The great voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497-9) connected and completed the various aims of Portuguese enterprise, to which Prince Henry had given a permanent and organised form.
Though he was not able to see in his own lifetime the fulfilment of his plans, both the method of a South-East Passage, and the men who finally discovered it, were, in a true sense, his—were inseparably associated with his work. The lines of Portuguese advance, a generation after his death, continued to follow his initiative so closely, that, when a different route to the Indies was suggested by Columbus, the government of John II refused to treat it seriously. And yet it was to the Infant's movement—in part, at least—that Columbus owed his conception. "It was in Portugal," says Ferdinand Columbus, "that the Admiral began to surmise that if men could sail so far south, one might also sail west and find lands in that direction." In another place[58]it will be questioned how far a Portuguese movement America-wards can be credited to the mariners of Prince Henry's own time. It is plain that, whether he or his captains ever thought favourably of the chances of the Western route, he and they alike devoted their main energies to its rival, the Eastern or African coasting way. It is equallyplain, on the other hand, that the Infant's work produced a new interest in the world-science of geography throughout Christendom, and so was indirectly responsible for quite as much as it directly aimed at accomplishing.
[47]This voyage is described by Cadamosto as an appendix to his own voyages. A young Portuguese who accompanied De Sintra described to Cadamosto the stretch of coast now discovered beyond the Rio Grande, the anchorages of the fleet, and the names given to points on the shore. "This account, without any rhetorical embellishment, is of special interest as a specimen of a Portuguese sailing-direction from a sailor of Henry the Navigator's School" (Nordenskjöld,Periplus, 121). De Sintra reached 5° further South than any before him. His nomenclature still survives at many points:e.g., Cape Verga, Sierra Leone, Cape Santa Anna, Cape del Monte, Cape Mesurado. Cape Sagres, "the highest promontory they had ever seen," between Cape Verga and Cape Ledo, has been re-named. De Sintra also noticed especially a "great green forest"—"Bosque de St. Maria," in 5° 30' N. lat. (?)—and near his furthest point (at Rio dos Fumos) an immense quantity of smoke from native fires. Cf. Hanno's language in hisPeriplus, on the fiery rivers running down into the sea; and see J. N. Bellin'sPetit Atlas Maritime, Paris, 1764; Part iii, Map 105.
[48]Elmina.
[49]According to some, he accompanied De Sintra in the voyage of 1461.
[50]Cadamosto explicitly says that when he left Portugal on February 1, 1463, no voyages had been made in continuation of De Sintra's venture, recorded by him.
[51]According to Cadamosto's account, De Sintra had gone a good deal further.
[52]It is not very clearly recorded who first crossed the line among the Portuguese sailors of this time. Some conclude as stated in text, but Nordenskjöld believes it was "perhaps Lopo Gonçalvez, after whom a promontory directly south of the Equator is named"; he also thinks this great event was accomplished on Gomez' first expedition, under Santarem, Escobar, Fernandez and Esteves, in 1470-1. As to progress eastwards, towards India, it was muchexaggeratedby many. While his caravels were still off the Guinea coast, King Affonso V believed the meridian of "Tunis, and even of Alexandria," had been already passed.
[53]It is probably right to ascribe great importance to the work of Fernam Gomez, during his five years' lease. His wealth gave a new character to the equipment of the African Expeditions of Portugal. Formerly there had been too much waste of energy through indefiniteness of object; too much discretion had been left to mariners themselves; now the definite contract for geographical discovery with the Crown caused a more rapid and continuous advance, and long stretches of coast were explored and mapped.
[54]According to King John's orders. Wooden crosses (often of Madeira wood?) had hitherto been erected by Portuguese discoverers in new lands. Now stone pillars 6 ft. high were to be used, and on them was to be inscribed, in Portuguese and Latin, the date, with the name of the reigning monarch, and those of the discoverers.
[55]Near C. Frio. So it is placed (atArenarum AestuariumorManga das Arenas) on Pl. X in Livio Sanuto'sGeographiaof 1588. We have mentioned that Martin Behaim, of Nüremberg, claimed to have accompanied Cão to West Africa; but his globe, so famous afterwards, executed in 1492 at the order of the Nüremberg Town Council, shows very little evidence of this. Behaim's West Africa is often obstinately Ptolemaic, at the end of the century which had revolutionised the knowledge of this part of the world. He inserts all the legendary Atlantic islands, and puts the Cape Verdes far out of their proper place.
[56]? Diaz Point, at theSerra Pardaor "Dark Hills" of Barros.
[57]Some way beyond Cape Agulhas, and immediately to the east of the River Gauritz.
[58]See the section of this Introduction on the "Atlantic Islands," especially pp. ciii-cvi.
African Exploration preliminary to Prince Henry's work.
The first recorded African expedition along the Atlantic coast of Africa was, if we accept the account of Herodotus, that of the Phœnicians sent out by Pharaoh Necho (c.600b.c.), who started from the Red Sea and returned by the Pillars of Hercules and the Mediterranean.[59]Almost at the same time (c.570b.c., according to Vivien de St. Martin's estimate) the great Phœnician settlement of Carthage attempted in reverse order a voyage of colonisation and discovery along the West of the Continent outside the Straits. Eratosthenes refers to Phœnician (or Carthaginian) settlements already existing on what is now the coast of Marocco, both inside and outside the "Pillars;" this new expedition under Hanno was intended to strengthen the old, as well as to found new plantations. It is often compared with a similar venture, "to explore theouter coasts of Europe," undertaken by Himilco, probably about the same time.[60]
Hanno[61]sailed from Carthage, according to our authority, with sixty penteconters, carrying 30,000(?) people, colonists and others, first to Cerne,[62]which was as far distant from the Pillars of Hercules as the Pillars were from Carthage. Then he ascended the river Chretes[63]to a lake. Twelve days' voyage south of Cerne he passed a promontory with lofty woodedhills,[64]and a little beyond this, a great estuary.[65]Five days more to the south brought him to the Western Horn,[66]and on the other side of this he coasted along a "fragrant shore," with "streams of fire running down into the sea," and "fiery mountains, the loftiest of which seemed to touch the clouds," and which he named[67]"Chariot of the Gods."[68]Three days' sail beyond this was his furthest point, the Southern Horn,[69]whence he returned directly to Carthage.
It is very difficult to identify Hanno's positions, and this is not the place to attempt a fresh investigation.[70]But the tradition of thisPeriplushavingreached far beyond the Straits of Gibraltar—farther than any venture of the earlier Middle Ages, or of the classical period—may be regarded as reliable, and some position on the Sierra Leone coast may provisionally be taken as its ultimate point of advance.
The African voyages of Sataspes under Xerxes, and of Eudoxus of Cyzicus under Ptolemy Euergetes II, cannot be regarded as of much importance. Neither probably reached Cape Verde (even if we are to attach any belief to their narratives). Sataspes[71]declared that his ship was stopped by obstructions in the sea at a point where lived on the ocean shore a people of small stature, clad in garments made of the palm-tree.[72]This was "many months'" sail south of Cape Soloeis or Cantin, and may stand for the neighbourhood of the Senegal, if it be not a mere traveller's tale invented by Sataspes, as Herodotus seems to have thought, to excuse his failure to the Great King. Eudoxus[73]claimed to havesailed so far, first along the eastern and then, along the western, coasts of Africa, that he practically circumnavigated the Continent; but all the details with which we are favoured go to disprove his claim. For instance, he implies that the Ethiopians reached by him on his farthest point S.W. "adjoined Mauretania." On the eastern coast he picked up a ship's prow from a vessel which he was told had been wrecked coming from the westward, and which mariners of Alexandria identified as a ship of Gades—a very unlikely story in the face of the currents on the East African coast.
According to Pliny,[74]Polybius the historian also made areconnaissancedown the West coast of Africa, in the lifetime and under the order of Scipio Æmilianus. He seems to have passed the termination of the Atlas chain, but Pliny's language does not warrant us in going any further.[75]He interweavesin his narrative the voyage of Polybius with the great measurement of the Roman world under Augustus by Agrippa, which is perhaps in part commemorated by the Peutinger Table, and which evidently took into its view the Hesperian Promontory,[76]and the Chariot of the Gods. Some have claimed for Polybius a voyage as far as the latter point, but this, if understood in the sense of Sierra Leone, is highly improbable.
We must not here delay over classical attempts at African continental exploration; but it will be right to notice briefly: That in the age of Pliny, as shown by thePeriplus of the Erythraean Sea(c.70a.d.), and in the age of Ptolemy, as shown in hisGeography(c.139-162a.d.), the knowledge of the Græco-Roman world was extended down the East coast of Africa at least as far as Zanzibar and its neighbourhood, and down the Western coast to Cape Soloeis, or Cape Cantin: That beyond these points only vague ideas obtained, though occasional travellers had ventured further: That in the interior of Africa only the North coast region, viz., Egypt and the "Barbary States," were thoroughly well known, though expeditions had at times crossed the Sahara, reached the Sudan, and ascended the Nile to themarshes situate in 9° N. lat.: That, even if never seen or visited, at least something had been heard of the African Alps in the neighbourhood of the Great Lakes, as well as of those lakes themselves: That Ptolemy's work marks the highest point of ancient knowledge in Africa, which began to decline from the age of the Antonines: That it is not probable even Ptolemy had any definite notions about the Niger, though his text names such a stream in West Africa, and his Map lays it down in a position not very distant from our Joliba: That it is clear he was conscious of the vast size of the Continent in a way that none of his predecessors had grasped, while utterly ignorant of its shape towards the South, so that he even denied the primary fact of its practically insular form.
Leaving to another section any notice of ancient exploration among the African islands, it would also appear that Statius Sebosus, Juba, and Marinus of Tyre all made contributions to the knowledge of West Africa. These contributions are now only preserved in the allusions or paraphrases of other authors; but it is clear that Sebosus, perhaps identical with a Sebosus who was a friend of Catulus and a contemporary of Sallust and Cæsar, had made independent inquiries concerning the West or Ocean coast of the Continent;[77]that Juba,[78]who made theNile rise in Western Mauretania, did similar work in the time of Augustus; and that Marinus preserved some original records of Roman expeditions which crossed the Great Desert,[79]apparently from Tripoli and Fezzan to the neighbourhood of the Central Sudan States.
As the Roman Empire broke up, geographical knowledge naturally suffered, and Africa shared in this loss. But a considerable recovery was effected through the work of the Arabs, to whom the Infant Henry owed much.
Confining our attention to Continental exploration, we may remark among other particulars: (1) That the Arab migration[80]to the East coast beyond Guardafui in the eighth century began the extensionof Moslem trade-colonies, which at last reached Sofala. (2) That the coast near Madagascar, as well as that island itself, seems to have been known to the great Arab traveller and geographer Masudi ("Massoudy") in the tenth century. (3) That the same writer considered the Atlantic or Western Ocean unnavigable, but that even he preserves a record of one Arab voyage thereon.[81](4) That Edrisi, in the twelfth century, records another voyage which touched the African mainland a good distance beyond the Straits of Gibraltar.[82](5) That Ibn Said, in the thirteenth century, relates a discovery of Cape Blanco.[83](6) That overland communication between the Barbary States and the negroes of the Sudan was originated by the Arabs, as a regular line of commerce, probably from the eleventh century at least.
This last point is one which requires specialconsideration. By sea the Arabs did scarcely anything to prepare the way for the Christian discoveries of the fifteenth century in Africa (except along the Eastern coast), but by land they were the most important helpers and informants of Prince Henry.[84]Islam effected the conquest of the Barbary States, politically in the seventh century, dogmatically in the course of about 200 years after the days of Tarik and Musa. By the end of the eleventh century the faith of Mohammed had begun to spread and take deep root in the Sudan,[85]havingalready made its way into many parts of the Sahara. With the Moslem faith came the Moslem civilisation. The caravan trade across the desert now commencedbetween Negroland and the Mediterranean; "Timbuktu" was founded by Moslems, probably drawn in large measure from the Tuareg, in about 1077-1100; and the Central Sudan States, from Sokoto to Darfur and Kordofan, passed under Mohammedan influence betweena.d.1000 and 1250. With the fresh migration of Nomad Arabs which seems to have taken place abouta.d.1050, from Upper Egypt to West Africa, a distinct advance of Islam in Central Africa is to be noticed by way of Kanem, Bornu, Sokoto, and the Niger Valley; this new wave reached Jenné, Ghiné, or "Guinea", on the Upper Valley of the Niger.
Even earlier than this a movement seems to have been in progress from the opposite direction—first south along the west coast, and then east up the valley of the Senegal and similar inlets. The tradition preserved by John Pory[86]is approved by the most recent research—at least in its general conclusions. The Moslems "pierced into" theSahara in, or a little after, 710, and "overthrew the Azanegue, and the people of Walata;" in "the year 973 (others say about 950) they infected the negroes and first those of Melli." During the ninth century, Islam made progress among the Sahara tribes, and the influence of this faith promoted intercourse between the desert tribes and the great commercial centres of the North African coast—a movement which was furthered by the Almoravide revival of the eleventh, and the Almohade of the twelfth, century. The former started from a reformed Moslem "community," settled on an island at the mouth of the Senegal—in other words, it shows Islam already finding centres for recovery and expansion in Negroland, exploring the Sudan from the north and west, creeping along the Atlantic Ocean, and spreading from the neighbourhood of Cape Verde into the interior of the populous land to the south of the Great Desert.
Here we may notice that Edrisi takes a point called Ulil as his starting-place in reckoning measurements, and especially longitudes, in the Sudan. This Ulil is fixed by all our authorities as close to the sea, in the centre of a salt-producing district; and it may be supposed to have been in the neighbourhood of the Senegal estuary.[87]To the east, Ulil bordered on Gana, Ghanah, Guinoa, Geneoa, or "Guinea," which, at least in name, was the firstobjective of Prince Henry's expeditions, and was famous for its slave export, and its money of "uncoined gold."[88]The name of the country was probably derived from its chief city of Jenné, variously described by Leo Africanus, in the sixteenth century, as a large village; by the earlier geographers—especially Edrisi in the twelfth century, and Ibn-Batuta in the fourteenth—as a spacious and well-built city on an island in the Niger, lying west from Timbuktu.
Between Ghanah or Jenné, and Ulil, according to some writers, lay the kingdom of Tokrur, while Andagost was on the northern boundary of Ghanah close to the Sahara. All these were Moslem states like Melli or Malli (W.S.W. from Timbuktu), and carried on trade with Barbary across the desert long before the days of Prince Henry. One of the earliest important converts to Islam in the Sudan was Sa-Ka-ssi, of the dynasty of Sa in the Songhaycountry on the Middle Niger (c.a.d.1009-1010). From this time the states on the Middle Niger became a centre of Mohammedan influence, especially after the foundation of Timbuktu about 1077. When Ibn-Batuta visited these parts in 1330, he found the negroes of the Niger full of Moslem devotion, enjoying a commerce with Mediterranean Africa, and mostly acknowledging the lead of Melli, which kingdom, according to him, had been founded in the early thirteenth century by the Mandingo.[89]
Among the Lake Chad States progress was also made in the eleventh century. The first Moslem Sultan of Bornu (Hami ibnu-l-Jalil) is recorded about 1050;[90]and a similar conversion happened in Kanem about the same time. This latter kingdom was then more important than now, and dominated much even of the Egyptian Sudan. Hence in the fourteenth century Islam obtained a strong footing in Darfur, as it had already in Baghirmi and Wadai.[91]Already in the twelfth century, Kordofan and the extreme east of the Sudan had been partially Moslemised by Arabs from Egypt, who had come south after the fall of the Fatimite Caliphs.
Along the eastern coast, in spite of the earlyspread of Moslem settlements from Magadoxo southward, Islam was very slow in penetrating the interior. Here the Arabs chiefly devoted themselves to maritime commerce, and for a long time their intercourse with the inland tribes was not of a kind to open up the country. Caravans with slaves and natural products came down to the coast towns, but the merchants of the latter seem to have been content with waiting and receiving. But on this side of Africa was a Christian kingdom, which was now—in Prince Henry's days—becoming more familiar to Europe: Abyssinia, the kingdom of Prester John, as the Portuguese of later time identified it. The original seat of the Priest-King, as described (chiefly from Nestorian information) by Carpini, Rubruquis, Marco Polo, and other Asiatic travellers of the thirteenth century, was in Central Asia, but the Abyssinian state offered so close a parallel, that it was naturally recognised by many as the true realm of Prester John, when the first clear accounts of it came into Mediæval Europe. The Asiatic prototype, moreover, was only temporary; it had apparently ceased to exist in the time of Polo himself, who spread its fame so widely; whereas its Abyssinian rival was both permanent and ancient enough to be noticed in pre-Crusading and even in pre-Mediæval literature. As the Renaissance movement progressed in Europe, learned men of the West gained from their reading an ever clearer realisation of this isolated Christianity of the East; and, as the trade of thelater Middle Ages spread itself more widely, the Venetians seem to have made their way to the Court of the Negus, even before John II of Portugal sent Covilham and Payva (1486) to find the Prester. Probably the beginnings of this Italian intercourse with Abyssinia may be placed as far back as the lifetime of Prince Henry (c.1450).
The Christianity of Nubia, which dated from the fourth century like that of Abyssinia itself, was still vigorous in the twelfth,[92]but from that time it began to fail before the incessant and determined pressure of Islam. Ibn-Batuta,[93]about 1330-40, found that the King of Dongola had just become a Moslem. Father Alvarez, in 1520-7, considered that the Nubian Christianity which had once extended up the Nile from the first Cataract to Sennaar had become extinct; though he would not allow that the mass of the Nubians had adopted any other religion in its place;[94]and himself, he tells us, had met a Christian who, in travelling through Nubia, had seen 150 churches.[95]But, in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all Nubia embraced Islam; and even in 1534, Ahmad Gragne, King of Adel, in one of his attacks upon Abyssinia, is said to have had 15,000 Nubian allies, apparently all Mohammedans.[96]
In Prince Henry's day, then, we may fairly assume that the old Christianity of East Africa was practically limited to Abyssinia; but when Azurara tells us of the Infant's desire "to know if there were in those parts[97]any Christian Princes,"[98]and again more explicitly, "to have knowledge of the land of Prester John,"[99]it is possible that some dim acquaintance with the old tradition of an isolated African (as well as of an isolated Asiatic) Church, was at the root of his endeavour.
At the end of the twelfth century, Islam had already begun to encroach upon the coast of what is now Italian "Erythraea;" and about 1300a.d.a Musulman army attacked the ruler of Amhara. At this time the realm of the Negus seems to have been completely cut off from the Red Sea;[100]but it was not till the early sixteenth century that Abyssinia was in serious danger of becoming a province of Islam, from the attacks of Ahmad Gragne (1528-1543), which, however, ended in complete failure.
To return to the North coast of Africa. Here, by the capture of Ceuta, Prince Henry gained a starting-point for his work; here he is said (probably with truth) to have gained his earliest knowledge of the interior of Africa; here especially he was brought in contact with those Sudan and Saharancaravans which, coming down to the Mediterranean coast, brought news, to those who sought it, of the Senegal and Niger, of the Negro kingdoms beyond the desert, and particularly of the Gold land of "Guinea." Here also, from a knowledge thus acquired, he was able to form a more correct judgment of the course needed for the rounding or circumnavigation of Africa, of the time, expense, and toil necessary for that task, and of the probable support or hindrance his mariners were to look for on their route.
We must, however, qualify in passing the statements of Azurara, in ch. vii, which would imply that Christianity had for ages been utterly extinct in North Africa. "As it was said that the power of the Moors in ... Africa was ... greater than commonly supposed, and that there were no Christians among them." "During the one-and-thirty years that he had warred against the Moors, he had never found a Christian King nor a lord outside this land,[101]who for the love of ... Christ would aid him."[102]The old North African Church, though constantly declining, survived the Musulman Conquest of the seventh and eighth centuries for nearly 800years. True, its episcopate, which could still muster 30 members in the tenth century, was practically extinct by the time of Hildebrand[103](Pope Gregory VII), and in 1246 the Franciscan missionary bishop of Fez and Marocco was the only Christian prelate in "Barbary"; but a number of native Christians still lingered on, though without Apostolic succession. In 1159, the Almohade conqueror, Abdu-'l Mu'min ben Ali, on subduing Tunis, compelled many of these to change their faith; but all through the next centuries, down to 1535, a certain number of Tunisians preserved their ancient religion so far that, when Charles V gained possession of the city in the above-named year (1535), he congratulated these perseverants on their steadfastness. The same fact is evidenced by the tolerant behaviour, as a rule, of the Mediæval Barbary States towards Christians, both native and European.
Thus they employ Christian soldiers, among others; grant freedom of worship to Christianmerchants and settlers; and exchange letters with various Popes, especially Gregory VII, Gregory IX, Innocent III, and Innocent IV, on the subject of the due protection of native Christians.[104]Traces of Christianity were to be found among the Kabyles of Algeria down to the time of the capture of Granada (1492), when a fresh influx of Andalusian Moors from Spain completed the conversion of these tribes,[105]—a conversion which, as Leo Africanus notices, was not inconsistent with some survivals of Christian custom. Similar survivals have been alleged among the Tuâreg of the Sahara, the "Christians of the Desert" at the present day.
Two practical questions arise for our special purpose from this summary of the mediæval progress and fifteenth-century status of Islam in Africa. These questions have been partly answered already, but we may here re-state them to generalise our conclusions. 1. What information was the Infant able to gain from the "Moors" for his own plans? and 2.Was this "Moorish" information so valuable as to account, in any great degree, for the Prince's perseverance and success in his task?
To the former query it may be replied: 1. That the "Arabs and Moors" of the early fifteenth century could give the Infant detailed and correct information, not only about the Barbary states and the trade-routes of the Sahara, but also about many of the Western and Central Sudan countries, and about the general course and direction of the "Guinea coast" both to the west and south of the great African hump. Especially could they describe the kingdom of Guinea, centreing round the town of Jenné on the Upper Niger, which was the chief market of their Negro trade in slaves, gold, and ivory. This kingdom, then, reached almost to the Atlantic on the lower valley of the Senegal, where in earlier times a place called Ulil had been marked by Edrisi and other Arab geographers, as independent of Ghanah but important for traffic. Also, the Moors were acquainted with the country of Tokrur,[106]which may be supposed to occupy the upper valley of the Senegal, becoming perhaps, in Prince Henry's time, merely a province of Guinea. Further, they could give much information about the States of Timbuktu and Melli, to the east of Guinea, on the Middle Niger, about the gold landof Wangara, in the great bend to the south of that river, and about the Songhay, afterwards so powerful, whose capital was at Gao, at the extreme N.E. angle of the Negro Nile, or Joliba. The Arab travellers and writers seem generally to have made but one river out of the Senegal, the Niger, Joliba, or Quorra, and the Benué or "river of Haussa."
De Barros explicitly states that the Moors told Prince Henry how on the other side of the Great Desert lived the Azanegues, who bordered on the Jaloff negroes, where began the kingdom of Guinea, or Guinanha. From other sources we know, as already stated, that the Infant obtained from the same informants[107]definite descriptions of the Senegal estuary, its "tall palms," and other landmarks. For here, rather than at any point more to the south, was the Guinea coast proper of the fifteenth century; though in the Bull of Pope Nicholas V, granting to Portugal (1454) all the lands that should be discovered "from the Cape of Bojador and of Nun throughout the whole of Guinea, as far as itsSouthern shore, or even to the Antarctic Pole and the Indies," our modern extension of the term is virtually admitted.
2. And, in the second place, granting what has just been said, it is obvious that the Moorishinformation was important enough to have very considerable influence on the Infant's plans, and especially to furnish him with hopes of success, and reasons for perseverance in the face of opposition and repeated failure.
Our materials for the Prince's life are so inadequate that we can hardly decide, from the silence of our authorities, that he was entirely ignorant, even at second hand, of all that the Arab geographers or travellers had written about Africa. Especially is this the case with Edrisi (1099-1154), whose work was composed in the Christian kingdom of Sicily, and owed much to Christian writers. And perhaps the same hope applies to Ibn-Batuta (fl.1330), who, living at a time so near to the epoch of the Prince's voyages, had revealed the Western Sudan to the Moslem world—and so to any Christians conversant with Moslem trade and enterprise—far more thoroughly than ever before. These are only two examples among those Moslem geographers, whose work may have been brought to the Infant's notice during his visits to Ceuta.
* * * * *
We have now to see what progress had been made by Christian nations in the exploration of Africa immediately before Prince Henry's time. The Crusades were not merely expeditions to recover the Holy Sepulchre: they were the outward sign of the great mediæval awakening of Europe and Christendom, which, beginning in the eleventh century, has never slumbered since, and which, inthe Infant's days, was passing through that great transition we call the Renaissance. On the geographical side this movement took first of all the direction of land travel, and achieved such great discoveries in Asia that a new desire for wealth and commercial expansion was kindled in Europe, with the special object of controlling the Asiatic treasures which Marco Polo and others had described. Islam, however, interposed a troublesome barrier between Central Asia, India and China on the one side, and European trade or dominion on the other. Hence, from the thirteenth century, we find a new series of attempts to reach the Far East by sea from the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. It was not till the last years of Prince Henry's life that any serious attempts were made to explore the interior of Africa, but expeditions along its shores were sent out long before his time to reconnoitre for a sea-route to India.[108]We have already remarked that the Infant represents in his own life-work the leading transition in this movement, from a tentative, impermanent, and unorganised series of efforts, to a continuous, properly directed, and successful plan; but some notice must be taken of those ventureswhich immediately prepared his way. Leaving out of sight, for another section as far as possible, the voyages which are concerned only with the Atlantic islands, or aim in a rudimentary way at finding a Western route to Asia, it is possible to mention several genuine attempts to anticipate the Portuguese along the Eastern or African mainland course.
The first of these, as far as known, is the voyage of Lancelot Malocello, of Genoa, in 1270. There is no proof that he started, like the adventurers of 1291, to find the ports of India: it is probable his ambitions were more modest; but we do not know how far he reached along the African mainland—only that he touched the Canaries, and staying there some time built a castle in Lancarote[109]island.
The next venture in this direction is also Genoese. In May, 1291,[110]Tedisio Doria and Ugolino de Vivaldo, with the latter's brother and certain other citizens of Genoa, equipped two galleys "that they might go by sea to[wards] the ports of India and bring back useful things for trade." But "after they had passed a place called Gozora,[111]nothing morecertain has been heard of them." This is confirmed by Pietro d'Abano, writing in 1312; but in the fifteenth century one of Prince Henry's captains, the Genoese colleague of Cadamosto, Antoniotto Ususmaris or Uso di Mare, professed to give some more details. On December 12th, 1455, he wrote his creditors a letter, in which he stated[112]that the two galleys of "Vadinus and Guido Vivaldi," leaving Genoa in 1281 "for the Indies," reached the "Sea of Ghinoia," where one ship was stranded, but the other sailed on to a city of Ethiopia called Menam, where lived Christian subjects of Prester John, who held them captive. None ever returned, but Uso di Mare himself spoke with the last surviving descendant of those Genoese.[113]Menam, he concludes, was on the sea coast, near the river Gihon.[114]
It is difficult to attach great weight to Usodi Mare's letter, which looks like an attempt to amuse his creditors with interesting adventures; but the voyage of 1291, with or without the survival of 1455, is sufficiently remarkable. It is the first direct attempt of Europeans in the Middle Ages to find a sea-route to India around Africa; its far-reaching design contrasts forcibly with the more modest projects of nearly all similar attempts before Prince Henry's time, and it is not improbable that some of its work survived, though officially unrecognised.[115]
The Hispano-Italian voyage of 1341 appears to have been solely occupied with the exploration of the Canaries, which were now becoming pretty well known, and we leave over any further notice of this for the present; but the Catalan expedition of 1346 was to some extent similar, both in object and method, to the Genoese expedition of 1291. "The ship of Jayme Ferrer," according to the Catalan Mappemonde of 1375, "started for the River of Gold[116]on St. Lawrence's Day, 1346."[117]To the same effect the Genoese archives[118]assert "Onthe Feast of St. Lawrence there went forth from the city of the Majorcans one galley of John Ferne the Catalan, with intent to go to Rujaura.[119]Of the same nothing has since been heard."[120]And on the Map of 1375 already noticed, upon the third sheet, is depicted off Cape Bojador the picture[121]of the ship in question adjoining the legend above-quoted. We may notice, however, that Guinea, the gold land of Africa, and not India, was the objective of this voyage—although Guinea was the first step on the African route to India—and that the venture, as Major says, was apparently designed only for the discovery of the supposed Negro river in which gold was collected: a guess of Mediterranean merchants[122]from the information of Moorish middlemen.
Beginning with the year 1364, the French also claimed to have made important advances along the African coast route. The men of Dieppe, it is said, repeatedly sailed beyond Cape Verde, and even Sierra Leone, and founded settlements on what was afterwards called the La Mina coast.[123]These stations, called Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, etc., lasted till 1410, when home troubles caused their abandonment,[124]like the temporary evacuation of the French Ivory Coast Settlements after 1870; but during the forty or fifty years of their existence, they carried on a regular trade with the Norman ports.
This tradition admits that it has lost its proofs in the destruction of the Admiralty Registers at Dieppe in 1694, but it is possible that some articles[125]may be discovered dating from this early commerce, which can supply fresh evidence. In itself, the Dieppese story is not impossible, and we shall see in another section, from the witness of the Map of 1351 and other portolanos, how plausible it appears, together with still greater ventures. But as things at present stand, it must be considered as a "thing not proven."[126]
Reliable evidence of French voyages to the Gold Coast of Guinea can only be quoted for the sixteenth century. Thus Braun in 1617, and Dappersome time shortly before 1668, inspected buildings and collected traditions from the natives on that shore which alone would prove these later expeditions, if they were not confirmed by several documents in Ramusio, Temporal, and Hakluyt.[127]Equallyreliable is the tradition of Béthencourt'sConquest of the Canariesin 1402, etc.; yet the authors of this history, Béthencourt's chaplains, give no hint of any knowledge possessed by their countrymen about the mainland coast beyond Cape Bojador, but rather imply the reverse. Finally, though so many of the best sixteenth-century maps are Dieppese, none of these show the fourteenth-century settlements, which are also wanting in all charts of the earlier time. The controverted names are first found on a map of 1631, by Jean Guérand; and this is probably not unconnected with the fact that in 1626 Rouen and Dieppe united for trade with the Guinea coast.
It is of course possible, as M. d'Avezac long ago argued from the evidence of the great Portolani of the fourteenth century, especially the Laurentian or Medicean[128]of 1351, the Pizzigani[129]of 1367, and the Catalan of 1375, that some unrecorded advance was accomplished along the African mainland coast during the middle years of this century; the imperfection of our records must never be forgotten; and we shall return to this question in another section. But nothing definite and certain can be gathered about the coast beyond Cape Bojador, except in a few small points.[130]With the Atlantic islands the case was very different.
The expedition[131](1402-12) of the Sieur de Béthencourt, Lord of Granville la Teinturière, of the Pays de Caux in Normandy, was chiefly concerned with the Canaries[132]—like the voyages of the Spaniards Francisco Lopez (1382), and Alvaro Becarra (? 1390, etc.) But, after achieving fair success in the islands, De Béthencourt attempted (apparently in 1404) an exploration of the mainland coast "from Cape Cantin, half way between the Canaries and Spain," to Cape "Bugeder" or Bojador,[133]the famous promontory to the right or east of the Canaries. But this was left unfinished; and De Béthencourt's chaplains, in describing their Seigneur's intentions beyond the "Bulging Cape," can only fall back on a certain Book of a Spanish Friar,[134]whichprofessed to give a description of Guinea, and the River of Gold. This last was said by the Friar to be 150 leagues from "the Cape Bugeder," and the French priests declare that "if things were such as described," their lord hoped sometime to reach the said river, "whereby access would be gained to the land of Prester John, whence come so many riches."
Thus the French colonists in the early fifteenth century, in Prince Henry's boyhood, know nothing first-hand, nothing save half-legendary rumours, about the African coast beyond Cape Bojador. They are anxious to reach the River of Gold, and traffic there, but they do not know the way. Of Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, La Mine, and other Norman settlements or factories beyond Cape Verde, they give no sign.
The late and doubtful[135]tradition of Macham's discovery of Madeira (c.1350-1370) does not concern the exploration of the African mainland, except that after the death of the "discoverer" inhis island, some of his sailors were said to have escaped in the ship's boat (according to the story) to the Continent, to have been made prisoners by the Berbers, and to have been held in slavery till some of the survivors were ransomed in 1416. But all this, if true, belongs to the well-known coast within Cape Non, and in no manner furthered exploration, except as regarded the island group of Madeira and Porto Santo.[136]
Fra Mauro preserves a tradition[137]of two voyages from India or the East coast of Africa round the Southern Cape—one in 1420, the other at an unfixed date. These, he says, had been accomplished by a person with whom he actually spoke, who claimed to have passed from Sofala to "Garbin," in the middle of the West coast, as it is marked on Fra Mauro's planisphere. If genuine, they would be the last anticipations of Prince Henry's enterprises left to chronicle; but few have placed much confidence in these statements, which seem indeed incredible in the form they are related by the Venetian draughtsman.
[59]Herod. ii, 158-9; iv, 42. These mariners took three years on their voyage: landed, sowed crops, and lived on the harvest during seasons unfavourable to navigation (especially autumn); during part of their journey they were astonished to find the sun on their right hand.
[60]This is first noticed by Aristotle, "On Marvellous Narratives," § 37; by Mela,De Situ Orbis, iii, 9; and by Pliny,Natural History, ii, 67, § 167-170, and elsewhere. ThePeriplusof Himilco seems to have been worked up by Avienus (c.400a.d.) in the first 400 lines of his poem, "De Ora Maritima."
[61]One account of Hanno's voyage was preserved on a Punic inscription in the temple of "Kronos," "Saturn," or Moloch, at Carthage; the inscription was translated into Greek by an unknown hand, probably about 300b.c.; and this version of thePeriplusstill remains to us. See Pliny,Hist. Nat., ii, 67; v, 1, 36; vi, 31;Solinus, 56;Pomponius Mela, iii, 9. The first edition of the Greek text is by Gelenius, Basel 1534; the best by C. Müller, inGeographi Graeci Minores. Cf. also an edition by Falconer, London, 1797; an edition by Kluge, Leipsig, 1829; Rennell,Geography of Herodotus, 719-745, 4to ed.; Bunbury,Ancient Geography, i, 318-335; Walckenaer,Recherches sur le Géographie de l'Afrique, p. 362, etc.; Vivien de St. Martin,Le Nord de l'Afrique dans l Antiquité, pp. 330-400; Major,Henry Navigator, 90, etc., 1868; Charton,Voyageurs Anciens, i, 1-5, Ed. of 1882; Gossellin,Recherches sur la Géographie des Anciens, i, pp. 70-106; A. Mer,Mémoire sur le Pêriple d'Hannon, 1885; Campomanés,El Periplo de Hannone illustrado, appended to hisAntiquedad maritima de Cartago(1756); Bougainville,Acad. des Inscr. et Belles Lettres, xxvi, xxvii, and especially xxviii, p. 287.
[62]Near Cape Non.
[63]This can hardly be the Senegal and Lake Nguier, as suggested by V. de St. Martin.
[64]Cape Verde?
[65]The Gambia?
[66]Cabo dos Mastos?
[67]Burton, with characteristic recklessness, insists on the Camaroons Mt. as the Chariot of the Gods ("Abeokuta and Camaroons Mt."); Fernando Po being another of the "lofty fiery mountains" seen by Hanno at this point.
[68]In the Sierra Leone range?
[69]Near Sherboro' island?
[70]Some (e.g., Gossellin) would refer the whole group of localities here named to the extreme N.W. or Maroccan coast of Africa. But the "lofty green headland," the Western and Southern Horns, the Chariot of the Gods, the gorillas captured by the seamen, hardly seem to allow of this restriction. Ancient enterprise was far more satisfactory than ancient observation, and the inaccuracies of the latter should not make us deny the former. Here the initial measurement, of the distance from Cerne to the Pillars as being equal to the distance from the Pillars to Carthage, because the time occupied in sailing was equal, seems not only too vague a reckoning, but inaccurate as ignoring one great difference. Inside the straits, Hanno's duty was simply to sail forward; outside, he had to plant colonists at suitable spots,—along a coast, moreover, not so well known as that of North Africa to the Carthaginians.
[71]Herodotus, iv, 43. Similar excuses were given,e.g.(1) by Pytheas in the North Sea; (2) by Arab and Christian mediæval voyagers off Cape Non and Cape Bojador; (3) by Arabs off Cape Corrientes (on the E. Coast of Africa).
[72]They lived in towns, he adds, possessed cattle, were of harmless and timid disposition, and fled to mountains on the approach of the strangers.
[73]Posidonius, inStrabo, ii, 3, § 4. Eudoxus made three voyages (see also Pliny,Hist. Nat., ii, 67, who bases his statement, like Mela, iii, 9, on Cornelius Nepos); in the first two he sailed to India and was driven to points on the East African coast; on the third he attempted to sail round Africa to India by the West, but evidently did not reach any distance beyond S.W. Mauretania (near C. Non). His first voyage must have been beforeb.c.117 (d.of Ptolemy Euergetes II, Physcon), his other two subsequent to that year. The narrative of Eudoxus was exaggerated by Pliny and Pomponius Mela into the story that the navigator had actually accomplished, in his own person, the voyage round Africa from the Red Sea to Gades; but his achievements may be limited thus: Two voyages from Egypt to India; a short distance of African coasting beyond Guardafui, probably not as far as Zanzibar; a short distance on the west coast beyond the S.W. coast of our Marocco, probably not beyond Cape Non, or at furthest Cape Bojador.
[74]Hist. Nat., v, i.
[75]The text here is very confused and difficult, but the best editors give the following text for Pliny's words: "He(Polybius)relates that beyond Atlas proceeding west there are forests.... Agrippa says that Lixus is distant from Gades 112 miles. From the Chariot of the Gods to the Western Horn is 10 days' voyage, and midway in this spacehe(i.e., Agr., not Pol.) has placed Mt. Atlas."
[76]Or Western Horn.
[77]He was also the alleged author of aPeriplus, and a treatise on theWonders of India, but he is only known by Pliny's quotations.
[78]The younger, "King of Numidia."
[79]Such as those of Julius Maternus and Septimius Flaccus, which perhaps reached Lake Chad, probably in the time of Trajan (98-117a.d.), and of Cornelius Balbus under Augustus (19b.c.), which conquered the Garamantes of Fezzan.
[80]This migration led to the foundation of Magadoxo, 909-951, and of Kilwa, 960-1000; later on of Malindi, Mombasa, and Sofala. See Krapf,Travels and Missionary Labours, etc., p. 522; G. P. Badger,Imams ... of Oman, p. xiii; El-Belâdzory,Futûh-el-Buldân(Ed. Kosegarten), pp. 132-135. The immigrants came from the Red Sea and Syria, according to Dr. Krapf, from Oman and the Persian Gulf according to Badger (though Krapf admits a later Persian element as well). This was the migration of the "Emosaids" ('Ammu-Sa'îd, or People of Sa'îd?). They, in one tradition, claimed to be the clan of Said, grandson of Ali; "a mythical personage," according to Badger, who substitutes "Sa'îd, grandson of Julánda" the Azdite; the latter, in this 'Omâni migration, was accompanied by his brother Suleimân. The traditional date isa.d.740, and onwards.
[81]Masudi, ch. 12 of theMeadows of Gold. The adventurer was Khosh-Khash, the "young man of Cordova," who returned with great riches, from Guinea (?).
[82]See the section of this Introduction upon the Atlantic Islands, pp. lxxv-lxxvii. Edrisi's Maghrurin or Wanderers probably sailed from and returned to Lisbon before 1147, the date of the final Christian capture of that city, and touched the African mainland at a point over against Madeira.
[83]By one Ibn Fatimah, who was wrecked at Wad-Nun, a little North of Cape Non, put off in a sloop with some sailors, and at last came to a glittering white headland, from which they were warned off by some Berbers. They learned afterwards that it was one mass of deadly serpents. Thence turning North they landed and went inland to the salt market of Tagazza, and finally returned home.
[84]Cf. what is said about Prince Henry's correspondent, the merchant at Oran, p. xxvi of this Introduction.
[85]Various early Arab MSS., lately found by the French in Tombuttu ("Timbuktu"), especially theTarik-es-Sudanof "Abderrahman ben Amr-Sadi-Tombukkti," according to Félix Dubois (Tombouctou la Mystérieuse), supply important rectifications of the standard accounts here;e.g.(1) Islam is found in the Western Sudan from the close of the ninth century. (2) The Songhay were converted in 1010; were for a time subject to the Kings of Melli; but gained freedom in 1355. (3) The Songhay took Timbuktu in 1469; and from this date, for more than a century, dominated all the West and Central Sudan from their capital at Gao. (4) Jenné, on the Upper Niger, was the furthest point westward of the original Songhay migration from Nubia. It was founded in 765; was converted to Islam in 1050, but "Pagan idols" were not completely rooted out till 1475. (5) Jenné was, in the Middle Ages, the greatest emporium of the Western Sudan, far outshining Timbuktu, which owed its foundation in part to Jenné. (6) Jenné was also a chief centre of Sudanese Islam. Its great Mosque, built in the eleventh century, partially destroyed in 1830, was the finest in all Negroland. (7) Its control of the salt and gold trade, as well as of most other branches of Sudanese merchandise, was such that it gave the name of Guinea to a vast region of West Africa, especially along the coast. (8) But Timbuktu, geographically, stood between Jenné and Barbary, and so between Jenné and Europe, and prevented Jenné from becoming famous in Christendom. (9) Jenné was connected primarily with a migration from East to West; Timbuktu, with a migration from North to South. (10) Timbuktu was founded [α] by the Tuareg, who owed their new energy in part to Moslem migrations from Spain,c.1100 (1077 according to some authorities); [β], by merchants from Jenné, who made it an emporium in the twelfth century. (11) In the twelfth century, Walata, or Gana, in the great bend of the Niger [? dominated by Jenné] was the most prosperous commercial district of West Soudan; but in the thirteenth century the conquests of the Kings of Melli [placed by these authorities west-south-west of Timbuktu, to the north of the Upper Niger] disturbed the old trade-routes, and diverted commerce to Timbuktu; which, however, was never itself very populous, and served chiefly as a place of passage and commercial rendezvous. (12) From 1330 to 1434 the Kings of Melli were usually masters of Timbuktu, where they built a pyramid minaret for the chief mosque; but at least during some years of the fourteenth century, Timbuktu was conquered by an invasion from Mossi. (13) From 1434 to 1469, the Tuareg regained possession of Timbuktu, and drove out the Melinki; but in 1469 the Songhay took the town, and held it for more than 100 years. (14) In the fourteenth century the Kings of Melli built a great palace in Timbuktu, which did not disappear till the sixteenth century. (15) From the fourteenth century Timbuktu was the intellectual capital of the Sudan. This was due to the Spanish-Moorish influence. (16) The patron saint and doctor of Timbuktu, Sidi Yahia, was practically contemporary (1373-1462) with Prince Henry the Navigator. (17) The town of Kuku, Kuka or Kokia, in the W. Sudan, mentioned by mediæval Moslem travellers, was probably either a city on or near the Niger, immediately south of Gao, the Songhay capital; or else Gao itself, which is sometimes called Kuku or Gogo. Even this place was conquered by Melli, in the fourteenth century, which thus dominated part of the Central Sudan. The ruins of the great mosque at Gao still commemorate Kunkur Musa, King of Melli, who built this house of prayer on his return from the Mecca pilgrimage, about 1325. SeeTarik-es-Sudan, composed about 1656, and giving a history of the Sudan down to that year: the fragments remaining of theFatassiof Mahmadu-Koti (1460-1554);Nil-el-Ibtihaj bitatriz el-dibaj, or Supplement to the Biographical Dictionary of Ibn-Ferhun by Ahmed Baba, 1556-1627.
[86]In his "Summary Discourse of the Manifold Religions in Africa," printed at the end of the Hakluyt Society's Edition of Pory's (1600) Translation ofLeo Africanus, vol. iii, especially pp. 1018-1021.
[87]See Edrisi, Climate I, § i; Wappaüs,Heinrich der Seefahrer, pp. 65, etc.
[88]Similar language is used by Abulfeda, who calls it the seat of the King of Gana (whither come the western merchants of Segelmesa), situate on a Nile, twin-brother of the Egyptian, which flows into the Ocean; also by Ibn-al-Wardi, who calls Ghanah city one of the greatest in the land of the Blacks, placed on both sides of the Negro Nile, and resorted to for gold by merchants, twelve days' journey from Segelmesa. Edrisi (Climate I, section ii; ed. Jaubert, i, 16-18; also see i, 11, 13, 15, 19-20, 23, 106, 109, 173-4, 206, 272) is the most specific of all. "Ghanah the Great, made up of two towns on the banks of a sweet-water river ... the most populous and commercial city in Negroland. Merchants come there from all surrounding countries, and from the extremities of the West ... it was built ina.h.510" (=a.d.1116) (see also Leo Africanus, Hakluyt Soc. ed., pp. 124, 128, 822, 840).
[89]See Ibn-Batuta (Defrémery and Sanguinetti), iv, 395, 421-2; also Oppel,Die religiöse Verhältnisse von Afrika, Zeitschrift of Berlin Geog. Soc., xxii, 1887.
[90]See Otto Blau,Chronik von Bornu, p. 322, Z. D. M. G., vi, 1852.
[91]The more complete Islamising of Wadai, Darfur, and Baghirmi did not take place till the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See Slatin Pasha,Fire and Sword in Soudan, pp. 38-42; T. W. Arnold,Preaching of Islam, chs. iv, xi.
[92]Edrisi, Climate I, section iv; vol. i, p. 35 (Jaubert). See Duchesne,Eglises Séparées.