Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery Part 15

Meantime two of the other caravels and a pinnace, which had been separated early in the voyage from the main body, under the pilotage of the veteran Diniz Diaz, had also made their way to C. Verde, had fought with the natives in some desperate skirmishes--one knight had his "s.h.i.+eld stuck as full with arrows as the porcupine with quills," and had turned back in the face of the same discouragements as the rest; and so would have ended the whole of this great enterprise but for the dauntless energy of one captain and his crew.

Zarco of Madeira had given his caravel to his nephew with a special charge that, come what might, he was not to think of profit and trading, but of doing the will of the Prince his lord. He was not to land in the fatal Bay of Arguin, which had been the end of so many enterprises; he was to go as Diniz Diaz had first gone, straight to the land of the Negroes, and pa.s.s beyond the farthest of earlier sailors. Now the caravel, says Azurara proudly, was well equipped and was manned by a crew that was ready to bear hard s.h.i.+p, and the captain was full of energy and zeal, and so they went on steadily, sailing through the great Sea of Ocean till they came to the River of Nile, where they filled two pipes with water, of which they took back one to the city of Lisbon. And not even Alexander, though he was one of the monarchs of the world, ever drank of water that had been brought from so far as this.

"But now, still going on, they pa.s.sed C. Verde and landed upon the islands I have spoken of, to see if there were any people there, but they found only some tame goats without any one to tend them; and it was there that they made the signs that the others found on coming after, the arms of the Infant with his device and motto. And then drawing in close to the Cape, they waited to see if any canoes would come off to them, and anch.o.r.ed about a mile off the sh.o.r.e. But they had not waited long before two boats, with ten negroes in them, put off from the beach and made straight for the caravel, like men who came in peace and friends.h.i.+p. And being near, they began to make signs as if for a safe-conduct, which were answered in like manner, and then at once, without any other precaution, five of them came on board the caravel, where the captain made them all the entertainment that he could, bidding them eat and drink, and so they went away with signs of great contentment, but it appeared after, that in their hearts they meditated treachery. For as soon as they got to land they talked with the other natives on sh.o.r.e, and thinking that they could easily take the s.h.i.+p, with this intent there now set out six boats, with five and thirty or forty men, arrayed as those who come to fight, but when they came close they were afraid and stayed a little way off, without daring to make any attack. And seeing this, our men launched a boat on the other side of the caravel, where they could not be seen by the enemy, and manned it with eight rowers, who were to wait till the canoes came nearer to the s.h.i.+p. At last the negroes were tired of waiting and watching, and one of their canoes came up closer, in which were five strong warriors, and at once our boat rowed round the caravel and cut them off. And because of the great advantage that we had in our style of rowing, in a trice our men were upon them, and they having no hope of defence, threw themselves into the water, and the other boats made off for the sh.o.r.e. And our men had the greatest trouble in catching those that were swimming away, for they dived not a whit worse than cormorants, so that we could scarcely catch hold of them. One was taken, not very easily, on the spot, and another, who fought as desperately as two men, was wounded, and with these two the boat returned to the caravel.

"And for that they saw that it would not profit them to stay longer in that place, they resolved to see if they could find any new lands of which they might bring news to the Infant their lord. And so, sailing on again, they came to a cape, where they saw 'groves of palm trees dry and without branches, which they called the Cape of Masts.'" Here, a little farther along the coast, a reconnoitring party of seven landed and found four negro hunters sitting on the beach, armed with bows and arrows, who fled on seeing the strangers. "And as they were naked and their hair cut very short, they could not catch them," and only brought away their arrows for a trophy.

This Cape of Masts, or some point of the coast a little to the south-east, was the farthest now reached by Zarco's caravel. "From here they put back and sailed direct to Madeira, and thence to the city of Lisbon, where the Infant received them with reward enough. For this caravel, of all those who had sailed at this time (1445), had done most and reached farthest."

There was one contingent of the great armada yet unaccounted for, but they were sad defaulters. Three of the s.h.i.+ps on the outward voyage which had separated from the main body and Lancarote's flags.h.i.+p, had the cowardice or laziness to give up the purpose of the voyage altogether; "they agreed to make a descent on the Canary Islands instead of going to Guinea at all that year."

Here they stayed some time, raiding and slave-hunting, but also making observations on the natives and the different natural features of the different islands, which, as we have them in the old chronicle, are not the least interesting part of the story of the Lagos Armada of 1445.[38]

[Footnote 38: The date of this voyage is brought down as late as 1447 by Santarem Oliveiro Martins.]

CHAPTER XIV.

VOYAGES OF 1446-8.

And yet, but for the enterprise of Zarco's crew, this expedition of 1445 that began with so much promise, and on which so much time and trouble had been spent, was almost fruitless of "novelties," of discoveries, of the main end and object of all the Prince's voyages.

The next attempt, made by Nuno Tristam in 1446, ended in the most disastrous finish that had yet befallen the Christian seamen of Spain.

Nuno, who had been brought up from boyhood at the Prince's court, "seeing how earnest he was that his caravels should explore the land of the Negroes, and knowing how some had already pa.s.sed the River of Nile, thought that if he should not do something of right good service to the Infant in that land, he could in no wise gain the name of a brave knight.

"So he armed a caravel and began sail, not stopping anywhere that he might come straight to the Black Man's land. And pa.s.sing by Cape Verde he sailed on sixty leagues and found a river, where he judged there ought to be some people living. So he bade them lower two small boats and put ten men in the one and twelve in the other, which pulled straight towards some huts they sighted ahead of them. But before they could jump on sh.o.r.e, twelve canoes came out on the other side, and seventy or eighty Blackmoors in them, with bows in their hands, who began to shoot at our people." As the tide rose, one of the Guinea boats pa.s.sed them and landed its crew, "so that our men were between a fire from the land and a fire from the boats." They pulled back as hard as they could, but before they could get on board, four of them were lying dead.

"And so they began to make sail home again, leaving the boats in that they were not able to take charge of them. For of the twenty-two who went to land in them there did not escape more than two; nineteen were killed, for so deadly was the poison that with a tiny wound, a mere scratch that drew blood, it could bring a man to his last end. But above and beyond these was killed our n.o.ble knight, Nuno Tristam, earnestly desiring life, that he might die not a shameful death like this, but as a brave man should." Of seven who had been left in the caravel, two had been struck by the poisoned arrows as they tried to raise the anchors, and were long in danger of death, lying a good twenty days at the last gasp, without the power to raise a finger to help the others who were trying to get the caravel home, so that only five were left to work the s.h.i.+p.

Nuno's men were saved by the energy and skill of one--a mere boy, a page of the Infant's House--who took charge of the s.h.i.+p, and steered its course due north, then north by east, so that in two months' time they were off the coast of Portugal. But they were absolutely helpless and hopeless, knowing nothing of their whereabouts, for in all those two months they had had no glimpse of land,--so that when at last they caught sight of an armed fusta, they were "much troubled," supposing it to be a Moorish cruiser. When it came near and shewed itself to be a Gallician pirate, the poor fellows were almost wild with delight, still more when they found they were not far from Lagos. They had had a terrible time; first they were almost poisoned by the dead bodies of Nuno Tristam and the victims of the savages' poisoned arrows; then, when at last they had "thrown their honour to the winds and those bodies to the fishes," shamefaced and utterly broken in spirit, the five wretchedly ignorant seamen, who were now left alone, drifted, with the boundless and terrible ocean on one side, and the still more dangerous and unknown coast of Africa on the other, for sixty days. A common sailor, "little enough skilled in the art of sailing"; a groom of the Prince's chamber, the young hero who saved the s.h.i.+p; a negro boy, who was taken with the first captives from Guinea; and two other "little lads small enough,"--this was the crew. As for the rest, Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur, Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, cries the chronicler in that outburst of bewildered grief with which he ends his story. There were widows and orphans left for the Prince to care for, and "of these he took especial charge."

But all people were not so unlucky as Nuno Tristam. The caravel of Zarco of Madeira, which under Zarco's nephew, Alvaro Fernandez, had already pa.s.sed beyond every other in the year of the great armada, 1445, was sent back again on its errand "of doing service in the unknown lands of Guinea to the Lord Don Henry," in the black year, 1446. Its n.o.ble and valiant owner now "charged the aforesaid" Alvaro Fernandez, with the s.h.i.+p well armed, to go as far as he could, and to try and make some booty, that should be so new and so splendid that it would be a sign of his good-will to serve the Lord who had made him. So they sailed on straight to Cape Verde, and beyond that to the Cape of Masts (or Spindle Palms), their farthest of the year before, but they did not turn back here, in spite of unfriendly natives and unknown sh.o.r.es. Still coasting along, they found tracks of men, and a little farther on a village, "where the people came out as men who shewed that they meant to defend their homes; in front of them was a champion, with a good target on his arm and an a.s.segai in his hand. This fellow our captain rushed upon, and with a blow of his lance struck him dead upon the ground. Then, running up, he seized his sword and spear, and kept them as trophies to be offered to the Lord Infant." The negroes fled, and the conquerors turned back to their s.h.i.+p and sailed on. Next day they came to a land where they saw certain of the women of those negroes, and seized one who was of age about thirty, with her child a baby of two, and another, a young girl of fourteen, "the which had a good enough presence and beauty for that country"; but the strength of the woman was so wonderful, that she gave the three men who held her trouble enough to lift her into the boat. And seeing how they were kept struggling on the beach, they feared that some of the people of the country might come down upon them. So one of them put the child into the boat, and love of it forced the mother to go likewise, without much more pus.h.i.+ng.

Thence they went on, pursues the story, till they came to a river, into which they made an entrance with a boat, and carried off a woman that they found in a house. But going up the river somewhat farther, with a mind to make some good booty, there came out upon them four or five canoes full of negroes, armed as men who would fight for their country, whose encounter our men in the boat did not wish to await in face of the advantage of the enemy, and fearing above all the great peril of poisoned arrows. So they began to pull down stream as hard as they could towards the caravel; but as one of the canoes distanced the others and came up close to them, they turned upon it and in the fight one of the negroes shot a dart, that wounded the captain, Alvaro Fernandez, in the foot. But he, as he had been already warned of the poison, drew out the arrow very quickly and bathed it with acid and oil, and then anointed it well with theriack, and it pleased G.o.d that he pa.s.sed safely through a great trouble, though for some days he lay on the point of death. And so they got back to the caravel.

But though the captain was so badly wounded, the crew did not stop in following the coast and went on (all this was over quite new ground) till they came to a certain sand-spit, directly in front of a great bay.

Here they launched a boat, and rowed out to see the land they had come to, and at once there came out against them full 120 negroes, some with bows, others with s.h.i.+elds and a.s.segais, and when they reached the edge of the sea, they began to play and dance about, "like men clean wearied of all sadness, but our men in the boat wis.h.i.+ng to be excused from sharing in that festival of theirs, turned and rowed back to the s.h.i.+p."

Now all this was a good 110 leagues,--320 miles beyond Cape Verde, "mostly to the south of the aforesaid cape" (that is, about the place of Sierra Leone on our maps), and this caravel remained a longer time abroad and went farther than any other s.h.i.+p of that year, and but for the sickness of the wounded captain they would not have stopped there.

But as it was they came straight back to the Bank of Arguin, "where they met that chief Ahude Meymam, of whom we have spoken before," in the story of Joan Fernandez. And though they had no interpreter, by whom they might do their business, by signs they managed so that they were able to buy a negress, in exchange for certain cloths that they had with them. And so they came safe home. There was not much trouble now in getting volunteers for the work of discovery, and a reward of 200 doubloons--100 from Prince Henry, 100 more from the Regent Don Pedro--to the last bold explorers who had got fairly round Senegambia, added zest to enterprise.

In this same year 1446-7, no fewer than nine caravels sailed to Guinea from Portugal in another armada, on the track of Zarco's successful crew. At Madeira they were joined by two more, and the whole fleet sailed through the Canary island group to Cape Verde. Eight of them pa.s.sed sixty leagues, 180 miles, beyond, and found a river, the Rio Grande, "of good size enough," up which they sailed, except one s.h.i.+p, belonging to a Bishop--the Bishop of Algarve--"for that this happened to run upon a sand-bank, in such wise, that they were not able to get her off, though all the people on board were saved with the cargo. And while some of them were busy in this, others landed and found the country just deserted by its inhabitants, and going on to find them, they soon perceived that they had found a track, which they had chanced on near the place where they landed."

They followed this track recklessly enough, and nearly met the fate of Nuno Tristam. "For as they went on by that road, they came to a country with great sown fields, with plantations of cotton trees and rice plots, in a land full of hills like loaves, after which they came to a great wood," and as they were going into the wood, the Guineas came out upon them in great numbers, with bows and a.s.segais and saluted them with a shower of poisoned arrows. The first five Europeans fell dead at once, two others were desperately wounded, the rest escaped to the s.h.i.+ps, and the s.h.i.+ps went no farther that year.

Still worse was the fate of Vallarte's venture in the early months of 1448. Vallarte was a n.o.bleman of the Court of King Christopher of Denmark, who had been drawn to the Court of Henry at Sagres by the growing fame of the Prince's explorations, and who came forward with the stock request, "Give me a caravel to go to the land of the negroes."

A little beyond Cape Verde, Vallarte went on sh.o.r.e with a boat's crew and fell into the trap which had caught the exploring party of the year before. He and his men were surrounded by negroes and were shot down or captured to a man. But one escaped, swimming to the s.h.i.+p, and told how as he looked back over his shoulder to the sh.o.r.e, again and again, he saw Vallarte sitting a prisoner in the stern of the boat.

"And when the chronicle of these voyages was in writing at the end of the self-same year, there were brought certain prisoners from Guinea to Prince Henry, who told him that in a city of the upland, in the heart of Africa, there were four Christian prisoners." One had died, three were living, and in these four, men in Europe believed they had news of Vallarte and his men.

But between the last voyage of Zarco's caravel in 1446 and the first voyage of Cadamosto in 1455, there is no real advance in exploration.

The "third armada," as it was called, that is the fleet of the nine caravels of 1446-7, the voyage of Gomes Pires to the Rio d'Ouro at the same time, the trading ventures of the Marocco coast which were the means of bringing the first lion to Portugal in 1447, the expeditions to the Rio d'Ouro and to Arguin in the course of the same year, are not part of the story of discovery, but of trade. There is hardly a suspicion of exploring interest about most of them. Even Vallarte's venture in 1448 has nothing of the novelty which so many went out to find "for the satisfaction of the Lord Henry." Guinea voyages are frequent, almost constant, during these years, and this frequency has at any rate the point of making Europeans thoroughly familiar with the coast already explored, if it did little or nothing to bring in new knowledge.

But the value and meaning of Henry's life and work was not after all in commerce, except in a secondary sense; and these voyages of purely trading interest, with no design or at any rate no result of discovery, do not belong to our subject. Each one of them has its own picturesque beauty in the pages of the old chronicle of the Conquest of Guinea, but measured by its importance to the general story of the expansion of Europe, there is no lasting value in any one of the last chapters of Azurara's voyages,--his description of the Canaries, and of the "Inferno" of Teneriffe, "of how Madeira was peopled, and the other islands that are in that part, of how the caravel of Alvaro Dornellas took certain of the Canarians, of how Gomes Pires went to the Rio d'Ouro and of the Moors that he took, of the caravel that went to Meca (in Marocco) and of the Moors that were taken, of how Antam Gonsalvez received the island of Lancarote in the name of the Prince."

Only the chronicler's summary of results, up to the year 1446, the year of Nuno Tristam's failure, is of wider interest. "Till then there had been fifty-one caravels to those parts, which had gone 450 leagues (1350 miles) beyond the Cape (Boyador). And as it was found that the coast ran southward with many points, the Prince ordered these to be added to the sailing chart. And here it is to be noted, that what was clearly known before of the coast of the great sea was 200 leagues (600 miles), which have been increased by these 450. Also what had been laid down upon the Mappa Mundi was not true but was by guess work, but now 't is all from the survey by the eyes of our seamen. And now seeing that in this history we have given account sufficient of the first four reasons which brought our n.o.ble Prince to his attempt, it is time we said something of the accomplishment of his fifth object, the conversion of the Heathen, by the bringing of a number of infidel souls from their lands to this, the which by count were nine hundred and twenty-seven, of whom the greater part were turned into the true way of salvation. And what capture of town or city could be more glorious than this."

CHAPTER XV.

THE AZORES.

1431-1460.

We have now come very nearly to the end of the voyages that are described in the old _Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_, and setting aside the story of the famous Venetian Cadamosto, this is also the end of the African mainland-coasting of Henry's seamen.

Though he did not die till 1460, and we have now only reached the year 1448, for Azurara's solemn catalogue of negroes brought to Europe is reckoned only up to that year--"nine hundred and twenty-seven who had been turned into the true path of salvation,"--yet there is no more exploration in the last ten years of Henry's life worth noting, except what falls into this and two of the following chapters.

The first of these is Cadamosto's own record of his two voyages along the Guinea coast, in which he is supposed to have reached Cape Palmar, some five hundred miles beyond Cape Verde, and certainly reached the Gambia, whose great mouth, "like an arm of the sea," is well described in his journal.

The second is the "true account of the finding of the Cape Verde islands by Diego Gomez, servant of Don Henry," who writes the story of the Prince's death and was as faithful a servant as he had at his Court. But there is one other chapter of the exploration directed from Sagres and described by Azurara, which must find its place, and is best spoken of here and now, in the interval between the two most active periods of African coasting voyages. This is the story of the colonisation of the Azores, of the Western or Hawk islands, known to map-makers at least as early as 1351, for they figure clearly enough on the great Florentine chart of that year, though not reclaimed for Europe and Christendom till somewhere about 1430. These islands were found, says a legend, on the Catalan map of 1439, by Diego de Sevill, pilot of the King of Portugal, in 1427. But these islands were after all only two groups of the Archipelago, and the rediscovery or finding of the rest fell between the years 1432 and 1450.

The voyage of Diego de Sevill and Gonzalo Velho Cabral to the Azores, that is to the island of St. Mary and the Formigas, has been alluded to as among the earliest of Prince Henry's successes. But as it was out of this first attempt that the discovery of the whole group resulted, it has been necessary to refer to it again. Cabral, rewarded by his lord with the gift of his discoveries and living in St. Mary's island as "Captain Donatory" or Lord of the Land, was in charge of the colonisation of the islands he had already found, and of as many others as might come to light. He spent three years (1433-6) collecting men and means in Portugal and then settled in the "Western Isles" with some of the best families in this country.

With this, discovery seemed to have come to a standstill, but years after, somewhere about 1440-1 an odd chance started exploration westward once more. There was a hunt after a runaway slave, a negro, of course, from the continent, who had escaped to the top of the highest mountain in St. Mary. The weather was of the clearest, and he fancied that he saw far off on the horizon the outline of an unknown land. Was it another island? He knew his masters were there as explorers quite as much as colonisers, and he must often have heard their talk about the finding of new lands, and the will of their Lord the Prince that those new lands should at all costs be found, was no secret. That will had sent them there; that same will would secure their slave's pardon, if he came back from hiding with the news of a real discovery.

So he reasoned to himself; and he was right. The Prince, hearing the news, instantly consulted his ancient maps and found that these hinted at lands in the same direction as the slave had pointed out. He ordered Cabral to start at once in search of them. Cabral tried and missed. Then came a wonderful test of Henry's knowledge; he who had never been within a thousand miles of the place, proved to his captain that he had pa.s.sed between St. Mary and the unknown land, and correcting his course sent him out again, to seek and to find.

On the 8th of May, 1444, the new island was found "on the day of the apparition of St. Michael," and named after the festival. It is our modern "St. Michael of the Oranges."

As with the other islands so with this, colonisation followed discovery.

On the 29th of September, 1445, Cabral returned with Europeans, having before left only a few Moors to open up the country. Now on his return he found these wretched men frightened almost to death by the earthquakes that had kept them trembling since they first landed. "And if they had been able to get a boat, even the lightest, they would certainly have escaped in it." Cabral's pilot also, who had been with him before to that same island, declared that of the two great mountain peaks which he had noticed at the two ends of the island, east and west, only the Eastern was now standing. The slang name of "Azores" or "Hawks"

now began to take the place of the old term of "Western" islands, from the swarms of hawks or kites that were found in the new discovered St.

Michael, and in the others which came to light soon after. For the Third Group, "Terceira," was sighted between 1444-50, and added to the Portugal that was thus creeping slowly out towards the unknown West, as if in antic.i.p.ation of Columbus, throwing its outposts farther and farther into the ocean, as its pioneers grew more and more sure of their ground outside the Straits of Gibraltar. Some seamen of Prince Henry's, returning from "Guinea" to Spain, some adventurer trying to "win fame for himself with the Lord Infant," some merchants sent out to try their luck on the western side as so many had tried on the southern, some African coasters driven out of sight of land by contrary winds;--it may have been any of these, it must have been some one of them, who found the rest of the Azores, Terceira or the island of Jesus, St. George, Graciosa, Fayal, Flores, and Corvo.

Who were the discoverers is absolutely unknown. At this day we have only a few traces of the first colonisation, but of two things we may be pretty certain. First, that the Azores were all found and colonised in Henry's lifetime, and for the most part between 1430 and 1450. Second, that no definite purpose was formed of pus.h.i.+ng discovery beyond this group across the waste of waters to the west, and so of finding India from the "left" hand. Henry and all his school were quite satisfied, quite committed, to the south-east route. By coasting round the continent, not by venturing across the ocean, they hoped and meant to find their way to Malabar and Cathay. As to the settlement of these islands, a copy is still left of Henry's grant of the Captaincy of Terceira to the Fleming Jacques de Bruges.

The facts of the case were these. Jacques came to the Prince one day with a little request about the Hawk islands--that "within the memory of man the aforesaid islands had been under the aggressive lords.h.i.+p of none other than the Prince, and as the third of these islands called the island of Jesu Christ, was lying waste, he the said Jacques de Bruges begged that he might colonise the same. Which was granted to him with the succession to his daughters, as he had no heirs male."

For Jacques was a rich Fleming, who had come into the Prince's service, it would seem, with the introduction of the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, Don Henry's niece. Since then he had married into a n.o.ble house of Portugal, and now he was offering to take upon himself all the charges of his venture. Such a man was not lightly to be pa.s.sed over. His design was encouraged, and more than this his example was followed. An hidalgo named Sodre--Vincent Gil Sodre--took his family and adherents across to Terceira, the island of Jesu Christ, and from thence went on and settled in Graciosa, while another Fleming, Van der Haager, joining Van der Berge or De Bruges in Terceira with two s.h.i.+ps "fitted out at his own cost and filled with his own people and artisans, whom he had brought to work as in a new land," tried though unsuccessfully to colonise the island of St. George.