Chapter II

1295-1487.

In the opulent and insular city of Venice, there arrived, a few years before the close of the thirteenth century, three strangely clad sun-embrowned men. If any notice had been taken of them when they disembarked from the Mediterranean galley in which they had come from Negropont, this attention had, it is likely, been bestowed upon their odd garb and imperfect pronunciation of the Italian words which they used while obtaining a boatman to convey them to that part of the city known as the confine of S. Giovanni Crisostomo.

The unique story respecting the return of these famous travellers to Venice will always be deemed the prologue that introduces the notable acts of the explorers of the Atlantic coast territory of America in the fifteenth century. It is therefore properly entitled to a conspicuous place on the first pages of the history of the discovery of America. Five centuries ago it charmed the Venetians with its vivid colorings, and gave to the Orient an entrancing vision that made the name of Cathay for a time a synonym for an earthly paradise. It pictured to them a far-off El Dorado, abounding with gold, gems, and spicery, a country naturally delightful and artificially magnificent. America lay in some of the navigable ways which were sought by acquisitive Europeans to go to it, and thus the return of Nicolò, Maffeo, and Marco Polo, in 1295, to Venice, after an absence of twenty-four years, is inseparably linked to the great chain of events connecting it with the discovery of the new continent of the western hemisphere.[74] Ramusio, the distinguished Italian collector of information relating to voyages and travels, has preserved the account of the strange revelations made by the three travellers on their return from Cathay.[75]

“When they arrived here the same fate befell them which happened to Ulysses, who, when he returned after his twenty years’ wanderings to his native Ithaca, was recognized by none of his people. In like manner these three gentlemen, who had been absent so many years from their native city, were not identified by any of their kinsfolk, who believed that they had been dead for many years, as had been reported. They were quite changed in appearance by the prolongation and hardships of their journeys and by the trouble and anxieties they had experienced; and they had a certain indescribable smack of the Tartar both in demeanor and accent, having indeed almost forgotten their Venetian tongue. Their clothes, too, were coarse and shabby, and of a Tartar cut. They proceeded on their arrival to their house, in this city, in the confine of S. Giovanni Crisostomo, where you may see it to this day. The house, which in those days was a lofty and handsome palace, is now known by the name of the Court of the Millions, for a reason which I will tell you presently.

“When they reached the palace, they found it occupied by some of their relatives, and they had the utmost difficulty in making the latter understand who they were. For these good people seeing them to be in appearance so unlike what they were formerly, and in dress so shabby, flatly refused to believe that they were those very gentlemen of the Polo family whom they thought had been dead many years. So these three gentlemen,—this is a story I have often heard when I was a boy from the illustrious Messere Gasparo Malpiero, a gentleman of very great age and a senator of eminent virtue and integrity, whose house was on the canal of Santa Marianna, at the corner, over the mouth of the brook of S. Giovanni Crisostomo, and just midway among the buildings of the aforesaid Court of the Millions, and he said he had heard the story from his own father and grandfather, and from other old men among the neighbors,—the three gentlemen, I say, devised a scheme by which they should obtain at once from their kinsfolk the recognition they desired, and secure the honorable notice of the whole city; and this was it:

“They invited a number of their kindred to an entertainment, which they purposely prepared with great state and splendor in their house. When the hour arrived for sitting down to table all three came from their chambers clothed in crimson satin, fashioned in long robes reaching to the ground, such as people in those days wore within doors. And when water for the hands had been served, and the guests were seated, they took off these robes and put on others of crimson damask, while the first suits were by their orders cut and divided among the servants. Then after partaking of some of the dishes they went out again and came back in robes of crimson velvet, and when they had again taken their seats, the second suits were divided as the first. When dinner was over they did the like with the robes of velvet, after they had put on dresses of the ordinary fashion worn by their guests. These proceedings caused much wonder and amazement among their relatives. But when the cloth had been drawn, and all the servants had been ordered to retire from the dining-hall, Messere Marco, the youngest of the three, rose from the table, and going into another chamber brought forth the three shabby dresses of coarse stuff which they had worn when they first arrived. Straightway they took sharp knives and began to rip open some of the seams and welts, and to take out of them many gems of the greatest value, such as rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds, all of which had been stitched up in these dresses in a manner so artful that nobody could have suspected the fact. For when they took leave of the Grand Khan they changed all the wealth which he had bestowed upon them for these rubies, emeralds, and other gems, being well aware of the impossibility of carrying with them so great an amount of gold on a journey so long and so difficult.

“Now the exhibition of this large number of gems and precious stones, all scattered over the table, threw the guests into fresh amazement, insomuch that they seemed quite bewildered and speechless. They now saw that in spite of all their former doubts these were really the honored and worthy gentlemen of the Polo family as they had claimed to be, and they therefore paid them the greatest honor and reverence. And when the story became current in Venice, straightway the whole city, gentle and simple, flocked to the house to embrace them, and to make much of them, with every conceivable demonstration of affection and respect.

“On Messere Maffeo, who was the eldest, the Venetians conferred the honors of an office which was of great dignity in those days; while the young men came daily to visit and converse with the ever-polite and gracious Messere Marco, and to ask him questions about Cathay[76] and the Grand Khan, all of which he answered with such kindly courtesy that every man felt himself in a manner his debtor. And as it happened that in the story, which he was constantly called on to repeat, of the magnificence of the Grand Khan, he would speak of his revenues as amounting to ten or fifteen millions of gold; and in like manner, when recounting other instances of great wealth in those parts, he would always make use of the term millions, so they gave him the nickname of Messere Marco Millioni, an appellation which I have seen in the public records of this republic where mention is made of him. The court of his house, in the confine of S. Giovanni Crisostomo, has always from that time been known as the Corte del Millioni.”[77]

These conversational descriptions respecting the remote dominions of the Grand Khan, with which Marco Polo often interested the imaginative Venetians, were to have a much wider field of influence in another form,—one which was a most potent element among the leading agencies which opened to the people of Western Europe great pathways of discovery and of commerce around the earth. In order to perceive how these descriptions of Cathay led to the exploration of the Atlantic Ocean and the discovery of the continent of America, the fortunes of Marco Polo must be followed farther. It appears that shortly after his return to Venice he was placed in command of a fleet, which subsequently was captured by the Genoese in a naval engagement. While confined in Genoa as a prisoner of war, his remarkable adventures as an explorer of remote eastern countries became known, and he was often visited and questioned by inquisitive people. Wearied by the frequent repetition of the story of his wanderings in Cathay, he at last applied himself to writing an account of his extensive journeys by the aid of such notes and memoranda as he had taken while in the East. Assisted by a Genoese gentleman, he completed his curious and instructive narrative, which was soon copied, translated into different languages, and distributed among the people of Europe.[78]

As justly claimed by Yule, Marco Polo was the first traveller “to trace a route across the longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen with his own eyes; the deserts of Persia, the flowering plateaux and wild gorges of Badakhshan, the jade-bearing rivers of Khotan, the Mongolian steppes, ... the new and brilliant court that had been established at Cambaluc; the first traveller to reveal China in all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge cities, its rich manufactures, its swarming population, the inconceivably vast fleets that quickened its seas and its inland waters; to tell us of the nations on its borders with all their eccentricities of manners and worship; of Tibet with its sordid devotees; of Burma, with its golden pagodas and their tinkling crowns; of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin China, of Japan, the Eastern Thule, with its rosy pearls and golden-roofed palaces; the first to speak of that museum of beauty and wonder, still so imperfectly ransacked, the Indian archipelago, source of aromatics then so highly prized and whose origin was so dark; of Java, the pearl of islands; of Sumatra with its many kings, its strange costly products, and its cannibal races; of the naked savages of Nicobar and Andaman; of Ceylon, the isle of gems, with its sacred mountain and its tomb of Adam; of India the great, not as a dreamland of Alexandrian fables but as a country seen and partially explored, with its virtuous Brahmans, its obscene ascetics, its diamonds and the strange tales of their acquisition, its sea-beds of pearl, and its powerful sun; the first in medieval times to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia and the semi-Christian island of Socotra; to speak, though indeed dimly, of Zanzibar with its negroes and its ivory, and of the vast and distant Madagascar, bordering on the dark ocean of the South, with its ruc and other monstrocities; and, in a remotely opposite region, of Siberia and the Arctic Ocean, of dog-sledges, white bears, and reindeer-riding Tunguses.”[79]

Never before had the people of Europe heard of such extraordinary wealth and unlimited resources as existed in the far-off countries visited by Marco Polo. His novel descriptions of stately, gold-covered palaces, of the royal magnificence of the entertainments of the Grand Khan, of the intoxicating fragrance of an endless profusion of rare flowers, of luscious fruits and sweet spicery, of heavily laden argosies of valuable merchandise floating on noble rivers, and of vast collections of gold, silver, and precious stones, were read with the most exaggerated conceptions of their reality. These enchanting details respecting Cathay and the adjacent countries were fully confirmed in the fourteenth century by Sir John Mandeville, who, in 1322, departed from England, and after an absence of thirty-four years in different countries returned to write, in Latin, in French, and in English, a narrative of his extended travels.[80]

Dazzled by the splendor of the Orient the people of Western Europe were eager to enter into commercial intercourse with the inhabitants of Cathay. But there were innumerable barriers, both natural and political, obstructing all the overland ways to the East. Chief among the obstacles classed as political was the selfish exclusiveness of the different governments possessing the intervening territory. Had there been no national opposition to the establishment of a protected system of overland commerce between Western Europe and Eastern Asia, the distance was too great to be travelled over by slowly moving caravans.

As early as the year 1343 the aggressive enterprise of the Venetians had obtained from the sultan of Egypt the exclusive privilege of sending ships to trade in the ports of that country and of Syria. The merchants of Venice thereupon established commercial agencies at Alexandria and Damascus. Their factors penetrated Central and Southern Asia, and became active participants in the remunerative traffic of those regions. The prized productions of the islands in the Indian Ocean, such as pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and other spices, were transported by them to Venice and distributed through Europe. Although the ocean along the western and southern coast of Africa to the East was believed to be navigable, no attempt was made in the fourteenth century to sail by it to the Moluccas or Spice Islands. Concerning the early navigation of the sea-path along the coast of Africa, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Arabian Sea, Herodotus says that when Necho, king of Egypt, “had ceased digging the canal leading from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he sent certain Phœnicians in ships, with orders to sail between the Pillars of Hercules into the Northern Sea [the Mediterranean], and so to return to Egypt. These Phœnicians, taking their course from the Red Sea, entered the Southern Ocean. On the approach of autumn they landed in Libya [Africa], and planted some corn in the place where they happened to find themselves. When this was ripe, and they had cut it down, they again departed. Having thus consumed two years, they in the third doubled the Pillars of Hercules, and returned to Egypt. Their account may obtain attention from others, but to me it seems incredible, for they affirmed, that having sailed around Libya, they had the sun on their right hand. Thus was Libya for the first time known.”[81]

Pliny, the celebrated encyclopedist of ancient times, says that “while the power of Carthage was at its height, Hanno published an account of a voyage which he made from Gades [Cadiz, Spain], to the extremity of Arabia.[82] ... Besides, we learn from Cornelius Nepos, that one Eudoxus, a contemporary of his, when he was fleeing from King Lathyrus, set out from the Arabian Gulf, and was carried as far as Gades.[83] And long before him, Cælius Antipater informs us that he had seen a person who had sailed from Spain to Æthiopia for the purpose of trade. The same Cornelius Nepos, when speaking of the northern circumnavigation, tells us that Q. Metellus Celer, the colleague of L. Afranius in the consulship, but then a proconsul in Gaul,[84] had a present made to him by the king of the Suevi,[85] of certain Indians, who, sailing from India for the purpose of commerce, had been driven by tempests to Germany.”[86]

These statements were quoted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to support the growing belief that India could be reached in a short time by sailing round the coast of Africa. But the want of nautical instruments restrained seamen from undertaking a voyage which carried them beyond the sight of familiar coasts and beneath new constellations. It was extremely perilous for European navigators to attempt to sail to India before they had acquired a knowledge of the use of the mariner’s compass and of the astrolabe. The polarity of the magnet was known among oriental nations several centuries before the Christian era. The use of the magnetic needle for the guidance of vessels, however, did not become popular in Europe until as late as the fourteenth century.[87] The slowness with which its use grew into favor with European seamen is ascribable to the prevailing superstition which hung like a darkening cloud over the minds of the people. The strange conservatism of the age is well described in a letter written, as it seems, in the year 1258, by Brunetto Latini, a learned Italian, Dante’s tutor, to Guido Cavalcanti of Florence. Speaking of his visit to Roger Bacon, the English philosopher and monk, at Oxford, England, he says:

“The Parliament being summoned to assemble at Oxford, I did not fail to see Friar Bacon as soon as I arrived, and [among other things] he showed me a black ugly stone, called a magnet, which has the surprising property of drawing iron to it; and upon which, if a needle be rubbed, and afterwards fastened to a straw, so that it shall swim upon water, the needle will instantly turn toward the pole-star; therefore, be the night ever so dark, so that neither moon nor star be visible, yet shall the mariner be able, by the help of the needle, to steer his vessel aright.[88]

“This discovery, which appears useful in so great a degree to all who travel by sea, must remain concealed until other times, because no master-mariner dares to use it lest he should fall under a supposition of his being a magician; nor would even the sailors venture themselves out to sea under his command if he took with him an instrument which carries so great an appearance of being constructed under the influence of some infernal spirit. A time may come when these prejudices, which are of such great hindrance to researches into the secrets of nature, will probably be no more; and then it will be that mankind shall reap the benefit of the labors of such learned men as Friar Bacon, and do justice to that industry and intelligence for which he and they now meet with no other return than obloquy and reproach.”[89]

About the beginning of the fourteenth century, Flavia Gioja of Amalfi, in Naples, devised what were then known as the eight points of the superficies—the four cardinal and the four intermediate points of the compass-card.[90] From this time forward the use of the magnet gradually found favor with European seamen.

The most enthusiastic projector of voyages of discovery undertaken to ascertain the character of the land and water divisions of the earth, in the early part of the fifteenth century, was Prince Henry, the son of King John I. of Portugal.[91] When twenty-one years of age, he witnessed, in 1415, the taking of Ceuta, on the northern coast of Africa, opposite the southern extremity of Portugal. While at this opulent city, he learned from its merchants and traders that the continent extended far southward and was inhabited by many strange people. Fixing his residence on the promontory of Sagres, at the southwestern extremity of Portugal, he began to send the most experienced seamen in the service of Portugal to explore the western coast of Africa. For a time Cape de Não, in north latitude, 28° 45´ was considered the limit of safe navigation. It was a common saying among Portuguese seamen, that “He who should pass Cabo de Não, either will return or not.”[92] Beyond it was Cape Bojador, in 26° 12´ north latitude. This rocky headland, for a time, was also deemed perilous and impassable. “Beyond this cape” it was said, “there is no people whatever; the ground is as barren as that of Libya,—no water, no trees, no grass in it; the sea is so shallow that at a league from the land it is only a fathom deep; the currents are so strong that a ship passing the cape cannot return.”[93] The attempts made by Prince Henry’s mariners to double the two capes are thus commented upon by Antonio Galvano, the Portuguese historian,[94] in his treatise respecting the routes by which spices came from India to the year 1550: “In those days none of the Portuguese had yet passed Cabo de Não in 29 degrees of latitude.” But after it was doubled, “when they came to another cape named Bojador, there was not one of them that dared to risk his life beyond it. The prince was exceedingly displeased with their want of confidence and unmanly timidity.”[95] Of the number of seamen that had made unsuccessful attempts to pass the cape was Gil Eannes. Disappointed as Prince Henry was by these failures to accomplish that which he had ordered them to do, he nevertheless gave his timorous navigators all the encouragement he could to induce them to make other and more persistent efforts to double the formidable headland. In 1434, he again sent Gil Eannes to explore the coast beyond Cape Bojador. Before the latter departed the prince endeavored to dispel the terrifying fancies that might deter him from attempting to prosecute the undertaking for which he was commissioned. “You cannot incur such peril” said the prince, “that the promised reward shall not be commensurate thereto. It is very strange to me that you should be governed by a fear of something of which you are ignorant, for if the things reported had any authentication, I should not find fault with you for believing them. The stories of the four seamen driven out of their course to Flanders or to the ports to which they were sailing are not to be credited, for they had not and could not have used the needle and the chart. But do you go notwithstanding, and make your voyage without being influenced by their opinions, and, by the grace of God, you will not fail to secure, by your enterprise, both honor and compensation.”[96] Gil Eannes followed the advice of his sanguine patron, and succeeded the same year in doubling Cape Bojador and in exploring a part of the coast beyond it.

South of Cape Bojador it was believed that a zone of scorching heat would be entered by vessels sailing toward the equator. Pliny adverts to it in these words: “The middle of the earth, over which is the path of the sun, is parched and set on fire by the luminary, and is consumed by being so near the heat. There are only two of the zones which are temperate—those which lie between the torrid and the frigid zones—and these are separated from each other, in consequence of the scorching heat of the heavenly bodies.”[97] Conceiving this statement to be as fallacious as many other declarations of the early geographers had been, Prince Henry, in 1454, sent Luigi da Cadamosto, a Venetian navigator, to explore the coast beyond Cape Bojador so long invested with so many imaginary terrors. In 1462 Pedro de Cintra sailed three hundred miles beyond Sierre Leone.

As it was necessary for seamen to know the latitude and longitude of the places to which they desired to sail, another nautical instrument besides the mariner’s compass was needed by them.[98] The adaptation of an instrument called the astrolabe, by which the latitudes of places could be determined, apparently originated with King John II. of Portugal.[99]

It is said that “when Prince Henry began the discovery of Guinea that all mariners were accustomed to sail along the coasts, and that they always steered their courses by observing the physical features of the land, which are still used as guides.”

“This method of navigating permitted them to make voyages from place to place; but when they wished to sail in the open sea, losing sight of the coast and standing out on the wide ocean, they perceived the numerous errors they had made in calculating and judging the day’s run, for they had been accustomed to allow so much way to the ship in the twenty-four hours on account of the currents and the other mysteries of the sea, the facts of which are clearly demonstrated by navigating by altitude. But as necessity is the teacher of all arts, in the time of King John II., the matter of navigation was assigned by him to Master Roderic, and Master Joseph, a Jew, (who were his physicians,) and to one Martin of Bohemia, a native of those parts, who boasted of being a pupil of John of Monteregius, a famous astronomer among the professors of that science,[100] and these devised the way of navigating by the sun’s altitude, and they made tables of his declination such as are now used by navigators, now more complete than they were at the beginning when the great wooden astrolabes were first used.”[101]

This novel and serviceable nautical instrument, first made of wood and of a triangular shape, was soon in general use on Portuguese vessels. The astrolabe was improved from time to time. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the French seaman, Samuel de Champlain, was exploring the St. Lawrence River and its tributaries, it was a disk of brass, having one of its faces marked with degrees and minutes. A brass rule, called a label, with sight-holes, turning upon a pivot at the centre of the instrument, moved over the marked circumference of the disk. At the zenith part of the instrument there was a small ring by which it could be suspended from the thumb of the person taking an observation. When used the astrolabe was turned to the sun, so that his rays could freely pass through the two sight-holes of the label. In this position the altitude of the sun was indicated on the divided limb of the instrument. Opposite the zenith point was a small eyelet from which a weight could be suspended to keep the instrument from shaking when used.

In the fifteenth century the day’s run of a ship was commonly reckoned by the pilot. In an old nautical work it is said: “In order to know the speed of the ship over the length of the course the pilot must set down in his journal the progress the vessel has made according to hours; and to do this he must know that the greatest distance that a ship advances in an hour is four miles, and with feebler breezes, three or only two.”[102] Time was measured by sand-glasses, or _ampolletas_, as they were called by the Spaniards. Forty-eight changes of these half-hour glasses equalled the space of a day.[103]

In 1487 the persistent enterprise of the Portuguese in exploring a commercial route to India along the west and south coasts of Africa was notably signalized by the success attending the expedition commanded by the adventurous seaman, Bartolomeu Dias. The indomitable zeal of this Portuguese mariner enabled him to reach the southern extremity of Africa, where he found a bold promontory to which he gave the name of Cabo Tormentoso, (the Stormy Cape,) commemorative of the adverse winds and bad weather encountered there. King John II., personally appreciating the good fortune attending the explorations of the navigators of Portugal in this direction during the previous seventy years, in which time more than six thousand miles of coast-line had been inspected by them, called the promontory discovered by Dias, Cabo de Boa Esperança (the Cape of Good Hope).[104]