Chapter XL: How Alvaro Vasquez took the seven Moors (3)

_Ergim_, in ch. xxxiii, pp. 104, etc., and elsewhere, is, of course, Arguim. Santarem here refers to Barros' description in _Decade I_, i, 10. "Porque naquelle tempo para fazer algum proveito todos os hião demandar (os ilheos d'Arguim); e tinha por certo que avião elles de ir dar com elle, por ser aquella costa e os ilheos a mais povoada parte de quantas té então tinhão descoberto. E a causa de ser mais povoada, era por razão da pescaria de que aquella misera gente de Mouros Azenegues se mantinha, porque em toda aquella costa não avia lugar mais abrigado do impeto dos grandes mares que quebrão nas suas praias senão na paragem daquellas ilhas d'Arguim: onde o pescado tinha alguma acolheita, e lambujem da povoação dos Mouros, posto que as ilhas em si não são mais que huns ilheos escaldados dos ventos e rocio da agua das ondas do mar. Os quaes ilheos seis ou sete que elles são, quada hum per si tinha o nome proprio per que nesta scriptura os nomeamos, posto que ao presente todos se chamão per nome commum _os ilheos d'Arguim_; por causa de huma fortaleza que el Rei D. Affonso mandou fundar em hum delles chamado Arguim." Cf. Duarte Pacheco Pereira's _Esmeraldo_, chs. xxv-vi, pp. 43-4. _Arguim_ is defined in the most recent surveys of its present French possessors as "Golfe, île, et banc de sable ... l'île est par 20° 27' N. lat., 18° 57' à 60 kilom. vers le S.E. du Cap Blanc ... Ses dimensions sont de 7 kilom. sur 4. Elle est basse, inculte, et parsemée de dunes."]

[Endnote 98: (p. 107). _John Fernandez ... in that country._--Santarem draws attention to Azurara's statement that the explorer, Fernandez, was personally known to him. Cf. ch. lxxvii of this Chronicle; also chs. xxix and xxxii. "That country" is of course the Azanegue or Sahara land, near the Rio do Ouro.

_Setuval_ (p. 106) is in Estremadura (of Portugal), twenty miles south-east of Lisbon.]

[Endnote 99: (p. 110). _Fear to prolong my story ... though all would be profitable._--The fondness of Azurara for these scholastic discussions and useless displays of learning is one of his worst failings; and a good deal of Cerveira's matter of fact has apparently been sacrificed to this weakness of his redactor.]

[Endnote 100: (p. 110). _Nine negroes and a little gold-dust._--This was the first instalment of the precious metal brought home to Portugal from the Negro-land of Guinea. The same Antam Gonçalvez had already, in 1441, brought the first gold dust from the Sahara, or Azanegue coast (see ch. xvi of this Chronicle, p. 57). As to the importance of these gold-samples in promoting the European exploring movement, see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. x-xi.]

[Endnote 101: (p. 111). _Cape of the Ransom._--[This name is marked upon the manuscript maps already referred to. On one great Portuguese chart of this class, on parchment, in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the reading is not Cape, but _Port_ of the Ransom. The Portuguese nomenclature for the West African coast, as we see in this instance, was for a long time accepted by all the nations of Europe.]--S.

We may notice the allusion in this paragraph to the Portuguese colonisation of Madeira, in the story of Fernam Taavares (see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. xcviii-cii).]

[Endnote 102: (p. 112). _Isle of Tider_ (see note 78 to p. 68).--[Tider, marked "Tiber" in the map of West Africa before referred to. We do not meet this name in any of the many earlier charts that we have examined].--S.]

[Endnote 103: (p. 115). _Officers who collected royal dues._--The custom-house officers of Lisbon. We may compare with Azurara's graphic account of the return of Antam Gonçalvez in 1445, the very similar details of a much greater reception in the same port: that of Columbus on March 14th, 1493, on his home-coming from his first voyage (see the postscript of Columbus' Letter to Luis de Santangel, Chancellor of the Exchequer of Aragon, respecting the Islands found in the Indies).]

[Endnote 104: (p. 115). _A palace of the Infant, a good way distant from the Ribeira._--Azurara's only reference, in this Chronicle, to the Lisbon residence of the Infant Henry. This passage implies that Prince Henry was often to be found there, and must be taken with others in modification of extreme statements about his "shutting himself up at Sagres," etc. Again, at the end of this chapter we are expressly told that he was now in his dukedom of Viseu, in the province of Beira, some 50 kilometres N.E. of Coimbra, 220 kilometres N.N.E. of Lisbon.]

[Endnote 105: (p. 115). _Profits._--Azurara's remarks here about the change of feeling as to the Infant's plans are similar to passages in ch. xiv, p. 51, ch. xviii, pp. 60-61.]

[Endnote 106: (p. 116). _Lisbon ... profit._--The city of Lisbon, whose name was traditionally and absurdly derived from Ulysses--"Ulyssipo," "Olisipo," and his foundation of the original settlement in the course of his voyages, was perhaps a greater city under the Moors, eighth-twelfth century, than at any time before the reign of Emmanuel the Fortunate. It was a Roman colony, but its prosperity greatly increased under the Arab rule from A.D. 714; from this port sailed Edrisi's Maghrarins, or Wanderers, on their voyage of discovery in the Western Ocean, probably in the earliest eleventh century. It was three times recovered and lost by the Christians: in 792(-812) by Alfonso the Chaste of Castille; in 851 by Ordonho I of Leon, who held it only a few months; and in 1093(-1094) by Alfonso VI of Leon, soon after his great defeat by the Almoravides at Zalacca (1086); but on each occasion it was quickly retaken--in 1094 by Seyr, General of Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the Almorvaide. In alarm at the Moslem revival, Alfonso founded the county of Portugal in 1095, giving it in charge of Count Henry of Burgundy and his natural daughter Theresa, to hold as a "march" against the Moors. In 1147 Lisbon was finally recaptured by Affonso Henriques, the first King of Portugal, in alliance with a fleet (164 ships) of English, Flemish, German and French Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land (Second Crusade). At this time it was said, perhaps with exaggeration, to contain 400,000 inhabitants; its present number is only about 240,000 (see _Cruce-signati Anglici Epistola de Expugnatione Olisiponis_, in _Portugalliæ Monumenta Historica_, vol. i, p. 392, etc). Before 1147 Guimaraens had been the capital of Portugal; and even down to the time of John I, Henry's father, Lisbon was not formally the seat of government, this being more often fixed at Coimbra. In the same reign, Lisbon also, as a commercial port, easily distanced all rivals within the kingdom, especially Oporto; and King John's erection of palaces in the city, and his successful application to the Pope for the creation of an Archiepiscopal See (thus rivalling Braga), further contributed to give point to Azurara's words in this paragraph about "the most noble town in Portugal." On the share of the commercial classes of Lisbon, Lagos, etc., in Henry's schemes, see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. x, xii.

_Paulo Vergeryo_ is Pietro Paulo Vergerio, born at Capo d'Istria, July 23, 1370, died at Buda, 1444 (1428 according to others). He enjoyed a considerable reputation as a scholar at Padua in 1393, etc., and migrated to Hungary in 1419. See Bayle, _Dict. Crit._ IV, 430 (1741); P. Louisy, in _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_, art. (Vergerio); J. Bernardi, in _Riv. Univers._ (Florence, 1875) xxii, 405-430, in _Arch. Stor. Ital._ (1876) C., xxiii, 176-180; Brunet, _Manuel V_, 1132-3; Muratori, _Rer. Ital. Scr._ (edition of Vergerio's works) XVI, pp. 111-187, 189-215, 215-242; _Fabricius_, ed. Mansi, VI, p. 289. He has left various _Orations and Letters_; especially an _Epistola de morte Francisci Zabarekae_, and a _Historia seu Vitae Carariensium Principum ab eorum origine usque ad Jacobini mortem_ (1355). See also Joachim Vadianus, _Biographia P. P. Vergerii, sen._; and C. A. Combi, _Di Pierpaolo V. ... seniore ... memoria_, Venice, 1880.]

[Endnote 107: (p. 116). _Gonçalo Pacheco ... Kingdom._--Barros copies this sentence, with some omissions. The allusion to the _High Treasurer of Ceuta_ (_Thesoureiro Mor das cousas de Cepta_), and his _Noble lineage, goodness, and valour_, is interesting in its proof of the detailed attention given to the new conquest, and to African affairs generally, by the Portuguese government at this time.]

[Endnote 108: (p. 117). _Cape Branco._--On the _personnel_ of this expedition we have accounts elsewhere; for Dinis Eannes de Graã and the rest, see chs. xxxvii-xlviii, and especially pp. 121, 122, 126, 130, 131, 138; for Mafaldo, especially p. 119 ("a man well acquainted with this business ... had been many times in the Moorish traffic"); also pp. 120-121, etc. Cape Branco, since its discovery by Nuno Tristam, had become the favourite rendezvous of the Portuguese expeditions on this coast. See ch. lii, p. 153 (made agreement to await one another _as usual at Cape Branco_).

On the _banners of the Order of Christ_, see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. xviii-xix; and in this Chronicle, pp. 62 (ch. xviii), 53 (ch. xv), 117 (ch. xxxvii), etc.

[Cf. a parchment atlas (unpublished), executed in Messina as late as 1567 by João Martinez, in which two Portuguese ships are painted in various points of the Eastern Ocean _with the Cross of the Order of Christ on their sails_, apparently to indicate the Portuguese dominion in those waters. This atlas passed into the Library of Heber, and afterwards into that of M. Ternaux.]--S.]

[Endnote 109: (p. 120). _The patience with which men bear the troubles of their fellows_ is another piece of irony, similar to that on p. 102; see note 96.]

[Endnote 110: (p. 122). _Fifty-three Moorish prisoners._--In this, as in subsequent actions, Mafaldo, rather than Gonçalo Pacheco, showed himself to be the leader of the expedition.]

[Endnote 111: (p. 123). _Cunning ... but small in this part of the world._--The fair inference is that, on this occasion, Mafaldo, from his previous experience, correctly estimated the danger (or absence of danger), and knew when to trust the natives. Similar trustfulness was not always equally successful, sometimes from absence of that past experience possessed by Mafaldo. See chs. xxvii, pp. 90, 91; xlviii, pp. 144-5; lxxxvi, pp. 252, etc.; xxxv, pp. 112-3. The Azanegue Moors of the Sahara on the whole showed less ability to defend themselves than the Negroes of the Sudan coast; cf. chs. xlv, pp. 137-8; lx, pp. 179-182; lxxxvi, pp. 252-6; xli, p. 130; xxxi, p. 99; contrast with pp. 126, 122, 114, 105-6, 78, 73, 36.]

[Endnote 112: (p. 126) ... _true effects._--Azurara certainly does not commit the error of "those historians who avoid prolixity by summarizing things that would be greatest if related in their true effects," _i. e._, in detail. This central portion of his narrative (chs. xxxvi-lix, lxviii-lxxiv) is especially tedious, and we cannot too much regret the comparative sacrifice of the scientific interest to the anecdotal, biographical, or slave-raiding details, with which he fills so much of this Chronicle. Cf. the slender and imperfect narratives of the really important voyages of Dinis Diaz (ch. xxxi), Alvaro Fernandez (ch. lxxv), and Nuno Tristam (chs. xxx, lxxxvi), with the lengthy descriptions of the expeditions personally conducted by Gonçalo de Sintra, Gonçalo Pacheco, Lançarote, Mafaldo, and other men whose voyages resulted in scarcely any advance of exploration. In all this Azurara's narrative contrasts unfortunately with Cadamosto's, which is not only a record of exploration, but of acute original observation, a quality by no means so noticeable in the _Chronicle of Guinea_, except at rare intervals. Cf., however, chs. xxv, lxxvi-lxxvii, lxxix-lxxxiii, and see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. xxiv-xxvi, etc.]

Transcribers Notes:

Footnotes are indented and moved to the end of the paragraph in which
the anchor appears.

Volume 1 ends with the illustration of the Coast of N.W. Africa.
Endnotes pertaining to volume 1 have been added for the convenience of
the reader; originally, they were only included in volume 2. An 'N' was
added to endnote anchors (e.g. [N1], [N2]) to distinguish them from
numbered footnote anchors in the first half of the book.

Obsolete and archaic spellings were retained. Punctuation was standarized.

Changed 'Brendam' to 'Brandan' ... the voyages of St. Brendan ..., for
consistency with remaining text.

Printing errors corrected:
Changed 'Michäelis' to 'Michaëlis' ... Michaëlis de Vasconcellos ...
Added missing word 'thing' ... for a man to do a good thing ...
Added missing 'l' to 'mediæval' ... Among early Christian and
mediæval authors ...
Added missing word 'of' ... writers worthy of the name ...
Page reference for Endnote 78 was corrected from 61 to 68.
Page reference for Endnote 100 was corrected from 110 to 111.
The first paragraph of Chapter XXXIII had two lines of text reversed
in the original. The text was reordered so that it makes sense.
In Chapter XXXVI, "Then said some of them, it would be well for us ..."
was changed to ...Then said some of them, "It would be well for us...
There are two endnotes numbered 75. The second was renumbered as 75A.
The anchor for 75A was missing in the original.