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

all kinds were at that time

unpopular in Lisbon. The Guinea trade did not pay, and it was

strenuously urged at the council that the West African

Settlements should be abandoned. The friends of exploration

were obliged to stand on the defensive. They could not carry

the proposal of Columbus; it was all that they could do to save

the African expeditions. But when Columbus had won for Castile

the east coast of Asia (as was then supposed) the king

perceived that if he wished to have an Indian empire he must

set to work at once. He accordingly conducted the naval

expeditions with such vigour that the Cape of Storms was

discovered, was then called the Cape of Good Hope, and, was

then doubled, though without immediate result, the sailors

forcing their captain to return. The king also sent a

gentleman, named Covilham, to visit the countries of the East

by land. His instructions were to trace the Venetian trade in

drugs and spices to its source, and to find out Prester John.

 

Covilham went to Alexandria in the pilgrim’s garb, but instead

of proceeding to the Holy Land, he passed on to Aden, and

sailed round the Indian Ocean or the Green Sea, that Lake of

Wonder with the precious ambergris floating on its waters and

pearls strewed upon its bed, whitened with the cotton sails of

the Arab vessels, of the Gujrat Indians, and even of the

Chinese, whose four-masted junks were sometimes to be seen

lying in the Indian harbours with great wooden anchors dangling

from their bows. The east coast of Africa, as low down as

Madagascar, or the Island of the Moon, was lined with large

towns in which the Arabs resided as honoured strangers, or

in which they ruled as kings. On this coast Covilham obtained in

formation respecting the Cape. He then crossed over to the India

shore; he sailed down the coast of Malabar from city to city, and

from port to port. He was astounded and bewildered by what he

saw: the activity and grandeur of the commerce; the magnificence

of the courts; the half-naked kings blazing with jewels, saying their

prayers on rosaries of precious stones, and using golden

goblets as spittoons; the elephants with pictures drawn in

bright colours on their ears, and with jugglers in towers on

their backs; the enormous temples filled with lovely girls; the

idols of gold with ruby eyes; the houses of red sandal wood;

the scribes who wrote on palm leaves with iron pens; the pilots

who took observations with instruments unknown to Europeans;

the huge bundles of cinnamon or cassia in the warehouses of the

Arab merchants; the pepper vines trailing over trees; and

drugs, which were priceless in Europe, growing in the fields

like corn.

 

He returned to Cairo, and there found two Jews, Rabbi Abraham

and Joseph the Shoemaker, whom the king had sent to look after

him. To them he gave a letter for the king, in which he wrote

that the ships which sailed down the coast of Guinea might be

sure of reaching the termination of the continent by keeping on

to the south; and that when they arrived in the Eastern ocean,

they must ask for Sofala and the Island of the Moon.”

 

Covilham himself did not return. He had accomplished one part

of his mission; he had traced the Venetian commerce to its

source; but he had now to find out Prester John.

 

A fable had arisen, in the Dark Ages, of a great Christian king

in Central Asia; and when it was clearly ascertained that the

Grand Khan was not a Christian, and that none of the Tartar

princes could possibly be Christians, as they could not keep

Lent, having no fish or vegetables in their country, it was

hoped that Prester John, as the myth was called, might be found

elsewhere. Certain pilgrims were met with at Jerusalem who were

almost negroes in appearance. Their baptism was of three kinds-of fire, of water, and of blood: they were sprinkled, they were

circumcised, they were seared on the forehead with a red-hot

iron in the form of a cross. Their king, they said, was a good

Christian and a hater of the Moslems, and was descended from

the Queen of Sheba. This swarthy king, the ancestor of

Theodore, could be no other than Prester John; and Covilham

felt it his duty to bear him the greetings of his master before

he went home to enjoy that reputation which he had so

gloriously earned, and to take a part in the great discoveries

that were soon to be made.

 

But the king of Abyssinia wanted a tame white man. He gave his

visitor wife and lands; he treated him with honour; but he

would not let him go. This kind of complimentary captivity is a

danger to which African travellers are always exposed. It is

the glory and pride of a savage king to have a white man at his

court. And so Covilham was detained, and he died in Abyssinia.

But he lived to hear that Portugal had risen in a few years to

be one of the great European powers, and that the flag he loved

was waving above those castles and cities which he had been the

first of his nation to behold. His letter arrived at the same

time as the ship of Dias, who had doubled the Cape. The king

determined that a final expedition should be sent, and that

India should be reached by sea.

 

It was a fête day in Lisbon. The flags were flying on every

tower; the fronts of the houses were clothed in gorgeous

drapery, which swelled and floated in the wind; stages were

erected on which mysteries were performed; bells were ringing,

artillery boomed. Marble balconies were crowded with ladies and

cavaliers, and out of upper windows peeped forth the faces of

girls, who were kept in semi-Oriental seclusion. Presently the

sound of trumpets could be heard; and then came in view a

thousand friars, who chanted a litany, while behind them an

immense crowd chanted back in response. At the head of this

procession rode a gentleman richly dressed; he was followed by

a hundred and forty-eight men in sailors’ clothes, but bare-footed, and carrying tapers in their hands. On they went till

they reached the quay where the boats, fastened to the shore,

swayed to and fro with the movement of the tide, and strained

at the rope as if striving to depart. The sailors knelt. A

priest of venerable appearance stood before them, and made a

general confession, and absolved them in the form of the Bull

which Prince Henry had obtained. Then the wives and mothers

embraced their loved ones whom they bewailed as men about to

die. And all the people wept. And the children wept also,

though they knew not why.

 

Thirty-two months passed, and again the waterside was crowded,

and the guns fired, and the bells rang. Again Vasco da Gama

marched in procession through the streets; and behind him

walked, with feeble steps, but with triumph gleaming in their

eyes, fifty-five men — the rest were gone. But in that

procession were not only Portuguese, but also men with white

turbans and brown faces; and sturdy blacks, who bore a chest

which was shown by their straining muscles to be of enormous

weight; and in his hand the Captain General held a letter which

was written with a pen of iron on a golden leaf, and which

addressed the king of Portugal and Guinea in these words:

“Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of thy house, came to my country,

of whose coming I was glad. In my country there is plenty of

cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and precious stones. The things which

I am desirous to have out of thy country are silver, gold,

coral, and scarlet.”

 

That night all the houses in Lisbon were illuminated; the

gutters ran with wine; the skies, for miles round, were

reddened with the light of bonfires. The king’s men brought ten

pounds of spices to each sailor’s wife, to give away to her

gossips. The sailors themselves were surrounded by crowds, who

sat silent and open-mouthed, listening to the tales of the

great waters, and the marvellous lands where they had been.

 

They told of the wonders of the Guinea coast, and of the men

near the Cape, who rode on oxen and played sweet music on the

flute; and of the birds which looked like geese, and brayed

like donkeys, and did not know how to fly, but put up their

wings like sails, and scudded along before the wind. They told

how as they sailed on towards the south, the north star sank

and sank, and grew fainter and fainter, until at last it

disappeared; and they entered a new world, and sailed beneath

strange skies; and how, when they had doubled the Cape, they

again saw sails on the horizon, and the north star again rose

to view. They told of the cities on the Eastern shore, and of

their voyage across the Indian Ocean, and of that joyful

morning when, through the grey mists of early dawn, they

discerned the hills of Calicut.

 

And then they sank their voices, and their eyes grew grave and

sad as they told of the horrors of the voyage; of the long,

long nights off the stormy Cape when the wind roared, and the

spray lashed through the rigging, and the waves foamed over the

bulwarks, and the stones that were their cannon-shot crashed

from side to side, and the ships like live creatures groaned

and creaked, and hour after hour the sailors were forced to

labour at the pumps till their bones ached, and their hands

were numbed by cold. They told of treacherous pilots in the

Mozambique, who plotted to run their ships ashore; and of the

Indian pirates, the gipsies of the sea, who sent their spies on

board. They told of that new and horrible disease which, when

they had been long at sea, made their bodies turn putrid and

the teeth drop from their jaws. And as they told of those

things, and named the souls who had died at sea, there rose a

cry of lamentation, and widows in new garments fled weeping

from the crowd.

 

That night, the Venetian ambassador sat down and wrote to his

masters that he had seen vessels enter Lisbon harbour laden

with spices and with India drugs. His next letter informed them

that a strong fleet was being prepared, and that Vasco da Gama

intended to conquer India. The Venetians saw that they were

ruined. They wrote to their ally, the Sultan of Egypt, and

implored him to bestir himself. They gave him artillery to send

to the India princes. They offered to open the Suez canal at

their own expense, that their ships might arrive in the Indian

Ocean before the Portuguese. On the other hand, came the

terrible Albuquerque, who told the Sultan to beware, or he

would destroy Mecca and Medina, and turn the Nile into the Red

Sea. The Indian Ocean became a Portuguese lake. There was

scarcely a town upon its shores which had not been saluted by

the Portuguese bombardiers. Not a vessel could cross its waters

without a Portuguese passport. As a last resource, the

Venetians offered to take the India produce off the king’s

hands, and to give him a fair price. This offer was declined,

and Lisbon, instead of Venice, became the market-place of the

India trade. The great cities on the Euphrates, the Tigris, and

the Nile fell into decay; the caravan trade of Central Asia

declined; the throne of commerce was transferred from the basin

of the Mediterranean to the basin of the Atlantic; and the

oceanic powers, though rigidly excluded from the commerce

itself,