Chapter III: Introduction (2)

The great voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497-9) connected and completed the various aims of Portuguese enterprise, to which Prince Henry had given a permanent and organised form.

Though he was not able to see in his own lifetime the fulfilment of his plans, both the method of a South-East Passage, and the men who finally discovered it, were, in a true sense, his--were inseparably associated with his work. The lines of Portuguese advance, a generation after his death, continued to follow his initiative so closely, that, when a different route to the Indies was suggested by Columbus, the government of John II refused to treat it seriously. And yet it was to the Infant's movement--in part, at least--that Columbus owed his conception. "It was in Portugal," says Ferdinand Columbus, "that the Admiral began to surmise that if men could sail so far south, one might also sail west and find lands in that direction." In another place[58] it will be questioned how far a Portuguese movement America-wards can be credited to the mariners of Prince Henry's own time. It is plain that, whether he or his captains ever thought favourably of the chances of the Western route, he and they alike devoted their main energies to its rival, the Eastern or African coasting way. It is equally plain, on the other hand, that the Infant's work produced a new interest in the world-science of geography throughout Christendom, and so was indirectly responsible for quite as much as it directly aimed at accomplishing.

[Footnote 58: See the section of this Introduction on the
"Atlantic Islands," especially pp. ciii-cvi.]

AFRICAN EXPLORATION PRELIMINARY TO PRINCE HENRY'S WORK.

The first recorded African expedition along the Atlantic coast of Africa was, if we accept the account of Herodotus, that of the Phœnicians sent out by Pharaoh Necho (_c._ 600 B.C.), who started from the Red Sea and returned by the Pillars of Hercules and the Mediterranean.[59] Almost at the same time (_c._ 570 B.C., according to Vivien de St. Martin's estimate) the great Phœnician settlement of Carthage attempted in reverse order a voyage of colonisation and discovery along the West of the Continent outside the Straits. Eratosthenes refers to Phœnician (or Carthaginian) settlements already existing on what is now the coast of Marocco, both inside and outside the "Pillars;" this new expedition under Hanno was intended to strengthen the old, as well as to found new plantations. It is often compared with a similar venture, "to explore the outer coasts of Europe," undertaken by Himilco, probably about the same time.[60]

[Footnote 59: Herod. ii, 158-9; iv, 42. These mariners took
three years on their voyage: landed, sowed crops, and lived on
the harvest during seasons unfavourable to navigation
(especially autumn); during part of their journey they were
astonished to find the sun on their right hand.]

[Footnote 60: This is first noticed by Aristotle, "On
Marvellous Narratives," § 37; by Mela, _De Situ Orbis_, iii,
9; and by Pliny, _Natural History_, ii, 67, § 167-170, and
elsewhere. The _Periplus_ of Himilco seems to have been worked
up by Avienus (_c._ 400 A.D.) in the first 400 lines of his
poem, "_De Ora Maritima_."]

Hanno[61] sailed from Carthage, according to our authority, with sixty penteconters, carrying 30,000(?) people, colonists and others, first to Cerne,[62] which was as far distant from the Pillars of Hercules as the Pillars were from Carthage. Then he ascended the river Chretes[63] to a lake. Twelve days' voyage south of Cerne he passed a promontory with lofty wooded hills,[64] and a little beyond this, a great estuary.[65] Five days more to the south brought him to the Western Horn,[66] and on the other side of this he coasted along a "fragrant shore," with "streams of fire running down into the sea," and "fiery mountains, the loftiest of which seemed to touch the clouds," and which he named[67] "Chariot of the Gods."[68] Three days' sail beyond this was his furthest point, the Southern Horn,[69] whence he returned directly to Carthage.

[Footnote 61: One account of Hanno's voyage was preserved on a
Punic inscription in the temple of "Kronos," "Saturn," or
Moloch, at Carthage; the inscription was translated into Greek
by an unknown hand, probably about 300 B.C.; and this version
of the _Periplus_ still remains to us. See Pliny, _Hist.
Nat._, ii, 67; v, 1, 36; vi, 31; _Solinus_, 56; _Pomponius
Mela_, iii, 9. The first edition of the Greek text is by
Gelenius, Basel 1534; the best by C. Müller, in _Geographi
Graeci Minores_. Cf. also an edition by Falconer, London,
1797; an edition by Kluge, Leipsig, 1829; Rennell, _Geography
of Herodotus_, 719-745, 4to ed.; Bunbury, _Ancient Geography_,
i, 318-335; Walckenaer, _Recherches sur le Géographie de
l'Afrique_, p. 362, etc.; Vivien de St. Martin, _Le Nord de
l'Afrique dans l Antiquité_, pp. 330-400; Major, _Henry
Navigator_, 90, etc., 1868; Charton, _Voyageurs Anciens_, i,
1-5, Ed. of 1882; Gossellin, _Recherches sur la Géographie des
Anciens_, i, pp. 70-106; A. Mer, _Mémoire sur le Pêriple
d'Hannon_, 1885; Campomanés, _El Periplo de Hannone
illustrado_, appended to his _Antiquedad maritima de Cartago_
(1756); Bougainville, _Acad. des Inscr. et Belles Lettres_,
xxvi, xxvii, and especially xxviii, p. 287.]

[Footnote 62: Near Cape Non.]

[Footnote 63: This can hardly be the Senegal and Lake Nguier,
as suggested by V. de St. Martin.]

[Footnote 64: Cape Verde?]

[Footnote 65: The Gambia?]

[Footnote 66: Cabo dos Mastos?]

[Footnote 67: Burton, with characteristic recklessness,
insists on the Camaroons Mt. as the Chariot of the Gods
("Abeokuta and Camaroons Mt."); Fernando Po being another of
the "lofty fiery mountains" seen by Hanno at this point.]

[Footnote 68: In the Sierra Leone range?]

[Footnote 69: Near Sherboro' island?]

It is very difficult to identify Hanno's positions, and this is not the place to attempt a fresh investigation.[70] But the tradition of this _Periplus_ having reached far beyond the Straits of Gibraltar--farther than any venture of the earlier Middle Ages, or of the classical period--may be regarded as reliable, and some position on the Sierra Leone coast may provisionally be taken as its ultimate point of advance.

[Footnote 70: Some (_e.g._, Gossellin) would refer the whole
group of localities here named to the extreme N.W. or Maroccan
coast of Africa. But the "lofty green headland," the Western
and Southern Horns, the Chariot of the Gods, the gorillas
captured by the seamen, hardly seem to allow of this
restriction. Ancient enterprise was far more satisfactory than
ancient observation, and the inaccuracies of the latter should
not make us deny the former. Here the initial measurement, of
the distance from Cerne to the Pillars as being equal to the
distance from the Pillars to Carthage, because the time
occupied in sailing was equal, seems not only too vague a
reckoning, but inaccurate as ignoring one great difference.
Inside the straits, Hanno's duty was simply to sail forward;
outside, he had to plant colonists at suitable spots,--along a
coast, moreover, not so well known as that of North Africa to
the Carthaginians.]

The African voyages of Sataspes under Xerxes, and of Eudoxus of Cyzicus under Ptolemy Euergetes II, cannot be regarded as of much importance. Neither probably reached Cape Verde (even if we are to attach any belief to their narratives). Sataspes[71] declared that his ship was stopped by obstructions in the sea at a point where lived on the ocean shore a people of small stature, clad in garments made of the palm-tree.[72] This was "many months'" sail south of Cape Soloeis or Cantin, and may stand for the neighbourhood of the Senegal, if it be not a mere traveller's tale invented by Sataspes, as Herodotus seems to have thought, to excuse his failure to the Great King. Eudoxus[73] claimed to have sailed so far, first along the eastern and then, along the western, coasts of Africa, that he practically circumnavigated the Continent; but all the details with which we are favoured go to disprove his claim. For instance, he implies that the Ethiopians reached by him on his farthest point S.W. "adjoined Mauretania." On the eastern coast he picked up a ship's prow from a vessel which he was told had been wrecked coming from the westward, and which mariners of Alexandria identified as a ship of Gades--a very unlikely story in the face of the currents on the East African coast.

[Footnote 71: _Herodotus_, iv, 43. Similar excuses were given,
_e.g._ (1) by Pytheas in the North Sea; (2) by Arab and
Christian mediæval voyagers off Cape Non and Cape Bojador; (3)
by Arabs off Cape Corrientes (on the E. Coast of Africa).]

[Footnote 72: They lived in towns, he adds, possessed cattle,
were of harmless and timid disposition, and fled to mountains
on the approach of the strangers.]

[Footnote 73: _Posidonius_, in _Strabo_, ii, 3, § 4. Eudoxus
made three voyages (see also Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, ii, 67, who
bases his statement, like Mela, iii, 9, on Cornelius Nepos);
in the first two he sailed to India and was driven to points
on the East African coast; on the third he attempted to sail
round Africa to India by the West, but evidently did not reach
any distance beyond S.W. Mauretania (near C. Non). His first
voyage must have been before B.C. 117 (_d._ of Ptolemy
Euergetes II, Physcon), his other two subsequent to that year.
The narrative of Eudoxus was exaggerated by Pliny and
Pomponius Mela into the story that the navigator had actually
accomplished, in his own person, the voyage round Africa from
the Red Sea to Gades; but his achievements may be limited
thus: Two voyages from Egypt to India; a short distance of
African coasting beyond Guardafui, probably not as far as
Zanzibar; a short distance on the west coast beyond the S.W.
coast of our Marocco, probably not beyond Cape Non, or at
furthest Cape Bojador.]

According to Pliny,[74] Polybius the historian also made a reconnaissance down the West coast of Africa, in the lifetime and under the order of Scipio Æmilianus. He seems to have passed the termination of the Atlas chain, but Pliny's language does not warrant us in going any further.[75] He interweaves the great measurement of the Roman world under Augustus by Agrippa, which is perhaps in part commemorated by the Peutinger Table, and which evidently took into its view the Hesperian Promontory,[76] and the Chariot of the Gods. Some have claimed for Polybius a voyage as far as the latter point, but this, if understood in the sense of Sierra Leone, is highly improbable.

[Footnote 74: _Hist. Nat._, v, i.]

[Footnote 75: The text here is very confused and difficult,
but the best editors give the following text for Pliny's
words: "He (Polybius) relates that beyond Atlas proceeding
west there are forests.... Agrippa says that Lixus is distant
from Gades 112 miles. From the Chariot of the Gods to the
Western Horn is 10 days' voyage, and midway in this space _he_
(_i.e._, Agr., not Pol.) has placed Mt. Atlas."]

[Footnote 76: Or Western Horn.]

We must not here delay over classical attempts at African continental exploration; but it will be right to notice briefly: That in the age of Pliny, as shown by the _Periplus of the Erythraean Sea_ (_c._ 70 A.D.), and in the age of Ptolemy, as shown in his _Geography_ (_c._ 139-162 A.D.), the knowledge of the Græco-Roman world was extended down the East coast of Africa at least as far as Zanzibar and its neighbourhood, and down the Western coast to Cape Soloeis, or Cape Cantin: That beyond these points only vague ideas obtained, though occasional travellers had ventured further: That in the interior of Africa only the North coast region, viz., Egypt and the "Barbary States," were thoroughly well known, though expeditions had at times crossed the Sahara, reached the Sudan, and ascended the Nile to the marshes situate in 9° N. lat.: That, even if never seen or visited, at least something had been heard of the African Alps in the neighbourhood of the Great Lakes, as well as of those lakes themselves: That Ptolemy's work marks the highest point of ancient knowledge in Africa, which began to decline from the age of the Antonines: That it is not probable even Ptolemy had any definite notions about the Niger, though his text names such a stream in West Africa, and his Map lays it down in a position not very distant from our Joliba: That it is clear he was conscious of the vast size of the Continent in a way that none of his predecessors had grasped, while utterly ignorant of its shape towards the South, so that he even denied the primary fact of its practically insular form.

Leaving to another section any notice of ancient exploration among the African islands, it would also appear that Statius Sebosus, Juba, and Marinus of Tyre all made contributions to the knowledge of West Africa. These contributions are now only preserved in the allusions or paraphrases of other authors; but it is clear that Sebosus, perhaps identical with a Sebosus who was a friend of Catulus and a contemporary of Sallust and Cæsar, had made independent inquiries concerning the West or Ocean coast of the Continent;[77] that Juba,[78] who made the Nile rise in Western Mauretania, did similar work in the time of Augustus; and that Marinus preserved some original records of Roman expeditions which crossed the Great Desert,[79] apparently from Tripoli and Fezzan to the neighbourhood of the Central Sudan States.

[Footnote 77: He was also the alleged author of a _Periplus_,
and a treatise on the _Wonders of India_, but he is only known
by Pliny's quotations.]

[Footnote 78: The younger, "King of Numidia."]

[Footnote 79: Such as those of Julius Maternus and Septimius
Flaccus, which perhaps reached Lake Chad, probably in the time
of Trajan (98-117 A.D.), and of Cornelius Balbus under
Augustus (19 B.C.), which conquered the Garamantes of Fezzan.]

As the Roman Empire broke up, geographical knowledge naturally suffered, and Africa shared in this loss. But a considerable recovery was effected through the work of the Arabs, to whom the Infant Henry owed much.

Confining our attention to Continental exploration, we may remark among other particulars: (1) That the Arab migration[80] to the East coast beyond Guardafui in the eighth century began the extension of Moslem trade-colonies, which at last reached Sofala. (2) That the coast near Madagascar, as well as that island itself, seems to have been known to the great Arab traveller and geographer Masudi ("Massoudy") in the tenth century. (3) That the same writer considered the Atlantic or Western Ocean unnavigable, but that even he preserves a record of one Arab voyage thereon.[81] (4) That Edrisi, in the twelfth century, records another voyage which touched the African mainland a good distance beyond the Straits of Gibraltar.[82] (5) That Ibn Said, in the thirteenth century, relates a discovery of Cape Blanco.[83] (6) That overland communication between the Barbary States and the negroes of the Sudan was originated by the Arabs, as a regular line of commerce, probably from the eleventh century at least.

[Footnote 80: This migration led to the foundation of
Magadoxo, 909-951, and of Kilwa, 960-1000; later on of
Malindi, Mombasa, and Sofala. See Krapf, _Travels and
Missionary Labours_, etc., p. 522; G. P. Badger, _Imams ... of
Oman_, p. xiii; El-Belâdzory, _Futûh-el-Buldân_ (Ed.
Kosegarten), pp. 132-135. The immigrants came from the Red Sea
and Syria, according to Dr. Krapf, from Oman and the Persian
Gulf according to Badger (though Krapf admits a later Persian
element as well). This was the migration of the "Emosaids"
('Ammu-Sa'îd, or People of Sa'îd?). They, in one tradition,
claimed to be the clan of Said, grandson of Ali; "a mythical
personage," according to Badger, who substitutes "Sa'îd,
grandson of Julánda" the Azdite; the latter, in this 'Omâni
migration, was accompanied by his brother Suleimân. The
traditional date is A.D. 740, and onwards.]

[Footnote 81: Masudi, ch. 12 of the _Meadows of Gold_. The
adventurer was Khosh-Khash, the "young man of Cordova," who
returned with great riches, from Guinea (?).]

[Footnote 82: See the section of this Introduction upon the
Atlantic Islands, pp. lxxv-lxxvii. Edrisi's Maghrurin or
Wanderers probably sailed from and returned to Lisbon before
1147, the date of the final Christian capture of that city,
and touched the African mainland at a point over against
Madeira.]

[Footnote 83: By one Ibn Fatimah, who was wrecked at Wad-Nun,
a little North of Cape Non, put off in a sloop with some
sailors, and at last came to a glittering white headland, from
which they were warned off by some Berbers. They learned
afterwards that it was one mass of deadly serpents. Thence
turning North they landed and went inland to the salt market
of Tagazza, and finally returned home.]

This last point is one which requires special consideration. By sea the Arabs did scarcely anything to prepare the way for the Christian discoveries of the fifteenth century in Africa (except along the Eastern coast), but by land they were the most important helpers and informants of Prince Henry.[84] Islam effected the conquest of the Barbary States, politically in the seventh century, dogmatically in the course of about 200 years after the days of Tarik and Musa. By the end of the eleventh century the faith of Mohammed had begun to spread and take deep root in the Sudan,[85] having already made its way into many parts of the Sahara. With the Moslem faith came the Moslem civilisation. The caravan trade across the desert now commenced between Negroland and the Mediterranean; "Timbuktu" was founded by Moslems, probably drawn in large measure from the Tuareg, in about 1077-1100; and the Central Sudan States, from Sokoto to Darfur and Kordofan, passed under Mohammedan influence between A.D. 1000 and 1250. With the fresh migration of Nomad Arabs which seems to have taken place about A.D. 1050, from Upper Egypt to West Africa, a distinct advance of Islam in Central Africa is to be noticed by way of Kanem, Bornu, Sokoto, and the Niger Valley; this new wave reached Jenné, Ghiné, or "Guinea", on the Upper Valley of the Niger.

[Footnote 84: Cf. what is said about Prince Henry's
correspondent, the merchant at Oran, p. xxvi of this
Introduction.]

[Footnote 85: Various early Arab MSS., lately found by the
French in Tombuttu ("Timbuktu"), especially the
_Tarik-es-Sudan_ of "Abderrahman ben Amr-Sadi-Tombukkti,"
according to Félix Dubois (_Tombouctou la Mystérieuse_),
supply important rectifications of the standard accounts here;
_e.g._ (1) Islam is found in the Western Sudan from the close
of the ninth century. (2) The Songhay were converted in 1010;
were for a time subject to the Kings of Melli; but gained
freedom in 1355. (3) The Songhay took Timbuktu in 1469; and
from this date, for more than a century, dominated all the
West and Central Sudan from their capital at Gao. (4) Jenné,
on the Upper Niger, was the furthest point westward of the
original Songhay migration from Nubia. It was founded in 765;
was converted to Islam in 1050, but "Pagan idols" were not
completely rooted out till 1475. (5) Jenné was, in the Middle
Ages, the greatest emporium of the Western Sudan, far
outshining Timbuktu, which owed its foundation in part to
Jenné. (6) Jenné was also a chief centre of Sudanese Islam.
Its great Mosque, built in the eleventh century, partially
destroyed in 1830, was the finest in all Negroland. (7) Its
control of the salt and gold trade, as well as of most other
branches of Sudanese merchandise, was such that it gave the
name of Guinea to a vast region of West Africa, especially
along the coast. (8) But Timbuktu, geographically, stood
between Jenné and Barbary, and so between Jenné and Europe,
and prevented Jenné from becoming famous in Christendom. (9)
Jenné was connected primarily with a migration from East to
West; Timbuktu, with a migration from North to South. (10)
Timbuktu was founded [α] by the Tuareg, who owed their new
energy in part to Moslem migrations from Spain, _c._ 1100
(1077 according to some authorities); [β], by merchants from
Jenné, who made it an emporium in the twelfth century. (11) In
the twelfth century, Walata, or Gana, in the great bend of the
Niger [? dominated by Jenné] was the most prosperous
commercial district of West Soudan; but in the thirteenth
century the conquests of the Kings of Melli [placed by these
authorities west-south-west of Timbuktu, to the north of the
Upper Niger] disturbed the old trade-routes, and diverted
commerce to Timbuktu; which, however, was never itself very
populous, and served chiefly as a place of passage and
commercial rendezvous. (12) From 1330 to 1434 the Kings of
Melli were usually masters of Timbuktu, where they built a
pyramid minaret for the chief mosque; but at least during some
years of the fourteenth century, Timbuktu was conquered by an
invasion from Mossi. (13) From 1434 to 1469, the Tuareg
regained possession of Timbuktu, and drove out the Melinki;
but in 1469 the Songhay took the town, and held it for more
than 100 years. (14) In the fourteenth century the Kings of
Melli built a great palace in Timbuktu, which did not
disappear till the sixteenth century. (15) From the fourteenth
century Timbuktu was the intellectual capital of the Sudan.
This was due to the Spanish-Moorish influence. (16) The patron
saint and doctor of Timbuktu, Sidi Yahia, was practically
contemporary (1373-1462) with Prince Henry the Navigator. (17)
The town of Kuku, Kuka or Kokia, in the W. Sudan, mentioned by
mediæval Moslem travellers, was probably either a city on or
near the Niger, immediately south of Gao, the Songhay capital;
or else Gao itself, which is sometimes called Kuku or Gogo.
Even this place was conquered by Melli, in the fourteenth
century, which thus dominated part of the Central Sudan. The
ruins of the great mosque at Gao still commemorate Kunkur
Musa, King of Melli, who built this house of prayer on his
return from the Mecca pilgrimage, about 1325. See
_Tarik-es-Sudan_, composed about 1656, and giving a history of
the Sudan down to that year: the fragments remaining of the
_Fatassi_ of Mahmadu-Koti (1460-1554); _Nil-el-Ibtihaj
bitatriz el-dibaj_, or Supplement to the Biographical
Dictionary of Ibn-Ferhun by Ahmed Baba, 1556-1627.]

Even earlier than this a movement seems to have been in progress from the opposite direction--first south along the west coast, and then east up the valley of the Senegal and similar inlets. The tradition preserved by John Pory[86] is approved by the most recent research--at least in its general conclusions. The Moslems "pierced into" the Sahara in, or a little after, 710, and "overthrew the Azanegue, and the people of Walata;" in "the year 973 (others say about 950) they infected the negroes and first those of Melli." During the ninth century, Islam made progress among the Sahara tribes, and the influence of this faith promoted intercourse between the desert tribes and the great commercial centres of the North African coast--a movement which was furthered by the Almoravide revival of the eleventh, and the Almohade of the twelfth, century. The former started from a reformed Moslem "community," settled on an island at the mouth of the Senegal--in other words, it shows Islam already finding centres for recovery and expansion in Negroland, exploring the Sudan from the north and west, creeping along the Atlantic Ocean, and spreading from the neighbourhood of Cape Verde into the interior of the populous land to the south of the Great Desert.

[Footnote 86: In his "Summary Discourse of the Manifold
Religions in Africa," printed at the end of the Hakluyt
Society's Edition of Pory's (1600) Translation of _Leo
Africanus_, vol. iii, especially pp. 1018-1021.]

Here we may notice that Edrisi takes a point called Ulil as his starting-place in reckoning measurements, and especially longitudes, in the Sudan. This Ulil is fixed by all our authorities as close to the sea, in the centre of a salt-producing district; and it may be supposed to have been in the neighbourhood of the Senegal estuary.[87] To the east, Ulil bordered on Gana, Ghanah, Guinoa, Geneoa, or "Guinea," which, at least in name, was the first objective of Prince Henry's expeditions, and was famous for its slave export, and its money of "uncoined gold."[88] The name of the country was probably derived from its chief city of Jenné, variously described by Leo Africanus, in the sixteenth century, as a large village; by the earlier geographers--especially Edrisi in the twelfth century, and Ibn-Batuta in the fourteenth--as a spacious and well-built city on an island in the Niger, lying west from Timbuktu.

[Footnote 87: See Edrisi, Climate I, § i; Wappaüs, _Heinrich
der Seefahrer_, pp. 65, etc.]

[Footnote 88: Similar language is used by Abulfeda, who calls
it the seat of the King of Gana (whither come the western
merchants of Segelmesa), situate on a Nile, twin-brother of
the Egyptian, which flows into the Ocean; also by
Ibn-al-Wardi, who calls Ghanah city one of the greatest in the
land of the Blacks, placed on both sides of the Negro Nile,
and resorted to for gold by merchants, twelve days' journey
from Segelmesa. Edrisi (Climate I, section ii; ed. Jaubert, i,
16-18; also see i, 11, 13, 15, 19-20, 23, 106, 109, 173-4,
206, 272) is the most specific of all. "Ghanah the Great, made
up of two towns on the banks of a sweet-water river ... the
most populous and commercial city in Negroland. Merchants come
there from all surrounding countries, and from the extremities
of the West ... it was built in A.H. 510" (= A.D. 1116) (see
also Leo Africanus, Hakluyt Soc. ed., pp. 124, 128, 822,
840).]

Between Ghanah or Jenné, and Ulil, according to some writers, lay the kingdom of Tokrur, while Andagost was on the northern boundary of Ghanah close to the Sahara. All these were Moslem states like Melli or Malli (W.S.W. from Timbuktu), and carried on trade with Barbary across the desert long before the days of Prince Henry. One of the earliest important converts to Islam in the Sudan was Sa-Ka-ssi, of the dynasty of Sa in the Songhay country on the Middle Niger (_c._ A.D. 1009-1010). From this time the states on the Middle Niger became a centre of Mohammedan influence, especially after the foundation of Timbuktu about 1077. When Ibn-Batuta visited these parts in 1330, he found the negroes of the Niger full of Moslem devotion, enjoying a commerce with Mediterranean Africa, and mostly acknowledging the lead of Melli, which kingdom, according to him, had been founded in the early thirteenth century by the Mandingo.[89]

[Footnote 89: See Ibn-Batuta (Defrémery and Sanguinetti), iv,
395, 421-2; also Oppel, _Die religiöse Verhältnisse von
Afrika_, Zeitschrift of Berlin Geog. Soc., xxii, 1887.]

Among the Lake Chad States progress was also made in the eleventh century. The first Moslem Sultan of Bornu (Hami ibnu-l-Jalil) is recorded about 1050;[90] and a similar conversion happened in Kanem about the same time. This latter kingdom was then more important than now, and dominated much even of the Egyptian Sudan. Hence in the fourteenth century Islam obtained a strong footing in Darfur, as it had already in Baghirmi and Wadai.[91] Already in the twelfth century, Kordofan and the extreme east of the Sudan had been partially Moslemised by Arabs from Egypt, who had come south after the fall of the Fatimite Caliphs.

[Footnote 90: See Otto Blau, _Chronik von Bornu_, p. 322, Z.
D. M. G., vi, 1852.]

[Footnote 91: The more complete Islamising of Wadai, Darfur,
and Baghirmi did not take place till the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. See Slatin Pasha, _Fire and Sword in
Soudan_, pp. 38-42; T. W. Arnold, _Preaching of Islam_, chs.
iv, xi.]

Along the eastern coast, in spite of the early spread of Moslem settlements from Magadoxo southward, Islam was very slow in penetrating the interior. Here the Arabs chiefly devoted themselves to maritime commerce, and for a long time their intercourse with the inland tribes was not of a kind to open up the country. Caravans with slaves and natural products came down to the coast towns, but the merchants of the latter seem to have been content with waiting and receiving. But on this side of Africa was a Christian kingdom, which was now--in Prince Henry's days--becoming more familiar to Europe: Abyssinia, the kingdom of Prester John, as the Portuguese of later time identified it. The original seat of the Priest-King, as described (chiefly from Nestorian information) by Carpini, Rubruquis, Marco Polo, and other Asiatic travellers of the thirteenth century, was in Central Asia, but the Abyssinian state offered so close a parallel, that it was naturally recognised by many as the true realm of Prester John, when the first clear accounts of it came into Mediæval Europe. The Asiatic prototype, moreover, was only temporary; it had apparently ceased to exist in the time of Polo himself, who spread its fame so widely; whereas its Abyssinian rival was both permanent and ancient enough to be noticed in pre-Crusading and even in pre-Mediæval literature. As the Renaissance movement progressed in Europe, learned men of the West gained from their reading an ever clearer realisation of this isolated Christianity of the East; and, as the trade of the later Middle Ages spread itself more widely, the Venetians seem to have made their way to the Court of the Negus, even before John II of Portugal sent Covilham and Payva (1486) to find the Prester. Probably the beginnings of this Italian intercourse with Abyssinia may be placed as far back as the lifetime of Prince Henry (_c._ 1450).

The Christianity of Nubia, which dated from the fourth century like that of Abyssinia itself, was still vigorous in the twelfth,[92] but from that time it began to fail before the incessant and determined pressure of Islam. Ibn-Batuta,[93] about 1330-40, found that the King of Dongola had just become a Moslem. Father Alvarez, in 1520-7, considered that the Nubian Christianity which had once extended up the Nile from the first Cataract to Sennaar had become extinct; though he would not allow that the mass of the Nubians had adopted any other religion in its place;[94] and himself, he tells us, had met a Christian who, in travelling through Nubia, had seen 150 churches.[95] But, in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all Nubia embraced Islam; and even in 1534, Ahmad Gragne, King of Adel, in one of his attacks upon Abyssinia, is said to have had 15,000 Nubian allies, apparently all Mohammedans.[96]

[Footnote 92: Edrisi, Climate I, section iv; vol. i, p. 35
(Jaubert). See Duchesne, _Eglises Séparées_.]

[Footnote 93: _Ibn-Batuta_, iv, 396. (Defrémery and
Sanguinetti).]

[Footnote 94: See _Alvarez_, Hakl. Soc. Edition, p. 352.]

[Footnote 95: Ruins?]

[Footnote 96: See Nerazzini, _Musulman Conquest of Ethiopia_,
Rome 1891. (Ital. Transl. from Arab MS.).]

In Prince Henry's day, then, we may fairly assume that the old Christianity of East Africa was practically limited to Abyssinia; but when Azurara tells us of the Infant's desire "to know if there were in those parts[97] any Christian Princes,"[98] and again more explicitly, "to have knowledge of the land of Prester John,"[99] it is possible that some dim acquaintance with the old tradition of an isolated African (as well as of an isolated Asiatic) Church, was at the root of his endeavour.

[Footnote 97: Africa.]

[Footnote 98: _Azurara_, c. vii.]

[Footnote 99: _Ibid._, c. xvii.]

At the end of the twelfth century, Islam had already begun to encroach upon the coast of what is now Italian "Erythraea;" and about 1300 A.D. a Musulman army attacked the ruler of Amhara. At this time the realm of the Negus seems to have been completely cut off from the Red Sea;[100] but it was not till the early sixteenth century that Abyssinia was in serious danger of becoming a province of Islam, from the attacks of Ahmad Gragne (1528-1543), which, however, ended in complete failure.

[Footnote 100: See Maqrīzī, _Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks de
l'Egypte_, Quatremère, 1837-45, t. ii, Pt. 11, p. 183.]

To return to the North coast of Africa. Here, by the capture of Ceuta, Prince Henry gained a starting-point for his work; here he is said (probably with truth) to have gained his earliest knowledge of the interior of Africa; here especially he was brought in contact with those Sudan and Saharan caravans which, coming down to the Mediterranean coast, brought news, to those who sought it, of the Senegal and Niger, of the Negro kingdoms beyond the desert, and particularly of the Gold land of "Guinea." Here also, from a knowledge thus acquired, he was able to form a more correct judgment of the course needed for the rounding or circumnavigation of Africa, of the time, expense, and toil necessary for that task, and of the probable support or hindrance his mariners were to look for on their route.

We must, however, qualify in passing the statements of Azurara, in ch. vii, which would imply that Christianity had for ages been utterly extinct in North Africa. "As it was said that the power of the Moors in ... Africa was ... greater than commonly supposed, and that there were no Christians among them." "During the one-and-thirty years that he had warred against the Moors, he had never found a Christian King nor a lord outside this land,[101] who for the love of ... Christ would aid him."[102] The old North African Church, though constantly declining, survived the Musulman Conquest of the seventh and eighth centuries for nearly 800 years. True, its episcopate, which could still muster 30 members in the tenth century, was practically extinct by the time of Hildebrand[103] (Pope Gregory VII), and in 1246 the Franciscan missionary bishop of Fez and Morocco was the only Christian prelate in "Barbary"; but a number of native Christians still lingered on, though without Apostolic succession. In 1159, the Almohade conqueror, Abdu-'l Mu'min ben Ali, on subduing Tunis, compelled many of these to change their faith; but all through the next centuries, down to 1535, a certain number of Tunisians preserved their ancient religion so far that, when Charles V gained possession of the city in the above-named year (1535), he congratulated these perseverants on their steadfastness. The same fact is evidenced by the tolerant behaviour, as a rule, of the Mediæval Barbary States towards Christians, both native and European.

[Footnote 101: Portugal.]

[Footnote 102: To find such a "Christian Lord" in the person
of Prester John was said to have been one of the chief objects
of D. Pedro's travels. This object Pedro avowed in Cairo; and
with this, among other aims, he visited not only Egypt but
Sinai and the Red Sea (see Martins, _Os Filhos_, pp. 83, 97,
121-2, etc., and pp. xvii-xviii of this volume).]

[Footnote 103: In 1076, the Church of Barbary could not
provide three bishops to consecrate a new member of the
Episcopate, and Gregory VII named two bishops to co-operate
with the Archbishop of Carthage (See Migne, _Pat. Lat._,
cxlviii, p. 449; Mas Latrie, _Rélations de l'Afrique
septentrionale avec les Nations chrétiennes au Moyen Age_, p.
226). In 1053, Leo IX declared that only five bishops could be
found in North Africa (Migne, _P. L._, cxliii, p. 728). On the
thirty bishops of the tenth century, see Mas Latrie, _Ibid._
pp. 27-8. It is curious to find Gregory II, in _c._ 730,
forbidding St. Boniface of Mainz to admit emigrants from North
Africa to Holy Orders without inquiry (Migne, _P. L._, lxxxix,
p. 502)--a remarkable proof of mediæval emigration.]

Thus they employ Christian soldiers, among others; grant freedom of worship to Christian merchants and settlers; and exchange letters with various Popes, especially Gregory VII, Gregory IX, Innocent III, and Innocent IV, on the subject of the due protection of native Christians.[104] Traces of Christianity were to be found among the Kabyles of Algeria down to the time of the capture of Granada (1492), when a fresh influx of Andalusian Moors from Spain completed the conversion of these tribes,[105]--a conversion which, as Leo Africanus notices, was not inconsistent with some survivals of Christian custom. Similar survivals have been alleged among the Tuâreg of the Sahara, the "Christians of the Desert" at the present day.

[Footnote 104: See Mas Latrie, _Afrique Septentrionale_,
_passim_, and especially pp. 61-2, 192, 266-7, 273.]

[Footnote 105: See C. Trumelet, _Les Saints de l'Islam_
(1881), pp. xxviii-xxxvi. In this connection we may notice one
or two other traces of intercourse between the Moslems of
Granada and those of Africa, _e.g._ (1) Ibn-Batuta's mention
of the tomb of the poet Abu Ishak es Sahili, born in Granada,
died and buried in Timbuktu, 1346. (2) Leo Africanus' notice
of the stone mosque and palace in Timbuktu, the work of an
architect from Granada in the fifteenth century. On Timbuktu,
see Ibn Batuta (Def. and San.), iv, 395, 426, 430-2; Leo Afr.
(Hakluyt Soc.), 4, 124, 128, 133-4, 146, 173, 255, 306, 798,
820, 822-4, 842.]

Two practical questions arise for our special purpose from this summary of the mediæval progress and fifteenth-century status of Islam in Africa. These questions have been partly answered already, but we may here re-state them to generalise our conclusions. 1. What information was the Infant able to gain from the "Moors" for his own plans? and 2. Was this "Moorish" information so valuable as to account, in any great degree, for the Prince's perseverance and success in his task?

To the former query it may be replied: 1. That the "Arabs and Moors" of the early fifteenth century could give the Infant detailed and correct information, not only about the Barbary states and the trade-routes of the Sahara, but also about many of the Western and Central Sudan countries, and about the general course and direction of the "Guinea coast" both to the west and south of the great African hump. Especially could they describe the kingdom of Guinea, centreing round the town of Jenné on the Upper Niger, which was the chief market of their Negro trade in slaves, gold, and ivory. This kingdom, then, reached almost to the Atlantic on the lower valley of the Senegal, where in earlier times a place called Ulil had been marked by Edrisi and other Arab geographers, as independent of Ghanah but important for traffic. Also, the Moors were acquainted with the country of Tokrur,[106] which may be supposed to occupy the upper valley of the Senegal, becoming perhaps, in Prince Henry's time, merely a province of Guinea. Further, they could give much information about the States of Timbuktu and Melli, to the east of Guinea, on the Middle Niger, about the gold land of Wangara, in the great bend to the south of that river, and about the Songhay, afterwards so powerful, whose capital was at Gao, at the extreme N.E. angle of the Negro Nile, or Joliba. The Arab travellers and writers seem generally to have made but one river out of the Senegal, the Niger, Joliba, or Quorra, and the Benué or "river of Haussa."

[Footnote 106: But in one view Tokrur is merely a generic name
for the Sudan and Sudanese, and is only by mistake converted
into a definite kingdom by Arab writers of second-rate
authority.]

De Barros explicitly states that the Moors told Prince Henry how on the other side of the Great Desert lived the Azanegues, who bordered on the Jaloff negroes, where began the kingdom of Guinea, or Guinanha. From other sources we know, as already stated, that the Infant obtained from the same informants[107] definite descriptions of the Senegal estuary, its "tall palms," and other landmarks. For here, rather than at any point more to the south, was the Guinea coast proper of the fifteenth century; though in the Bull of Pope Nicholas V, granting to Portugal (1454) all the lands that should be discovered "from the Cape of Bojador and of Nun throughout the whole of Guinea, as far as its _Southern shore_, or even to the Antarctic Pole and the Indies," our modern extension of the term is virtually admitted.

[Footnote 107: From the same he may have heard the tradition
of Bakui's voyage in 1403, from the Maroccan coast to about
the latitude of the Bight of Arguim, a parallel adventure to
Ibn Fatimah's. See above, p. xliv.]

2. And, in the second place, granting what has just been said, it is obvious that the Moorish information was important enough to have very considerable influence on the Infant's plans, and especially to furnish him with hopes of success, and reasons for perseverance in the face of opposition and repeated failure.

Our materials for the Prince's life are so inadequate that we can hardly decide, from the silence of our authorities, that he was entirely ignorant, even at second hand, of all that the Arab geographers or travellers had written about Africa. Especially is this the case with Edrisi (1099-1154), whose work was composed in the Christian kingdom of Sicily, and owed much to Christian writers. And perhaps the same hope applies to Ibn-Batuta (_fl._ 1330), who, living at a time so near to the epoch of the Prince's voyages, had revealed the Western Sudan to the Moslem world--and so to any Christians conversant with Moslem trade and enterprise--far more thoroughly than ever before. These are only two examples among those Moslem geographers, whose work may have been brought to the Infant's notice during his visits to Ceuta.

* * * * *

We have now to see what progress had been made by Christian nations in the exploration of Africa immediately before Prince Henry's time. The Crusades were not merely expeditions to recover the Holy Sepulchre: they were the outward sign of the great mediæval awakening of Europe and Christendom, which, beginning in the eleventh century, has never slumbered since, and which, in the Infant's days, was passing through that great transition we call the Renaissance. On the geographical side this movement took first of all the direction of land travel, and achieved such great discoveries in Asia that a new desire for wealth and commercial expansion was kindled in Europe, with the special object of controlling the Asiatic treasures which Marco Polo and others had described. Islam, however, interposed a troublesome barrier between Central Asia, India and China on the one side, and European trade or dominion on the other. Hence, from the thirteenth century, we find a new series of attempts to reach the Far East by sea from the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. It was not till the last years of Prince Henry's life that any serious attempts were made to explore the interior of Africa, but expeditions along its shores were sent out long before his time to reconnoitre for a sea-route to India.[108] We have already remarked that the Infant represents in his own life-work the leading transition in this movement, from a tentative, impermanent, and unorganised series of efforts, to a continuous, properly directed, and successful plan; but some notice must be taken of those ventures which immediately prepared his way. Leaving out of sight, for another section as far as possible, the voyages which are concerned only with the Atlantic islands, or aim in a rudimentary way at finding a Western route to Asia, it is possible to mention several genuine attempts to anticipate the Portuguese along the Eastern or African mainland course.

[Footnote 108: Raymond Lulli ["of Lull"] is thought by some to
have made the first definite suggestion of this route in the
central mediæval period. This "doctor illuminatus" was born at
Palma in Majorca, 1235, became a Franciscan Tertiary in 1266,
and died 1315. We may perhaps connect him with the very early
school of portolano-draughtsmanship in the Balearics. See Map
section of this Introduction.]

The first of these, as far as known, is the voyage of Lancelot Malocello, of Genoa, in 1270. There is no proof that he started, like the adventurers of 1291, to find the ports of India: it is probable his ambitions were more modest; but we do not know how far he reached along the African mainland--only that he touched the Canaries, and staying there some time built a castle in Lancarote[109] island.

[Footnote 109: = Lancelote? See pp. lxxviii-lxxix.]

The next venture in this direction is also Genoese. In May, 1291,[110] Tedisio Doria and Ugolino de Vivaldo, with the latter's brother and certain other citizens of Genoa, equipped two galleys "that they might go by sea to[wards] the ports of India and bring back useful things for trade." But "after they had passed a place called Gozora,[111] nothing more certain has been heard of them." This is confirmed by Pietro d'Abano, writing in 1312; but in the fifteenth century one of Prince Henry's captains, the Genoese colleague of Cadamosto, Antoniotto Ususmaris or Uso di Mare, professed to give some more details. On December 12th, 1455, he wrote his creditors a letter, in which he stated[112] that the two galleys of "Vadinus and Guido Vivaldi," leaving Genoa in 1281 "for the Indies," reached the "Sea of Ghinoia," where one ship was stranded, but the other sailed on to a city of Ethiopia called Menam, where lived Christian subjects of Prester John, who held them captive. None ever returned, but Uso di Mare himself spoke with the last surviving descendant of those Genoese.[113] Menam, he concludes, was on the sea coast, near the river Gihon.[114]

[Footnote 110: According to some authorities, 1281. See
Giustiniani, _Castigatissimi Annali di Genova_, 1537, fol.
cxi, verso. Giustiniani refers to Francesco Stabili, otherwise
Cecco d'Ascoli, in his Commentary on the _De Sphaera Mundi_ of
Sacrobosco (John of Holywood, in Yorks, _c._ A.D. 1225). The
year 1291 corresponds with the fall of Acre, and the
consequent embarrassment of the Syrian overland routes to
Inner Asia.]

[Footnote 111: At or near Cape Non, which, on the Pizzigani
Map of 1367, is marked "Caput Finis Gozole."]

[Footnote 112: This statement, it has been conjectured, was
intended for use in a "forthcoming globe or map." Uso di
Mare's statement was first noticed by Gräberg af Hemsö. See
Peschel, _Erdkunde_, p. 179 (Ed. of 1865); Major, _Henry
Navigator_, 99-106 (Ed. of 1868), P. Amat di S. Filippo,
_Studi biografici_, etc. (Ed. of 1882), i, p. 77, for recent
studies on the general question of the Genoese Voyage of 1291,
and Uso di Mare's letter. The earliest modern notice of the
account of this voyage in the Public Annals of Genoa was by G.
H. Pertz, in his memoir, "Der älteste Versuch zur Entdeckung
des Seewegs nach Ostindien", offered to the Royal Academy of
Sciences at Munich, March 28th, 1859 (_Festschrift_, Berlin,
1859). The Genoese Annals referred to are a continuation of
the Chronicles of Caffaro. Muratori has printed an abstract of
the narrative. See also Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_ (1897), pp.
114, 116; _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (d'Avezac), vol.
cviii, p. 47.]

[Footnote 113: In 1455?]

[Footnote 114: Nile.]

It is difficult to attach great weight to Uso di Mare's letter, which looks like an attempt to amuse his creditors with interesting adventures; but the voyage of 1291, with or without the survival of 1455, is sufficiently remarkable. It is the first direct attempt of Europeans in the Middle Ages to find a sea-route to India around Africa; its far-reaching design contrasts forcibly with the more modest projects of nearly all similar attempts before Prince Henry's time, and it is not improbable that some of its work survived, though officially unrecognised.[115]

[Footnote 115: Thus it has been pointed out that two of
Tedisio Doria's galleys were registered in a legal document of
1291, under the names of St. Antonio and Allegrancia, and that
the name Allegranza, applied for some time to one of the
Canaries, was perhaps derived from this ship. Either from this
or from Malocello's venture of 1270, the islands of Lançarote
and Maloxelo in the same group probably took their names.
Lançarote was marked with the red cross of Genoa on most
Portolani down to a late period of the sixteenth century.]

The Hispano-Italian voyage of 1341 appears to have been solely occupied with the exploration of the Canaries, which were now becoming pretty well known, and we leave over any further notice of this for the present; but the Catalan expedition of 1346 was to some extent similar, both in object and method, to the Genoese expedition of 1291. "The ship of Jayme Ferrer," according to the Catalan Mappemonde of 1375, "started for the River of Gold[116] on St. Lawrence's Day, 1346."[117] To the same effect the Genoese archives[118] assert "On the Feast of St. Lawrence there went forth from the city of the Majorcans one galley of John Ferne the Catalan, with intent to go to Rujaura.[119] Of the same nothing has since been heard."[120] And on the Map of 1375 already noticed, upon the third sheet, is depicted off Cape Bojador the picture[121] of the ship in question adjoining the legend above-quoted. We may notice, however, that Guinea, the gold land of Africa, and not India, was the objective of this voyage--although Guinea was the first step on the African route to India--and that the venture, as Major says, was apparently designed only for the discovery of the supposed Negro river in which gold was collected: a guess of Mediterranean merchants[122] from the information of Moorish middlemen.

[Footnote 116: _I.e._, Guinea.]

[Footnote 117: 10th August.]

[Footnote 118: See Papers presented to Archives of Genoa by
Federico Federici, 1660. Reference discovered by Gräberg af
Hemsö.]

[Footnote 119: The River of Gold.]

[Footnote 120: Yet, proceeds this record, the "river [of gold]
is a league wide and deep enough for the largest ship. This is
the Cape of the end ... of W. Africa."]

[Footnote 121: Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, p. 114 (1897), gives
a confirmation from experience. "There is hardly any doubt
that the ship-drawing on the Atlas Catalan is in the main
correct.... Even in my time, Norwegians went out fishing on
Spitzbergen in large undecked boats, somewhat like that of
Ferrer."]

[Footnote 122: Such as dealt in Guinea products, especially
malaguette pepper, at Nismes, Marseilles, and Montpellier.]

Beginning with the year 1364, the French also claimed to have made important advances along the African coast route. The men of Dieppe, it is said, repeatedly sailed beyond Cape Verde, and even Sierra Leone, and founded settlements on what was afterwards called the La Mina coast.[123] These stations, called Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, etc., lasted till 1410, when home troubles caused their abandonment,[124] like the temporary evacuation of the French Ivory Coast Settlements after 1870; but during the forty or fifty years of their existence, they carried on a regular trade with the Norman ports.

[Footnote 123: "The Mine" of Hakluyt and early English
geographers.]

[Footnote 124: See the MS. edited by Margry, and given in
Major's Introduction to his _Life of Henry the Navigator_; the
_Short History of the Navigation of Jean Prunaut of Rouen_;
also _La Relation des Costes d'Afrique appelées Guinées_, by
Sieur Villaut de Bellefond, Paris, 1669; L. Estancelin,
_Recherches sur les voyages des navigateurs normands_, 1832;
Père Labat, _Nouvelle rélation de l'Afrique Occidentale_,
1728; Pierre Margry, _Les Navigations Françaises du XIVme.
au XVIme. siècle_, 1867. The French claim is fully admitted
by Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 115-6 (1847), but of course
vigorously denied by the Portuguese, whom Major
supports.--_Henry Navigator_, Introduction, pp. xxiv-li, and
text, pp. 117-133.]

This tradition admits that it has lost its proofs in the destruction of the Admiralty Registers at Dieppe in 1694, but it is possible that some articles[125] may be discovered dating from this early commerce, which can supply fresh evidence. In itself, the Dieppese story is not impossible, and we shall see in another section, from the witness of the Map of 1351 and other portolanos, how plausible it appears, together with still greater ventures. But as things at present stand, it must be considered as a "thing not proven."[126]

[Footnote 125: Especially some of the ivory carvings said to
have been made from spoils of this fourteenth-century trade.]

[Footnote 126: The "short history" of Prunaut's navigation
assigns September, 1364, for the start of the first voyage;
makes the sailors reach "Ovideg" at Christmas ("Ovidech" in
Barros, _Decade I_, occurs as a native name for the Senegal);
and tells us the anchorage was at C. "Bugiador," in "Guinoye."
The blacks, called Jaloffs or Giloffs, had never seen white
men before. Small presents were exchanged for "morphi" or
ivory, skins, etc. Next year (?) Prunaut (called "Messire Jean
of Rouen" throughout), returned with four ships and acquired
land from the natives. Here he built houses for wares and
habitation, and proposed to his men to settle there
permanently. They agreed, but quarrels prevented the
foundation of the colony. In September, 1379, Prunaut sailed
again to Guinea with a very fine ship, _Notre Dame de bon
Voyage_, but lost many men from sickness; he himself returned
after Easter, 1380, with much gold. After this Prunaut was
made a captain in the French navy. Next year (1381) the _Notre
Dame_ again went out with the _St. Nicholas_ and
_L'Espérance_, of Dieppe and Rouen. The first-named cast
anchor at La Mine, where Prunaut built a chapel, a castle, a
fortalice, and a square house, on a hill called the "Land of
the Prunauts." Near this were Petit Dieppe, Petit Rouen, Petit
Paris, Petit Germentrouville; French forts were also built at
Cormentin and Acra. But from 1410 all this prosperity decayed;
in eleven years only two ships went to the gold coast, and one
to the Grande Siest; and soon after the wars in France
destroyed this commerce altogether.