CHAPTER III.

PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY UNDER PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL.

HE career of modern discovery had commenced shortly

THE

before the time of Columbus, and at the period of which we are treating was prosecuted with great activity by Portugal. Some have attributed its origin to a romantic incident in the fourteenth century. An Englishman of the name of Macham, flying to France with a lady of whom he was enamored, was driven far out of sight of land by stress of weather, and after wandering about the high seas, arrived at an unknown and uninhabited island, covered with beautiful forests, which was afterwards called Madeira.* Others have treated this account as a fable, and have pronounced the Canaries to be the first fruits of modern discovery. This famous group, the Fortunate Islands of the ancients, in which they placed their garden of the Hesperides, and whence Ptolemy commenced to count the longitude, had been long lost to the world. There are vague accounts, it is true, of their having received casual visits, at wide intervals, during the obscure

* See Illustrations, article "Discovery of Madeira."

ages, from the wandering bark of some Arabian, Norman, or Genoese adventurer; but all this was involved in uncertainty, and led to no beneficial result. It was not until the fourteenth century that they were effectually rediscovered, and restored to mankind. From that time they were occasionally visited by the hardy navigators of various countries. The greatest benefit produced by their discovery was, that the frequent expeditions made to them emboldened mariners to venture far upon the Atlantic, and familiarized them, in some degree, to its dangers.

The grand impulse to discovery was not given by chance, but was the deeply meditated effort of one master mind. This was Prince Henry of Portugal, son of John the First, surnamed the Avenger, and Philippa of Lancaster, sister of Henry the Fourth of England. The character of this illustrious man, from whose enterprises the genius of Columbus took excitement, deserves particular mention.

Having accompanied his father into Africa, in an expedi tion against the Moors, at Ceuta he received much information concerning the coast of Guinea, and other regions in the interior, hitherto unknown to Europeans, and conceived an idea that important discoveries were to be made by navigating along the western coast of Africa. On returning to Portugal, this idea became his ruling thought. Withdrawing from the tumult of a court to a country retreat in the Algarves, near Sagres, in the neighborhood of Cape St. Vincent, and in full view of the ocean, he drew around him men eminent in science, and prosecuted the study of those branches of knowledge connected with the maritime arts. He was an able mathemati VOL. I.-2*

cian, and made himself master of all the astronomy known to the Arabians of Spain.

On studying the works of the ancients, he found what he considered abundant proofs that Africa was circumnavigable. Eudoxus of Cyzicus was said to have sailed from the Red Sea into the ocean, and to have continued on to Gibraltar; and Hanno the Carthaginian, sailing from Gibraltar with a fleet of sixty ships, and following the African coast, was said to have reached the shores of Arabia.* It is true these voyages had been discredited by several ancient writers, and the possibility of circumnavigating Africa, after being for a long time admitted by geographers, was denied by Hipparchus, who considered each sea shut up and land-bound in its peculiar basin; and that Africa was a continent continuing onward to the south pole, and surrounding the Indian sea, so as to join Asia beyond the Ganges. This opinion had been adopted by Ptolemy, whose works, in the time of Prince Henry, were the highest authority in geography. The prince, however, clung to the ancient belief, that Africa was circumnavigable, and found his opinion sanctioned by various learned men of more modern date. To settle this question, and achieve the circumnavigation of Africa, was an object worthy the ambition. of a prince, and his mind was fired with the idea of the vast benefits that would arise to his country should it be accomplished by Portuguese enterprise.

The Italians, or Lombards, as they were called in the north of Europe, had long monopolized the trade of Asia. They had formed commercial establishments at Constantinople

* See Illustrations, article “Circumnavigation of Africa by the Ancients."

and in the Black Sea, where they received the rich produce of the Spice Islands, lying near the equater; and the silks, the gums, the perfumes, the precious stones, and other luxurious commodities of Egypt and southern Asia, and distributed them over the whole of Europe. The republics of Venice and Genoa rose to opulence and power in consequence of this trade. They had factories in the most remote parts, even in the frozen regions of Moscovy and Norway. Their merchants emulated the magnificence of princes. All Europe was tributary to their commerce. Yet this trade had to pass through various intermediate hands, subject to the delays and charges of internal navigation, and the tedious and uncertain journeys of the caravan. For a long time, the merchandise of India was conveyed by the Gulf of Persia, the Euphrates, the Indus, and the Oxus, to the Caspian and the Mediterranean seas; thence to take a new destination for the various marts of Europe. After the Soldan of Egypt had conquered the Arabs, and restored trade to its ancient channel, it was still attended with great cost and delay. Its precious commodities had to be conveyed by the Red Sea; thence on the backs of camels to the banks of the Nile, whence they were transported to Egypt to meet the Italian merchants. Thus, while the opulent traffic of the East was engrossed by these adventurous monopolists, the price of every article was enhanced by the great expense of transportation.

It was the grand idea of Prince Henry, by circumnavigat ing Africa to open a direct and easy route to the source of this commerce, to turn it in a golden tide upon his country. He was, however, before the age in thought, and had to counteract ignorance and prejudice, and to endure the delays to

which vivid and penetrating minds are subjected, from the tardy co-operations of the dull and the doubtful. The navigation of the Atlantic was yet in its infancy. Mariners looked with distrust upon a boisterous expanse, which appeared to have no opposite shore, and feared to venture out of sight of the landmarks. Every bold headland, and far-stretching promontory, was a wall to bar their progress. They crept timorously along the Barbary shores, and thought they had accomplished a wonderful expedition when they had ventured a few degrees beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. Cape Non was long the limit of their daring; they hesitated to double its rocky point, beaten by winds and waves, and threatening to thrust them forth upon the raging deep.

Independent of these vague fears, they had others, sanctioned by philosophy itself. They still thought that the earth, at the equator, was girdled by a torrid zone, over which the sun held his vertical and fiery course, separating the hemispheres by a region of impassive heat. They fancied Cape Bojador the utmost boundary of secure enterprise, and had a superstitious belief, that whoever doubled it would never return. They looked with dismay upon the rapid currents of its neighborhood, and the furious surf which beats upon its arid coast. They imagined that beyond it lay the frightful region of the torrid zone, scorched by a blazing sun; a region of fire, where the very waves, which beat upon the shores, boiled under the intolerable fervor of the heavens.

To dispel these errors, and to give a scope to navigation, equal to the grandeur of his designs, Prince Henry estab lished a naval college, and erected an observatory at Sagres,

* Mariana, Hist. Esp., lib. ii. cap. 22.