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 mostpowerful 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, elegantenough 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 ashonourable 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. Tothe 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 theSenegal, 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 wearisomerepetitions 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 theriver 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 themsooty 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 hadcome 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, armedwith 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 andran 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, andmade 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 ofthem 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."
decorative illustration
decorative illustration
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 theWren, 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.
THE BORGIAN MAP OF 1450.
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 inOran 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. AndI 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 saltalong 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 asthey 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 horsesand 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 therewere 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, forthough 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."
decorative illustration
COIMBRA UNIVERSITY OF WHICH HENRY WAS THE OFFICIAL PATRON.
COIMBRA UNIVERSITY OF WHICH HENRY WAS THE OFFICIAL PATRON.
decorative illustration
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. Sothe 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 wereraising 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 thescratchings 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.
WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA MAURO. 1457-9.
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 spiritualjurisdiction 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.
SKETCH-MAP OF FRA MAURO'S MAPPE-MONDE.
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, onCape 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 bynature, 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.
THE RECUMBENT STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY. FROM HIS TOMB IN BATALHA CHURCH.
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, myLord 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.
decorative illustration
decorative illustration
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, especiallyin 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 farthestand 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 theonward 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.
COLUMBUS AS S. CHRISTOPHER, CARRYING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, IN THE FORM OF THE INFANT JESUS, ACROSS THE OCEAN.
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 shutup 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 GuineaCoast, 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.
VASCO DA GAMA. FROM THE PORTRAIT IN POSSESSION OF COUNT OF LAVRADIO.
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 themighty 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; afourth 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 theLusiadsand 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 winddue 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.