TO THE INDIES EASTWARD—PRINCE HENRY AND VASCO DA GAMA
Up to the fifteenth century the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula were chiefly occupied in slowly moving back the tide of Mohammedan conquest, which had spread nearly throughout the country from 711 onwards. The last sigh of the Moor in Spain was to be uttered in 1492—an epoch-making year, both in history and in geography. But Portugal, the western side of the peninsula, had got rid of her Moors at a much earlier date—more that 200 years before—though she found it difficult to preserve her independence from the neighbouring kingdom of Castile. The attempt of King Juan of Castile to conquer the country was repelled by João, a natural son of the preceding king of Portugal, and in 1385 he became king, and freed Portugal from any danger on the side of Castile by his victory at Aljubarrota. He married Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt; and his third son, Henry, was destined to be the means of revolutionising men's views of the inhabited globe. He first showed his mettle in the capture of Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar, at the time of the battle of Agincourt, 1415, and by this means he first planted the Portuguese banner on the Moorish coast. This contact with the Moors may possibly have first suggested to Prince Henry the idea of planting similar factory-fortresses among the Mussulmans of India; but, whatever the cause, he began, from about the year 1418, to devote all his thoughts and attention to the possibility of reaching India otherwise than through the known routes, and for that purpose established himself on the rocky promontory of Sagres, almost the most western spot on the continent of Europe.
Here he established an observatory, and a seminary for the training of theoretical and practical navigators. He summoned thither astronomers and cartographers and skilled seamen, while he caused stouter and larger vessels to be built for the express purpose of exploration. He perfected the astrolabe (the clumsy predecessor of the modern sextant) by which the latitude could be with some accuracy determined; and he equipped all his ships with the compass, by which their steering was entirely determined. He brought from Majorca (which, as we have seen, was the centre of practical map-making in the fourteenth century) one Mestre Jacme, "a man very skilful in the art of navigation, and in the making of maps and instruments." With his aid, and doubtless that of others, he set himself to study the problem of the possibility of a sea voyage to India round the coast of Africa.
We have seen that Ptolemy, with true scientific caution, had left undefined the extent of Africa to the south; but Eratosthenes and many of the Roman geographers, even after Ptolemy, were not content with this agnosticism, but boldly assumed that the coast of Africa made a semicircular sweep from the right horn of Africa, just south of the Red Sea, with which they were acquainted, round to the north-western shore, near what we now term Morocco. If this were the fact, the voyage by the ocean along this sweep of shore would be even shorter than the voyage through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, while of course there would be no need for disembarking at the Isthmus of Suez. The writers who thus curtailed Africa of its true proportions assumed another continent south of it, which, however, was in the torrid zone, and completely uninhabitable.
Now the north-west coast of Africa was known in Prince Henry's days as far as Cape Bojador. It would appear that Norman sailors had already advanced beyond Cape Non, or Nun, which was so called because it was supposed that nothing existed beyond it. Consequently the problems that Prince Henry had to solve were whether the coast of Africa trended sharply to the east after Cape Bojador, and whether the ideas of the ancients about the uninhabitability of the torrid zone were justified by fact. He attempted to solve these problems by sending out, year after year, expeditions down the north-west coast of Africa, each of which penetrated farther than its predecessor. Almost at the beginning he was rewarded by the discovery, or re-discovery, of Madeira in 1420, by João Gonsalvez Zarco, one of the squires of his household. For some time he was content with occupying this and the neighbouring island of Porto Santo, which, however, was ruined by the rabbits let loose upon it. On Madeira vines from Burgundy were planted, and to this day form the chief industry of the island. In 1435 Cape Bojador was passed, and in 1441 Cape Branco discovered. Two years later Cape Verde was reached and passed by Nuno Tristão, and for the first time there were signs that the African coast trended eastward. By this time Prince Henry's men had become familiar with the natives along the shore and no less than one thousand of them had been brought back and distributed among the Portuguese nobles as pages and attendants. In 1455 a Venetian, named Alvez Cadamosto, undertook a voyage still farther south for purposes of trade, the Prince supplying the capital, and covenanting for half profits on results. They reached the mouth of the Gambia, but found the natives hostile. Here for the first time European navigators lost sight of the pole-star and saw the brilliant constellation of the Southern Cross. The last discovery made during Prince Henry's life was that of the Cape Verde Islands, by one of his captains, Diogo Gomez, in 1460—the very year of his death. As the successive discoveries were made, they were jotted down by the Prince's cartographers on portulanos, and just before his death the King of Portugal sent to a Venetian monk, Fra Mauro, details of all discoveries up to that time, to be recorded on a mappa mundi, a copy of which still exists (p. 77).
The impulse thus given by Prince Henry's patient investigation of the African coast continued long after his death. In 1471 Fernando de Poo discovered the island which now bears his name, while in the same year Pedro d'Escobar crossed the equator. Wherever the Portuguese investigators landed they left marks of their presence, at first by erecting crosses, then by carving on trees Prince Henry's motto, "Talent de bien faire," and finally they adopted the method of erecting stone pillars, surmounted by a cross, and inscribed with the king's arms and name. These pillars were called padraos. In 1484, Diego Cam, a knight of the king's household, set up one of these pillars at the mouth of a large river, which he therefore called the Rio do Padrao; it was called by the natives the Zaire, and is now known as the River Congo. Diego Cam was, on this expedition, accompanied by Martin Behaim of Nürnberg, whose globe is celebrated in geographical history as the last record of the older views (p. 115).
Meanwhile, from one of the envoys of the native kings who visited the Portuguese Court, information was received that far to the east of the countries hitherto discovered there was a great Christian king. This brought to mind the mediæval tradition of Prester John, and accordingly the Portuguese determined to make a double attempt, both by sea and by land, to reach this monarch. By sea the king sent two vessels under the command of Bartholomew Diaz, while by land he despatched, in the following year, two men acquainted with Arabic, Pedro di Covilham and Affonso de Payba. Covilham reached Aden, and there took ship for Calicut, being the first Portuguese to sail the Indian Ocean. He then returned to Sofala, and obtained news of the Island of the Moon, now known as Madagascar. With this information he returned to Cairo, where he found ambassadors from João, two Jews, Abraham of Beja and Joseph of Lamejo. These he sent back with the information that ships that sailed down the coast of Guinea would surely reach the end of Africa, and when they arrived in the Eastern Ocean they should ask for Sofala and the Island of the Moon. Meanwhile Covilham returned to the Red Sea, and made his way into Abyssinia, where he married and settled down, transmitting from time to time information to Portugal which gave Europeans their first notions of Abyssinia.
The voyage by land in search of Prester John had thus been completely successful, while, at the same time, information had been obtained giving certain hopes of the voyage by sea. This had, in its way, been almost as successful, for Diaz had rounded the cape now known as the Cape of Good Hope, but to which he proposed giving the title of Cabo Tormentoso, or "Stormy Cape." King João, however, recognising that Diaz's voyage had put the seal upon the expectations with which Prince Henry had, seventy years before, started his series of explorations, gave it the more auspicious name by which it is now known.
For some reason which has not been adequately explained, no further attempt was made for nearly ten years to carry out the final consummation of Prince Henry's plan by sending out another expedition. In the meantime, as we shall see, Columbus had left Portugal, after a mean attempt had been made by the king to carry out his novel plan of reaching India without his aid; and, as a just result, the discovery of a western voyage to the Indies (as it was then thought) had been successfully accomplished by Columbus, in the service of the Catholic monarchs of Spain, in 1492. This would naturally give pause to any attempt at reaching India by the more cumbersome route of coasting along Africa, which had turned out to be a longer process than Prince Henry had thought. Three years after Columbus's discovery King João died, and his son and successor Emmanuel did not take up the traditional Portuguese method of reaching India till the third year of his reign.
By this time it had become clear, from Columbus's second voyage, that there were more difficulties in the way of reaching the Indies by his method than had been thought; and the year after his return from his second voyage in 1496, King Emmanuel determined on once more taking up the older method. He commissioned Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of his court, to attempt the eastward route to India with three vessels, carrying in all about sixty men. Already by this time Columbus's bold venture into the unknown seas had encouraged similar boldness in others, and instead of coasting down the whole extent of the western coast of Africa, Da Gama steered direct for Cape Verde Islands, and thence out into the ocean, till he reached the Bay of St. Helena, a little to the north of the Cape of Good Hope.
For a time he was baffled in his attempt to round the Cape by the strong south-easterly winds, which blow there continually during the summer season; but at last he commenced coasting along the eastern shores of Africa, and at every suitable spot he landed some of his sailors to make inquiries about Covilham and the court of Prester John. But in every case he found the ports inhabited by fanatical Moors, who, as soon as they discovered that their visitors were Christians, attempted to destroy them, and refused to supply them with pilots for the further voyage to India. This happened at Mozambique, at Quiloa, and at Mombasa, and it was not till he arrived at Melinda that he was enabled to obtain provisions and a pilot, Malemo Cana, an Indian of Guzerat, who was quite familiar with the voyage to Calicut. Under his guidance Gama's fleet went from Melinda to Calicut in twenty-three days. Here the Zamorin, or sea-king, displayed the same antipathy to his Christian visitors. The Mohammedan traders of the place recognised at once the dangerous rivalry which the visit of the Portuguese implied, with their monopoly of the Eastern trade, and represented Gama and his followers as merely pirates. Vasco, however, by his firm behaviour, managed to evade the machinations of his trade rivals, and induced the Zamorin to regard favourably an alliance with the Portuguese king. Contenting himself with this result, he embarked again, and after visiting Melinda, the only friendly spot he had found on the east coast of Africa, he returned to Lisbon in September 1499, having spent no less than two years on the voyage. King Emmanuel received him with great favour, and appointed him Admiral of the Indies.
The significance of Vasco da Gama's voyage was at once seen by the persons whose trade monopoly it threatened—the Venetians, and the Sultan of Egypt. Priuli, the Venetian chronicler, reports: "When this news reached Venice the whole city felt it greatly, and remained stupefied, and the wisest held it as the worst news that had ever arrived"—as indeed they might, for it prophesied the downfall of the Venetian Empire. The Sultan of Egypt was equally moved, for the greatest source of his riches was derived from the duty of five per cent. which he levied on all merchandise entering his dominions, and ten per cent. upon all goods exported from them. Hitherto there had been all manner of bickerings between Venice and Egypt, but this common danger brought them together. The Sultan represented to Venice the need of common action in order to drive away the new commerce; but Egypt was without a navy, and had indeed no wood suitable for shipbuilding. The Venetians took the trouble to transmit wood to Cairo, which was then carried by camels to Suez, where a small fleet was prepared to attack the Portuguese on their next visit to the Indian Ocean.
The Portuguese had in the meantime followed up Vasco da Gama's voyage with another attempt, which was, in its way, even more important. In 1500 the king sent no less than thirteen ships under the command of Pedro Alvarez Cabral, with Franciscans to convert, and twelve hundred fighting men to overawe, the Moslems of the Indian Ocean. He determined on steering even a more westerly course than Vasco da Gama, and when he arrived in 17° south of the line, he discovered land which he took possession of in the name of Portugal, and named Santa Cruz. The actual cross which he erected on this occasion is still preserved in Brazil, for Cabral had touched upon the land now known by that name. It is true that one of Columbus's companions, Pinzon, had already touched upon the coast of Brazil before Cabral, but it is evident from his experience that, even apart from Columbus, the Portuguese would have discovered the New World sooner or later. It is, however, to be observed that in stating this, as all historians do, they leave out of account the fact that, but for Columbus, sailors would still have continued the old course of coasting along the shore, by which they would never have left the Old World. Cabral lost several of his ships and many of his men, and, though he brought home a rich cargo, was not regarded as successful, and Vasco da Gama was again sent out with a large fleet in 1502, with which he conquered the Zamorin of Calicut and obtained rich treasures. In subsidiary voyages the Portuguese navigators discovered the islands of St. Helena, Ascension, the Seychelles, Socotra, Tristan da Cunha, the Maldives, and Madagascar.
Meanwhile King Emmanuel was adopting the Venetian method of colonisation, which consisted in sending a Vice-Doge to each of its colonies for a term of two years, during which his duty was to encourage trade and to collect tribute. In a similar way, Emmanuel appointed a Viceroy for his Eastern trade, and in 1505 Almeida had settled in Ceylon, with a view to monopolising the cinnamon trade of that place.
But the greatest of the Portuguese viceroys was Affonso de Albuquerque, who captured the important post of Goa, on the mainland of India, which still belongs to Portugal, and the port of Ormuz, which, we have seen, was one of the centres of the Eastern trade. Even more important was the capture of the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, which were discovered in 1511, after the Portuguese had seized Malacca. By 1521 the Portuguese had full possession of the Spice Islands, and thus held the trade of condiments entirely in their own hands. The result was seen soon in the rise of prices in the European markets. Whereas at the end of the fifteenth century pepper, for instance, was about 17s. a pound, from 1521 and onwards its average price grew to be 25s., and so with almost all the ingredients by which food could be made more tasty. One of the circumstances, however, which threw the monopoly into the hands of the Portuguese was the seizure of Egypt in 1521 by the Turks under Selim I., which would naturally derange the course of trade from its old route through Alexandria. From the Moluccas easy access was found to China, and ultimately to Japan, so that the Portuguese for a time held in their hands the whole of the Eastern trade, on which Europe depended for most of its luxuries.
As we shall see, the Portuguese only won by a neck—if we may use a sporting expression—in the race for the possession of the Spice Islands. In the very year they obtained possession of them, Magellan, on his way round the world, had reached the Philippines, within a few hundred miles of them, and his ship, the Victoria, actually sailed through them that year. In fact, 1521 is a critical year in the discovery of the world, for both the Spanish and Portuguese (the two nations who had attempted to reach the Indies eastward and westward) arrived at the goal of their desires, the Spice Islands, in that same year, while the closure of Egypt to commerce occurred opportunely to divert the trade into the hands of the Portuguese. Finally, the year 1521 was signalised by the death of King Emmanuel of Portugal, under whose auspices the work of Prince Henry the Navigator was completed.
It must here be observed that we are again anticipating matters. As soon as the discovery of the New World was announced, the Pope was appealed to, to determine the relative shares of Spain and Portugal in the discoveries which would clearly follow upon Columbus's voyage. By his Bull, dated 4th May 1493, Alexander VI. granted all discoveries to the west to Spain, leaving it to be understood that all to the east belonged to Portugal. The line of demarcation was an imaginary one drawn from pole to pole, and passing one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands, which were supposed, in the inaccurate geography of the time, to be in the same meridian. In the following year the Portuguese monarch applied for a revision of the raya, as this would keep him out of all discovered in the New World altogether; and the line of demarcation was then shifted 270 leagues westward, or altogether 1110 miles west of the Cape Verdes. By a curious coincidence, within six years Cabral had discovered Brazil, which fell within the angle thus cut off by the raya from South America. Or was it entirely a coincidence? May not Cabral have been directed to take this unusually westward course in order to ascertain if any land fell within the Portuguese claims? When, however, the Spice Islands were discovered, it remained to be discussed whether the line of demarcation, when continued on the other side of the globe, brought them within the Spanish or Portuguese "sphere of influence," as we should say nowadays. By a curious chance they happened to be very near the line, and, with the inaccurate maps of the period, a pretty subject of quarrel was afforded between the Portuguese and Spanish commissioners who met at Badajos to determine the question. This was left undecided by the Junta, but by a family compact, in 1529, Charles V. ceded to his brother-in-law, the King of Portugal, any rights he might have to the Moluccas, for the sum of 350,000 gold ducats, while he himself retained the Philippines, which have been Spanish ever since.
By this means the Indian Ocean became, for all trade purposes, a Portuguese lake throughout the sixteenth century, as will be seen from the preceding map, showing the trading stations of the Portuguese all along the shores of the ocean. But they only possessed their monopoly for fifty years, for in 1580 the Spanish and Portuguese crowns became united on the head of Philip II., and by the time Portugal recovered its independence, in 1640, serious rivals had arisen to compete with her and Spain for the monopoly of the Eastern trade.
TO THE INDIES WESTWARD—THE SPANISH ROUTE—COLUMBUS AND MAGELLAN
While the Portuguese had, with slow persistency, devoted nearly a century to carrying out Prince Henry's idea of reaching the Indies by the eastward route, a bold yet simple idea had seized upon a Genoese sailor, which was intended to achieve the same purpose by sailing westward. The ancients, as we have seen, had recognised the rotundity of the earth, and Eratosthenes had even recognised the possibility of reaching India by sailing westward. Certain traditions of the Greeks and the Irish had placed mysterious islands far out to the west in the Atlantic, and the great philosopher Plato had imagined a country named Atlantis, far out in the Indian Ocean, where men were provided with all the gifts of nature. These views of the ancients came once more to the attention of the learned, owing to the invention of printing and the revival of learning, when the Greek masterpieces began to be made accessible in Latin, chiefly by fugitive Greeks from Constantinople, which had been taken by the Turks in 1453. Ptolemy's geography was printed at Rome in 1462, and with maps in 1478. But even without the maps the calculation which he had made of the length of the known world tended to shorten the distance between Portugal and Farther India by 2500 miles. Since his time the travels of Marco Polo had added to the knowledge of Europe the vast extent of Cathay and the distant islands of Zipangu (Japan), which would again reduce the distance by another 1500 miles. As the Greek geographers had somewhat under-estimated the whole circuit of the globe, it would thus seem that Zipangu was not more than 4000 miles to the west of Portugal. As the Azores were considered to be much farther off from the coast than they really were, it might easily seem, to an enthusiastic mind, that Farther India might be reached when 3000 miles of the ocean had been traversed.
This was the notion that seized the mind of Christopher Columbus, born at Genoa in 1446, of humble parentage, his father being a weaver. He seems to have obtained sufficient knowledge to enable him to study the works of the learned, and of the ancients in Latin translations. But in his early years he devoted his attention to obtaining a practical acquaintance with seamanship. In his day, as we have seen, Portugal was the centre of geographical knowledge, and he and his brother Bartolomeo, after many voyages north and south, settled at last in Lisbon—his brother as a map-maker, and himself as a practical seaman. This was about the year 1473, and shortly afterwards he married Felipa Moñiz, daughter of Bartolomeo Perestrello, an Italian in the service of the King of Portugal, and for some time Governor of Madeira.
Now it chanced just at this time that there was a rumour in Portugal that a certain Italian philosopher, named Toscanelli, had put forth views as to the possibility of a westward voyage to Cathay, or China, and the Portuguese king had, through a monk named Martinez, applied to Toscanelli to know his views, which were given in a letter dated 25th June 1474. It would appear that, quite independently, Columbus had heard the rumour, and applied to Toscanelli, for in the latter's reply he, like a good business man, shortened his answer by giving a copy of the letter he had recently written to Martinez. What was more important and more useful, Toscanelli sent a map showing in hours (or degrees) the probable distance between Spain and Cathay westward. By adding the information given by Marco Polo to the incorrect views of Ptolemy about the breadth of the inhabited world, Toscanelli reduced the distance from the Azores to 52°, or 3120 miles. Columbus always expressed his indebtedness to Toscanelli's map for his guidance, and, as we shall see, depended upon it very closely, both in steering, and in estimating the distance to be traversed. Unfortunately this map has been lost, but from a list of geographical positions, with latitude and longitude, founded upon it, modern geographers have been able to restore it in some detail, and a simplified sketch of it may be here inserted, as perhaps the most important document in Columbus's career.
Certainly, whether he had the idea of reaching the Indies by a westward voyage before or not, he adopted Toscanelli's views with enthusiasm, and devoted his whole life henceforth to trying to carry them into operation.
He gathered together all the information he could get about the fabled islands of the Atlantic—the Island of St. Brandan, where that Irish saint found happy mortals; and the Island of Antilla, imagined by others, with its seven cities. He gathered together all the gossip he could hear—of mysterious corpses cast ashore on the Canaries, and resembling no race of men known to Europe; of huge canes, found on the shores of the same islands, evidently carved by man's skill. Curiously enough, these pieces of evidence were logically rather against the existence of a westward route to the Indies than not, since they indicated an unknown race, but, to an enthusiastic mind like Columbus's, anything helped to confirm him in his fixed idea, and besides, he could always reply that these material signs were from the unknown island of Zipangu, which Marco Polo had described as at some distance from the shores of Cathay.
He first approached, as was natural, the King of Portugal, in whose land he was living, and whose traditional policy was directed to maritime exploration. But the Portuguese had for half a century been pursuing another method of reaching India, and were not inclined to take up the novel idea of a stranger, which would traverse their long-continued policy of coasting down Africa. A hearing, however, was given to him, but the report was unfavourable, and Columbus had to turn his eyes elsewhere. There is a tradition that the Portuguese monarch and his advisers thought rather more of Columbus's ideas at first; and attempted secretly to put them into execution; but the pilot to whom they entrusted the proposed voyage lost heart as soon as he lost sight of land, and returned with an adverse verdict on the scheme. It is not known whether Columbus heard of this mean attempt to forestall him, but we find him in 1487 being assisted by the Spanish Court, and from that time for the next five years he was occupied in attempting to induce the Catholic monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, to allow him to try his novel plan of reaching the Indies. The final operations in expelling the Moors from Spain just then engrossed all their attention and all their capital, and Columbus was reduced to despair, and was about to give up all hopes of succeeding in Spain, when one of the great financiers, a converted Jew named Luis de Santaguel, offered to find means for the voyage, and Columbus was recalled.
On the 19th April 1492 articles were signed, by which Columbus received from the Spanish monarchs the titles of Admiral and Viceroy of all the lands he might discover, as well as one-tenth of all the tribute to be derived from them; and on Friday the 3rd August, of the same year, he set sail in three vessels, entitled the Santa Maria (the flagship), the Pinta, and the Nina. He started from the port of Palos, first for the Canary Islands. These he left on the 6th September, and steered due west. On the 13th of that month, Columbus observed that the needle of the compass pointed due north, and thus drew attention to the variability of the compass. By the 21st September his men became mutinous and tried to force him to return. He induced them to continue, and four days afterwards the cry of "Land! land!" was heard, which kept up their spirits for several days, till, on the 1st October, large numbers of birds were seen. By that time Columbus had reckoned that he had gone some 710 leagues from the Canaries, and if Zipangu were in the position that Tostanelli's map gave it, he ought to have been in its neighbourhood. It was reckoned in those days that a ship on an average could make four knots an hour, dead reckoning, which would give about 100 miles a day, so that Columbus might reckon on passing over the 3100 miles which he thought intervened between the Azores and Japan in about thirty-three days. All through the early days of October his courage was kept up by various signs of the nearness of land—birds and branches—while on the 11th October, at sunset, they sounded, and found bottom; and at ten o'clock, Columbus, sitting in the stern of his vessel, saw a light, the first sure sign of land after thirty-five days, and in near enough approximation to Columbus's reckoning to confirm him in the impression that he was approaching the mysterious land of Zipangu. Next morning they landed on an island, called by the natives Guanahain, and by Columbus San Salvador. This has been identified as Watling Island. His first inquiry was as to the origin of the little plates of gold which he saw in the ears of the natives. They replied that they came from the West—another confirmation of his impression. Steering westward, they arrived at Cuba, and afterwards at Hayti (St. Domingo). Here, however, the Santa Maria sank, and Columbus determined to return, to bring the good news, after leaving some of his men in a fort at Hayti. The return journey was made in the Nina in even shorter time to the Azores, but afterwards severe storms arose, and it was not till the 15th March 1493 that he reached Palos, after an absence of seven and a half months, during which everybody thought that he and his ships had disappeared.
He was naturally received with great enthusiasm by the Spaniards, and after a solemn entry at Barcelona he presented to Ferdinand and Isabella the store of gold and curiosities carried by some of the natives of the islands he had visited. They immediately set about fitting out a much larger fleet of seven vessels, which started from Cadiz, 25th September 1493. He took a more southerly course, but again reached the islands now known as the West Indies. On visiting Hayti he found the fort destroyed, and no traces of the men he had left there. It is needless for our purposes to go through the miserable squabbles which occurred on this and his subsequent voyages, which resulted in Columbus's return to Spain in chains and disgrace. It is only necessary for us to say that in his third voyage, in 1498, he touched on Trinidad, and saw the coast of South America, which he supposed to be the region of the Terrestrial Paradise. This was placed by the mediæval maps at the extreme east of the Old World. Only on his fourth voyage, in 1502, did he actually touch the mainland, coasting along the shores of Central America in the neighbourhood of Panama. After many disappointments, he died, 20th May 1506, at Valladolid, believing, as far as we can judge, to the day of his death, that what he had discovered was what he set out to seek—a westward route to the Indies, though his proud epitaph indicates the contrary:—
| A Castilla y á Leon | | To Castille and to Leon |
| Nuevo mondo dió Colon. | | A NEW WORLD gave Colon.[1] |
[Footnote 1: Columbus's Spanish name was Cristoval Colon.]
To this day his error is enshrined in the name we give to the Windward and Antilles Islands—West Indies: in other words, the Indies reached by the westward route. If they had been the Indies at all, they would have been the most easterly of them.
Even if Columbus had discovered a new route to Farther India, he could not, as we have seen, claim the merit of having originated the idea, which, even in detail, he had taken from Toscanelli. But his claim is even a greater one. He it was who first dared to traverse unknown seas without coasting along the land, and his example was the immediate cause of all the remarkable discoveries that followed his earlier voyages. As we have seen, both Vasco da Gama and Cabral immediately after departed from the slow coasting route, and were by that means enabled to carry out to the full the ideas of Prince Henry; but whereas, by the Portuguese method of coasting, it had taken nearly a century to reach the Cape of Good Hope, within thirty years of Columbus's first venture the whole globe had been circumnavigated.
The first aim of his successors was to ascertain more clearly what it was that Columbus had discovered. Immediately after Columbus's third, voyage, in 1498, and after the news of Vasco da Gama's successful passage to the Indies had made it necessary to discover some strait leading from the "West Indies" to India itself, a Spanish gentleman, named Hojeda, fitted out an expedition at his own expense, with an Italian pilot on board, named Amerigo Vespucci, and tried once more to find a strait to India near Trinidad. They were, of course, unsuccessful, but they coasted along and landed on the north coast of South America, which, from certain resemblances, they termed Little Venice (Venezuela). Next year, as we have seen, Cabral, in following Vasco da Gama, hit upon Brazil, which turned out to be within the Portuguese "sphere of influence," as determined by the line of demarcation.
But, three months previous to Cabral's touching upon Brazil, one of Columbus's companions on his first voyage, Vincenta Yanez Pinzon, had touched on the coast of Brazil, eight degrees south of the line, and from there had worked northward, seeking for a passage which would lead west to the Indies. He discovered the mouth of the Amazon, but, losing two of his vessels, returned to Palos, which he reached in September 1500.
This discovery of an unknown and unsuspected continent so far south of the line created great interest, and shortly after Cabral's return Amerigo Vespucci was sent out in 1501 by the King of Portugal as pilot of a fleet which should explore the new land discovered by Cabral and claim it for the Crown of Portugal. His instructions were to ascertain how much of it was within the line of demarcation. Vespucci reached the Brazilian coast at Cape St. Roque, and then explored it very thoroughly right down to the river La Plata, which was too far west to come within the Portuguese sphere. Amerigo and his companions struck out south-eastward till they reached the island of St. Georgia, 1200 miles east of Cape Horn, where the cold and the floating ice drove them back, and they returned to Lisbon, after having gone farthest south up to their time.
This voyage of Amerigo threw a new light upon the nature of the
discovery made by Columbus. Whereas he had thought he had discovered
a route to India and had touched upon Farther India, Amerigo and his
companions had shown that there was a hitherto unsuspected land
intervening between Columbus's discoveries and the long-desired Spice
Fig. 15
AMERIGO VESPUCCI.
Islands of Farther India. Amerigo, in describing his discoveries,
ventured so far as to suggest that they constituted a New World;
and a German professor, named Martin
Waldseemüller, who wrote an introduction to Cosmography in
1506, which included an account of Amerigo's discoveries, suggested
that this New World should be called after him, AMERICA, after the
analogy of Asia, Africa, and Europe. For a long time the continent
which we now know as South America was called simply the New World,
and was supposed to be joined on to the east coast of Asia. The
name America was sometimes applied to it—not altogether
inappropriately, since it was Amerigo's voyage which definitely
settled that really new lands had been discovered by the western
route; and when it was further ascertained that this new land was
joined, not to Asia, but to another continent as large as itself,
the two new lands were distinguished as North and South America.
It was, at any rate, clear from Amerigo's discovery that the westward route to the Spice Islands would have to be through or round this New World discovered by him, and a Portuguese noble, named Fernao Magelhaens, was destined to discover the practicability of this route. He had served his native country under Almeida and Albuquerque in the East Indies, and was present at the capture of Malacca in 1511, and from that port was despatched by Albuquerque with three ships to visit the far-famed Spice Islands. They visited Amboyna and Banda, and learned enough of the abundance and cheapness of the spices of the islands to recognise their importance; but under the direction of Albuquerque, who only sent them out on an exploring expedition, they returned to him, leaving behind them, however, one of Magelhaens' greatest friends, Francisco Serrao, who settled in Ternate and from time to time sent glowing accounts of the Moluccas to his friend Magelhaens. He in the meantime returned to Portugal, and was employed on an expedition to Morocco. He was not, however, well treated by the Portuguese monarch, and determined to leave his service for that of Charles V., though he made it a condition of his entering his service that he should make no discoveries within the boundaries of the King of Portugal, and do nothing prejudicial to his interests.
This was in the year 1517, and two years elapsed before Magelhaens
started on his celebrated voyage. He had represented to the Emperor
that he was convinced that a strait existed which would lead into
the Indian Ocean, past the New World of Amerigo, and that the Spice
Islands were beyond the line of demarcation and within the Spanish
sphere of influence. There is some evidence that Spanish merchant
vessels, trading secretly to obtain Brazil wood, had already caught
sight of the strait afterwards named after Magelhaens, and certainly
such a strait is represented upon Schoner's globes dated 1515 and
1520—earlier than Magelhaens' discovery. The Portuguese were
fully aware of the dangers threatened to their monopoly of the spice
trade—which by this time had been firmly established—owing
to the presence of Serrao in Ternate, and did all in their power
to dissuade Charles from
sending out the threatened expedition, pointing out that they would
consider it an unfriendly act if such an expedition were permitted
to start. Notwithstanding this the Emperor persisted in the project,
and on Tuesday, 20th September 1519, a fleet of five vessels, the
Trinidad, St. Antonio, Concepcion, Victoria, and St.
Jago, manned by a heterogeneous collection of Spaniards, Portuguese,
Basques, Genoese, Sicilians, French, Flemings, Germans, Greeks,
Neapolitans, Corfiotes, Negroes, Malays, and a single Englishman
(Master Andrew of Bristol), started from Seville upon perhaps the
most important voyage of discovery ever made. So great was the
antipathy between Spanish and Portuguese that disaffection broke
out almost from the start, and after the mouth of the La Plata
had been carefully explored, to ascertain whether this was not
really the beginning of a passage through the New World, a mutiny
broke out on the 2nd April 1520, in Port St. Julian, where it had
been determined to winter; for of course by this time the sailors
had become aware that the time of the seasons was reversed in the
Southern Hemisphere. Magelhaens showed great firmness and skill in
dealing with the mutiny; its chief leaders were either executed or
marooned, and on the 18th October he resumed his voyage. Meanwhile
the habits and customs of the natives had been observed—their
huge height and uncouth foot-coverings, for which Magelhaens gave
them the name of Patagonians. Within three days they had arrived
at the entrance of
the passage which still bears Magelhaens' name. By this time one of
the ships, the St Jago, had been lost, and it was with only
four of his vessels—the Trinidad, the Victoria, the
Concepcion. and the St. Antonio—that, Magelhaens
Fig. 16
FERDINAND MAGELLAN.
began his passage. There are many twists and divisions in the strait,
and on arriving at one of the partings, Magelhaens despatched the
St. Antonio to explore it, while he proceeded with the other
three ships along the more direct route. The pilot of the St.
Antonio
had been one of the mutineers, and persuaded the crew to seize this
opportunity to turn back altogether; so that when Magelhaens arrived
at the appointed place of junction, no news could be ascertained of
the missing vessel; it went straight back to Portugal. Magelhaens
determined to continue his search, even, he said, if it came to
eating the leather thongs of the sails. It had taken him thirty-eight
days to get through the Straits, and for four months afterwards
Magelhaens continued his course through the ocean, which, from
its calmness, he called Pacific; taking a north-westerly course,
and thus, by a curious chance, only hitting upon a couple of small
uninhabited islands throughout their whole voyage, through a sea
which we now know to be dotted by innumerable inhabited islands.
On the 6th March 1520 they had sighted the Ladrones, and obtained
much-needed provisions. Scurvy had broken out in its severest form,
and the only Englishman on the ships died at the Ladrones. From
there they went on to the islands now known as the Philippines,
one of the kings of which greeted them very favourably. As a reward
Magelhaens undertook one of his local quarrels, and fell in an
unequal fight at Mactan, 27th April 1521. The three vessels continued
their course for the Moluccas, but the Concepcion proved
so unseaworthy that they had to beach and burn her. They reached
Borneo, and here Juan Sebastian del Cano was appointed captain
of the Victoria.
At last, on the 6th November 1521, they reached the goal of their journey, and anchored at Tidor, one of the Moluccas. They traded on very advantageous terms with the natives, and filled their holds with the spices and nutmegs for which they had journeyed so far; but when they attempted to resume their journey homeward, it was found that the Trinidad was too unseaworthy to proceed at once, and it was decided that the Victoria should start so as to get the east monsoon. This she did, and after the usual journey round the Cape of Good Hope, arrived off the Mole of Seville on Monday the 8th September 1522—three years all but twelve days from the date of their departure from Spain. Of the two hundred and seventy men who had started with the fleet, only eighteen returned in the Victoria. According to the ship's reckoning they had arrived on Sunday the 7th, and for some time it was a puzzle to account for the day thus lost.
Meanwhile the Trinidad, which had been left behind at the Moluccas, had attempted to sail back to Panama, and reached as far north as 43°, somewhere about longitude 175° W. Here provisions failed them, and they had to return to the Moluccas, where they were seized, practically as pirates, by a fleet of Portuguese vessels sent specially to prevent interference by the Spaniards with the Portuguese monopoly of the spice trade. The crew of the Trinidad were seized and made prisoners, and ultimately only four of them reached Spain again, after many adventures. Thirteen others, who had landed at the Cape de Verde Islands from the Victoria, may also be included among the survivors of the fleet, so that a total number of thirty-five out of two hundred and seventy sums up the number of the first circumnavigators of the globe.
The importance of this voyage was unique when regarded from the point of view of geographical discovery. It decisively clinched the matter with regard to the existence of an entirely New World independent from Asia. In particular, the backward voyage of the Trinidad (which has rarely been noticed) had shown that there was a wide expanse of ocean north of the line and east of Asia, whilst the previous voyage had shown the enormous extent of sea south of the line. After the circumnavigation of the Victoria it was clear to cosmographers that the world was much larger than had been imagined by the ancients; or rather, perhaps one may say that Asia was smaller than had been thought by the mediæval writers. The dogged persistence shown by Magelhaens in carrying out his idea, which turned out to be a perfectly justifiable one, raises him from this point of view to a greater height than Columbus, whose month's voyage brought him exactly where he thought he would find land according to Toscanelli's map. After Magelhaens, as will be seen, the whole coast lines of the world were roughly known, except for the Arctic Circle and for Australia.
The Emperor was naturally delighted with the result of the voyage.
He granted Del Cano a pension, and a coat of arms commemorating
Fig. 17
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY OF 1548.
his services. The terms of the grant are very significant: or,
two cinnamon sticks saltire proper, three nutmegs and twelve
cloves, a chief gules, a castle or; crest, a globe,
bearing the motto, "Primus circumdedisti me" (thou wert the first
to go round me); supporters, two Malay kings crowned, holding
in the exterior hand a spice branch proper. The castle, of course,
refers to Castile, but the rest of the blazon indicates the importance
attributed to the voyage as resting mainly upon the visit to the
Spice Islands. As we have already seen, however, the Portuguese
recovered their position in the Moluccas immediately after the
departure of the Victoria, and seven years later Charles
V. gave up any claims he might possess through Magelhaens' visit.
But for a long time afterwards the Spaniards still cast longing eyes upon the Spice Islands, and the Fuggers, the great bankers of Augsburg, who financed the Spanish monarch, for a long time attempted to get possession of Peru, with the scarcely disguised object of making it a "jumping-place" from which to make a fresh attempt at obtaining possession of the Moluccas. A modern parallel will doubtless occur to the reader.
There are thus three stages to be distinguished in the successive discovery and delimitation of the New World:—
(i.) At first Columbus imagined that he had actually reached Zipangu or Japan, and achieved the object of his voyage.
(ii.) Then Amerigo Vespucci, by coasting down South America, ascertained that there was a huge unknown land intervening even between Columbus' discoveries and the long-desired Spice Islands.
(iii.) Magelhaens clinches this view by traversing the Southern Pacific for thousands of miles before reaching the Moluccas.
There is still a fourth stage by which it was gradually discovered that the North-west of America was not joined on to Asia, but this stage was only gradually reached and finally determined by the voyages of Behring and Cook.
TO THE INDIES NORTHWARD—ENGLISH, FRENCH, DUTCH, AND RUSSIAN ROUTES
The discovery of the New World had the most important consequences on the relative importance of the different nations of Europe. Hitherto the chief centres for over two thousand years had been round the shores of the Mediterranean, and, as we have seen, Venice, by her central position and extensive trade to the East, had become a world-centre during the latter Middle Ages. But after Columbus, and still more after Magelhaens, the European nations on the Atlantic were found to be closer to the New World, and, in a measure, closer to the Spice Islands, which they could reach all the way by ship, instead of having to pay expensive land freights. The trade routes through Germany became at once neglected, and it is only in the present century that she has at all recovered from the blow given to her by the discovery of the new sea routes in which she could not join. But to England, France, and the Low Countries the new outlook promised a share in the world's trade and affairs generally, which they had never hitherto possessed while the Mediterranean was the centre of commerce. If the Indies could be reached by sea, they were almost in as fortunate a position as Portugal or Spain. Almost as soon as the new routes were discovered the Northern nations attempted to utilise them, notwithstanding the Bull of Partition, which the French king laughed at, and the Protestant English and Dutch had no reason to respect. Within three years of the return of Columbus from his first voyage, Henry VII. employed John Cabot, a Venetian settled in Bristol, with his three sons, to attempt the voyage to the Indies by the North-West Passage. He appears to have re-discovered Newfoundland in 1497, and then in the following year, failing to find a passage there, coasted down North America nearly as far as Florida.
In 1534 Jacques Cartier examined the river St. Lawrence, and his discoveries were later followed up by Samuel de Champlain, who explored some of the great lakes near the St. Lawrence, and established the French rule in Canada, or Acadie, as it was then called.
Meanwhile the English had made an attempt to reach the Indies, still by a northern passage, but this time in an easterly direction. Sebastian Cabot, who had been appointed Grand Pilot of England by Edward VI., directed a voyage of exploration in 1553, under Sir Hugh Willoughby. Only one of these ships, with the pilot (Richard Chancellor) on board, survived the voyage, reaching Archangel, and then going overland to Moscow, where he was favourably received by the Czar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible. He was, however, drowned on his return, and no further attempt to reach Cathay by sea was attempted.
The North-West Passage seemed thus to promise better than that by the North-East, and in 1576 Martin Frobisher started on an exploring voyage, after having had the honour of a wave of Elizabeth's hand as he passed Greenwich. He reached Greenland, and then Labrador, and, in a subsequent voyage next year, discovered the strait named after him. His project was taken up by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on whom, with his brother Adrian, Elizabeth conferred the privilege of making the passage to China and the Moluccas by the north-westward, north-eastward, or northward route. At the same time a patent was granted him for discovering any lands unsettled by Christian princes. A settlement was made in St. John's, Newfoundland, but on the return voyage, near the Azores, Sir Humphrey's "frigate" (a small boat of ten men), disappeared, after he had been heard to call out, "Courage, my lads; we are as near heaven by sea as by land!" This happened in 1583.
Two years after, another expedition was sent out by the merchants of London, under John Davis, who, on this and two subsequent voyages, discovered several passages trending westward, which warranted the hope of finding a northwest passage. Beside the strait named after him, it is probable that on his third voyage, in 1587, he passed through the passage now named after Hudson. His discoveries were not followed up for some twenty years, when Henry Hudson was despatched in 1607 with a crew of ten men and a boy. He reached Spitzbergen, and reached 80° N., and in the following year reached the North (Magnetic) Pole, which was then situated at 75.22° N. Two of his men were also fortunate enough to see a mermaid—probably an Eskimo woman in her kayak. In a third voyage, in 1609, he discovered the strait and bay which now bear his name, but was marooned by his crew, and never heard of further. He had previously, for a time, passed into the service of the Dutch, and had guided them to the river named after him, on which New York now stands. The course of English discovery in the north was for a time concluded by the voyage of William Baffin in 1615, which resulted in the discovery of the land named after him, as well as many of the islands to the north of America.
Meanwhile the Dutch had taken part in the work of discovery towards the north. They had revolted against the despotism of Philip II., who was now monarch of both Spain and Portugal. At first they attempted to adopt a route which would not bring them into collision with their old masters; and in three voyages, between 1594 and 1597, William Barentz attempted the North-East Passage, under the auspices of the States-General. He discovered Cherry Island, and touched on Spitzbergen, but failed in the main object of his search; and the attention of the Dutch was henceforth directed to seizing the Portuguese route, rather than finding a new one for themselves.
The reason they were able to do this is a curious instance of Nemesis in history. Owing to the careful series of intermarriages planned out by Ferdinand of Arragon, the Portuguese Crown and all its possessions became joined to Spain in 1580 under Philip II., just a year after the northern provinces of the Netherlands had renounced allegiance to Spain. Consequently they were free to attack not alone Spanish vessels and colonies, but also those previously belonging to Portugal. As early as 1596 Cornelius Houtman rounded the Cape and visited Sumatra and Bantam, and within fifty, years the Dutch had replaced the Portuguese in many of their Eastern possessions. In 1614 they took Malacca, and with it the command of the Spice Islands; by 1658 they had secured full possession of Ceylon. Much earlier, in 1619, they had founded Batavia in Java, which they made the centre of their East Indian possessions, as it still remains.
The English at first attempted to imitate the Dutch in their East Indian policy. The English East India Company was founded by Elizabeth in 1600, and as early as 1619 had forced the Dutch to allow them to take a third share of the profits of the Spice Islands. In order to do this several English planters settled at Amboyna, but within four years trade rivalries had reached such a pitch that the Dutch murdered some of these merchants and drove the rest from the islands. As a consequence the English Company devoted its attention to the mainland of India itself, where they soon obtained possession of Madras and Bombay, and left the islands of the Indian Ocean mainly in possession of the Dutch. We shall see later the effect of this upon the history of geography, for it was owing to their possession of the East India Islands that the Dutch were practically the discoverers of Australia. One result of the Dutch East India policy has left its traces even to the present day. In 1651 they established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope, which only fell into English hands during the Napoleonic wars, when Napoleon held Holland.
Meanwhile the English had not lost sight of the possibilities of the North-East Passage, if not for reaching the Spice Islands, at any rate as a means of tapping the overland route to China, hitherto monopolised by the Genoese. In 1558 an English gentleman, named Anthony Jenkinson, was sent as ambassador to the Czar of Muscovy, and travelled from Moscow as far as Bokhara; but he was not very fortunate in his venture, and England had to be content for some time to receive her Indian and Chinese goods from the Venetian argosies as before. But at last they saw no reason why they should not attempt direct relations with the East. A company of Levant merchants was formed in 1583 to open out direct communications with Aleppo, Bagdad, Ormuz, and Goa. They were unsuccessful at the two latter places owing to the jealousy of the Portuguese, but they made arrangements for cheaper transit of Eastern goods to England, and in 1587 the last of the Venetian argosies, a great vessel of eleven hundred tons, was wrecked off the Isle of Wight. Henceforth the English conducted their own business with the East, and Venetian and Portuguese monopoly was at an end.
But the journeys of Chancellor and Jenkinson to the Court of Moscow
had more far-reaching effects; the Russians themselves were thereby
led to contemplate utilising their proximity to one of the best
known routes to the Far East. Shortly after Jenkinson's visit, the
Czar, Ivan the Terrible, began extending his dominions eastward,
sending at first a number of troops to accompany the Russian merchant
Strogonof as far as the Obi in search of sables. Among the troops
were a corps of six thousand Cossacks commanded by one named Vassili
Yermak, who, finding the Tartars an easy prey, determined at first
to set up a new kingdom for himself. In 1579 he was successful in
overcoming the Tartars and their chief town Sibir, near Tobolsk;
but, finding it difficult to retain his position, determined to
return to his allegiance to the Czar on condition of being supported.
This was readily granted, and from that time onward the Russians
steadily pushed on through to the unknown country of the north
of Asia, since named after the little town conquered by Yermak,
of which scarcely any traces now remain. As early as 1639 they
had reached
the Pacific under Kupilof. A force was sent out from Yakutz, on
the Lena, in 1643, which reached the Amur, and thus Russians came
for the first time in contact with the Chinese, and a new method
of reaching Cathay was thus obtained, while geography gained the
Fig. 18
RUSSIAN MAP OF ASIA, 1737.
knowledge of the extent of Northern Asia. For, about the same time
(in 1648), the Arctic Ocean was reached on the north shores of
Siberia, and a fleet under the Cossack Dishinef
sailed from Kolyma and reached as far as the straits known by the
name of Behring. It was not, however, till fifty years afterwards,
in 1696, that the Russians reached Kamtschatka.
Notwithstanding the access of knowledge which had been gained by these successive bold pushes towards north and east, it still remained uncertain whether Siberia did not join on to the northern part of the New World discovered by Columbus and Amerigo, and in 1728 Peter the Great sent out an expedition under VITUS BEHRING, a Dane in the Russian service, with the express aim of ascertaining this point. He reached Kamtschatka, and there built two vessels as directed by the Czar, and started on his voyage northward, coasting along the land. When he reached a little beyond 67° N., he found no land to the north or east, and conceived he had reached the end of the continent. As a matter of fact, he was within thirty miles of the west coast of America; but of this he does not seem to have been aware, being content with solving the special problem put before him by the Czar. The strait thus discovered by Behring, though not known by him to be a strait, has ever since been known by his name. In 1741, however, Behring again set out on a voyage of discovery to ascertain how far to the east America was, and within a fortnight had come within sight of the lofty mountain named by him Mount St. Elias. Behring himself died upon this voyage, on an island also named after him; he had at last solved the relation between the Old and the New Worlds.
These voyages of Behring, however, belong to a much later stage of discovery than those we have hitherto been treating for the last three chapters. His explorations were undertaken mainly for scientific purposes, and to solve a scientific problem, whereas all the other researches of Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch were directed to one end, that of reaching the Spice Islands and Cathay. The Portuguese at first started out on the search by the slow method of creeping down the coast of Africa; the Spanish, by adopting Columbus's bold idea, had attempted it by the western route, and under Magellan's still bolder conception had equally succeeded in reaching it in that way; the English and French sought for a north-west passage to the Moluccas; while the English and Dutch attempted a northeasterly route. In both directions the icy barrier of the north prevented success. It was reserved, as we shall see, for the present century to complete the North-West Passage under Maclure, and the North-East by Nordenskiold, sailing with quite different motives to those which first brought the mariners of England, France, and Holland within the Arctic Circle.
The net result of all these attempts by the nations of Europe to wrest from the Venetians the monopoly of the Eastern trade was to add to geography the knowledge of the existence of a New World intervening between the western shores of Europe and the eastern shores of Asia. We have yet to learn the means by which the New World thus discovered became explored and possessed by the European nations.