The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

the sight of

the ocean continually inflamed his thoughts. It was a cold,

bleak headland, with a few juniper trees scattered here and

there: all other vegetation had been withered by the spray. But

Prince Henry was not alone. He invited learned men from all

countries to reside with him. He established a court, in which

weather-beaten pilots might discourse with German

mathematicians and Italian cosmographers. He built an

observatory, and founded a naval school. He collected a

library, in which might be read the manuscript of Marco Polo,

which his elder brother had brought from Venice; copies on

vellum of the great work of Ptolemy; and copies also of

Herodotus, Strabo, and other Greek writers, which were being

rapidly translated into Latin under the auspices of the Pope at

Rome. He had also a collection of maps and sea-charts engraved

on marble or on metal tables, and painted upon parchment. At a

little distance from the castle were the harbour and town of

Sagres, from which the vessels of the Prince went forth with

the cross of the order painted on their sails.

 

They sailed down the coast of the Sahara; on their right was a

sea of darkness, on their left a land of fire. The gentlemen of

the household who commanded the ships did not believe in the

country of green trees beyond the ocean of sand. Instead of

pushing rapidly along, they landed as soon as they detected any

signs of the natives — the old people of Masinissa and

Jugurtha — attacked them crying, Portugal! Portugal! and

having taken a few prisoners returned home. In every expedition

the commander made it a point of honour to go a little further

than the preceding expedition. Several years thus passed, and

the Black Country had not been found. The Canary Islands were

already known to the Spaniards: but the Portuguese discovered

Porto Santo and Madeira. A ship-load of emigrants was

despatched to the former island, and among the passengers was a

female rabbit in an interesting situation. She was turned down

with her young ones on the island, and, there being no checks

to rabbit-population, they increased with such rapidity that

they devoured every green thing, and drove the colonists across

into Madeira. In that island the colonists were more fortunate;

instead of importing rabbits they introduced the vine from

Cyprus, and the sugar-cane from Sicily; and soon Madeira wine

and sugar were articles of export from Lisbon to London and to

other ports. In the meantime the expeditions to Africa became

exceedingly unpopular. The priests declared that the holy money

was being scandalously wasted on the dreams of a lonely madman.

That castle on the Atlantic shore, which will ever be revered

as a sacred place in the annals of mankind, was then regarded

with abhorrence and contempt. The common people believed it to

be the den of a magician, and crossed themselves in terror when

they met in their walks a swarthy strong-featured man, with a

round barret cap on his head, wrapped in a large mantle, and

wearing black buskins with gilt spurs. Often they saw him

standing on the brink of the cliff, gazing earnestly towards

the sea, his eyes shaded by his hand. It was said that on fair

nights he might be seen for hours and hours on the tower of

Babel which he had built, holding a strange weapon in his

hands, and turning it towards the different quarters of the

sky.

 

There was an orthodox geography at that period founded

upon statements in the Jewish writings, and in the Fathers of

the Church. The earth was in the centre of the universe; the

sun and the moon and the stars humbly revolving round it.

Jerusalem was in the precise centre of the earth. In Eastern

India was the Terrestrial Paradise, situated on high ground,

and surrounded by a wall of fire, reaching to the sky. St.

Augustine, Lactantius, and Cosmas Indicopleustes opposed the

Antipodes as being contrary to Scripture; and there could not

be people on the other side of the earth, for how would they be

able to see the Son of God descending in his glory? It was also

generally believed that there was a torrid zone, an impassable

belt on both sides of the equator, which Providence had created

for the lower animals, and in which no man could live. It was

to this fiery land that the Prince kept sending vessel after

vessel. The Portuguese did not see what would come of these

expeditions except to make widows and orphans. “The Prince

seems to think,” said they, “that because he has discovered two

desert islands he has conferred a great blessing upon us but we

have enough uncultivated land without going across the seas for

more. His own father, only a little while ago, gave land to a

nobleman of Germany, on condition that he should people it with

emigrants. But Dom Henry sends men out of Portugal instead of

asking them in. Let us keep to the country that God has given

us. It may be seen how much better suited those lands are for

beasts than men by what happened with the rabbits. And even if

there are in that unfound land as many people as the Prince

pretends, we do not know what sort of people they are; and if

they are like those in the Canaries who jump from rock to rock,

and throw stones at Christian heads, of what use is it to

conquer a land so barren, and a people so contemptible?

 

However, an incident occurred which produced a revolution in

popular and ecclesiastic feeling. The prisoners captured on the

desert coast offered a ransom for their release and this ransom

consisted of negro slaves and gold. The place where this metal

first made its appearance was called the Golden River. It was

not in reality a river but an arm of the sea, and the gold had

been brought from the mines of Bambouk in the country of the

negroes. Its discovery created an intense excitement: the

priests acknowledged that it could not have been placed there

for the use of the wild animals. Companies were formed and were

licensed by the Crown, which assigned to the Prince a fifth

part of the cargoes returned. He himself cared little for the

gold but the discovery of this precious metal, of which India

was proverbially the native land, suggested the idea that by

following the coast of Africa the Indies might be reached by

sea. Letters and maps which he received from his Venetian

correspondents encouraged him in this belief, and he obtained

without delay a Bull from the Pope granting to the Crown of

Portugal all lands that its subjects might discover as far as

India inclusive, with license to trade with infidels, and

absolution for the souls of those that perished in these semi-commercial, semi-crusading expeditions.

 

The practice of piracy was now partly given up: the Portuguese,

like the Phoenicians of old, traded in one place and kidnapped

in another. The commodities which they brought home were gold

dust, seal skins, and negroes. Yet still they did not reach the

negro land, till at last a merchant of Lagos, one time an

equerry in the Prince’s service, knowing his old master had

exploration at heart more than trade, determined to push on,

without loitering on the desert coast. He was rewarded with the

sight of trees growing on the banks of a great river, which

Prince Henry and his cosmographers supposed to be the Nile. On

one side were the brown men of the desert with long tangled

hair, lean, and fierce in expression, living on milk, wandering

with their camels from place to place. On the other side were

large, stout, comely men with hair like wool, skins black as

soot, living in villages and cultivating fields of corn.

 

The Portuguese had now discovered the coast of Guinea, and they

were obliged to give up their predatory practices. Instead of

an open plain in which knights habited in armour and men

dressed in quilted cotton jackets could fight almost with

impunity against naked Moors, they entered rivers the banks of

which were lined with impenetrable jungles. The negroes,

perched in trees, shot down upon them from above, or attacked

the ships’ boats in mid-channel with their swift and light

canoes. The Portuguese had no firelocks, and the crossbow bolt

was a poor missile compared with the arrows which the negroes

dipped in a poison so subtle that as soon as the wounded man

drank he died, the blood bursting from his nose and ears. A

system of barter was therefore established, and the negroes

showed themselves disposed to trade. The Gold Coast was

discovered: a fort and a chapel were built at Elmina, where a

commandant was appointed to reside. This ancient settlement has

just been ceded to the English by the Dutch. The ships carried

out copper bracelets, brass basins, knives, rattles, looking-glasses, coloured silks, and woollen goods, green Rouen cloth,

coral, figured velvet, and dainty napkins of Flanders

embroidered with gold brocade, receiving chiefly gold dust in

exchange. This trade was farmed out to a company for five

years, on condition that the company should each year explore

to a certain distance along the coast.

 

The excitement which followed the discovery of gold dust, and

the institution of the House of Mines, gradually died away. The

noble Prince Henry was no more. The men who went out to the

coast were not of the class who devote their lives to the

chivalry of enterprise. An official who had just returned from

Elmina being presented to the king, His Majesty asked him how

it was that although he had lived in Africa his face and hands

were so white. The gentleman replied that he had worn a mask

and gloves during the whole period of his absence in that

sultry land; upon which the king told him what he thought he

was fit for in words too vigorous to be translated. This same

king, John the second, was a vigorous-minded man, and in him

the ambition of Prince Henry was revived. He found in a chest

belonging to the late king a series of letters from a Venetian

gentleman giving much information about the India trade, and

earnestly advising him to prosecute his explorations along the

coast. The librarians of St. Mark had also sent maps in which

the termination of the continent was marked. The king sent out

new expeditions and fostered the science of nautical astronomy.

A Jew named Zacuto and the celebrated Martin Behem improved the

mariner’s compass and modified the old Alexandrian astrolabe,

so that it might be used at sea. Wandering knights from distant

lands volunteered for these expeditions desiring to witness the

tropical storms and the strange manners of the New World, as it

was called.

 

Many skilful mariners and pilots visited Lisbon, were

encouraged to remain, and became naturalised Portuguese.

Among these was the glorious Christopher Columbus, who made

more than one voyage to the Gold Coast, married a Portuguese

lady, and lived for some time in the Azores. It was his

conviction that the eastern coast of Asia could be reached by

sailing due west across the ocean. It was his object not to

discover a new land, but to reach by sea the country which

Marco Polo had visited by land. He eventually sailed with

letters to the Emperor of China in his pockets and came back

from the West India Islands thinking that he had been to Japan.

He made his proposals in the first place to the king, who

referred it to a council of learned men. There were now two

plans for sailing to India before the court: the one by

following the African coast, the other by sailing west across

the ocean. But expeditions of