and the last
+hindrance was almost worse than the first. So one might say,
+impatiently, looking at the great expense, the energy, and time and life
+spent on the voyages of this time, and especially of the years 1444-8.
+More than forty ships sail out, more than nine hundred captives are
+brought home, and the new lands found are all discovered by three or
+four explorers. National interest seems awakened to very little purpose.
+But what explains the slow progress of discovery, explains also the
+fact that any progress, however slow, was made at all, apart from the
+personal action of Henry himself. Without the mercantile interest, the
+Prince's death would have been the end and ruin of his schemes for many
+a year.
+
+But for the hope of adventure and of profitable plunder, and the
+certainty of reward; but for the assurance, so to say, of such and such
+a revenue on the ventures of the time, Portuguese "public opinion" would
+not probably have been much ahead of other varieties of the same organ.
+In deciding the abstract question to which the Prince had given his
+life, the mob of Lisbon or of Lagos would hardly have been quicker than
+modern mobs to rise to a notion above that of personal gain. If the
+cause of discovery and an empire to come had been left to them, the
+labour leaders might have said then in Spain, as some of them have said
+to-day in England, "What is all this talk about the Empire? What is it
+to us working men? We don't want the Empire, we want more wages." And so
+when the great leader was dead, and the people were left to carry out
+his will, his spiritual foresight of great scientific discoveries, his
+ideas of conversion and civilisation, were not the things for the sake
+of which ordinary men were reconciled to his scheme and ready to finish
+his work. If they thought or spoke or toiled for the finding of the way
+to India, it was to find the gold and spices and jewels of an earthly
+paradise.
+
+This is not fancy. It is simply impossible to draw any other conclusion
+from the original accounts of these voyages in Azurara's chronicle, for
+Azurara himself, though one of Henry's first converts, a man who
+realised something of the grandeur of his master's schemes and their
+reach beyond a merely commercial ideal through discovery to empire, yet
+preserves in the speeches and actions of captains and seamen alike,
+proof enough of the thoroughly commonplace aims of most of the first
+discoverers.
+
+On the other hand, the strength of the movement lay of course in the few
+exceptions. As long as all or nearly all the instruments employed were
+simply buccaneers, with a single eye to trade profits, discovery could
+not advance very fast or very far. Till the real meaning of the Prince's
+life had impressed his nearest followers with something of his own
+spirit, there could be no exploration, except by accident, though
+without this background of material gain no national interest could have
+been enlisted in exploration at all.
+
+Real progress in this case was by the slow increase of that inner circle
+which really shared Henry's own ambition, of that group of men who went
+out, not to make bargains or do a little killing, but to carry the flag
+of Portugal and of Christ farther than it had ever been planted before,
+"according to the will of the Lord Infant." And as these men were called
+to the front, and only as they were there at all, was there any rapid
+advance. If two sailors, Diego Cam and Bartholomew Diaz, could within
+four years, in two voyages, explore the whole south-west coast of Africa
+from the Equator to the Cape of Tempests or of Good Hope, was it not
+absurd that the earlier caravels, after Bojador was once passed should
+hang so many years round the north-west shores of the Sahara?
+
+Even some of the more genuine discoverers, the most trusted of the
+Prince's household, men like Gil Eannes, the first who saw the coasts
+beyond the terrible Bojador, or Diniz Diaz, or Antam Gonsalvez, or Nuno
+Tristam, as they come before us in Azurara's chronicle, are more like
+their men than their master.
+
+He thought of the slaves they brought home "with unspeakable pleasure,
+as to the saving of their souls, which but for him, would have been for
+ever lost." They thought a good deal more, like the crowd that gathered
+at the slave market in Lagos, of the "distribution of the captives," and
+of the money they would get for each. At those sales, which Azurara
+describes so vividly, Henry had the bearing of one who cared little for
+amassing plunder, and was known, once and again, to give away his fifth
+of the spoil, "for his spoil was chiefly in the success of his great
+wishes." But his suite seems to have been as keenly on the look-out for
+such favours as their lord was easy in bestowing them.
+
+To return to Lancarote's voyage:
+
+"For that the Infant knew, by certain Moors that Nuno Tristam had
+carried off, that in the Isle of Naar, in the Bay of Arguin, and in the
+parts thereabout, were more than two hundred souls," the six caravels
+began with a descent on that island. Five boats were launched and thirty
+men in them, and they set off from the ships about sunset. And rowing
+all that night, we are told, they came about the time of dawn to the
+island that they sought. And as day was breaking they got up to a
+Moorish village close to the shore, where were living all the people in
+the island. At sight of this the boats' crews drew up, and the leaders
+consulted whether to go on or turn back. It was decided to attack.
+Thirty "Portugals" ought to be a match for five or six times as many
+natives; the sailors landed and rushed upon the villagers and "saw the
+Moors with their women and children coming out of their huts as fast as
+they could, when they caught sight of their enemy; and our men, crying
+out 'St. James, St. George, Portugal,' fell upon them, killing and
+taking all they could. There you might have seen mothers catch up their
+children, husbands their wives, each one trying to fly as best he could.
+Some plunged into the sea, others thought to hide themselves in the
+corners of their hovels, others hid their children underneath the shrubs
+that grew about there, where our men found them.
+
+"And at last our Lord God, who gives to all a due reward, to our men
+gave that day a victory over their enemies, in recompence for all their
+toil in His service, for they took, what of men, women, and children,
+one hundred and sixty-five, without counting the slain."
+
+Then finding from the captives that there were other well-peopled
+islands near at hand, they raided these for more prisoners. In their
+next descent they could not catch any men, but of women and little
+boys, not yet able to run, they seized seventeen or eighteen; soon after
+this they did meet the "Moormen bold," who were drawing together on all
+sides to defend themselves; a great power of three hundred savages
+chased another raiding party to their boats.
+
+That the whole expedition had no thought of discovery was plain enough
+from the fact that Lancarote did not try to go beyond the White Cape
+(Blanco), which had been already passed several times, but turned back
+directly he found the hunting grounds becoming deserted, and a descent
+producing no prize, except one girl, who had chosen to go to sleep when
+the rest of the people fled up country at the first sight of the
+Christian boats.
+
+The voyage was a slave chase from first to last, and two hundred and
+thirty-five Blacks were the result. Their landing and their sale at
+Lagos was a day of great excitement, a long remembered 8th of August.
+"Very early in the morning, because of the heat (of the later day) the
+sailors began to land their captives, who as they were placed all
+together in the field by the landing-place, were indeed a wonderful
+sight; for among them there were some that were almost white, of
+beautiful form and face; others were darker; and others again as black
+as moles and so hideous, alike in face and body, that they looked, to
+any one who saw them, the very images of a Lower Hemisphere."
+
+But what heart so stern, exclaims the chronicler, as not to be pierced
+with pity to see that company. For some held down their heads, crying
+piteously, others looked mournfully upon one another, others stood
+moaning very wretchedly, sometimes looking up to the height of Heaven,
+calling out with shrieks of agony, as if invoking the Father of Nature;
+others grovelled upon the ground, beating their foreheads with their
+hands, while others again made their moan in a sort of dirge, in their
+own way, for though one could not understand the words, the sense of all
+was plain in the agony of those who uttered it.
+
+But most terrible was that agony when came the partition and each
+possessor took away his lot. Wives were divided from husbands, fathers
+from sons, brothers from brothers, each being forced to go where his lot
+might send him. Parents and children who had been ranged opposite one
+another, now rushed forward to embrace, if it were for the last time;
+mothers, holding their little children in their arms, threw themselves
+down, covering their babes with their own bodies.
+
+And yet these slaves were treated with kindness, and no difference was
+made between them and other and freeborn servants. The younger captives
+were taught trades, and those who showed that they could manage property
+were set free and married. Widow ladies treated the girls they bought
+like their own daughters, and often left them dowries by will, that they
+might marry as entirely free. Never have I known one of these captives,
+says Azurara, put in irons like other slaves, or one who did not become
+a Christian. Often have I been present at the baptisms or marriages of
+these slaves, when their masters made as much and as solemn a matter of
+it as if it had been a child or a parent of their own.
+
+During Henry's life the action of buccaneers on the African coast was a
+good deal kept in check by the spirit and example and positive commands
+of the Infant, who sent out his men to explore, and could not prevent
+some outrages in the course of exploration. Again and again he ordered
+his captains to act fairly to the natives, to trade with them
+honourably, and to persuade them by gentler means than kidnapping to
+come to Europe for a time. In the last years of his life he did succeed
+in bettering things; by establishing a regular Government trade in the
+bay of Arguin he brought a good deal more under control the unchained
+deviltry of the Portuguese freebooters; Cadamosto and Diego Gomez, his
+most trusted lieutenants of this later time, were real discoverers, who
+tried to make friends of the natives rather than slaves.
+
+In the early days of Portuguese exploration, it may also be said,
+information, first-hand news of the new countries and their dangers, was
+absolutely needed, and if the Negroes and the Azaneguy Moors could not
+or would not speak some Christian tongue and guide the caravels to
+Guinea, they must be carried off and made fit and proper instruments for
+the work.
+
+It would be out of place here to justify or condemn this excuse or to
+enter on the wider question of the right or wrong of the slave-trade in
+general. It is enough to see how brutally the work of "saving the
+Heathen," was carried out by the average explorer, when discovery was
+used as a plea for traffic.
+
+No one then questioned the right of Christians to make slaves of Heathen
+Blacks; Henry certainly did not, for he used slavery as an education, he
+made captives of "Gentiles" for the highest ends, as he believed, to
+save their souls, and to help him in the way of doing great things for
+his country and for Christendom. He knew more of the results than of the
+incidental cruelty, more of the hundreds taken than of the hundreds more
+killed and maimed and made homeless in the taking. For centuries past
+Moors had brought back slaves from the south across the Sahara to sell
+on the coast of Tunis and Morocco; no Christian doubted the right
+and--more than the right--the merit of the Prince in bringing black
+slaves by sea from Guinea to Lisbon, where they might be fairly saved
+from the grasp of "Foul Mahumet."
+
+So if it is said that Henry started the African slave-trade of European
+nations, that must not be understood as the full-blooded atrocity of the
+West Indian planters, for the use he made of his prisoners was utterly
+different, though his action was the cause of incessant abuse of the
+best end by the worst of means.
+
+At the time the gold question was much more important than the
+slave-trade, and most Portuguese, most Europeans--nobles, merchants,
+burghers, farmers, labourers--were much more excited by the news and the
+sight of the first native gold dust than by anything else whatever. It
+was the first few handfuls of this dust, brought home by Gonsalvez in
+1442, that had such a magical effect on public opinion, that spread the
+exploring interest from a small circle out into every class, and that
+brought forward volunteers on every side. For a Guinea voyage was now
+the favourite plan of every adventurer.
+
+But however they may be explained, however natural and even necessary
+they may seem to be, as things stood in Portugal and in Latin
+Christendom, the slave-trade and the gold hunger hindered the Prince's
+work quite as much as they helped it. If further discovery depended upon
+trade profits, native interpreters, and the attractions of material
+interest, there was at least a danger that the discoverers who were not
+disposed to risk anything, and only went out to line their own pockets,
+would hang about the well known coasts till they had loaded all the
+plunder they could hold, and would then simply reappear at Sagres with
+so many more souls for the good Prince to save, but without a word or a
+thought of "finding of new lands." And this, after all, was the end.
+Buccaneering on the north-west coast of Africa was not what Henry aimed
+at.
+
+So he gave a caravel to one of his household, Gonsalo de Cintra, "who
+had been his stirrup-boy," and "bade him go straight to the Land of
+Guinea, and that for no cause whatever should he do otherwise." But when
+De Cintra got to the White Cape (Blanco) it struck him that "with very
+little danger he could make some prisoners there."
+
+So with a cheerful impudence, in the face of the Infant's express
+commands, he put his ship about and landed in that bay of Arguin, where
+so many captures had been made, but he was cut off from the rest of the
+men, and killed with seven others by a host of more than two hundred
+Moors, and the chronicle which tells of all such details at the greatest
+length, stops to give seven reasons for this, the first serious loss of
+life the Europeans had suffered in their new African piracies. And for
+the rest, "May God receive the soul that He created and the nature that
+came forth from Him, as it is His very own. _Habeat Deus animam quam
+creavit et naturam, quod suum est._" (_Azurara_, ch. 27).
+
+Three other caravels, which quickly followed De Cintra, sailed with
+special orders to Christianise and civilise the natives wherever and
+however they could, and the result of this was seen in the daring
+venture of Joan Fernandez. This man, the pattern of all the Crusoes of
+after time, offered to stay on shore among the Blacks "to learn what he
+could of the manners and speech and customs of the people," and so was
+left along with that "bestial and barbarous" nation for seven months, on
+the shores of the Bank of Arguin, while in exchange for him an old Moor
+went back to Portugal.
+
+Yet a third voyage was made in this spring of 1445 by Nuno Tristam. And
+of this, says Azurara, I know nothing very exact or at first hand,
+because Nuno Tristam was dead before the time that King Affonso (D.
+Henry's nephew) commanded me to write this history. But this much we do
+know, that he sailed straight to the Isle of Herons in Arguin, that he
+passed the sandy wilderness and landed in the parts beyond, in a land
+fertile and full of palm trees; and having landed he took a score of
+prisoners. And so Nuno Tristam was the first to see the country of the
+real Blacks. In other words, Nuno reached Cape Palmar, far beyond Cape
+Blanco, where he saw the palms and got the all-important certainty that
+the desert did end somewhere, and that beyond, instead of a country
+unapproachable from the heat, where the very seas were perpetually
+boiling as if in a cauldron, there was a land richer than any northern
+climate, through which men could pass to the south.
+
+Still further was this proved by the next voyage, which reached the end
+of the great western trend of the African coast, and found that instead
+of the continent stretching out farther and farther to an infinite
+breadth, there was an immense contraction of the coast.
+
+Diniz Diaz, the eldest of that family which gave to Portugal some of her
+greatest men and makers, now begged a caravel from the Prince with the
+promise of "doing more with it than any had done before." He had done
+well under old King John, and now he kept his word.
+
+Passing Arguin and Cape Blanco and Cape Palmar, he entered the mouth of
+the Senegal, the western Nile, which was now fixed as the northern limit
+of Guinea, or Blackman's Land. "Nor was this a little honour for our
+Prince, whose mighty power was thus brought to bear upon the peoples so
+far distant from our land and so near to that of Egypt." For Azurara
+like Diaz, like Henry himself, thought not only that the Senegal was the
+Niger, the western Nile of the Blacks, but that the caravels of
+Portugal were far nearer to India than was the fact,--were getting close
+to the Mountains of the Moon and the sources of the Nile.
+
+But Diaz was not content with this. He had reached and passed, as he
+thought, the great western stream up which men might sail, in the belief
+of the time, to the mysterious sources of the world's greatest river,
+and so down by the eastern and northern course of the same to Cairo and
+the Christian seas. He now sailed on "to a great cape, which he named
+Cape Verde," a green and beautiful headland covered with grass and trees
+and dotted with native villages, running out into the Western Ocean far
+beyond any other land, and beyond which, in turn, there was no more
+western coast, but only southern and eastern. From this point Diaz
+returned to Portugal.
+
+"But great was the wonder of the people of the coast in seeing his
+caravel, for never had they seen or heard tell of the like, but some
+thought it was a fish, others were sure it was a phantom, others again
+said it might be a bird that had that way of skimming along the surface
+of the sea." Four of them picked up courage to venture out in a canoe
+and try to settle this doubt. Out they went in their little boat, all
+made from one hollow tree, but when they saw that there were men on
+board the caravel they fled to the shore and "the wind falling our men
+could not overtake.
+
+"And though the booty of Diniz Diaz was far less than what others had
+brought home before him, the Prince made very much of his getting to
+that land of Negroes and Cape Verde and the Senegal," and with reason,
+for these discoveries assured the success of his work, and from this
+time all trouble and opposition were at an end. Mariners now went out to
+sail to the golden country that had been found or to the spice land that
+was now so near; men passed at once from extreme apathy or extreme
+terror to an equally extreme confidence. They seemed to think the fruit
+was within reach for them to gather, before the tree had been half
+climbed. Long before Fernando Po had been reached, while the caravels
+were still off the coasts of Sierra Leone, men at home, from King
+Affonso to the common seamen of the ports, "thought the line of Tunis
+and even of Alexandria had been long passed." The difficult first steps
+seemed all.
+
+Now three volunteers, Antam Gonsalvez, and two others who had already
+sailed in the Prince's service, applied for the command of ships for the
+discovery and conquest of the lands of Guinea, and to bring back Joan
+Fernandez from his exile. Sailing past Cape Blanco they set up there a
+great wooden cross and "much would it have amazed any one of another
+nation that should have chanced to pass that way, not knowing of our
+voyages along that coast," says Azurara gleefully, giving us proof
+enough in every casual expression of this sort, often dropped with
+perfect simplicity and natural truthfulness, that to his knowledge and
+that of his countrymen, to the Europe of 1450, the Portuguese had had no
+forerunners along the Guinea Coast.
+
+A little south of the Bight of Arguin the caravels sighted a man on the
+shore making signals to the ships, and coming closer they saw Fernandez
+who had much to tell. He had completely won over the natives of that
+part during his seven months' stay, and now he was able to bring the
+caravels to a market where trinkets were exchanged for slaves and gold
+with a Moorish chief--"a cavalier called Ahude Meymam." Then he was
+taken home to tell his story to the Prince, the fleet wasting some time
+in descents on the tribes of the bay of Arguin.
+
+When he was first put on shore, Joan Fernandez told Don Henry, the
+natives came up to him, took his clothes off him and made him put on
+others of their own make. Then they took him up the country, which was
+very scantily clothed with grass, with a sandy and stony soil, growing
+hardly any trees. A few thorns and palms were the only relief to the
+barren monotony of this African prairie, over which wandered a few
+nomade shepherds in search of pasture for their flocks. There were no
+flowers, no running streams to light up the waste, so Fernandez thought
+at first, till he found one or two exceptions that proved the rule. The
+natives got their water from wells, spoke a tongue and wrote a writing
+that was different from that of the other Moors, though all these
+people, in the upland, were Moslems, like the Berbers nearer home. For
+they themselves were a tribe, the Azaneguy tribe, of the great Berber
+family, who had four times--in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and
+fourteenth centuries--come over to help the Moslem power in Spain.
+
+Yet, said Fernandez, these Moors of the west are quite barbarous: they
+have neither law nor lordship; their food is milk and the seeds of wild
+mountain herbs and roots; meat and bread are both rare luxuries; and so
+is fish for those on the upland, but the Moors of the coast eat nothing
+else, and for months together I have seen those I lived among, their
+horses and their dogs, eating and drinking only milk, like infants. 'T
+is no wonder they are weaker than the negroes of the south with whom
+they are ever at war, fighting with treachery and not with strength.
+They dress in leather--leather breeches and jackets, but some of the
+richer wear a native mantle over their shoulders--such rich men as keep
+good swift horses and brood mares. It was about the trade and religion
+of the country that Fernandez was specially questioned, and his answers
+were not encouraging on either point. The people were bigoted, ignorant
+worshippers of the abominations of Mahumet, he said, and their traffic
+in slaves and gold was a small matter after all. The only gold he saw in
+their country was in ankle rings on the women of the chiefs; the gold
+dust and black bodies they got from the negroes they took to Tunis and
+the Mediterranean coast on camels. Their salt, on which they set great
+store, was from the Tagazza salt quarries, far inland. The chief, Ahude
+Meymam, who had been so kind to Fernandez, lived in the upland; the
+Christian stranger had been induced to ride up from the coast, and had
+reached the Court only after tortures of thirst. The water failed them
+on the way, and for three days they had nothing to drink.
+
+Altogether, Fernandez' report discouraged any further attempts to
+explore by land, where all the country as far as could be reached seemed
+to yield nothing but desert with a few slender oases. It was not indeed
+till the European explorers reached the Congo on their coasting voyages
+to the south that they found a natural and inviting pathway into the
+heart of Africa. The desert of the north and west, the fever-haunted
+swamps and jungle of the Guinea Coast only left narrow inlets of more
+healthy and passable country, and these the Portuguese did their best to
+close by occasional acts of savage cruelty and impudent fraud in their
+dealings with the natives.
+
+Another expedition, and that an unlucky one, under Gonsalo Pacheco, a
+gentleman of Lisbon, followed this last of Antam Gonsalvez. Pacheco got
+leave to make the voyage, equipped a caravel that he had built for
+himself, and got two others to share the risk and profits with him. And
+so, says Azurara, hoisting the banners of the Order of Christ, they made
+their way to Cape Blanco. Here they found, one league from the Cape, a
+village, and by the shore a writing, that Antam Gonsalvez had set up, in
+which he counselled all who passed that way not to trouble to go up and
+sack the village, as it was quite empty of people. So they hung about
+the Bank of Arguin, making raids in various places, and capturing some
+one hundred and twenty natives, all of which is not of much interest to
+any one, though as Pacheco and his men had to pay themselves for their
+trouble, and make a profit on the voyage, these man-hunts were the
+chief thing they thought about and the main thing in their stories when
+they got home.
+
+Men like Pacheco and his friends were not explorers at all. They stopped
+far short of the mark that Diniz Diaz had made for the European
+Furthest, and their only discovery was of a new cape one hundred miles
+and more beyond the Bank of Arguin. Sailing south, because the natives
+fled at their approach and left the coast land all bare, "they came to a
+headland which they called Cape St. Anne, by which an arm of the sea ran
+four leagues up the country," where they hunted for more prisoners.
+
+Still in search of slaves and gold they sailed on two hundred and fifty
+miles--eighty leagues--to Negroland, where Diaz had been before, and
+where they saw a land, to the north of the Great Western Cape, all
+green, peopled with men and cattle, but when they tried to near the
+shore and land a storm drove them back. For three days they struggled
+against it, but at last they found themselves near Cape Blanco, more
+than three hundred miles to the north, where they gave up all thought of
+trying to push into the unknown south, and turned cheerfully to their
+easier work of slave-hunting. In one of these raids, a party of seven,
+in a boat away from all the rest, was overpowered and killed like De
+Cintra's men by a large body of natives, "whose souls may God in His
+mercy receive in the Habitation of the Saints." The Moors carried off
+the boat and broke it up for the sake of its nails, and Azurara was told
+by some that the bodies of the dead were eaten by their brutal
+conquerors. 'T is certain at least, he adds, that their custom is to eat
+the livers of their victims and to drink their blood, when they are
+avenging the death of parents or brothers or children, as they do it to
+have full vengeance on such as have so greatly injured them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE ARMADA OF 1445.
+
+
+While Gonsalo Pacheco had been wasting time and men and the good name of
+Europe and Christendom in his plunderings between C. Bojador and C.
+Blanco, the memory of the death of Gonsalo de Cintra was kept alive in
+Lagos, and the men of the town came in solemn deputation to the Prince,
+before the summer of this same year (1445) was out, to beg him for
+permission to take full, perfect, and sufficient vengeance. In other
+words, they offered to equip the largest fleet that had ever sailed on
+an ocean voyage--as it now began to be called, a Guinea voyage--since
+the Prince began his work. As far as we know, this was also one of the
+greatest armadas that had been sent out into the new-discovered or
+re-discovered or undiscovered seas and lands since the European nations
+had begun to look at all beyond their own narrow limits.
+
+Neither the fleet of 1341, which found the Canaries, and of which
+Boccaccio tells us, nor the Genoese expedition of 1291, nor the Catalan
+venture of 1346, nor De Bethencourt's armament of 1402, for the
+conquest of the Fortunate Isles, was anything like this armada of 1445.
+For this last was a real sign of national interest in a work which was
+not only discovery, but profit and a means to more; it proved that in
+Portugal, in however base and narrowly selfish a way, there was now a
+spirit of general enterprising activity, and till this had been once
+awakened, there was not much hope of great results from the efforts of
+individuals.
+
+The first contingent now equipped in Lagos--for the Prince at once
+approved of his men's idea--numbered fourteen caravels--fourteen of the
+best sailing ships afloat, as Cadamosto said a little later; but this
+was only the central fleet, under Lancarote as Admiral. Three more ships
+came from Madeira, one of them under Tristam Vaz, the coloniser of
+Funchal; Diniz Diaz headed another contingent from Lisbon; Zarco, the
+chief partner in the discovery and settlement of Madeira, sent his own
+caravel in command of his nephew; in all there were seven and twenty
+ships--caravels, galleys, and pinnaces. Since the Carthaginians sent out
+their colonists under Hanno beyond the Pillars of Hercules, a larger and
+braver fleet had not sailed down that desolate West of Africa.
+
+Gil Eannes, who had rounded Bojador, was there, with the Diaz, who had
+passed the Green Headland and come first to the land of the Negroes, and
+the list of captains was made up of the most daring and seasoned of
+Spanish seamen. Scarcely a man who had ventured on the ocean voyages of
+the last thirty years was still alive and able-bodied who did not sail
+on the 10th August, 1445.
+
+At the start Cape Blanco was appointed as the rendezvous; with favouring
+wind and tide the ships raced out as far as Arguin. Lawrence, a younger
+brother of the Diaz family, drew ahead, and was the first to fall in
+with Pacheco's three caravels, which were slowly crawling home after
+their losses. Now, hearing of the great fleet that was coming after to
+take vengeance, they turned about to wait for them, "as it was worth
+while to have revenge though one had to live on short rations." So, now,
+thirty European ships and their crews were included in the fleet. The
+pioneer, Lawrence Diaz, and the rest, lay to at the Isle of Herons in
+the Bank of Arguin; while waiting there they saw some wonderful things
+in birds, and Azurara tells us what they told him, though rather
+doubtfully. The great beaks of the Marabout, or Prophet Bird, struck
+them most,--"a cubit long and more, three fingers' breadth across, and
+the bill smooth and polished, like a Bashaw's scabbard, and looking as
+if artificially worked with fire and tools,"--the mouth and gullet so
+big that the leg of a man of the ordinary size would go into it. On
+these birds particularly, says Azurara, our men refreshed themselves
+during their three days' stay.
+
+Slowly but surely, two by two, three by three, nine caravels mustered at
+C. Blanco, and as the flagship of Lancarote was among them, an attack
+was made at once with two hundred and seventy-eight men picked from
+among the crews, the footmen and lancers in one boat and the archers in
+another, with Lancarote himself and the men-at-arms behind. They were
+steered by pilots who had been on the coast before and knew it, and it
+was hoped they would come upon the natives of Tider Island with the
+first light of dawn. But the way was longer than the pilots reckoned,
+the night was pitchy dark, without moon or stars, the tide was on the
+ebb, and at last the boats were aground. It was well on in the morning
+before they got off on the flood and rowed along the coast to find a
+landing-place. The shore was manned with natives, not at all taken by
+surprise, but dancing, yelling, spitting, and throwing missiles in
+insolent defiance. After a desperate struggle on the beach, they were
+put to flight with trifling loss--eight killed, four taken,--but when
+the raiders reached the village, they found it empty; the women and
+children had been sent away, and all their wretched little property had
+gone with them. The same was found true of all the villages on that
+coast; but in a second battle on the next day, fifty-seven Moors were
+captured, and the army went back on shipboard once more.
+
+And now the fleet divided. Lancarote, holding a council of his captains,
+declared the purpose of the voyage was accomplished. They had punished
+the natives and taken vengeance for Gonsalo de Cintra and the other
+martyrs; now it was for each crew and captain to settle whether they
+would go farther. All the prisoners having now been divided like
+prize-money between the ships, there was nothing more to stay for.
+
+Five caravels at once returned to Portugal after trying to explore the
+inlet of the sea at C. Blanco; but they only went up in their boats five
+leagues, and then turned back. One stayed in the Bay of Arguin to
+traffic in slaves, and lost one of the most valuable captives by sheer
+carelessness,--a woman, badly guarded, slipped out and swam ashore.
+
+But there was a braver spirit in some others of the fleet. The captain
+of the King's caravel, which had come from Lisbon in the service of the
+King's uncle, swore he would not turn back. He, Gomes Pires, would go on
+to the Nile; the Prince had ordered him to bring him certain word of it.
+He would not fail him. Lancarote for himself said the same, and another,
+one Alvaro de Freitas, capped the offers of all the rest. He would go on
+beyond the Negro-Nile to the Earthly Paradise, to the farthest East,
+where the four sacred rivers flowed from the tree of life. "Well do you
+all know how our Lord the Infant sets great store by us, that we should
+make him know clearly about the land of the Negroes, and especially the
+River of Nile. It will not be a small guerdon that he will give for such
+service."
+
+Six caravels in all formed the main body of the Perseverants, and these
+coasted steadily along till they came to Diaz's Cape of Palms, which
+they knew was near the Senegal and the land of the Negroes, "and so
+beautiful did the land now become, and so delicious was the scent from
+the shore, that it was as if they were by some gracious fruit garden,
+ordained to the sole end of their delights. And when the men in the
+caravels saw the first palms and towering woodland, they knew right well
+that they were close upon the River of Nile, which the men there call
+the Sanaga." For the Infant had told them how little more than twenty
+leagues beyond the sight of those trees they would see the river, as his
+prisoners of the Azanegue tribes had told him. And as they looked
+carefully for the signs of this, they saw at last, two leagues from
+land, "a colour of the water that was different from the rest, for that
+was of the colour of mud."
+
+And understanding this to mean that there were shoals, they put farther
+out to sea for safety, when one took some of the water in his hand and
+put it to his mouth, and found that it was sweet. And crying out to the
+others, "Of a surety," said they, "we are now at the River of Nile, for
+the water of the river comes with such force into the sea as to sweeten
+it." So they dropped their anchors in the river's mouth, and they of the
+caravel of Vincent Diaz (another brother of Diniz and Lawrence) let down
+a boat, into which jumped eight men who pulled ashore.
+
+Here they found some ivory and elephant hide, and had a fierce battle
+with a huge negro whose two little naked children they carried off,--but
+though the chronicle of the voyages stops here for several chapters of
+rapturous reflection on the greatness of the Nile, and the valour and
+spirit of the Prince who had thus found a way to its western mouth, we
+must follow the captains as they coast slowly along to Cape Verde, "for
+that the wind was fair for sailing." Landing on a couple of uninhabited
+islands off the Cape, they found first of all "fresh goat-skins and
+other things," and then the arms of the Infant and the words of his
+motto, _Talan de bien faire_, carved upon trees, and they doubted, like
+Azurara when writing down his history from their lips; "whether the
+great power of Alexander or of Caesar could have planted traces of itself
+so far from home," as these islands were from Sagres. For though the
+distance looks small enough on a full map of all the world, on the chart
+of the Then Known it was indeed a lengthy stretch--some two thousand
+miles, fully as great a distance as the whole range of the Mediterranean
+from the coast of Palestine to the Straits of Gibraltar.
+
+Now by these signs, adds the chronicler, they understood right well that
+other caravels had been there already--and it was so; for it was the
+ship of John Gonsalvez Zarco, Captain of Madeira, which had passed this
+way, as they found for a fact on the day after. And wishing to land, but
+finding the number of the natives to be such that they could not land by
+day or night, they put on shore a ball and a mirror and a paper on which
+was drawn a cross.
+
+And when the natives came and found them in the morning, they broke the
+ball and threw away the pieces, and with their assegais broke up the
+mirror into little bits, and tore the paper, showing that they cared for
+none of these things.
+
+Since this is so, said Captain Gomes Pires to the archers, draw your
+bows upon these rascals, that they may know we are people who can do
+them a damage.
+
+But the negroes returned the fire with arrows and assegais--deadly
+weapons, the arrows unfeathered and without a string-notch, but tipped
+with deadly poison of herbs, made of reed or cane or charred wood with
+long iron heads, and the assegais poisoned in like manner and pricked
+with seven or eight harpoons of iron, so that it was no easy matter to
+draw it out of the flesh.
+
+So they lost heart for going farther, with all the coast-land up in arms
+against them, and turned back to Lagos, but before they left the Cape
+they noticed in the desert island, where they had found the Prince's
+arms, trees so large that they had never seen the like, for among them
+was one which was 108 palms round at the foot. Yet this tree, the famous
+baobab, was not much higher than a walnut; "of its fibre they make good
+thread for sewing, which burns like flax; its fruit is like a gourd and
+its kernels like chestnuts." And so, we are told, all the captains put
+back along the coast, in a mind to enter the aforesaid River of Nile,
+but one of the caravels getting separated from the rest and not liking
+to enter the Senegal alone, went straight to Lagos, and another put back
+to water in the Bay of Arguin and the Rio d'Ouro estuary, where there
+came to them at once the Moors on board the caravel, full of confidence
+because they had never had any dealings before with the merchants of
+Spain, and sold them a negro for five doubloons, and gave them meat and
+water from their camels, and came in and out on board the ship, so that
+there was great fear of treachery, but at last without any quarrel they
+were all put on shore, under promise that next July their friends would
+come again and trade with them in slaves and gold to their hearts'
+content. And so, taking in a good cargo of seal-skins, they made their
+way straight home.
+
+Meantime two of the other caravels and a pinnace, which had been
+separated early in the voyage from the main body, under the pilotage of
+the veteran Diniz Diaz, had also made their way to C. Verde, had fought
+with the natives in some desperate skirmishes--one knight had his
+"shield stuck as full with arrows as the porcupine with quills," and had
+turned back in the face of the same discouragements as the rest; and so
+would have ended the whole of this great enterprise but for the
+dauntless energy of one captain and his crew.
+
+Zarco of Madeira had given his caravel to his nephew with a special
+charge that, come what might, he was not to think of profit and trading,
+but of doing the will of the Prince his lord. He was not to land in the
+fatal Bay of Arguin, which had been the end of so many enterprises; he
+was to go as Diniz Diaz had first gone, straight to the land of the
+Negroes, and pass beyond the farthest of earlier sailors. Now the
+caravel, says Azurara proudly, was well equipped and was manned by a
+crew that was ready to bear hard ship, and the captain was full of
+energy and zeal, and so they went on steadily, sailing through the great
+Sea of Ocean till they came to the River of Nile, where they filled two
+pipes with water, of which they took back one to the city of Lisbon. And
+not even Alexander, though he was one of the monarchs of the world,
+ever drank of water that had been brought from so far as this.
+
+"But now, still going on, they passed C. Verde and landed upon the
+islands I have spoken of, to see if there were any people there, but
+they found only some tame goats without any one to tend them; and it was
+there that they made the signs that the others found on coming after,
+the arms of the Infant with his device and motto. And then drawing in
+close to the Cape, they waited to see if any canoes would come off to
+them, and anchored about a mile off the shore. But they had not waited
+long before two boats, with ten negroes in them, put off from the beach
+and made straight for the caravel, like men who came in peace and
+friendship. And being near, they began to make signs as if for a
+safe-conduct, which were answered in like manner, and then at once,
+without any other precaution, five of them came on board the caravel,
+where the captain made them all the entertainment that he could, bidding
+them eat and drink, and so they went away with signs of great
+contentment, but it appeared after, that in their hearts they meditated
+treachery. For as soon as they got to land they talked with the other
+natives on shore, and thinking that they could easily take the ship,
+with this intent there now set out six boats, with five and thirty or
+forty men, arrayed as those who come to fight, but when they came close
+they were afraid and stayed a little way off, without daring to make any
+attack. And seeing this, our men launched a boat on the other side of
+the caravel, where they could not be seen by the enemy, and manned it
+with eight rowers, who were to wait till the canoes came nearer to the
+ship. At last the negroes were tired of waiting and watching, and one of
+their canoes came up closer, in which were five strong warriors, and at
+once our boat rowed round the caravel and cut them off. And because of
+the great advantage that we had in our style of rowing, in a trice our
+men were upon them, and they having no hope of defence, threw themselves
+into the water, and the other boats made off for the shore. And our men
+had the greatest trouble in catching those that were swimming away, for
+they dived not a whit worse than cormorants, so that we could scarcely
+catch hold of them. One was taken, not very easily, on the spot, and
+another, who fought as desperately as two men, was wounded, and with
+these two the boat returned to the caravel.
+
+"And for that they saw that it would not profit them to stay longer in
+that place, they resolved to see if they could find any new lands of
+which they might bring news to the Infant their lord. And so, sailing on
+again, they came to a cape, where they saw 'groves of palm trees dry and
+without branches, which they called the Cape of Masts.'" Here, a little
+farther along the coast, a reconnoitring party of seven landed and found
+four negro hunters sitting on the beach, armed with bows and arrows, who
+fled on seeing the strangers. "And as they were naked and their hair cut
+very short, they could not catch them," and only brought away their
+arrows for a trophy.
+
+This Cape of Masts, or some point of the coast a little to the
+south-east, was the farthest now reached by Zarco's caravel. "From here
+they put back and sailed direct to Madeira, and thence to the city of
+Lisbon, where the Infant received them with reward enough. For this
+caravel, of all those who had sailed at this time (1445), had done most
+and reached farthest."
+
+There was one contingent of the great armada yet unaccounted for, but
+they were sad defaulters. Three of the ships on the outward voyage which
+had separated from the main body and Lancarote's flagship, had the
+cowardice or laziness to give up the purpose of the voyage altogether;
+"they agreed to make a descent on the Canary Islands instead of going to
+Guinea at all that year."
+
+Here they stayed some time, raiding and slave-hunting, but also making
+observations on the natives and the different natural features of the
+different islands, which, as we have them in the old chronicle, are not
+the least interesting part of the story of the Lagos Armada of 1445.[38]
+
+[Footnote 38: The date of this voyage is brought down as late as 1447 by
+Santarem Oliveiro Martins.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+VOYAGES OF 1446-8.
+
+
+And yet, but for the enterprise of Zarco's crew, this expedition of 1445
+that began with so much promise, and on which so much time and trouble
+had been spent, was almost fruitless of "novelties," of discoveries, of
+the main end and object of all the Prince's voyages.
+
+The next attempt, made by Nuno Tristam in 1446, ended in the most
+disastrous finish that had yet befallen the Christian seamen of Spain.
+Nuno, who had been brought up from boyhood at the Prince's court,
+"seeing how earnest he was that his caravels should explore the land of
+the Negroes, and knowing how some had already passed the River of Nile,
+thought that if he should not do something of right good service to the
+Infant in that land, he could in no wise gain the name of a brave
+knight.
+
+"So he armed a caravel and began sail, not stopping anywhere that he
+might come straight to the Black Man's land. And passing by Cape Verde
+he sailed on sixty leagues and found a river, where he judged there
+ought to be some people living. So he bade them lower two small boats
+and put ten men in the one and twelve in the other, which pulled
+straight towards some huts they sighted ahead of them. But before they
+could jump on shore, twelve canoes came out on the other side, and
+seventy or eighty Blackmoors in them, with bows in their hands, who
+began to shoot at our people." As the tide rose, one of the Guinea boats
+passed them and landed its crew, "so that our men were between a fire
+from the land and a fire from the boats." They pulled back as hard as
+they could, but before they could get on board, four of them were lying
+dead.
+
+"And so they began to make sail home again, leaving the boats in that
+they were not able to take charge of them. For of the twenty-two who
+went to land in them there did not escape more than two; nineteen were
+killed, for so deadly was the poison that with a tiny wound, a mere
+scratch that drew blood, it could bring a man to his last end. But above
+and beyond these was killed our noble knight, Nuno Tristam, earnestly
+desiring life, that he might die not a shameful death like this, but as
+a brave man should." Of seven who had been left in the caravel, two had
+been struck by the poisoned arrows as they tried to raise the anchors,
+and were long in danger of death, lying a good twenty days at the last
+gasp, without the power to raise a finger to help the others who were
+trying to get the caravel home, so that only five were left to work the
+ship.
+
+Nuno's men were saved by the energy and skill of one--a mere boy, a page
+of the Infant's House--who took charge of the ship, and steered its
+course due north, then north by east, so that in two months' time they
+were off the coast of Portugal. But they were absolutely helpless and
+hopeless, knowing nothing of their whereabouts, for in all those two
+months they had had no glimpse of land,--so that when at last they
+caught sight of an armed fusta, they were "much troubled," supposing it
+to be a Moorish cruiser. When it came near and shewed itself to be a
+Gallician pirate, the poor fellows were almost wild with delight, still
+more when they found they were not far from Lagos. They had had a
+terrible time; first they were almost poisoned by the dead bodies of
+Nuno Tristam and the victims of the savages' poisoned arrows; then, when
+at last they had "thrown their honour to the winds and those bodies to
+the fishes," shamefaced and utterly broken in spirit, the five
+wretchedly ignorant seamen, who were now left alone, drifted, with the
+boundless and terrible ocean on one side, and the still more dangerous
+and unknown coast of Africa on the other, for sixty days. A common
+sailor, "little enough skilled in the art of sailing"; a groom of the
+Prince's chamber, the young hero who saved the ship; a negro boy, who
+was taken with the first captives from Guinea; and two other "little
+lads small enough,"--this was the crew. As for the rest, Beati mortui
+qui in Domino moriuntur, Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord,
+cries the chronicler in that outburst of bewildered grief with which he
+ends his story. There were widows and orphans left for the Prince to
+care for, and "of these he took especial charge."
+
+But all people were not so unlucky as Nuno Tristam. The caravel of Zarco
+of Madeira, which under Zarco's nephew, Alvaro Fernandez, had already
+passed beyond every other in the year of the great armada, 1445, was
+sent back again on its errand "of doing service in the unknown lands of
+Guinea to the Lord Don Henry," in the black year, 1446. Its noble and
+valiant owner now "charged the aforesaid" Alvaro Fernandez, with the
+ship well armed, to go as far as he could, and to try and make some
+booty, that should be so new and so splendid that it would be a sign of
+his good-will to serve the Lord who had made him. So they sailed on
+straight to Cape Verde, and beyond that to the Cape of Masts (or Spindle
+Palms), their farthest of the year before, but they did not turn back
+here, in spite of unfriendly natives and unknown shores. Still coasting
+along, they found tracks of men, and a little farther on a village,
+"where the people came out as men who shewed that they meant to defend
+their homes; in front of them was a champion, with a good target on his
+arm and an assegai in his hand. This fellow our captain rushed upon, and
+with a blow of his lance struck him dead upon the ground. Then, running
+up, he seized his sword and spear, and kept them as trophies to be
+offered to the Lord Infant." The negroes fled, and the conquerors turned
+back to their ship and sailed on. Next day they came to a land where
+they saw certain of the women of those negroes, and seized one who was
+of age about thirty, with her child a baby of two, and another, a young
+girl of fourteen, "the which had a good enough presence and beauty for
+that country"; but the strength of the woman was so wonderful, that she
+gave the three men who held her trouble enough to lift her into the
+boat. And seeing how they were kept struggling on the beach, they feared
+that some of the people of the country might come down upon them. So one
+of them put the child into the boat, and love of it forced the mother to
+go likewise, without much more pushing.
+
+Thence they went on, pursues the story, till they came to a river, into
+which they made an entrance with a boat, and carried off a woman that
+they found in a house. But going up the river somewhat farther, with a
+mind to make some good booty, there came out upon them four or five
+canoes full of negroes, armed as men who would fight for their country,
+whose encounter our men in the boat did not wish to await in face of the
+advantage of the enemy, and fearing above all the great peril of
+poisoned arrows. So they began to pull down stream as hard as they could
+towards the caravel; but as one of the canoes distanced the others and
+came up close to them, they turned upon it and in the fight one of the
+negroes shot a dart, that wounded the captain, Alvaro Fernandez, in the
+foot. But he, as he had been already warned of the poison, drew out the
+arrow very quickly and bathed it with acid and oil, and then anointed it
+well with theriack, and it pleased God that he passed safely through a
+great trouble, though for some days he lay on the point of death. And so
+they got back to the caravel.
+
+But though the captain was so badly wounded, the crew did not stop in
+following the coast and went on (all this was over quite new ground)
+till they came to a certain sand-spit, directly in front of a great bay.
+Here they launched a boat, and rowed out to see the land they had come
+to, and at once there came out against them full 120 negroes, some with
+bows, others with shields and assegais, and when they reached the edge
+of the sea, they began to play and dance about, "like men clean wearied
+of all sadness, but our men in the boat wishing to be excused from
+sharing in that festival of theirs, turned and rowed back to the ship."
+
+Now all this was a good 110 leagues,--320 miles beyond Cape Verde,
+"mostly to the south of the aforesaid cape" (that is, about the place of
+Sierra Leone on our maps), and this caravel remained a longer time
+abroad and went farther than any other ship of that year, and but for
+the sickness of the wounded captain they would not have stopped there.
+But as it was they came straight back to the Bank of Arguin, "where they
+met that chief Ahude Meymam, of whom we have spoken before," in the
+story of Joan Fernandez. And though they had no interpreter, by whom
+they might do their business, by signs they managed so that they were
+able to buy a negress, in exchange for certain cloths that they had with
+them. And so they came safe home. There was not much trouble now in
+getting volunteers for the work of discovery, and a reward of 200
+doubloons--100 from Prince Henry, 100 more from the Regent Don Pedro--to
+the last bold explorers who had got fairly round Senegambia, added zest
+to enterprise.
+
+In this same year 1446-7, no fewer than nine caravels sailed to Guinea
+from Portugal in another armada, on the track of Zarco's successful
+crew. At Madeira they were joined by two more, and the whole fleet
+sailed through the Canary island group to Cape Verde. Eight of them
+passed sixty leagues, 180 miles, beyond, and found a river, the Rio
+Grande, "of good size enough," up which they sailed, except one ship,
+belonging to a Bishop--the Bishop of Algarve--"for that this happened to
+run upon a sand-bank, in such wise, that they were not able to get her
+off, though all the people on board were saved with the cargo. And while
+some of them were busy in this, others landed and found the country just
+deserted by its inhabitants, and going on to find them, they soon
+perceived that they had found a track, which they had chanced on near
+the place where they landed."
+
+They followed this track recklessly enough, and nearly met the fate of
+Nuno Tristam. "For as they went on by that road, they came to a country
+with great sown fields, with plantations of cotton trees and rice plots,
+in a land full of hills like loaves, after which they came to a great
+wood," and as they were going into the wood, the Guineas came out upon
+them in great numbers, with bows and assegais and saluted them with a
+shower of poisoned arrows. The first five Europeans fell dead at once,
+two others were desperately wounded, the rest escaped to the ships, and
+the ships went no farther that year.
+
+Still worse was the fate of Vallarte's venture in the early months of
+1448. Vallarte was a nobleman of the Court of King Christopher of
+Denmark, who had been drawn to the Court of Henry at Sagres by the
+growing fame of the Prince's explorations, and who came forward with the
+stock request, "Give me a caravel to go to the land of the negroes."
+
+A little beyond Cape Verde, Vallarte went on shore with a boat's crew
+and fell into the trap which had caught the exploring party of the year
+before. He and his men were surrounded by negroes and were shot down or
+captured to a man. But one escaped, swimming to the ship, and told how
+as he looked back over his shoulder to the shore, again and again, he
+saw Vallarte sitting a prisoner in the stern of the boat.
+
+"And when the chronicle of these voyages was in writing at the end of
+the self-same year, there were brought certain prisoners from Guinea to
+Prince Henry, who told him that in a city of the upland, in the heart of
+Africa, there were four Christian prisoners." One had died, three were
+living, and in these four, men in Europe believed they had news of
+Vallarte and his men.
+
+But between the last voyage of Zarco's caravel in 1446 and the first
+voyage of Cadamosto in 1455, there is no real advance in exploration.
+
+The "third armada," as it was called, that is the fleet of the nine
+caravels of 1446-7, the voyage of Gomes Pires to the Rio d'Ouro at the
+same time, the trading ventures of the Marocco coast which were the
+means of bringing the first lion to Portugal in 1447, the expeditions
+to the Rio d'Ouro and to Arguin in the course of the same year, are not
+part of the story of discovery, but of trade. There is hardly a
+suspicion of exploring interest about most of them. Even Vallarte's
+venture in 1448 has nothing of the novelty which so many went out to
+find "for the satisfaction of the Lord Henry." Guinea voyages are
+frequent, almost constant, during these years, and this frequency has at
+any rate the point of making Europeans thoroughly familiar with the
+coast already explored, if it did little or nothing to bring in new
+knowledge.
+
+But the value and meaning of Henry's life and work was not after all in
+commerce, except in a secondary sense; and these voyages of purely
+trading interest, with no design or at any rate no result of discovery,
+do not belong to our subject. Each one of them has its own picturesque
+beauty in the pages of the old chronicle of the Conquest of Guinea, but
+measured by its importance to the general story of the expansion of
+Europe, there is no lasting value in any one of the last chapters of
+Azurara's voyages,--his description of the Canaries, and of the
+"Inferno" of Teneriffe, "of how Madeira was peopled, and the other
+islands that are in that part, of how the caravel of Alvaro Dornellas
+took certain of the Canarians, of how Gomes Pires went to the Rio d'Ouro
+and of the Moors that he took, of the caravel that went to Meca (in
+Marocco) and of the Moors that were taken, of how Antam Gonsalvez
+received the island of Lancarote in the name of the Prince."
+
+Only the chronicler's summary of results, up to the year 1446, the year
+of Nuno Tristam's failure, is of wider interest. "Till then there had
+been fifty-one caravels to those parts, which had gone 450 leagues (1350
+miles) beyond the Cape (Boyador). And as it was found that the coast ran
+southward with many points, the Prince ordered these to be added to the
+sailing chart. And here it is to be noted, that what was clearly known
+before of the coast of the great sea was 200 leagues (600 miles), which
+have been increased by these 450. Also what had been laid down upon the
+Mappa Mundi was not true but was by guess work, but now 't is all from
+the survey by the eyes of our seamen. And now seeing that in this
+history we have given account sufficient of the first four reasons which
+brought our noble Prince to his attempt, it is time we said something of
+the accomplishment of his fifth object, the conversion of the Heathen,
+by the bringing of a number of infidel souls from their lands to this,
+the which by count were nine hundred and twenty-seven, of whom the
+greater part were turned into the true way of salvation. And what
+capture of town or city could be more glorious than this."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE AZORES.
+
+1431-1460.
+
+
+We have now come very nearly to the end of the voyages that are
+described in the old _Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of
+Guinea_, and setting aside the story of the famous Venetian Cadamosto,
+this is also the end of the African mainland-coasting of Henry's seamen.
+Though he did not die till 1460, and we have now only reached the year
+1448, for Azurara's solemn catalogue of negroes brought to Europe is
+reckoned only up to that year--"nine hundred and twenty-seven who had
+been turned into the true path of salvation,"--yet there is no more
+exploration in the last ten years of Henry's life worth noting, except
+what falls into this and two of the following chapters.
+
+The first of these is Cadamosto's own record of his two voyages along
+the Guinea coast, in which he is supposed to have reached Cape Palmar,
+some five hundred miles beyond Cape Verde, and certainly reached the
+Gambia, whose great mouth, "like an arm of the sea," is well described
+in his journal.
+
+The second is the "true account of the finding of the Cape Verde islands
+by Diego Gomez, servant of Don Henry," who writes the story of the
+Prince's death and was as faithful a servant as he had at his Court. But
+there is one other chapter of the exploration directed from Sagres and
+described by Azurara, which must find its place, and is best spoken of
+here and now, in the interval between the two most active periods of
+African coasting voyages. This is the story of the colonisation of the
+Azores, of the Western or Hawk islands, known to map-makers at least as
+early as 1351, for they figure clearly enough on the great Florentine
+chart of that year, though not reclaimed for Europe and Christendom till
+somewhere about 1430. These islands were found, says a legend, on the
+Catalan map of 1439, by Diego de Sevill, pilot of the King of Portugal,
+in 1427. But these islands were after all only two groups of the
+Archipelago, and the rediscovery or finding of the rest fell between the
+years 1432 and 1450.
+
+The voyage of Diego de Sevill and Gonzalo Velho Cabral to the Azores,
+that is to the island of St. Mary and the Formigas, has been alluded to
+as among the earliest of Prince Henry's successes. But as it was out of
+this first attempt that the discovery of the whole group resulted, it
+has been necessary to refer to it again. Cabral, rewarded by his lord
+with the gift of his discoveries and living in St. Mary's island as
+"Captain Donatory" or Lord of the Land, was in charge of the
+colonisation of the islands he had already found, and of as many others
+as might come to light. He spent three years (1433-6) collecting men
+and means in Portugal and then settled in the "Western Isles" with some
+of the best families in this country.
+
+With this, discovery seemed to have come to a standstill, but years
+after, somewhere about 1440-1 an odd chance started exploration westward
+once more. There was a hunt after a runaway slave, a negro, of course,
+from the continent, who had escaped to the top of the highest mountain
+in St. Mary. The weather was of the clearest, and he fancied that he saw
+far off on the horizon the outline of an unknown land. Was it another
+island? He knew his masters were there as explorers quite as much as
+colonisers, and he must often have heard their talk about the finding of
+new lands, and the will of their Lord the Prince that those new lands
+should at all costs be found, was no secret. That will had sent them
+there; that same will would secure their slave's pardon, if he came back
+from hiding with the news of a real discovery.
+
+So he reasoned to himself; and he was right. The Prince, hearing the
+news, instantly consulted his ancient maps and found that these hinted
+at lands in the same direction as the slave had pointed out. He ordered
+Cabral to start at once in search of them. Cabral tried and missed. Then
+came a wonderful test of Henry's knowledge; he who had never been within
+a thousand miles of the place, proved to his captain that he had passed
+between St. Mary and the unknown land, and correcting his course sent
+him out again, to seek and to find.
+
+On the 8th of May, 1444, the new island was found "on the day of the
+apparition of St. Michael," and named after the festival. It is our
+modern "St. Michael of the Oranges."
+
+As with the other islands so with this, colonisation followed discovery.
+On the 29th of September, 1445, Cabral returned with Europeans, having
+before left only a few Moors to open up the country. Now on his return
+he found these wretched men frightened almost to death by the
+earthquakes that had kept them trembling since they first landed. "And
+if they had been able to get a boat, even the lightest, they would
+certainly have escaped in it." Cabral's pilot also, who had been with
+him before to that same island, declared that of the two great mountain
+peaks which he had noticed at the two ends of the island, east and west,
+only the Eastern was now standing. The slang name of "Azores" or "Hawks"
+now began to take the place of the old term of "Western" islands, from
+the swarms of hawks or kites that were found in the new discovered St.
+Michael, and in the others which came to light soon after. For the Third
+Group, "Terceira," was sighted between 1444-50, and added to the
+Portugal that was thus creeping slowly out towards the unknown West, as
+if in anticipation of Columbus, throwing its outposts farther and
+farther into the ocean, as its pioneers grew more and more sure of their
+ground outside the Straits of Gibraltar. Some seamen of Prince Henry's,
+returning from "Guinea" to Spain, some adventurer trying to "win fame
+for himself with the Lord Infant," some merchants sent out to try their
+luck on the western side as so many had tried on the southern, some
+African coasters driven out of sight of land by contrary winds;--it may
+have been any of these, it must have been some one of them, who found
+the rest of the Azores, Terceira or the island of Jesus, St. George,
+Graciosa, Fayal, Flores, and Corvo.
+
+Who were the discoverers is absolutely unknown. At this day we have only
+a few traces of the first colonisation, but of two things we may be
+pretty certain. First, that the Azores were all found and colonised in
+Henry's lifetime, and for the most part between 1430 and 1450. Second,
+that no definite purpose was formed of pushing discovery beyond this
+group across the waste of waters to the west, and so of finding India
+from the "left" hand. Henry and all his school were quite satisfied,
+quite committed, to the south-east route. By coasting round the
+continent, not by venturing across the ocean, they hoped and meant to
+find their way to Malabar and Cathay. As to the settlement of these
+islands, a copy is still left of Henry's grant of the Captaincy of
+Terceira to the Fleming Jacques de Bruges.
+
+The facts of the case were these. Jacques came to the Prince one day
+with a little request about the Hawk islands--that "within the memory of
+man the aforesaid islands had been under the aggressive lordship of none
+other than the Prince, and as the third of these islands called the
+island of Jesu Christ, was lying waste, he the said Jacques de Bruges
+begged that he might colonise the same. Which was granted to him with
+the succession to his daughters, as he had no heirs male."
+
+For Jacques was a rich Fleming, who had come into the Prince's service,
+it would seem, with the introduction of the Duchess of Burgundy, Don
+Henry's niece. Since then he had married into a noble house of Portugal,
+and now he was offering to take upon himself all the charges of his
+venture. Such a man was not lightly to be passed over. His design was
+encouraged, and more than this his example was followed. An hidalgo
+named Sodre--Vincent Gil Sodre--took his family and adherents across to
+Terceira, the island of Jesu Christ, and from thence went on and settled
+in Graciosa, while another Fleming, Van der Haager, joining Van der
+Berge or De Bruges in Terceira with two ships "fitted out at his own
+cost and filled with his own people and artisans, whom he had brought to
+work as in a new land," tried though unsuccessfully to colonise the
+island of St. George.
+
+The first Captain Donatory of Fayal was another Fleming--Job van
+Heurter, Lord of Moerkerke--and there is a special interest in his name.
+For it is through him that we get in 1492 the long and interesting
+notice of the first settlement of the Azores on the globe of Martin
+Behaim, now at Nuremberg, the globe which was made to play such a
+curious part, as undesigned as it was ungenerous, in the Columbus
+controversy.
+
+"These islands," says the tablet attached to them on the map, "these
+Hawk islands, were colonised in 1466, when they were given by the King
+of Portugal to his sister Isabel, Duchess of Burgundy, who sent out
+many people of all classes, with priests and everything necessary for
+the maintenance of religion. So that in 1490 there were there some
+thousands of souls, who had come out with the noble knight, Job de
+Heurter, my dear father-in-law, to whom the islands were given in
+perpetuity by the Duchess.
+
+"Now in 1431, Prince Henry provisioned two ships for two years and sent
+them to the lands beyond Cape Finisterre, and they, sailing due west for
+some five hundred leagues, found these islands, ten in number, all
+desert without quadrupeds or men, only tenanted by birds, and these so
+tame that they could be caught by the hand. So they called these 'the
+Islands of the Hawks' (Azores).
+
+"And next year (1432), by the King's orders, sixteen vessels were sent
+out from Portugal with all kinds of tame animals, that they might breed
+there."
+
+Of the first settlement of Flores and Corvo, the two remaining islands
+of the group, still less is known, but in any case it seems not to have
+been fully carried out till the last years of the Prince's life,
+possibly it was the work of his successor in the Grand Mastership of the
+Order of Christ, which now took up a sort of charge to colonise outlying
+and new discovered lands. For among the Prince's last acts was his
+bequest of the islands, which had been granted to himself by his
+brother, King Edward, in 1433, to Prince Ferdinand, his nephew, whom he
+had adopted with a view of making him his successor in aims as well as
+in office, in leading the progress of discovery as well as in the
+headship of the Order of Christ.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE TROUBLES OF THE REGENCY AND THE FALL OF DON PEDRO.
+
+1440-9.
+
+
+Don Pedro had been nominated sole Regent of Portugal on November 1,
+1439, and by the end of the next year all the unsettlement consequent on
+the change at court seemed to be at an end. But a deep hatred continued
+between the various parties.
+
+First of all, the Count of Barcellos, natural son of John I., created
+Duke of Braganza by Affonso V., had taken up a definite policy of
+supplanting the Regent. The Queen Mother had not forgotten or forgiven
+Don Pedro's action at Edward's death, and the young King himself, though
+engaged to the Regent's daughter, was already distrustful, was fitting
+himself to lead the Barcellos party against the Prince.
+
+On February 18, 1445, died the Queen Leonor, with suspicions of poison,
+diligently fostered by the malcontents. Next year (1446) Affonso, now
+fourteen, came of age, and his uncle proposed at once to resign all
+actual power and retire to his estates as Duke of Coimbra. But the King
+was either not yet prepared to part with him, or still felt some
+gratitude to his guardian, "the wisest head in Spain."
+
+He begged him to keep the chief direction of affairs, thanked him for
+the past, and promised to help him in the future. More than this, he
+protested that he wished to be married to his cousin, Pedro's daughter
+Isabel. They had been formally betrothed four years; now Affonso called
+on his nobles and the deputies of Cortes to witness the marriage.
+
+In May, 1447, this royal wedding was celebrated, but coldly and poorly,
+as nephew and uncle had now drifted quite apart. The more the younger
+disliked and suspected the elder, the more vehement became his
+protestations of regard. But he bitterly resented the Duke's action in
+holding him to his promise, and he made up his mind before the marriage
+that he would henceforth govern as well as reign.
+
+The Regent just prevented his dismissal by laying down his offices; the
+King seemed almost to relent in parting from his guardian, who had kept
+the kingdom in such perfect peace and now resigned so well discharged a
+duty; but even his wife could not prevent the coming storm. She
+struggled hard to reconcile her father and her husband, but the
+mischief-makers were too hard for her. Persuaded that the Duke was a
+traitor, the King allowed himself to be used to goad him into revolt.
+"Your father wishes to be punished," he said fiercely to the Queen, "and
+he shall be punished."
+
+[Illustration: HENRY IN MORNING DRESS, WITH GREAT HAT.]
+
+If Henry, who in the last six years had only once left Sagres, to knight
+Don Pedro's eldest son at Coimbra in 1445, had now been able, in
+presence as well as writing, to stand by his brother in this crisis, the
+Regent might have been saved. As it was, Pedro had hardly settled down
+in his exile at Coimbra, when he found himself charged with the secret
+murders of King Edward, Queen Leonor, and Prince John. The more
+monstrous the slander, the more absurd and self-contradictory it might
+be, the more eagerly it was made.
+
+Persecution as petty and grinding as that which hunted Wolsey to death,
+at last drove Pedro to take arms. His son, knighted by Henry himself for
+the high place of Constable of the Realm, had been forced into flight,
+the arms of Coimbra Arsenal seized for the King's use, his letters to
+his nephew opened and answered, it was said by his enemies, who wrote
+back in the sovereign's name, as he would write to an open rebel. All
+this the Prince bore, but when he heard that his bastard brother of
+Braganza, who had betrayed and maligned and ruined him, was on the march
+to plunder his estates, like an outlaw's, he collected a few troops and
+barred his way. At this Affonso was persuaded to declare war.
+
+Only one great noble stood by the fallen Regent, but this was his friend
+Almada, the Spanish Hercules, his sworn brother in arms and in travels,
+one of the Heroes of Christendom, who had been made a Count in France
+and a Knight of the Garter in England. It was he who now escaped from
+honourable imprisonment at Cintra, joined Pedro in Coimbra, and proposed
+to him that they should go together to Court and demand justice and a
+fair trial, but sword in hand and with their men at their back. Was it
+not better to die as soldiers than as traitors without a hearing?
+
+So on May 5, 1449, the Duke left Coimbra with his little army of
+vassals, 1000 horse and 5000 foot and passed by Batalha, where he
+stopped to revisit the great church and the tombs of his father and his
+brothers. Thence he marched straight on Lisbon, which the King covered
+from Santarem with 30,000 men. At the rivulet of Alfarrobeira the armies
+met; a lance thrust or a cross-bow shot killed the Infant; a common
+soldier cut off his head and carried it to Affonso in the hope of
+knighthood. Almada, who fought till he could not stand from loss of
+blood, died with his friend. Hurling his sword from him, he threw
+himself on the ground, with a scornful, "Take your fill of me, Varlets,"
+and was cut to pieces.
+
+Though at first leave could hardly be got to bury Don Pedro's body, as
+time went on his name was cleared. His daughter bore a son to the King,
+and the proofs of his loyalty, the indignant warnings of foreign Courts,
+the entreaties of the Queen, at last brought Affonso to something like
+repentance and amendment. He buried the Regent at Batalha and pardoned
+his friends, those who were left from the butchery of Alfarrobeira.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+CADAMOSTO.
+
+1455-6.
+
+
+We have now come to the voyages of the Venetian Cadamosto, in the
+service of Prince Henry. And though these were far from being the most
+striking in their general effect, they are certainly the most famous,
+the best known, of all the enterprises of these fifty years (1415-1460).
+It is true that Cadamosto fairly reached Sierra Leone and, passing the
+farthest mark of the earlier Portuguese caravels, coasted along many
+miles of that great eastern bend of the West African coast which we call
+the Gulf of Guinea. But it is to his general fame as a seaman, his
+position in Italy, and the interest he aroused by his written and
+published story that he owed his greater share of attention.
+
+When I first set my mind, begins his narrative, on sailing the ocean
+between the Strait of Cadiz and the Fortunate Islands, the one man who
+had tried to enter the aforesaid ocean, since the days of our Father
+Adam, was the Infant Don Henry of Portugal, whose illustrious and
+almost countless deeds I pass over, excepting only his zeal for the
+Christian faith and his freedom from the bonds of matrimony. For his
+father, King John, had not given up the ghost before he had warned his
+son Henry with saving precepts, that the aforesaid Holy Faith he should
+foster with a dauntless mind and not fail in his vows of warring down
+the foes of Christ.
+
+Therefore every year did Don Henry, as it were, challenging and hurling
+defiance at the Moors, persist in sending out his caravels as far as the
+headland called the Cape of Non (Not), from the belief that beyond the
+said Cape there is "_No_" return possible. And as for a long time the
+ships of the Prince did not dare to pass that point, Henry roused
+himself to accomplish this feat, seeing that his caravels did much excel
+all other sailing ships afloat, and strictly enjoined his captains not
+to return before they had passed the said Cape. Who steadily pressing
+on, and never leaving sight of the shore, did in truth pass near one
+hundred miles beyond, finding nothing but desert land.
+
+Beyond this again, for the space of one hundred and fifty miles, the
+Prince then sent another fleet, which fared no better, and finding no
+trace of men or of tillage, returned home. And Don Henry, growing ever
+keener for discovery, and excited by the opposition as it were of
+nature, sent out again and again till his sailors had reached beyond the
+Desert Coast to the land of the Arabs and of those new races called
+Azaneguys, people of a tawny colour.
+
+And finally there appeared to these bold mariners the land of AEthiopia,
+which lies upon the shore of the Southern ocean, and here again from day
+to day the explorers discovered new races and new lands.
+
+"Now I, Luigi Ca da Mosto, who had sailed nearly all the Mediterranean
+coasts, once leaving Venice for 'Celtogallia' (France), but being caught
+by a storm off C. St. Vincent, had to take refuge in the Prince's town,
+near the said Cape, and was here told of the glorious and boundless
+conquests of the Prince, whence accrued such gain that from no traffic
+in the world could the like be had.
+
+"The which," continues the candid trader, "did exceedingly stir my soul,
+eager as it was for gain above all things else; and so I made suit to be
+brought before the Prince, if so be that I might gain leave to sail in
+his service, for since the profit of this voyage is subject to his
+pleasure, he doth guard his monopoly with no small care."
+
+With the Prince, at last, Cadamosto made terms: either that he, the
+adventurer, should furnish the ships at his own cost, and take the whole
+risk upon himself, and of the merchandise that he might gain a fourth
+part to go to his lord; or that the Prince should bear the cost of
+equipment and should have half the profits. But in any case, if there
+was no profit, the whole expense should fall upon the trader. The Prince
+added that he would heartily welcome any other volunteers from Venice,
+and on Cadamosto himself he urged an immediate start. "As for me,"
+repeats the sailor, "my age, my vigour, my skill equal to any toil,
+above all my passionate desire to see the world and explore the
+unknown, set me all on fire with eagerness. And especially the fact that
+no countryman of mine had ever tried the like, and my certainty of
+winning the highest honour and gain from such a venture, made me forward
+to offer myself. I only stayed to enquire from veteran Portuguese what
+merchandise was the most highly prized among the AEthiopians and people
+of the furthest South, and then went home to find the best light craft
+for the ocean coasting that I had in mind." Meantime the Prince ordered
+a caravel to be equipped, which he gave to one Vincent, a native of
+Lagos, as captain, and caused to be armed to the teeth, as was required,
+and on the 21st of March, 1455, Cadamosto sailed for Madeira. On the
+25th they were off Porto Santo, and the Venetian stops to give us a
+description of the island, which, he says in passing, had been found and
+colonised by the Prince's seamen twenty-seven years before. It was worth
+the settling. Every kind of grain and fruit was easily raised, and there
+was a great trade in dragon's blood, "which is made from the tears of a
+tree."
+
+On March 27th, Cadamosto sailed from Porto Santo to Madeira, forty miles
+distant, and easily seen from the first island when the weather was
+cloudy, and here the narrative stops some time to describe and admire
+sufficiently. Madeira had been colonised under the lead and action of
+the Prince four and twenty years before, and was now thickly peopled by
+the Portuguese settlers. Beyond Portugal its existence was hardly known.
+Its name was "from its woodland,"--here Cadamosto repeats the
+traditional falsehood about the place,--but the first settlers had
+destroyed most of this in trying to clear an open space by fire. The
+whole island had once been in flames, the colonists only saved their
+lives by plunging into the rivers, and even Zarco, the chief discoverer,
+with his wife and children had to stand in a torrent bed for two whole
+days and nights before they could venture on dry land again.
+
+The island was forty miles round; like Porto Santo, it was without a
+harbour, but not without convenient roads for ships to lie in; the soil
+was fertile, well watered by eight rivers that flowed through the
+island. "Various kinds of carved wood are exported, so that almost all
+Portugal is now adorned with tables and other furniture made from these
+woods."
+
+"Hearing of the great plenty of water in the island, the Prince ordered
+all the open country to be planted with sugar-cane and with vines
+imported from Crete, which do excellent well in a climate so well suited
+to the grape; the vine staves make good bows, and are exported to Europe
+like the wine, red and white alike, but especially the red. The grapes
+are ripe about Easter in each year," and this vintage, as early as
+Cadamosto's day, was evidently the main interest of the islanders, who
+had all the enthusiasm of a new venture in their experiment, "for no one
+had ever tried his hand upon the soil before."
+
+From Madeira the caravel sailed on 320 miles to the Canaries, of which
+says our Venetian, there are ten, seven cultivated and three still
+desert; and of the seven inhabited four are Christian, three Heathen,
+even now, fifty years after De Bethencourt's conquest. Neither wine nor
+grain can be produced on this soil, and hardly any fruit, only a kind of
+dye, used for clothes in Portugal; goat's flesh and cheese can also be
+exported, and something, Cadamosto fancies, might be made of the wild
+asses that swarm in the islands.
+
+Each of these Canary islands being some forty miles from the next, the
+people of one do not understand the speech of their neighbours. They
+have no walls, but open villages; watch towers are placed on the highest
+mountains to guard the people of one village from the attacks of the
+next, for a guerilla warfare, half marauding, half serious civil war, is
+the order of the day.
+
+Speaking of the three heathen islands, "which were also the most
+populous," Cadamosto stops a little over the mention of Teneriffe,
+"wonderful among the islands of the earth, and able to be seen in clear
+weather for a distance of seventy Spanish leagues, which is equal to two
+hundred and fifty miles. And what makes it to be seen from so far, is
+that on the top is a great rock of adamant, like a pyramid, which stone
+blazes like the mountain of AEtna, and is full fifteen miles from the
+plain, as the natives say."
+
+These natives have no iron weapons, but fight with stones and wooden
+daggers; they go naked except for a defensive armour of goat-skins,
+which they wear in front and behind. Houses they have none, not even the
+poorest huts, but live in mountain caves, without faith, without God.
+Some indeed worship the sun and moon, and others planets, reverence
+certain idols; in their marriage customs the chiefs have the first right
+by common consent, and at the graves of their dead chiefs are most of
+their religious sacrifices; the islanders have only one art, that of
+stone-slinging, unless one were to count their mountain-climbing and
+skill in running and in all bodily exercises, in which nature has
+created these Canarians to excel all other mortals.
+
+They paint their bodies with the juice of plants in all sorts of colours
+and think this the highest point of perfection, to be decked out on
+their skins like a garden bed.
+
+From the Canaries, Cadamosto sails to the White Cape, C. Blanco, on the
+mainland, some way beyond Bojador, "towards AEthiopia," passing the bay
+and isles of Arguin on the way, where the crews found such quantities of
+sea-birds that they brought home two ship-loads. And here it is to be
+noticed, says the narrative, that in sailing from the parts of Cadiz to
+that AEthiopia which faces to the south, you meet with nothing but desert
+lands till you come to Cape Cantin, from which it is a near course to C.
+Blanco. These parts towards the south do run along the borders of the
+negroes' land, and this great tract of white and arid land, full of
+sand, very low lying at a dead level, it would be a quick thing to cross
+in sixty days. At C. Blanco some hills begin to rise out of the plain,
+and this cape was first found by the Portuguese, and on it is nothing
+but sand, no trace of grass or trees; it is seen from far, being very
+sharply marked, three-sided, and having on its crest three pyramids, as
+they may be called, each one a mile from its neighbour. A little beyond
+this great desert tract is a vast sea and a wondrous concourse of
+rivers, where only explorers have reached. At C. Blanco there is a mart
+of Arab traders, a station for the camels and caravans of the interior,
+and those pass by the cape who are coming from Negro-land and going to
+the Barbary of North Africa. As one might expect on such a barren stony
+soil, no wine or grain can be raised; the natives have oxen and goats,
+but very few; milk of camels and others is their only drink; as for
+religion, the wretches worship Mahomet and hate Christians right
+bitterly. What is of more interest to the Venetian merchant, the traders
+of these parts have plenty of camels which carry loads of brass and
+silver, and even of gold, brought from the negroes to the people of our
+parts.
+
+The natives of C. Blanco are black as moles, but dress in white flowing
+robes, after the Moorish fashion, with a turban wound round the head;
+and indeed plenty of Arabs are always hovering off the cape and the bay
+of Arguin for the sake of trade with the Infant's ships, especially in
+silver, grain, and woven stuffs, and above all in slaves and gold. To
+protect this commerce, the Prince some time since (1448), built a fort
+in the bay, and every year the Portuguese caravels that come here lie
+under its protection and exchange the negro slaves that they have
+captured farther south for Arab horses, one horse against ten or fifteen
+slaves, or for silks and woven stuffs from Morocco and Granada, from
+Tunis and the whole land of Barbary. The Arabs on their side sell
+slaves, that they have driven from the upland, to the Portuguese at
+Arguin, in all nearly a thousand a year, so that the Europeans, who used
+to plunder all this coast as far as the Senegal, now find it more
+profitable to trade.
+
+The mention of the Senegal brings Cadamosto to the next stage of his
+voyage, to the great river, "which divides the Azaneguys, Tawny Moors,
+from the First Kingdom of the Negroes."
+
+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
+breasts 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 ships 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 shore, the natives changed their minds and thought they were
+fishes; some, who first saw the ships 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
+shore, 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 shore. 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
+shore 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 shore stretches between the two; up to the
+river the sailor sees from the shore only the wandering Azaneguys,
+tawny, squat, and miserable savages; across the stream to the south are
+the real Blacks, "well built noble-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 assigned 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 shirts, 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. Bloody and remorseless are the wars the princes of these
+barbarians carry on against one another. They have no horsemen 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 ships 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 ships 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
+ships lay, and the captain had to send word to his crews by negro
+swimmers, who could pass 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 Gods"; 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 classes have any privileges:
+ministers of religion share with the greatest nobles the sole right of
+access to the person of the "Mortal God."
+
+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 pushing on beyond Cape Verde.
+To the last the ships 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 God 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 ship--masts, helm, anchors,
+sails, and oars. The eyes painted on the bow excited them: the ship 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 ships 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 grass 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 shell-fish (turtles),
+of twelve pounds' weight.
+
+Soon after passing 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 ships. 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 repetitions 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, worshipping 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
+shore, 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 shore 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 ashore than he
+was seized and cut to pieces by some armed savages, while the ships
+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 ship 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 shield 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 space, 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 ships 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 passed 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 shells of such size that they
+could make very good shields for an army."
+
+Here they stayed a couple of days, exploring in the country and fishing
+in the river, which was so broad and deep that it would easily bear a
+ship 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 ships 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
+worshipped "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.
+
+"No long time after, the Prince equipped at Lagos a caravel, called the
+_Wren_, and set over it Diego Gomez, with two other caravels, of which
+the same Gomez was captain-in-chief. Their orders were to go as far as
+they could.
+
+"But after passing a great river beyond the Rio Grande, we met such
+strong currents in the sea that no anchor could hold. The other captains
+and their men were much alarmed, thinking we were at the end of the
+ocean, and begged me to put back. In the mid-current the sea was very
+clear and the natives came off from the shore and brought us their
+merchandise, cotton cloth, ivory, and a quart measure of malaguette
+pepper, in grain and in its pods as it grows, which delighted us.
+
+"As the current prevented our going farther, and even grew stronger, we
+put back and came to a land where there were groves of palms near the
+shore with their branches broken, so tall that from a distance I thought
+they were the masts or spars of negroes' vessels.
+
+"So we went there and found a great plain covered with hay and more than
+five thousand animals like stags, but larger, who shewed no fear of us.
+Five elephants came out of a small river that was fringed by trees,
+three full grown, with two young ones, and on the shore we saw holes of
+crocodiles in plenty. We went back to the ships and next day made our
+way from Cape Verde and saw the broad mouth of a great river, three
+leagues in width, which we entered and guessed to be the Gambia. Here
+wind and tide were in our favour, so we came to a small island in
+mid-stream and rested there the night. In the morning we went farther
+in, and saw a crowd of canoes full of men, who fled at the sight of us,
+for it was they who had killed Nuno Tristam and his men. Next day we saw
+beyond the point of the river some natives on the right-hand bank, who
+welcomed us. Their chief was called Frangazick and he was the nephew of
+Farosangul, the great Prince of the Negroes. There they gave us one
+hundred and eighty pounds worth of gold, in exchange for our goods. The
+lord of the country had a negro with him named Buka, who knew the tongue
+only of Negroland, and finding him perfectly truthful, I asked him to go
+with me to Cantor and promised him all he needed. I made the same
+promise to his chief and kept it.
+
+[Illustration: THE BORGIAN MAP OF 1450. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+"We went up the river as far as Cantor, which is a large town near the
+river-side. Farther than this the ships could not go, because of the
+thick growth of trees and underwood, but here I made it known that I had
+come to exchange merchandise, and the natives came to me in very great
+numbers. When the news spread through the country that the Christians
+were in Cantor, they came from Tambucatu in the North, from Mount Gelu
+in the South, and from Quioquun, which is a great city, with a wall of
+baked tiles. Here, too, I was told, there is gold in plenty and caravans
+of camels cross over there with goods from Carthage, Tunis, Fez, Cairo
+and all the land of the Saracens. These are exchanged for gold, which
+comes from the mines on the other side of Sierra Leone. They said that
+range ran southwards, which pleased me very greatly, because all the
+rivers coming from thence, as far as could be known, ran westward, but
+they told me that other very large rivers ran eastward from the other
+side of the ridge.
+
+"There was also, they said, East of these mountains, a great lake,
+narrow and long, on which sailed canoes like ships. The people on the
+opposite sides of this lake were always at war; and those on the eastern
+side were white. When I asked who ruled in those parts, they answered
+that one chief was a negro, but towards the East was a greater lord who
+had conquered the negroes a short time before.
+
+"A Saracen told me he had been all through that land and had been
+present at the fighting, and when I told this to the Prince, he said
+that a merchant in Oran had written him two months before about this
+very war, and that he believed it.
+
+"Such were the things told me by the negroes at Cantor; I asked them
+about the road to the gold country, and who were the lords of that
+country. They told me the King lived in Kukia, and was lord of all the
+mines on the right side of the river of Cantor, and that he had before
+the door of his palace a mass of gold just as it was taken from the
+earth, so large that twenty men could hardly move it, and that the King
+always fastened his horse to it and kept it as a curiosity on account of
+its size and purity. The nobles of his Court wore in their nostrils and
+ears ornaments of gold.
+
+"The parts to the East were full of gold mines, but the men who went
+into the pits to get gold did not live long, because of the foul air.
+The gold sand was given to women to wash the gold from it.
+
+"I enquired the road from Cantor to Kukia and was told the road ran
+eastward; where was great abundance of gold; as I can well believe, for
+I saw the negroes who went by those roads laden with it.
+
+"While I was thus trafficking with these negroes of Cantor, my men
+became worn out with the heat and so we returned towards the ocean.
+After I had gone down the river fifty leagues, they told me of a great
+chief living on the South side, who wished to speak with me.
+
+"We met in a great wood on the bank, and he brought with him a vast
+throng of people armed with poisoned arrows, assegais, swords and
+shields. And I went to him, carrying some presents and biscuit and some
+of our wine, for they have no wine except that made from the date-palm,
+and he was pleased and extremely gracious, giving me three negroes and
+swearing to me by the one only God that he would never again make war
+against Christians, but that they might trade and travel safely through
+all his country.
+
+"Being desirous of putting to proof this oath of his, I sent a certain
+Indian named Jacob whom the Prince had sent with us, in order that in
+the event of our reaching India, he might be able to hold speech with
+the natives, and I ordered him to go to the place called Al-cuzet, with
+the lord of that country, to find Mount Gelu and Timbuctoo through the
+land of Jaloffa. A knight had gone there with him before.
+
+"This Jacob, the Indian, told me that Al-cuzet was a very evil land,
+having a river of sweet water and abundance of lemons; and some of these
+he brought to me. And the lord of that country sent me elephants' teeth
+and four negroes, who carried one great ivory tusk to the ship.
+
+"Now the houses here are made of seaweed, covered with straw, and while
+I stayed here (at the river mouth) three days, I learned that all the
+mischief that had been done to the Christians had been done by a certain
+king called Nomimansa, who has the country near the great headland by
+the mouth of the river Gambia. So I took great pains to make peace with
+him, and sent him many presents by his own men in his own canoes, which
+were going for salt along the coast to his own country, for this salt
+is plentiful there and of a red colour. Now Nomimansa was in great fear
+of the Christians, lest they should take vengeance upon him.
+
+"Then I went on to a great harbour where I had many negroes come to me,
+sent by Nomimansa to see if I should do anything, but I always treated
+them kindly. When the King heard this, he came to the river side with a
+great force and sitting down on the bank, sent for me. And so I went and
+paid him all respect. There was a Bishop there of his own faith who
+asked me about the God of the Christians, and I answered him as God had
+given me to know; and then I questioned him about Mahomet, whom they
+believe. At last the King was so pleased with what I said that he sprang
+to his feet and ordered the Bishop to leave his country within three
+days, and swore that he would kill any one who should speak the name of
+Mahomet from that day forward. For he said he trusted in the one only
+God and there was no other but He, whom his brother Prince Henry
+worshipped.
+
+"Then calling the Infant his brother, he asked me to baptize him and all
+his lords and women. He himself would have no other name than Henry, but
+his nobles took our names, like James and Nuno. So I remained on shore
+that night with the King but did not baptize him, as I was a layman. But
+next day I begged the King with his twelve chief men and eight of his
+wives to dine with me on my caravel; and they all came unarmed and I
+gave them fowls and meat and wine, white and red, as much as they could
+drink, and they said to one another that no people were better than the
+Christians.
+
+"Then again on shore the King asked me to baptize him but I said I had
+not leave from the Pope; but I would tell the Prince, who would send a
+priest. So Nomimansa at once wrote to Prince Henry to send him a priest
+and some one to teach him the faith, and begged him to send him a falcon
+with the priest, for he was amazed when I told him how we carried a bird
+on the hand to catch other birds. And with these he asked the Prince to
+send him two rams and sheep and geese and ganders and a pig, and two men
+to build houses and plan out his town. And all these wishes of his I
+promised him that the Prince would grant. And he and all his people made
+a great noise at my going but I left the King at Gambia and started back
+for Portugal. One caravel I sent straight home, but with the others I
+sailed to Cape Verde.
+
+"And as we came near the sea-shore we saw two canoes putting out to sea;
+but we sailed between them and the shore, and so cut them off. Then the
+interpreter came to me and said that Bezeghichi, the lord of the land
+and an evil man, was in one of them.
+
+"So I made them come into the caravel and gave them to eat and drink
+with a double share of presents, and making as if I did not know him to
+be the chief, I said 'Is this the land of Bezeghichi?' He answered 'Yes,
+it is.' And I, to try him, exclaimed 'Why is he so bitter against the
+Christians? He would do far better to have peace with them, so that they
+might trade in his land and bring him horses and other things, as they
+do for other lords of the negroes. Go and tell your lord Bezeghichi that
+I have taken you and for love of him have let you go.'
+
+"At this he was very cheerful and he and his men got into their canoes,
+as I bade them, and as they all were standing by the side of the
+caravel, I called out 'Bezeghichi, Bezeghichi, do not think I did not
+know thee. I could have done to thee what I would, and now, as I have
+done to thee, do thou also to our Christians.'
+
+"So they went off, and we came back to Arguin and the Isle of the
+Herons, where we found flocks of birds of every kind, and after this
+came home to Lagos, where the Prince was very glad of our return.
+
+"Then after this for two years no one went to Guinea, because King
+Affonso was at war in Africa and the Prince was quite taken up with
+this. But after he had come back from Alcacer, I reminded him of what
+King Nomimansa had asked of him; and the Prince sent him all he had
+promised, with a priest, the Abbot of Soto de Cassa, and a young man of
+his household named John Delgado. This was in 1458.
+
+"Two years afterwards King Affonso equipped a large caravel and sent me
+out as captain, and I took with me ten horses and went to the land of
+the Barbacins, which is near the land of Nomimansa. And these Barbacins
+had two kings, but the King of Portugal gave me power over all the
+shores of that sea, that any ships I might find off the coast of Guinea
+should be under me, for he knew that there were those who sold arms to
+the Moors, and he bade me to seize such and bring them bound to
+Portugal.
+
+"And by the help of God I came in twelve days to this land (of the
+Barbacins), and found two ships there,--one under Gonzalo Ferreira, of
+Oporto, of the Household of Prince Henry, that was conveying horses; the
+other was under Antonio de Noli, of Genoa. These merchants injured our
+trade very much, for the natives used to give twelve negroes for one
+horse, and now gave only six.
+
+"And while we were there, a caravel came from Gambia, which brought us
+news that a captain called De Prado was coming with a richly laden ship,
+and I ordered Ferreira to go to Cape Verde and look for that ship and
+seize it, on pain of death and loss of all his goods. And he did so, and
+we found a great prize, which I sent home with Ferreira to the King. And
+then I and Antonio de Noli left that coast, and sailed two days and one
+night towards Portugal, and we sighted islands in the ocean, and as my
+ship was lighter and faster than the rest, I came first to one of those
+islands, to a good harbour, with a beach of white sand, where I
+anchored. I told all my men and the other captains that I wished to be
+first to land, and so I did.
+
+"We saw no trace of natives, and called the island Santiago, as it is
+still known. There were plenty of fish there and many strange birds, so
+tame that we killed them with sticks. And I had a quadrant with me, and
+wrote on the table of it the altitude of the Arctic Pole, and I found it
+better than the chart, for though you see your course of sailing on the
+chart well enough, yet if once you get wrong, it is hard by map alone to
+work back into the right course.
+
+"After this we saw one of the Canary islands, called Palma, and so came
+to the island of Madeira; and then adverse winds drove me to the Azores,
+but Antonio de Noli stayed at Madeira, and, catching the right breeze,
+he got to Portugal before me, and begged of the King the captaincy of
+the island of Santiago, which I had found, and the King gave it him, and
+he kept it till his death.
+
+"But De Prado, who had carried arms to the Moors, lay in irons and the
+King ordered him to be brought out. And then they martyrised him in a
+cart, and threw him into the fire alive with his sword and gold."
+
+[Illustration: COIMBRA UNIVERSITY OF WHICH HENRY WAS THE OFFICIAL
+PATRON.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+HENRY'S LAST YEARS AND DEATH.
+
+1458-60.
+
+
+While Cadamosto and Diego Gomez were carrying the Prince's flag farther
+from the shores of Europe "than Alexander or Caesar had ever ventured,"
+the Prince himself was getting more and more absorbed in the project of
+a new Holy War against the Infidel.
+
+The fall of Constantinople in 1453 into the hands of the Ottoman Turks,
+had at least the effect of frightening and almost of rousing Western
+Christendom at large. In the most miserably divided of Latin states
+there was now a talk about doing great things, though the time, the
+spirit for actually doing them, had long passed by, or was not yet come.
+Spain, the one part of the Western Church and State, which was still
+living in the crusading fervour of the twelfth century, was alone ready
+for action. The Portuguese kingdom in particular, under Affonso V., had
+been keeping up a regular crusade in Marocco, and was willing and eager
+to spend men and treasure in a great Levantine enterprise. So the
+Pope's Legate was welcomed when he came in 1457 to preach the Holy War.
+Affonso promised to keep up an army of twelve thousand men for war
+against the Ottoman, and struck a new gold coinage--the Cruzado--to
+commemorate the year of Deliverance.
+
+But Portugal by itself could not deliver New Rome or the Holy Land, and
+when the other powers of the West refused to move, Affonso had to
+content himself with the old crusade in Africa, but he now pushed on
+even more zealously than before his favourite ambition, a land empire on
+both sides of the Straits, and Prince Henry's last appearance in public
+service was in his nephew's camp in the Marocco campaign of 1458. In the
+siege of Alcacer the Little, the "Lord Infant" forced the batteries,
+mounted the guns, and took charge of the general conduct of the siege. A
+breach was soon made in the walls, and the town surrendered on easy
+terms, "for it was not," said Henry, "to take their goods or force a
+ransom from them that the King of Portugal had come against them, but
+for the service of God." They were only to leave behind in Alcacer their
+Christian prisoners; for themselves, they might go, with their wives,
+their children, and their property.
+
+The stout-hearted veteran Edward Menezes became governor of Alcacer, and
+held the town with his own desperate courage against all attempts to
+recover it. When the besiegers offered him terms, he offered them in
+return his scaling ladders that they might have a fair chance; when they
+were raising the siege he sent them a message, Would they not try a
+little longer? It had been a very short affair.
+
+Meantime Henry, returning to Europe by way of Ceuta, re-entered his own
+town of Sagres for the last time. His work was nearly done, and indeed,
+of that work there only remains one thing to notice. The great Venetian
+map, known as the Camaldolese Chart of Fra Mauro, executed in the
+convent of Murano just outside Venice, is not only the crowning specimen
+of mediaeval draughtsmanship, but the scientific review of the Prince's
+exploration. As Henry himself closes the middle age of exploration and
+begins the modern, so this map, the picture and proof of his
+discoveries, is not only the last of the older type of plan, but the
+first of the new style--the style which applied the accurate and careful
+methods of Portolano-drawing to a scheme of the whole world. It is the
+first scientific atlas.
+
+But its scale is too vast for anything of a detailed account: it
+measures six feet four inches across, and in every part it is crammed
+with detail, the work of three years of incessant labour (1457-9) from
+Andrea Bianco and all the first coasters and draughtsmen of the time. In
+general, there is an external carefulness as well as gorgeousness about
+the workmanship; the coasts, especially in the Mediterranean and along
+the west coast of Europe, would almost suit a modern Admiralty Chart,
+while its notice, the first notice, of Prince Henry's African and
+Atlantic discoveries is the special point of the whole work.
+
+There is a certain disposition to exaggerate the size of rivers,
+mountains, towns, and the whole proportion of things, as we get farther
+away from the well-known ground of Europe; Russia and the north and
+north-east of Asia are somewhat too large, but along the central belt,
+it is fair to say that the whole of the country west of the Caspian is
+thoroughly sound, the best thing yet done in any projection.
+
+No one could look at Fra Mauro's map and fail to see at a glance a
+picture of the Old World; and the more it is looked at, the more
+reliable it will prove to be, by the side of all earlier essays in this
+field. No one can look at the Arabic maps and their imitations in
+mediaeval Christendom, whether conscious or unconscious (as in the
+Spanish example of 1109), without despair. It is almost hopeless to try
+and recognise in these anything of the shape, the proportions, or the
+distribution of the parts of the world which are named, and which one
+might almost fancy it was meant to represent at the time.
+
+Place the map of 1459 by the side of the Hereford map of 1300 or of
+Edrisi's scheme of 1130 (made at the Christian Court of Sicily), or in
+fact beside any of the theoretical maps of the thousand years that had
+gone to make the Italy and the Spain of Fra Mauro and Prince Henry, and
+it will seem to be almost absurd to ask the question: Do these belong to
+the same civilisation, in any kind of way? What would the higher
+criticism answer, out of its infallible internal evidence tests? Of
+course, these are quite different. The one is merely a collection of
+the scratchings of savages, the other is the prototype of modern maps.
+Yet the Christian world is answerable for both kinds; it had struggled
+through ignorance and superstition and tradition into clearer light and
+truer knowledge.
+
+[Illustration: WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA MAURO. 1457-9.
+(SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+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 pushing 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
+ships as we have seen could sail beyond Bojador without his permit;
+whoever transgressed this forfeited his ship; and all ships 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 shirt 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 passion 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 passed all
+his days in unbroken chastity. He was so generous that no other
+uncrowned Prince in Europe had so noble a household, so large and
+splendid a school for the young nobles 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE RECUMBENT 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 passed 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 passed 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
+superstitious 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 passed 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 passed 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 passed 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 assuming--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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 passions 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, passed 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, passed 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 languishing exploration and flourishing
+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 passage 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 ships 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 passed 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 passed 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 passed 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 embassy 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 ships, 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
+passage.
+
+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 ships 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.
+
+Passing 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 passed
+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
+ashore 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 ships 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 ships 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."
+
+Yet another chapter of discoveries was opened by King John's Cathay
+fleet. He failed to get news of a North-east passage, but beyond the
+north coast of Asia there was found a frozen island whose name of Novaia
+Zemlaia or Nova Zembla still keeps the memory of the first Portuguese
+attempts on the road where so many Dutch and English seamen perished in
+after years.
+
+The great voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497-9), the empire founded by
+Albuquerque (1506-15) in the Indian seas, were the other steps in the
+complete achievement of Prince Henry's ambition. When in the early
+years of the sixteenth century a direct and permanent traffic was fairly
+started between Malabar and Portugal, when European settlements and
+forts controlled the whole eastern and western coasts of Africa from the
+mouth of the Red Sea to the mouth of the Mediterranean, and the five
+keys of the Indies--Malacca, Goa, Ormuz, Aden, and Ceylon--were all in
+Christian hands, when the Moslem trade between east Africa and western
+India had passed into a possession of the Kings of Lisbon, Don Henry
+might see of the travail of his soul and be well satisfied.
+
+The supposed discovery of Australia about 1530, or somewhat earlier, and
+the travels of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto in Japan and the furthest East,
+the opening of the trade with China in 1517, and the complete
+exploration of Abyssinia, the Prester's kingdom, in 1520, by Alvarez and
+the other Catholic missionaries, the millions converted by Francis
+Xavier and the Jesuit preachers in Malabar, and the union of the old
+native Christian Church of India with the Roman (1599), were other steps
+in the same road. All of them, if traced back far enough, bring us to
+the Court of Sagres, and the same is true of Spanish and French and
+Dutch and English empires in the southern and eastern world. Henry built
+for his own nation, but when that nation failed from the exhaustion of
+its best blood, other peoples entered upon the inheritance of his work.
+
+But though he was not able himself to see the fulfilment of his plans,
+both the method of a South-east passage, and the men who followed it out
+to complete success, were his,--his workmanship and his building.
+
+Da Gama, Diego Cam, the Diaz family, and most of the great seamen who
+followed the path they had traced, were either "brought up from boyhood
+in the Household of the Infant," as the _Chronicle of the Discovery_
+tells us of each new figure that comes upon the scene, or looked to him
+as their master, owed to the School of Sagres their training, and began
+their practical seamanship under his leave and protection. Even the
+lines upon which the national expansion and exploration went on were so
+strictly and exclusively the same as he had followed, that when a
+different route to the Indies was suggested after his death by
+Christopher Columbus, the Court of John II. refused to treat it
+seriously. And this brings us to the other, the indirect side of Henry's
+influence.
+
+"It was in Portugal," (says Ferdinand Columbus, in his _Life of the
+Admiral_, his father,) "that the Admiral began to think, that if men
+could sail so far south, one might also sail west and find lands in that
+quarter." The second great stream of modern discovery can thus be traced
+to the "generous Henry" of Camoens' _Lusiads_ no less plainly, though
+more indirectly, than the first; the Western path was suggested by his
+success in the Eastern.
+
+But that success had turned the heads of his own people. When Columbus,
+the son of the Genoese wool-comber, who had been a resident in Lisbon
+since 1470, submitted to the Court of John II. some time before 1484 a
+proposal to find Marco Polo's Cipangu by a few weeks' sail west, from
+the Azores, he was treated as a dreamer. John, as Henry's disciple and
+successor, was, like other disciples, narrower than his master in the
+master's own way.
+
+He was ready for any expense and trouble, but no novelty. He would only
+go on as he had been taught. He had reason to be confident, and his
+scientific Junto of four, Martin Behaim of Nuremburg among them, to whom
+Columbus was referred, were too much elated with their new improvements
+in the astrolabe, and the now assured confidence that the Southern Cape
+would soon be passed. They could not endure with patience the vehement
+dogmatism of an unknown theorist.
+
+But as he was too full of his message to be easily shaken off, he was
+treated with the basest trickery. At the suggestion of the Bishop of
+Ceuta, Columbus was kept waiting for his answer, and asked to furnish
+his plans in detail with charts and illustrations. He did so, and while
+the Council pretended to be poring over these for a final decision, a
+caravel was sent to the Cape Verde islands to try the route he had
+suggested,--a trial with the pickings of Italian brains.
+
+The Portuguese sailed westward for several days till the weather became
+stormy; then, as their heart was not in the venture, they put back to
+Europe with a fresh stock of the legends Henry had so heartily despised.
+They had come to an impenetrable mist, which had stopped their progress;
+apparitions had warned them back; the sea in those parts swarmed with
+monsters; it became impossible to breathe.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF 1492. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]
+
+Columbus learned how he had been used, and his wife's death helped to
+decide him, in his disgust for place and people. Towards the end of
+1484, he left Lisbon. Three years later, when he had become fully as
+much disgusted with the dilatory sloth and tricks of Spain, he offered
+himself again to Portugal. King John had repented of his meanness; on
+March 20, 1488, he wrote in answer to Columbus, eagerly offering on his
+side to guarantee him against any suits that might be taken against him
+in Lisbon. But the Court of Castille now became, in its turn, afraid of
+quite losing what might be infinite advantage; Columbus was kept in the
+service of Ferdinand and Isabella; and at last in August, 1492, the
+"Catholic Kings" sent him out from Palos to discover what he could on
+his own terms.
+
+What followed, the discovery of America, and all the subsequent ventures
+of the Cabots, of Amerigo Vespucci, of Cortes and Pizarro, De Soto and
+Raleigh and the Pilgrim Fathers, are not often connected in any way with
+the slow and painful beginnings of European expansion in the Portugal of
+the fifteenth century, but it is a true and real connection all the
+same. The whole onward and outward movement of the great exploring age
+was set in motion by one man. It might have come to pass without him,
+but the fact is simply that through him it did, as a matter of history,
+result. "And let him that did more than this, go before him."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  A
+
+  Abulfeda, 28
+
+  Adelard, of Bath, geographical postulates, 9, 10
+
+  Adelard or Athelard, 84
+
+  Affonso, comes of age, 257;
+    marries his cousin Isabel, 258;
+    forces Pedro into revolt, and declares war against him, 258, 259;
+    sends out Gomez with a large caravel, 296;
+    has the body of Prince Henry laid in chapel at Batalha, 305;
+    carries on the work of his uncle, Prince Henry, 312, 313;
+    is succeeded by King John II., 314
+
+  Africa, shape of, 13
+
+  Albateny, determined problems of astronomical geography, 19
+
+  Albertus Magnus, geographical postulates, 9, 11
+
+  Albuquerque, 125
+
+  Albyrouny, work of, 21
+
+  Alfarrobeira, battle of, 260
+
+  Alfred the Great, credit due to, for discoveries, 72;
+    efforts in exploration and religious extension, 74
+
+  Al Heravy, life of, 26
+
+  Almada, the Hercules of Portugal, 184;
+    stands by Pedro, 259;
+    dies, 260
+
+  Almamoun, age of, 18
+
+  Almanack, Arab, Latin translation of, 21
+
+  Ant islands discovered, 160
+
+  Antoninus the Martyr, an older Mandeville, 34;
+    legends of, 35
+
+  Arctic colonies checked, 59
+
+  Arculf, 42;
+    travels of, 43
+
+  Arguin, fort built in the bay of, 205
+
+  Arim, "World's Summit," 8;
+    taken as measure of places, 10;
+    twofold, 11
+
+  Armada of Lagos, 228-239;
+    "the third," 247
+
+  Athelard, or Adelard, 84
+
+  Aviz, House of. _See_ John, the King of Good Memory.
+
+  Azambuga, Diego de, 315
+
+  Azaneguys described by Cadamosto, 269
+
+  Azores, colonisation of, 251;
+    the entire group found, 254
+
+  Azurara, chronicler of voyages of Henry, 157
+
+
+  B
+
+  Bacon, Roger, geographical postulates, 9, 11
+
+  Baldaya, Affonso, sent out with Gil Eannes, 173;
+    his second voyage, 174-176
+
+  Batti, King, 285, 286
+
+  Batuta, Ibn, 27
+
+  Beginnings of the art and science of discovery, 145
+
+  Benjamin of Tudela, 88
+
+  Bernard, "the French monk," route of, 46
+
+  Bezeghichi, meets Gomez, 295;
+    makes a treaty with Azambuga, 315
+
+  Bjarni Herjulfson driven to new country, 56
+
+  Blanco, Cape, visited by Cadamosto, 267
+
+  Boa Vista, 284
+
+  Bojador, southmost point of Christian knowledge, 170;
+    legends concerning, 171;
+    doubled by Gil Eannes, 173
+
+  Bruges, Jacques de, receives a grant of Captaincy of Terceira, 254
+
+
+  C
+
+  Cabral, Gonzalo, discovers Formiga group of islands and Santa Maria, 169;
+    Captain Donatory in St. Mary's Island, 251;
+    settled in Western Isles, 252;
+    sent in search of land beyond St. Mary, misses it, and is sent
+        again, 252;
+    discovers St. Michael, 253;
+    returns to St. Michael with Europeans, 253
+
+  Cadamosto, record of his two voyages, 250;
+    his narrative, 261-288;
+    is presented to the Prince, 263;
+    visits Madeira, 264, 265;
+    goes on to Canaries, 265-267;
+    to Cape Blanco, 267-269;
+    reaches the Senegal, 269;
+    describes Azaneguys, 269;
+    pushes on to land of Budomel, 275-278;
+    reaches Cape Verde, 279;
+    describes people beyond, 280;
+    explores the Gambra, 281, 282;
+    goes back to Portugal, refits, and sails on second voyage, 283;
+    explores islands off Cape Verde, 283, 284;
+    names Boa Vista and St. James, 284;
+    sails up the Gambra and names St. Andrew, 285;
+    visits Battimansa, 285, 286,
+      and Gnumimansa, 287;
+    returns to Lisbon, 287;
+    leaves Portugal, 313
+
+  Camaldolese chart of Fra Mauro, 301
+
+  Cam, Diego, 315;
+    reaches the Congo and Walvisch Bay, 316
+
+  Canaries, visited by Cadamosto, 265
+
+  Cantor, visited by Gomez, 291
+
+  Cape Cod, reached by Scandinavian migration, 65
+
+  Cape St. Vincent, modern name for "Sacred Cape" and Sagres, 160
+
+  Carpini, John de Plano, 90;
+    his _Book of the Tartars_, 92
+
+  Ceuta, King John plans an attack on, 148;
+    situation, 150;
+    left in command of Menezes, 155;
+    safe in Christian hands, 156
+
+  Chart of Fra Mauro, 301
+
+  Christian pilgrimage begins with Constantine, 32
+
+  Cintra, Gonsalo de, 197;
+    sets out for Guinea, 218;
+    is killed by Moors, 219
+
+  Cintra, Pedro de, 313
+
+  Columbus, influenced by _Imago Mundi_, 11;
+    at Portuguese Court, 322;
+    at Spanish Court, 323
+
+  Constantine, Christian pilgrimage begins with, 32
+
+  Corvo, 254, 256
+
+  Cosmas Indicopleustes, 34;
+    theory of, 37;
+    interest to us, 40
+
+  Costa, Sueiro da, 313
+
+  Covilham, 316
+
+  Crossness, place called from dead chief, 59
+
+  Crusades and land travel, 76;
+    results of, 144
+
+  Crusading movement, results of, 78
+
+  Cruzado, the, 300
+
+
+  D
+
+  Daniel of Kiev, Abbot, 85
+
+  Death, Black, in Portugal, 127
+
+  De Prado, taken captive, 297;
+    martyrised, 298
+
+  Diaz, Bartholomew, 316;
+    makes greatest discovery in all history before Columbus, 317
+
+  Diaz, Diniz, enters mouth of the Senegal, 220;
+    reaches Cape Verde, 221;
+    heads a part of the fleet sent from Lagos, 229;
+    reaches Cape Verde, 236
+
+  Diaz, Lawrence, 230
+
+  Diaz, Vincent, 233
+
+
+  E
+
+  Eannes, Gil, makes a voyage to the Canaries, 170;
+    rounds Cape Bojador, 173;
+    sails with Lagos fleet, 229
+
+  Edrisi, Arabic Ptolemy, the, 21;
+    birth and life, 22;
+    account of voyage of Lisbon "Wanderers," 23;
+    "Traveller's Doctorate," in time of, 25;
+    map superseded, 27
+
+  Edward, eldest son of King John, 136;
+    becomes King, 172;
+    dies, 188
+
+  Emosaid, family, 24;
+    establish themselves as traders, 25
+
+  England, Vikings first landed in, 52
+
+  English-born travellers, first of, 45
+
+  Eratosthenes, geography of, 5
+
+  Eric the Red, renames Greenland, 55;
+    leads colonists, 56
+
+  Esteeves, Alvaro, crosses the equator, 314
+
+  Europe, compacted together in spiritual federation, 76
+
+  European development, pilgrim stage of, 42
+
+  European expansion, beginnings of, 50
+
+  Europeans, first landing of, on coasts of unknown Africa, 175;
+    break in upon Moslem trade, 204
+
+
+  F
+
+  Farosangul, King of Gambra, 285
+
+  Fayal, 254;
+    first Captain Donatory of, 255
+
+  Ferdinand, fourth son of King John, 136;
+    revives scheme of African war, 180;
+    goes by sea to Tangier, 182;
+    is left as hostage, 185;
+    dies a captive, 188
+
+  Ferdinand the Handsome, last of House of Burgundy to reign in Lisbon, 131
+
+  Fernandez, Alvara, commands the caravel of his uncle, Zarco, 229;
+    is again sent out with the caravel, 243;
+    the voyage, 243-245
+
+  Fernandez, Joan, left as hostage at Bank of Arguin, 219;
+    taken home, 223;
+    his story, 223, 224
+
+  Fernandez, Martin, crosses the equator, 314
+
+  Ferrer, Jayme, explorer, 108
+
+  Fidelis, the monk, travels of, 46
+
+  Flores, 254, 256
+
+  Formigas discovered by Cabral, 169
+
+  Frangazick, nephew of Farosangul, 290
+
+  Freitas, Alvara de, 232
+
+  Freydis, daughter of Red Eric, tries to colonise Vinland, 62
+
+
+  G
+
+  Gama, Vasco da, 125
+
+  Geographical record, last before age of Northmen, 47
+
+  Geography, first Christian, 33;
+    of Christendom from eighth and ninth centuries, 41
+
+  Gerard of Cremona, geographical postulates, 9, 10
+
+  Gnumi, King, 287
+
+  Gog and Magog, wall to shut off, 13
+
+  Gold dust, first ever brought by Europeans direct from Guinea coast, 203;
+    effect, 217
+
+  Gomez, Diego, 251;
+    sets out in command of the caravel the _Wren_, 289;
+    his narrative, 289-298;
+    visits Cantor, 291;
+    converts Nomimansa, 293-295;
+    meets Bezeghichi, 295;
+    returns to Lagos, 296;
+    is sent out by Affonso and goes to the land of the Barbacins, 296;
+    discovers Santiago, 297;
+    returns to Portugal, 298;
+    describes last illness and death of Prince Henry, 304, 305
+
+  Gonsalvez, Antam, sent out by Henry, 193;
+    his voyage, 193-195;
+    takes the first captives, 195;
+    is knighted by Nuno Tristam, 198;
+    goes back to Portugal, 199;
+    goes back to Africa with the captive prince, 202;
+    exchanges two boys for ten prisoners, gold dust, and ostrich eggs, 203;
+    applies for command of ships, 222
+
+  Graciosa, 254;
+    settled, 255
+
+  Greenland, sighted by Gunnbiorn and renamed by Eric, 55;
+    colonised, 56
+
+  Green sea of darkness, 13, 14
+
+  Gregory X., Pope, 93
+
+
+  H
+
+  Harold Hardrada, 68;
+    type of all Vikings, 69
+
+  Helluland, or Slate-land, 56
+
+  Henry, the Navigator, special interest of the life and work, 29;
+    author of discovering movement, 30;
+    preparation for work of, 80;
+    predecessors of seamen of, 107-112;
+    first voyage, 112;
+    maps used by, 117-122;
+    Hero of Portugal, 123;
+    inspires his countrymen with love of exploration, 125;
+    his brother Pedro his right hand man, 136;
+    birth, 138;
+    his aims, 139;
+    tries to find a way round Africa to India, 139;
+    his work of exploration a foundation of an empire for his country, 141;
+    a crusader and a missionary, 142;
+    sets the example for systematic exploration, 144;
+    the teacher and master of more successful explorers, 145;
+    sends out caravels past Cape Non, 147;
+    brings Portuguese fleet into harbour at Ceuta, 150;
+    anchors off Ceuta, 151;
+    leads in the attack on Ceuta and is reported dead, 152;
+    is made a knight, 153;
+    begins coasting voyages, 154;
+    is sent to relieve Ceuta, 155;
+    plans to get possession of Gibraltar, 156;
+    returns to Court, 156;
+    is made Duke of Viseu and Lord of Covilham, 157;
+    reasons for exploring Guinea, 158;
+    Sagres his chosen home, 160;
+    is made Governor for life of the Algarves, 160;
+    his buildings on Sagres, 161;
+    his scientific work, 162;
+    results of settlement on Cape St. Vincent, 163;
+    sends out men and ships to colonise Porto Santo, 164;
+    colonises Madeira, 166;
+    directs captains to Azores, 169;
+    impatience at superstition and fears of navigators, 172;
+    receives charter for Madeira, Porto Santo, and the Desertas, 173;
+    sends out Gil Eannes, 173;
+    despatches Baldaya, 174;
+    engaged in politics, 179;
+    reverence paid to him, 179;
+    plans and organises African war, 180;
+    sets sail for Ceuta, 181;
+    pushes forward along inland routes, 182;
+    attacks and blockades Tangier, 183;
+    raises the siege, 184;
+    signs a truce with Moors, 185;
+    shuts himself up in Ceuta, 186;
+    is recalled to Portugal, 186;
+    made one of the guardians of Affonso V., 189;
+    arranges a compromise between Pedro and Leonor, 190;
+    sends to the Holy Father for treasure to aid in crusades, 200;
+    gives grant to sail to coast of Guinea to Lancarote, 206;
+    his motives in slave trade, 207;
+    keeps buccaneers in check, 216;
+    differs from West Indian planters, 217;
+    gives a caravel to Gonsalo de Cintra, 218;
+    permits Lagos to equip and send out a fleet on a Guinea voyage, 229;
+    takes special charge of widows and orphans left by Nuno Tristam's
+        expedition, 242;
+    gives a reward to explorers, 246;
+    his wonderful knowledge shown in correcting Cabral's course, 252;
+    grants captaincy of Terceira to Jacques de Bruges, 254;
+    account of him in narrative of Cadamosto, 261;
+    absorbed in new Holy War against the Infidel, 299;
+    his last appearance in public service, 300;
+    makes set of charters, 303;
+    makes grants to the Order of Christ and to the Crown of Portugal, 304;
+    his illness and death, 304, 305;
+    his body is laid in the chapel at Batalha, 305;
+    his personal appearance, 305;
+    his character, 306;
+    results of his life, 309-312, 321, 323
+
+  Heravy, Al, life of, 26
+
+  Hereford _Mappa Mundi_, 120
+
+  Heurter, Job van, notice of first settlement of Azores, 255
+
+  Hippalus, discovery of monsoon, 17
+
+  Hope, country re-named, 60
+
+
+  I
+
+  Ibn Batuta, 27
+
+  Iceland, sighted by Nadodd, 54;
+    colonised, 55
+
+  _Imago Mundi_, influence on Columbus, 11
+
+  Isidore of Seville, belief of, 40
+
+  Italian, merchants, first, who opened Court of Great Khan to Venice and
+        Genoa, 90;
+    age of South Atlantic and African voyages, 107
+
+
+  J
+
+  Jacome from Majorca, 161
+
+  Japan discovered by Kublai Khan, 99
+
+  Jerusalem, loss of, 90
+
+  John de Plano Carpini, first papal legate to the Tartars, 90;
+    gives first genuine account of Tartary, 91;
+    first real explorer of Christian Europe, 92
+
+  John, fourth son of King John I., 136;
+    succeeds Affonso V., adds a new chapter to discovery, dies, 314
+
+  John, the King of Good Memory, transition figure, 133;
+    personal work and its results, 133-135;
+    sons of, 136;
+    plans attack on Ceuta, 148;
+    speech when he hears of death of his two sons, 152;
+    dies, 160
+
+  Jordanus, 104
+
+
+  K
+
+  Karlsefne, Thorfinn, greatest of the Vinland sailors, 60
+
+  Keel-Ness (Kjalarness), 58
+
+  Kublai Khan, 93-98
+
+
+  L
+
+  Labrador, possible discovery of, 56;
+    reached by Scandinavian migration, 65
+
+  Lagos equips and sends out a fleet, 229
+
+  La Mina, 315
+
+  Lancarote, obtains grant to sail to coast of Guinea, 206;
+    his voyage, 212-214;
+    landing at Lagos and sale of slaves captured by, 214;
+    admiral of fleet sent out from Lagos, 229;
+    holds a council of his captains, 231;
+    decides to go on to the Nile, 232
+
+  Latini, Brunetto, describes the magnet, 116
+
+  Leif, a son of Red Eric, starts for discovery, 56
+
+  Leonora Telles, evil genius of Ferdinand and Portugal, 131;
+    marries King of Portugal, 132;
+    people rise against, 132
+
+  Leonor of Aragon, attempts to be regent, 189;
+    yields to persuasions of Henry, 190;
+    dies, 257
+
+  Lion, first one brought to Portugal, 247
+
+  Lisbon, capture of, 128
+
+
+  M
+
+  Machin, Robert, 110
+
+  Madagascar, first known to Europe, 102
+
+  Madeira, discovered and named by the Portuguese, 165;
+    nature of island, 166;
+    visited by Cadamosto, 264
+
+  Magellan, 125, 310
+
+  Magnet, earliest mention of, 115
+
+  Magnus the Good, 68
+
+  Mandeville, Sir Henry, 105
+
+  _Mappa Mundi_, Hereford, 120
+
+  Maps, of fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, 118
+
+  Marabout, or Prophet Bird, 230
+
+  Markland (Woodland), 57
+
+  Massoudy, visited various countries, 19;
+    discussion of problems, 20;
+    greatest name of first age of Arabic geography, 21.
+
+  Masts, Cape of, 238
+
+  Mauro, Fra, Camaldolese chart of, 301
+
+  Melli, negro empire of, 270;
+    salt trade in, 271
+
+  Menezes, Edward, 300
+
+  Menezes, Pedro de, is left in command of Ceuta, 155
+
+  Meymam, Ahude, 223, 224, 245
+
+  Mythology, geographical, gradual development of, 7
+
+
+  N
+
+  Noli, Antonio de, sails with Gomez, 297;
+    gets the captaincy of Santiago, 298
+
+  Nomimansa converted by Gomez, 293-295
+
+  Norse, discoveries, 50, 51;
+    early settlements, 54;
+    farthest point of Northern advance in Europe, 55;
+    race, type of, 69
+
+  Northern, advance, lines of, 53;
+    effects of invasions, 74
+
+  Northmen, countries made known to Europe through, 67;
+    definite advances into the unknown, 72
+
+
+  O
+
+  Odjein, Aryn, or Arim, 8
+
+  Ogane, 316
+
+  Ohthere, 70;
+    service of, to western geography, 72
+
+  Olaf Trygveson, 68
+
+
+  P
+
+  Pacheco, Gonsalo, unlucky expedition of, 225;
+    meets Diaz on homeward voyage and turns back, 230
+
+  Papal Court sends missions to convert Tartars, 90
+
+  Payva, 316
+
+  Pedro the Traveller, 136;
+    joins in attack on Ceuta, 148-153;
+    is knighted, 153;
+    is made Duke of Coimbra and Lord of the Principality, 157;
+    returns from travels, 168;
+    becomes regent, 190;
+    gives a charter to Henry, 201;
+    gives a reward to explorers, 246;
+    resigns the regency, 258;
+    takes arms against Affonso, 259;
+    marches on Lisbon and is killed, 260
+
+  Philippa, Queen, character and death, 149
+
+  Pilgrims, primitive, 34;
+    pioneers of growth of Europe and Christendom, 76
+
+  Pilgrim stage of European development, 42
+
+  Pires, Gomes, goes on toward the Nile, 232;
+    attacks natives, 234
+
+  Po Fernando, 313
+
+  Polo, Marco, makes journey to the East with uncles, 94;
+    made commissioner of Imperial Council, 96;
+    memoirs of, 96;
+    heard and wrote of Madagascar and Zanzibar, 102;
+    Herodotus of Middle Ages, 103;
+
+  Polo, Nicolo and Matteo, traders to Crimea and Southern Russia, 93;
+    make second journey to farthest East, 94;
+    consulting engineers to Mongol Court, 96;
+    dismissed, 101
+
+  Pope, decides question of reviving African war, 181
+
+  Portolani, superseded map of Edrisi, 27;
+    drawn with aid of compass, 121
+
+  Portolano, Laurentian, 118
+
+  Portugal, chief points in story of, 123;
+    guide of Europe into larger world, 125;
+    mediaeval history of, 126-133
+
+  Portuguese give a value to the art and science of discovery, 145
+
+  Prado De, 297, 298
+
+  Prophet bird, or marabout, 230
+
+  Ptolemy, chart of, 2;
+    "Habitable Quarter" of the world, 12
+
+
+  R
+
+  Rio Grande, 246;
+    passed by Gomez, 289
+
+  Rubruquis, William de, 92, 93
+
+
+  S
+
+  St. George, 254, 255
+
+  St. James, 284
+
+  St. Michael, island of, discovered, 253
+
+  St. Silvia, of Aquitaine, travels of, 33
+
+  "Sacred Cape" of the Romans or Sagres, 160
+
+  Saewulf of Worcester, 81;
+    pilgrimage of, 82;
+    classes of pilgrim-crusaders in time of, 84
+
+  Sagres, chosen home of Henry, 160;
+    systematic study of applied science founded anew at, 162
+
+  Santa Maria discovered, 169
+
+  Santiago discovered by Gomez, 297
+
+  Sanuto, Marino, Venetian map of, 118
+
+  Senegal, reached by Cadamosto, 269;
+    region about the gulf described by him, 273-275
+
+  Sinbad Saga, 19
+
+  Slate-land or Helluland, 56
+
+  Slaves, beginning of trade in, as a part of European commerce, 207;
+    description of sale of, 214, 215;
+    treatment of, 215;
+    excuse for trade in, 216
+
+  Strabo, geography of, 5
+
+
+  T
+
+  Tagaza, or the Gold-Market, 270
+
+  Tangier, siege of, 183
+
+  Tarik, the rock of (Gibraltar), 156
+
+  Terceira, sighted, 253;
+    Jacques de Bruges becomes captain, 254
+
+  Theodosius, early pilgrim, 34
+
+  Thorfinn Karlsefne, greatest of the Vinland sailors, 60
+
+  Thorstein, third son of Red Eric, puts to sea, 59
+
+  Thorvald Ericson, puts to sea, 57;
+    voyages of, 58;
+    death, 59
+
+  Timbuctoo, inland route of merchants to, 270
+
+  Tristam, Nuno, meets Antam Gonsalvez, 196;
+    assists in capturing natives, 196-199;
+    continues voyage and returns to Portugal, 199;
+    sets out on another voyage, 204;
+    sails into bay of Arguin, makes captives and returns, 205;
+    makes a third voyage, 219;
+    reaches Cape Palmar, 220;
+    arms a caravel and sets sail, 240;
+    is killed by Blackmoors, 241
+
+  Trygveson, Olaf, 68
+
+
+  V
+
+  Vallarte, his expedition and fate, 247
+
+  Vaz, Tristam, sets out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea, 163;
+    is rewarded, 166;
+    heads three ships from Madeira in Lagos fleet, 229
+
+  Vergil, Irish missionary, 40
+
+  Vikings, highest type of explorers, 31;
+    Norse, discoveries, conquests, and colonies, beginning of European
+        expansion, 50;
+    voyages of, 52;
+    struggle with Esquimaux, 58;
+    rename places visited, 65;
+    work on south and south-west not one of exploration, 66;
+    type of all, 69;
+    credit due, for discoveries, 72;
+    their principalities in time of Alfred, 73
+
+  Vinland, discovery of, 57;
+    renamed, 60;
+    visited and abandoned by Thorfinn, 61;
+    recolonised by Freydis, 62;
+    fragmentary notices of, 63
+
+
+  W
+
+  "Wanderers," Lisbon, account of, 23
+
+  William de Rubruquis, sent by St. Louis on errand of conversion and
+        discovery, 92;
+    interest of his work, 93
+
+  Willibald, 44
+
+  Wulfstan, 70;
+    tells of voyages, 71;
+    service of, to western geography, 72
+
+
+  Y
+
+  Yacout, the Roman, _Dictionary_ of, 26
+
+  Yang-Tse-Kiang, 96
+
+
+  Z
+
+  Zarco, John Gonsalvez, sets out to explore as far as the coast of
+        Guinea, 163;
+    his voyages, 164-166;
+    returns to Madeira, 166;
+    sends his caravel under his nephew with Lagos fleet, 229;
+    the voyage, 236-239;
+    same caravel sent out again, 243
+
+
+
+
+The Story of the Nations.
+
+
+MESSRS. G. P. Putnam's Sons take pleasure in announcing that they have in
+course of publication, in co-operation with Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, of
+London, a series of historical studies, intended to present in a graphic
+manner the stories of the different nations that have attained
+prominence in history.
+
+In the story form the current of each national life is distinctly
+indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy periods and episodes are
+presented for the reader in their philosophical relation to each other
+as well as to universal history.
+
+It is the plan of the writers of the different volumes to enter into the
+real life of the peoples, and to bring them before the reader as they
+actually lived, labored, and struggled--as they studied and wrote, and
+as they amused themselves. In carrying out this plan, the myths, with
+which the history of all lands begins, will not be overlooked, though
+these will be carefully distinguished from the actual history, so far as
+the labors of the accepted historical authorities have resulted in
+definite conclusions.
+
+The subjects of the different volumes have been planned to cover
+connecting and, as far as possible, consecutive epochs or periods, so
+that the set when completed will present in a comprehensive narrative
+the chief events in the great STORY OF THE NATIONS; but it is, of
+course not always practicable to issue the several volumes in their
+chronological order.
+
+The "Stories" are printed in good readable type, and in handsome 12mo
+form. They are adequately illustrated and furnished with maps and
+indexes. Price, per vol., cloth, $1.50 Half morocco, gilt top, $1.75
+
+The following volumes are now ready (Jan., 1895):
+
+  THE STORY OF GREECE. Prof. JAS. A. HARRISON.
+   "    "    " ROME. ARTHUR GILMAN.
+   "    "    " THE JEWS. Prof. JAMES K. HOSMER.
+   "    "    " CHALDEA. Z.A. RAGOZIN.
+   "    "    " GERMANY. S. BARING-GOULD.
+   "    "    " NORWAY. HJALMAR H. BOYESEN.
+   "    "    " SPAIN. Rev. E.E. AND SUSAN HALE.
+   "    "    " HUNGARY. Prof. A. VAMBERY.
+   "    "    " CARTHAGE. Prof. ALFRED J. CHURCH.
+   "    "    " THE SARACENS. ARTHUR GILMAN.
+   "    "    " THE MOORS IN SPAIN. STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
+   "    "    " THE NORMANS. SARAH ORNE JEWETT.
+   "    "    " PERSIA. S.G.W. BENJAMIN.
+   "    "    " ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. GEO. RAWLINSON.
+   "    "    " ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. Prof. J.P. MAHAFFY.
+   "    "    " ASSYRIA. Z.A. RAGOZIN.
+   "    "    " THE GOTHS. HENRY BRADLEY.
+   "    "    " IRELAND. Hon. EMILY LAWLESS.
+   "    "    " TURKEY. STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
+   "    "    " MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA. Z.A. RAGOZIN.
+   "    "    " MEDIAEVAL FRANCE. Prof. GUSTAVE MASSON.
+   "    "    " HOLLAND. Prof. J. THOROLD ROGERS.
+   "    "    " MEXICO. SUSAN HALE.
+   "    "    " PHOENICIA. Prof. GEO. RAWLINSON.
+   "    "    " THE HANSA TOWNS. HELEN ZIMMERN.
+   "    "    " EARLY BRITAIN. Prof. ALFRED J. CHURCH.
+   "    "    " THE BARBARY CORSAIRS. STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
+   "    "    " RUSSIA. W.R. MORFILL.
+   "    "    " THE JEWS UNDER ROME. W.D. MORRISON.
+   "    "    " SCOTLAND. JOHN MACKINTOSH.
+   "    "    " SWITZERLAND. R. STEAD AND MRS. A. HUG.
+   "    "    " PORTUGAL. H. MORSE STEPHENS.
+   "    "    " THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. C.W.C. OMAN.
+   "    "    " SICILY. E.A. FREEMAN.
+   "    "    " THE TUSCAN REPUBLICS. BELLA DUFFY.
+   "    "    " POLAND. W.R. MORFILL.
+   "    "    " PARTHIA. Prof. GEORGE RAWLINSON.
+   "    "    " JAPAN. DAVID MURRAY.
+   "    "    " THE CHRISTIAN RECOVERY OF SPAIN. H.E. WATTS.
+   "    "    " AUSTRALASIA. GREVILLE TREGARTHEN.
+   "    "    " SOUTHERN AFRICA. GEO. M. THEAL.
+   "    "    " VENICE. ALETHEA WIEL.
+   "    "    " THE CRUSADES. T.S. ARCHER and C.L. KINGSFORD.
+
+
+
+
+Heroes of the Nations.
+
+EDITED BY
+
+EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A., FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD.
+
+
+A series of biographical studies of the lives and work of a number of
+representative historical characters about whom have gathered the great
+traditions of the Nations to which they belonged, and who have been
+accepted, in many instances, as types of the several National ideals.
+With the life of each typical character will be presented a picture of
+the National conditions surrounding him during his career.
+
+The narratives are the work of writers who are recognized authorities on
+their several subjects, and, while thoroughly trustworthy as history,
+will present picturesque and dramatic "stories" of the Men and of the
+events connected with them.
+
+To the Life of each "Hero" will be given one duodecimo volume,
+handsomely printed in large type, provided with maps and adequately
+illustrated according to the special requirements of the several
+subjects. The volumes will be sold separately as follows:
+
+Cloth extra                                      $1.50
+Half morocco, uncut edges, gilt top               1.75
+Large paper, limited to 250 numbered copies for
+  subscribers to the series. These may be obtained
+  in sheets folded, or in cloth, uncut edges.     3.50
+
+The first group of the Series comprises the following volumes:
+
+     Nelson, and the Naval Supremacy of England. By W. CLARK Russell,
+     author of "The Wreck of the Grosvenor," etc.
+
+     Gustavus Adolphus, and the Struggle of Protestantism for Existence.
+     By C.R.L. FLETCHER, M.A., late Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
+
+     Pericles, and the Golden Age of Athens. By EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A.,
+     Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+     Theodoric the Goth, the Barbarian Champion of Civilisation. By
+     THOMAS HODGKIN, author of "Italy and Her Invaders," etc.
+
+     Sir Philip Sidney, and the Chivalry of England. By H.R. FOX-BOURNE,
+     author of "The Life of John Locke," etc.
+
+     Julius Caesar, and the Organisation of the Roman Empire. By W. WARDE
+     FOWLER, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.
+
+     John Wyclif, Last of the Schoolmen and First of the English
+     Reformers. By LEWIS SERGEANT, author of "New Greece," etc.
+
+     Napoleon, Warrior and Ruler, and the Military Supremacy of
+     Revolutionary France. By W. O'CONNOR MORRIS, sometime Scholar of
+     Oriel College, Oxford.
+
+     Henry of Navarre, and the Huguenots in France. By P.F. WILLERT,
+     M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
+
+     Cicero, and the Fall of the Roman Republic. By J.L. STRACHAN
+     DAVIDSON, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+     Abraham Lincoln, and the Downfall of American Slavery. By NOAH
+     BROOKS.
+
+     Prince Henry (of Portugal) the Navigator, and the Age of Discovery.
+     By C.R. BEAZLEY, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
+
+     Julian the Philosopher, and the Last Struggle of Paganism against
+     Christianity. By ALICE GARDNER, Lecturer on Ancient History in
+     Newnham College.
+
+     Louis XIV., and the Zenith of the French Monarchy. By ARTHUR
+     HASSALL, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.
+
+
+     To be followed by:
+
+     Saladin, the Crescent and the Cross. By STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
+
+     Joan of Arc. By MRS. OLIPHANT.
+
+     The Cid Campeador, and the Waning of the Crescent in the West. By
+     H. BUTLER CLARKE, Wadham College, Oxford.
+
+     Charlemagne, the Reorganiser of Europe. By Prof. GEORGE L. BURR,
+     Cornell University.
+
+     Moltke, and the Founding of the German Empire. By SPENSER
+     WILKINSON.
+
+     Oliver Cromwell, and the Rule of the Puritans in England. By
+     CHARLES FIRTH, Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+     Alfred the Great, and the First Kingdom in England. By F. YORK
+     POWELL, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church College, Oxford.
+
+     Marlborough, and England as a Military Power. By C.W.C. OMAN, A.M.,
+     Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
+
+     Frederic the Second, the Wonder of the World. By A.L. SMITH, of
+     Balliol College, Oxford.
+
+     Charles the Bold, and the Attempt to Found a Middle Kingdom. By R.
+     LODGE, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.
+
+     Alexander the Great, and the Extension of Greek Rule and of Greek
+     Ideas. By Prof. BENJAMIN I. WHEELER, Cornell University.
+
+
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+
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+
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+
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+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+   A footnote for the anchor next to the "List of Maps" was not
+   found in the print edition.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR, THE HERO
+OF PORTUGAL AND OF MODERN DISCOVERY, 1394-1460 A.D.***
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