Chapter XLII: Part III: The Progress of Maritime Discovery (1)

CHAP. XXIII.

Maritime Discoveries of the Phœnicians.--Expedition of
Hanno.--Circumnavigation of Africa under the Pharaoh
Necho.--Colæus of Samos.--Pytheas of Massilia.--Expedition of
Nearchus.--Circumnavigation of Hindostan under the Ptolemies.--Voyages
of Discovery of the Romans.--Consequences of the Fall of the Roman
Empire.--Amalfi.--Pisa.--Venice.--Genoa.--Resumption of Maritime
Intercourse between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.--Discovery of
the Mariner's Compass.--Marco Polo.

Among the nations of antiquity, navigation, as may well be supposed, was in a very rude and imperfect state. Unacquainted with the mariner's compass, which during the darkest and most tempestuous nights safely leads the modern seaman over the pathless ocean, the sparkling constellations of a serene sky, or the position of the sun, were the only guides of the ancient navigator. He therefore rarely ventured to lose sight of land, but cautiously steering his little bark along the shore, was subject to all the delays and dangers of coast navigation. Even under the mild sky and in the calm waters of the Mediterranean, it was only during the summer months that he dared to leave the port; to brave the fury of the wintry winds was a boldness he never could have thought of. Under such adverse circumstances, it is surely far less astonishing that the geographical knowledge of the ancients was so extremely limited when compared with ours, than that with means so scanty they yet should have known so much of the boundaries of ocean.

But the spirit of commercial enterprise triumphs over every difficulty. Stimulated by the love of gain, and the hope of discovering new sources of wealth, the Phœnicians, the first great maritime nation mentioned in history, were continually enlarging the limits of the known earth, until the fatal moment when the sword of the conqueror destroyed their cities, and extinguished their power for ever.

The first periods of Phœnician greatness are veiled in the mysterious darkness of an unknown past, yet so much is certain, that their date must have been very remote; as, according to the accounts which Herodotus received from the priests, the foundation of Tyre took place thirty centuries before the Christian era.

Long before the expedition of the Argonauts, the Phœnicians had already founded colonies on the Bithynian coast of the Black Sea (Pronectus, Bithynium); and that at a very early time they must have steered through the Straits of Grades into the Atlantic is proved by the fact, that, as far back as the eleventh century before Christ, they founded the towns of Grades and Tartessus on the western coast of Southern Spain. Penetrating farther and farther to the north, they discovered Britain, where they established their chief station on the Scilly Isles, at present so insignificant and obscure, and even visited the barbarous shores of the Baltic in quest of the costly amber. They planted their colonies along the north-west coast of Africa, even beyond the tropic; and, 2000 years before Vasco de Gama, Phœnician mariners are said to have circumnavigated that continent, for Herodotus relates that a Tyrian fleet, fitted out by Necho II., Pharaoh of Egypt (611-595 B.C.), sailed from a port in the Red Sea, doubled the southern promontory of Africa, and, after a voyage of three years, returned through the Straits of Grades to the mouth of the Nile.

Less wonderful, but resting on better historical proof, is the celebrated voyage of discovery to the south which Hanno performed by command of the senate of Carthage, the greatest of all Phœnician colonies, eclipsing even the fame of Tyre itself. Sailing from Cerne, the principal Phœnician settlement on the western coast of Africa, and which was probably situated on the present island of Arguin, he reached, after a navigation of seventeen days, a promontory which he called the West Horn (probably Cape Palmas), and then advanced to another cape, to which he gave the name of South Horn, and which is manifestly Cape de Tres Puntas, only 5° north of the line. During daytime the deepest silence reigned along the newly discovered coast, but after sunset countless fires were seen burning along the banks of the rivers, and the air resounded with music and song, the black natives spending, as they still do now, the hours of the cool night in festive joy. Most likely the Canary Islands were also known to the Phœnicians, as the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe is visible from the heights of Cape Bojador.

The progress of the great mariners of old in the Indian Ocean was no less remarkable than the extension of their Atlantic discoveries. Far beyond Bab-el-Mandeb their fleets sailed to Ophir or Supara, and returned with rich cargoes of gold, silver, sandal-wood, jewels, ivory, apes, and peacocks, to the ports of Elath and Ezion-Geber at the head of the Red Sea. These costly productions of the south were then transported across the Isthmus of Suez to Rhinocolura, the nearest port on the Mediterranean, and thence to Tyre, which ultimately distributed them over the whole of the known world.

The true position of Ophir is an enigma which no learned Œdipus will ever solve. While some authorities place it on the east coast of Africa, others fix its situation somewhere on the west coast of the Indian peninsula; and Humboldt is even of opinion that the name had only a general signification, and that a voyage to Ophir meant nothing more than a commercial expedition to any part of the Indian Ocean, just as at present we speak of a voyage to the Levant or the West Indies.

But whatever Ophir may have been, it is certain that the Phœnicians carried on a considerable trade with the lands and nations beyond the Gates of the Red Sea. Their trade in the direction of the Persian Gulf was no less extensive. Through the Syrian desert, where Palmyra, their chief station or emporium, proudly rose above the surrounding sands, their caravans slowly wandered to the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, to provide Nineveh and Babylon with the costly merchandise of Sidon and Tyre. Following the course of the great Mesopotamian streams, they reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, where they owned the ports of Tylos and Aradus and the rich pearl islands of Bahrein, and, having loaded their empty camels with the produce of Iran and Arabia, returned by the same way to the shores of the Mediterranean. How far their ships may have ventured beyond the mouth of the Persian Gulf is unknown, but the researches of the learned orientalists, Gesenius, Benfey, and Lassen, render it extremely probable, that, taking advantage of the regularly changing monsoons, they sailed through the Straits of Ormus to the coast of Malabar.

The progress of the Phœnician race in the technical arts, as well as in the astronomical and mathematical sciences so highly important for the improvement of their navigation, was no less remarkable for the age in which they lived, than the vast extension of a commercial intercourse which reached from Britain to the Indus, and from the Black Sea to the Senegal. They wove the finest linen, and knew how to dye it with the most splendid purple. They were unsurpassed in the workmanship of metals, and possessed the secret of manufacturing white and coloured glass, which their caravans and ships exchanged for the produce of the north and of the south. By the invention of the alphabet, which with many other useful sciences and arts, they communicated to the Greeks and other nations with whom they traded, they no less contributed to the progress of mankind than by the humanising influence of commerce.

Thus when we consider the services which these merchant-princes of antiquity rendered to their contemporaries, wherever their flag was seen or their caravans appeared, the annihilation of the maritime power of Tyre by Alexander (332 B.C.), and the destruction of Carthage by the Romans (146 B.C.), must strike us as events calamitous to the whole human race. Had the Carthaginians, so distinguished by their commercial spirit and ardour for discovery, triumphed over the semi-barbarous Romans, who, then at least, had not yet learned to imitate the arts of plundered Greece, there is every probability that some Punic Columbus would have discovered America at least a thousand years sooner, and the world at this day be in possession of many secrets still unknown, and destined to contribute to the comforts or enjoyments of our descendants.

In the times of Homer, when the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic had long been known to the Phœnicians, the geographical knowledge of the Greeks was still circumscribed by the narrow limits of the Eastern Mediterranean and part of the Euxine, and many a century elapsed ere their ships ventured beyond the Straits of Gades. Colæus of Samos (639 B.C.) is said to have been the first seafarer of Hellenic race who sailed forth into the Atlantic, compelled by adverse winds, and was able on his return from his involuntary voyage to tell his astonished countrymen of the wondrous rising and falling of the oceanic tides. It was seventy years later before the Phoceans of Massilia, the present Marseilles, ventured to follow the path he had traced out, and to visit the Atlantic port of Tartessus.

The town of Massilia had the additional honour of reckoning among her sons the great traveller Pytheas, the Marco Polo of antiquity. This far-wandering philosopher, who lived about 330 years before Christ, had visited all the coasts of Europe, from the mouths of the Tanais or Don to the shores of Ultima Thule, which, according to Leopold von Buch, was not Iceland, nor Feroë, nor Orcadia, but the Norwegian coast. His narrative first made the Greeks acquainted with North-western Europe, and remained for a long time their only geographical guide to those hyperborean lands.

While the horizon of the Greeks was thus considerably expanding towards the regions of the setting sun, the conquests of Alexander opened to them a new world in the distant Orient. Greek navigators now for the first time unfurled their sails on the Indian Ocean. The Macedonian, desirous not only of subduing Asia but of firmly attaching it to the nations of the Mediterranean by the bonds of mutual interest, and hoping by this means to consolidate his vast conquests, sent a fleet under the command of Nearchus, from the mouths of the Indus to the head of the Persian Gulf, to establish if possible a new road for a regular commercial intercourse between India and Mesopotamia. The performance of this voyage was reckoned by the conqueror one of the most glorious events of his reign, but it may serve as a proof of the slowness of ancient navigation, that Nearchus took ten months to perform a journey which one of our steamers might easily accomplish in five days.

After the disruption of the Macedonian empire, the circle of the Greek discoveries in the Indian Ocean was widened by the enterprising spirit of the Seleucidæ and Ptolemies. Seleucus Nicator is said to have penetrated to the mouths of the Ganges, and the fleets of the Egyptian kings sailed round the peninsula of Hindostan and discovered the coasts of Taprobane or Ceylon, the spicy odours of whose cinnamon-groves are said to be wafted far out to sea, so that--

"for many a league,
Pleased with the grateful scent, old Ocean smiles."

But now came the time when earth-ruling Rome called the whole civilised world her own, and her victorious eagles expanded their triumphant wings from the Red Sea to the coasts of the Northern Ocean. What discoveries might not have been expected from such a power, if the Romans had possessed but one tithe of the maritime spirit of conquered Carthage? But even this military empire contributed something to the enlargement of maritime knowledge. Under the reign of Augustus a Roman fleet sailed round the promontory of Skagen, discovered about sixteen years after the birth of Christ the Island of Fionia or Fünen, and is even supposed to have reached the entrance of the Gulf of Finland. In the year 84 A.C. Julius Agricola, the conqueror of Britain, sailed for the first time round Scotland, and discovered the Orcadian Isles.

In Pliny's time the real magnitude of the earth was still so imperfectly known that, according to the calculations of that great though rather over-credulous naturalist, Europe occupied the third part, Asia only the fourth, and Africa about the fifth, of its whole extent.

The geographer Ptolemy, who lived about the middle of the second century, under the reigns of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, describes the limits of the earth as far as they were known in his time. To the west, the coast of Africa had been explored as far as Cape Juby; and the Fortunate Islands or Hesperides, the present Canaries, rose from the ocean as the last lands towards the setting sun.

To the north discovery had reached as far as the Shetland Isles, and the promontory Perispa at the entrance of the Gulf of Finland; while on the east coast of Africa Cape Brava formed the ultimate boundary of the known world. Soon after Ptolemy's time the whole coast of Malacca (_Aurea Chersonesus_) and the Siamese Sea, as far as the Cape of Cambogia (_Notium promontorium_), was explored, and the Romans even appear to have had some knowledge of the great islands of the Indian archipelago, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo.

And yet, notwithstanding all this progress towards the East, it may well be asked whether the Phœnicians had not embraced a wider horizon than the Romans in the full zenith of their fortunes. Even though we reject the circumnavigation of Africa under Necho, and the discovery of America by Punic navigators, as not fully proved or fabulous, it is quite certain that they had explored the west coast of Africa to a much greater extent than the Romans, and extremely probable that they knew at least as much of the lands which bound the Indian Ocean. But, as from a narrow-minded mercantile policy they kept many of their discoveries profoundly secret, all knowledge of them perished with their ruin. In ancient times, when the defeat of a people too often led to its complete destruction, or at least to the extinction of its peculiar civilisation, and the difficulties of intercourse rendered the diffusion of knowledge extremely difficult and slow, it not unfrequently happened that useful discoveries were erased from the memory of mankind, a danger which, thanks to the printing-press and the steam-engine, is now no longer to be feared.

Thus a darkening or eclipse of intellectual life took place to a vast extent when the western Roman Empire succumbed to the barbarians of the North, and the bands which for centuries had united the cities of the east and west were violently sundered. Under that fatal blight Civilisation vanished from the lands which had so long been her chosen seat, only to dawn again after a long and obscure night. Commercial intercourse ceased between the sea-ports of the Mediterranean, all communication with distant countries was cut off, and the boundaries of the known earth became more and more narrow, as the ignorance of a barbarous age increased.

It is not before the beginning of the ninth century that we perceive the first glimpses of a better day in the rising fortunes of some Italian sea-ports, where favourable circumstances had given birth to liberal institutions. As early as the year 840 Amalfi possessed a considerable number of trading-vessels, and carried on a lucrative commerce with the Levant. The maritime code of this little republic regulated the commercial transactions of all the Mediterranean sea-ports; as in a later century the law-book of Wisby served as a guide to the merchants of the Baltic. A few years after its submission in 1131 to the arms of King Roger of Sicily, Amalfi was plundered by the Pisanese and almost entirely destroyed. The neglected harbour was gradually choked with sand, and the little town, which now numbers no more than 3000 inhabitants, has nothing to console it for its actual poverty but the remembrance of a glorious past. Along with Amalfi, Gaëta, Naples, and Pisa, rose to considerable eminence in commerce, though far from equalling the power and splendour of Genoa and Venice, the great republics of northern Italy.

As far back as the beginning of the sixth century, the city of the lagunes fits out a small fleet to purge the Adriatic of Istrian pirates. By a prudent course of policy she renders herself indispensable to the Byzantine court, and acquires great privileges in Constantinople. It is here she purchases the costly productions of the East, with which during the ninth and tenth centuries, she provides Northern Italy and a great part of Germany. About the beginning of the eleventh century her trade with Egypt and Syria begins to flourish, and soon raises her to the pinnacle of her power and wealth. In the year 1080 she extends her rule over Croatia and Dalmatia, and gains in 1204 considerable advantages by assisting the western crusaders in the conquest of Constantinople. Pera, numerous coast towns from the Hellespont to the Ionian Sea, a great part of the Morea, Corfu, and Candia fall to the winged lion's share, and requite the services of "blind old Dandolo." The silk manufacture is transported, as a valuable fruit of conquest, from the Morea to Venice, and becomes a new source of wealth to the Adriatic Tyre. The Euxine opens her ports to the Venetian seamen, treaties of commerce are concluded with Trebizond and Armenia, and a factory is established at Tana, at the mouth of the Don.

While thus the power of Venice rises more and more in the East, Genoa, which already in the tenth century carried on a flourishing trade, acquires by degrees the supremacy in the Western Mediterranean. The aid afforded by the republic to the Greek emperor Michael Palæologus contributes largely to the overthrow of the Latin throne of Constantinople, and opens the Bosphorus and the Black Sea to the enterprise of her merchants. The grandeur of Genoa now reaches its height; she holds fortified possession of Pera and Galata, and covers the coasts of the Crimea with her strong-holds and castles.

At a later period the Florentines appear on the scene, and assume the rank formerly held by Pisa in Mediterranean commerce. The acquisition of the sea-port of Leghorn (1421) opens the barriers of the ocean to the birthplace of Dante and Galileo.

After their deliverance from the Moorish yoke in the ninth century, a fresh and vigorous spirit begins also to animate the Catalans. They conclude treaties of commerce with Genoa and Pisa, and towards the end of the thirteenth century the ships of Barcelona are found visiting all the ports of the Mediterranean.

But in spite of the growth of trade and navigation in Italy and Spain, many years had yet to elapse after the fall of the Roman empire ere the gates of the Atlantic were once more opened to the navigators of the Mediterranean. It was not before the middle of the thirteenth century, after Seville and a great part of the Andalusian coast had been wrested from the Moors by Ferdinand of Castile, that the Italian and Catalonian seafarers, encouraged by privileges and remissions of duties, began to visit the port of Cadiz, where they met with merchants from Portugal and Biscay. Soon after, and most probably in consequence of the connexions thus formed, we find Italian ships visiting the ports of England and the Netherlands. About 1316, Genoese vessels began to carry goods to England; and somewhat later the Venetians, whose visits are not mentioned by the chroniclers before 1323.

Thus after a long interruption we see the seamen of the Mediterranean at length resuming the track to the Atlantic ports that had been struck out more than thirty centuries before by their predecessors the Phœnicians. But their voyages to the western ocean took place under circumstances much more favourable than those which had attended the men of Tyre and Carthage in their adventurous expeditions. Not only the better construction of their ships, but still more the use of the mariner's compass, for which Europe is probably indebted to the Arabs, who in their turn owed its knowledge to the Chinese, enabled them to steer more boldly into the open sea, and regardless of the bendings of the coasts to reach their journey's end by a less circuitous route. The period when the magnetic needle was first made use of by the Mediterranean navigators is not exactly known, but so much is certain that it did good service long before the time of Flavio Gioja (1302), to whom its discovery has been erroneously ascribed, though he may have introduced some improvement in the arrangement of the compass. Humboldt tells us in his "Cosmos," that in the satirical poem of Guyot de Provens, "La Bible" (1190), and in the description of Palestine by Jaques de Vitry, bishop of Ptolemais (1204-1215), the sea-compass is mentioned as a well-known instrument. Dante also speaks of the needle which points to the stars (Paradise, xii. 29); and in a nautical work by Raimundus Lullus of Majorca, written in the year 1286, we find another proof of a much earlier knowledge of the compass than before the beginning of the fourteenth century, since its use by the mariners of his time is expressly mentioned by that author.

Confidently following this unerring guide, the Catalonians sailed at an early period to the north coast of Scotland, and even preceded the Portuguese in their discoveries on the west coast of Africa, since Don Jayme Ferrer penetrated to the mouth of the Rio de Ouro as early as August 1346. About the same time the long-forgotten Canary Islands were rediscovered by the Spaniards; and at a later period (1402-1405) conquered and depopulated by some Norman adventurers, the Bethencourts.

While thus the South-European navigators unfurled their sails on the Atlantic, and gave the first impulse to the glorious discoveries that in the following century were destined to open up the ocean, and reveal its hitherto unknown greatness to mankind, the Indian Sea still remained closed to their enterprise; for though the Venetians by this time rivalled, if they did not surpass the ancient maritime greatness of the Tyrians in the Mediterranean, they did not, like them, directly fetch the rich produce of the South in their own ships from the East-African and Indian ports, but received them at second hand from the Arabian masters of Syria and Egypt.

But though no ship of theirs was ever seen in the Indian seas, through them the knowledge of the Arabian discoveries in those parts penetrated to Europe, and widely extended the knowledge of the ocean. For when the Arabs, fired by the prophetic ardour of Mahomet, suddenly emerged from the obscurity of pastoral life, and appeared as conquerors before the astonished world, the trade of the Indian Ocean fell into the hands of these new masters of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, who soon learnt to pursue it with an energy which the Romans and Persians had never known. The town of Bassora was founded by the caliph Omar on the western shore of the great stream formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, and soon emulated Alexandria herself in the greatness of its commerce. From Bassora the Arabs sailed far beyond the Siamese Gulf, which had formerly bounded European navigation. They visited the unknown ports of the Indian archipelago, and established so active a trade with Canton, that the Chinese emperor granted them the use of their own laws in that city.

This progress of the Arabs, and the vast treasures accruing to Venice from the overland Indian trade, could not fail to excite the envy of the other seafaring powers, and to call forth an increasing desire of discovering a new maritime route to the wealth-teeming regions of Southern Asia.

The wonderful narratives of the first travellers who wandered by land to the distant East likewise contributed in no small degree to foment the ardour of discovery. The most celebrated of these geographical pioneers was Marco Polo, a noble Venetian who had resided many years at the court of the Mongol ruler, Kublai Khan, and visited the most remote regions of Asia. He was the first European that ever sailed along the western shores of the Pacific, the first that told his astonished countrymen of the magnificence of Cambalu or Peking, the capital of the great kingdom of Cathay, and of the splendour of Zipanga or Japan situated on the confines of a vast ocean extending to the east. He also made more than one sea-voyage in the Indian Ocean, and to him Europe owed her first knowledge of the Moluccas, the east coast of Africa, and the island of Madagascar.

This greatest of all the mediæval travellers, who without exaggeration may be said to have enlarged the boundaries of the known earth as much as Alexander the Great, was followed by Oderich of Portenau, who travelled as far as India and China (1320-1330); by Sir John Mandeville, who visited almost all the lands described by Marco Polo; by Schildberger of Munich, who accompanied the barbarous Tamerlane on his locust expeditions; and finally by Clavigo, sent in the year 1403 by the Spanish court on an embassy to Samarcand. The truths which these bold travellers communicated to their countrymen about the riches and the commerce of the nations they had visited, as well as the fables in which their credulity or their extravagant fancy indulged, made an enormous impression on the European mind, and raised to a feverish heat the longing after those sunny lands and isles which imagination adorned with all the charms of an earthly paradise.

CHAP. XXIV.

Prince Henry of Portugal.--Discovery of Porto Santo and
Madeira.--Doubling of Cape Bojador.--Discovery of the Cape Verde
Islands.--Bartholomew Diaz.--Vasco de Gama.--Columbus.--His
Predecessors.--Discovery of Greenland by Günnbjorn.--Bjorne
Herjulfson.--Leif.--John Vaz Cortereal.--John and Sebastian
Cabot.--Retrospective View of the Beginnings of English
Navigation.--Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci.--Vincent Yañez
Pinson.--Cortez.--Verazzani.--Cartier.--The Portuguese in the Indian
Ocean.

The reigning idea of a century finds always one or more eminent spirits, in whom and through whose agency the desires and hopes of thousands ripen into deeds, and are changed from dreams into realities. One of these rare and highly gifted men was Prince Henry of Portugal, a son of King John I., who made it the chief aim of his life to extend the boundaries of maritime discovery, and devoted with glowing ardour all the powers of his energetic mind, and all the influence of rank and riches to the attainment of this noble object. From the castle of Sagres near Cape St. Vincent, where, far from the court, he had fixed his residence in order to be less disturbed in his favourite studies, his eye glanced over the Atlantic, which constantly reminded him of the unknown lands which held out such brilliant prospects to the navigator who should venture to steer southwards along the African coast. The experienced seamen and learned geographers that surrounded him confirmed him in his hopes, and encouraged him to attempt the realisation of his generous ideas.

Fortunately all outward circumstances combined to favour the prince's projects. At that time Portugal was not plunged, as at present, in a state of slothful lethargy, but full of the bold and enterprising spirit which the expulsion of the Moors and long intestine wars had called to life. The geographical position of the country, bounded on every side by the dominions of a mightier neighbour, forbade all extension by land, and pointed to the ocean as the only field in which a comparatively small but spirited people could hope to reap a rich harvest of wealth and glory.

The first two ships which Prince Henry sent out on a voyage of discovery along the African coast (1412) did not reach farther than Cape Bojador, whose rocky cliffs stretching far out into the Atlantic intimidated their inexperienced commanders. Six years later (1418) Juan Gonsalez Zarco and Tristan Vaz Tejeira were intrusted with a new expedition, and sailed with express commands to double that ill-famed promontory; but a terrible gale drove them out to sea, and forced them to seek a refuge on an unknown island, to which they thankfully gave the name of Porto Santo. This discovery, though extremely unimportant in itself, served to confirm the prince in his projects, and encouraged him to send out in the following year a new expedition under the same commander, to take possession of the island.

This led to a more important discovery, for on landing on Porto Santo the attention of the Portuguese was struck by a black and prominent spot, rising above the southern horizon. To this they now directed their course, and were equally delighted and surprised to see it swell out as they approached to the ample proportions of a large island; to which, on account of the dense forests which at that time covered its verdant hill-slopes up to the very top, they gave the name of Madeira. Prince Henry immediately equipped a considerable fleet to carry a colony of his countrymen to the new land of promise, and furnished them with the vine of Cyprus, and the sugar-cane of Sicily, which throve so well on the Atlantic isle, that after a few years the produce of Madeira began to be of consequence in the trade of the mother country.

Thus the first undertakings of Prince Henry were not left unrewarded; but, besides the commercial advantages arising from the possession of Madeira, it encouraged the Portuguese navigators no longer servilely to creep along the coasts, but boldly to steer into the open sea. Thus Don Gilianez, by avoiding the shore-currents, succeeded at last in doubling the dreaded Cape Bojador (1433), and opening a new sphere to navigation. One discovery now rapidly followed another. Gonsalez and Nuño Tristan (1440-1442) penetrated as far as the Senegal; Cape de Verd was reached in 1446; and three years later, the limits of the known earth were extended as far as the islands of the same name and the Azores, those advanced sentinels in the bosom of the Atlantic. It may easily be imagined how much these successes contributed to encourage the universal ardour for discovery. Adventurers from all countries hastened to Portugal, hoping to gratify their ambition or avarice under the auspices of a prince who had already achieved so much; and even many Venetians and Genoese, who were at that time superior to all other nations in naval science, reckoned it as an honour to serve under a flag which might justly be considered as the high school of the seaman. Thus before Prince Henry closed his eyes (1463) the aim of his glorious life had been attained; for, though he did not live to see his countrymen penetrate into the Indian Ocean, yet he witnessed the mighty impulse which in a short time was to lead to that important result.

In the year 1471 the line was crossed for the first time, and the Portuguese thus detected the error of the ancients, who believed that the intolerable heat of a vertical sun rendered the equatorial regions uninhabitable by man.

Under John the Second a mighty fleet discovered the kingdoms of Benin and Congo (1484), followed the coast above 1500 miles beyond the equator, and revealed to Europe the constellations of another hemisphere.

The farther their ships penetrated to the south, the higher rose the flood tide of their hopes. As the African continent appeared sensibly to contract itself, and to bend towards the East as they proceeded, they no longer doubted that the way to the Indian Ocean would now soon be found, and give them the exclusive possession of a trade which had enriched Venice, and made that city the envy of the world. The ancient long-forgotten tale of the Phœnician circumnavigation of Africa now found belief, and Bartholomew Diaz sailed from Lisbon for the purpose of solving the important problem. The storms of an unknown ocean, the famine caused by the loss of his store-ship, and the frequent mutinies of a dispirited crew, could not stop the progress of this intrepid mariner, who, boldly advancing in the face of a thousand difficulties, at length discovered the high promontory which forms the southern extremity of Africa. But, as his weather-beaten ships were no longer able to confront the mountain-billows and furious gales foaming or roaring round that stormy headland, he was obliged, sore against his will, to give up the attempt to double the Cape of Tempests, Cabo tormentoso, as he called it, but to which the king gave the more inviting name of the Cape of Good Hope. Yet before Vasco de Gama set sail from Lisbon to accomplish the great work (1498) and win the prize to which so many navigators had gradually paved the way, the astounding intelligence had flashed through Europe that on the 12th of October, 1492, Columbus had discovered a new world in the west. The history of this most famous, and most important in its results, of all sea-voyages, is so well known that I may well refrain from entering into any details on the subject: at all events the reader will be much more interested by a short account of the intrepid navigators who, long before the great Genoese, found their way to the shores of the new continent.

While Tropical America is separated from Europe and Africa by a vast tract of intervening ocean, and even the advanced posts of the Azores and Cape de Verd Islands are far distant from the western shores of the Atlantic, Iceland and Greenland appear to us in the north as stations linking at comparatively easy distances the Old World and the New. It is, therefore, by no means surprising that the discovery of Iceland by the Norwegian _Viking_ or pirate Nadod, and the somewhat later colonisation of the island by Ingolf, in the year 875, should in the following century have led the Norsemen to the discovery of America, particularly when we consider that no people ever equalled them in daring and romantic love of adventure:

"Kings of the main their leaders brave,
Their barks the dragons of the wave."

Greenland, discovered by Günnbjorn in the year 876 or 877, was indeed not colonised by the Icelanders before 983; a delay excusable enough when we consider the uninviting climate of that dreary peninsula or island, but three years after the latter date, we already find Bjorne Herjulfson undertaking a cruise from the new settlement to the south-west, and successively discovering Nantucket, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, though without making any attempts to land. Bjorne was followed about the year 1000 by Leif, a son of Erick the Red, the founder of the Greenland colony; who, sailing along the American coast as far as 41-1/2° north lat. discovered the _good Winland_, which received its name from the wild vines which Tyrker, a German who accompanied the expedition, found growing there in abundance. The fertility and mild climate of this coast, when compared with that of Labrador and Greenland, induced the discoverers to settle, and to found the first European colony on the American continent. Frequent wars with the Eskimos or Skrelingers (dwarfs), who at that time, as I have already mentioned in the fourth chapter, extended far more to the south than at present, soon however destroyed the colony; and the last account of Norman America we find in the old Scandinavian records is the mention of a ship which, in the year 1347, had sailed from Greenland to Markland (Nova Scotia) to gather wood, and was driven by a storm to Stamfjord on the west coast of Iceland. About this time also the colonies in Greenland, which until then had enjoyed a tolerable state of prosperity, decayed and ultimately perished under the blighting influence of commercial monopolies, of wars with the aborigines, and above all of the _black death_ (1347-1351), that horrible plague of the fourteenth century, which, after having depopulated Europe, vented its fury even upon those remote wilds. Thus the knowledge of the Norman discovery of America gradually faded from the memory of man, and thus also it happened that the names and deeds of Leif and Bjorne Herjulfson remained totally unknown to the southern navigators, who at that time moreover, had little intercourse with the nations of Northern Europe.

Besides his well-authenticated Norman predecessors, Columbus may possibly have had others. Traces of early Irish and Welsh discoveries are pointed out by the Northern historians, and John Vaz Cortereal, a Portuguese navigator, is said to have visited the coasts of Newfoundland some time previous to the voyages of Columbus and Cabot.

If before the first voyage of the great Genoese navigator a mighty longing to penetrate to distant countries pervaded the public mind of Europe, it may be imagined to what a feverish glow this reigning idea of the century was excited, when the wonderful accounts of the gold and enchanting beauty of Haiti spread from land to land. As in former times, half Europe had thrown itself upon the Orient to liberate the tomb of our Saviour from the tyranny of the Moslem; so now one flood of adventurers followed another to the new land of promise, which held out such glittering prospects of wealth and enjoyment. Obeying the mighty impulse, England and France now entered upon the path on which Portugal and Spain had so gloriously preceded them, and, as the fruit of this general emulation, we see after a few years the whole western shore of the great Atlantic basin drawn into the circle of the known earth.

If Columbus was undoubtedly the first discoverer of the West Indian islands (the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, 1492; Lesser Antilles, 1493; Jamaica, 1494), the honour of having preceded him on the American continent belongs to John Cabot, a Venetian merchant settled in Bristol, and to the youthful energy of his son Sebastian, since they landed on the coast of Labrador (24th June, 1497) seventeen months before the continent of Tropical America, in the delta of the Orinoco, was discovered by Columbus on his third voyage.

Thus Genoa and Venice, the great Mediterranean rivals, divide the glory of having revealed a new world to mankind, but it was ordained that the laurels of their sons should bloom under a foreign flag, and the fruits of their endeavours be reaped by other nations. For as Columbus steered into the western ocean in the service of the Spanish monarch, the Cabots were sent by Henry the Seventh of England across the Atlantic to discover a north-western passage to India. This, of course, they did not accomplish, but the discovery of Newfoundland and of the coast of America from Labrador to Virginia rewarded their efforts, and laid the foundation of Britain's colonial greatness. Their voyage is also remarkable as having been the first expedition of the kind that ever left the shores of England, which at that time held a very inferior rank among the maritime nations, and gave but taint indications of her future naval supremacy. On this occasion it may not be uninteresting to cast a retrospective glance on the modest beginnings of British navigation. In the year 1217 the first treaty of commerce was concluded with Norway, and in the beginning of the fourteenth century Bergen was the most distant port to which English vessels resorted. Soon afterwards they ventured into the Baltic, and it was not before the middle of the following century that they began to frequent some of the Castilian and Portuguese ports. Towards the end of the fifteenth century the English flag was still a stranger to the Mediterranean, and direct intercourse with the Levant only began with the sixteenth. Edward the Second, preparing for his great Scottish war, was obliged to hire five galleys from Genoa, the same town whence a few years back our giant steamers transported a whole Sardinian army to the shores of the Crimea, where centuries before the Genoese had been established as lords and masters. Such are the changes in the relative position of nations that have been brought about by the power of time!

After this short digression I return to America, where, in 1499, Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci were the first to sail along the coast of Paria. The following year was uncommonly rich in voyages of discovery, as well in the south as in the north. In the western ocean the line was first crossed by Vincent Yañez Pinson, who doubled Cape Saint Augustin, discovered the mouths of the Amazon river, and thence sailed northwards along the coast as far as the island of Trinidad, which Columbus had discovered two years before. About the same time a Portuguese fleet, sailing under the command of Pedro Alvarez Cabral to the Indian Ocean, was driven by adverse winds to the coast of the Brazils; so that, if the genius of Columbus had not evoked, as it were, America out of the waves, chance would have effected her discovery a few years later.

A third voyage, which renders the year 1500 remarkable in maritime annals, is that of Gaspar Cortereal, a son of John Vaz Cortereal whom I have already mentioned as one of the doubtful precursors of Columbus.

Hoping to realise the dream of a north-west passage to the riches of India, Gaspar appeared on the inhospitable shores of Labrador, and penetrated into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Storms and ice-drifts forced him to retreat, but firmly resolved to prosecute his design, he again set sail in the following year with two small vessels. It is supposed that on this second voyage he penetrated into Frobisher Bay, but here floating ice-masses and violent gales separated him from his companion ship, which returned alone to Portugal.

As in our times the uncertain fate of Franklin has called forth a series of heroic deeds, so the doubtful destiny of the Portuguese explorer allowed his brother Miguel no rest, whom in the following spring we find hastening with three ships on the traces of the lost Gaspar. But Miguel also disappeared for ever among the ice-fields of the north. A third brother of this high-minded family yet remained, who earnestly implored the king that he also might be allowed to go forth and seek for his missing kindred. But Emanuel steadfastly refused permission, saying that these deplorable enterprises had already cost him two of his most valuable servants, and he could afford to lose no more.

In the year 1501 Rodrigo de Bastidas sailed to the coast of Paria, and discovered the whole shore-line from Cape de Vela to the Gulf of Darien. In the year 1502 the aged Columbus, entering with youthful ardour upon his fourth and last voyage, set sail with four wretched vessels, the largest of which was only seventy tons burthen, and discovered the coast of the American continent from Cape Gracias á Dios to Porto-Bello. The east coast of Yucatan was explored in the year 1508 by Juan Diaz de Solis and Vincent Yañez Pinson, and the island of Cuba circumnavigated for the first time by Sebastian de Ocampo.

In 1512 Juan Ponce de Leon is led by his evil star to Florida, where, instead of finding as he hoped the fountain of eternal youth, he is doomed to a miserable end; and in 1517 the above-mentioned Solis sails along the coasts of the Brazils to the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, where he is killed in a conflict with the Indians. In 1518 Cordova makes his countrymen acquainted with the north and west coasts of Yucatan, and in the same year Grijalva discovers the Mexican coast from Tabasco to San Juan de Ulloa. In 1518 he is followed by the great Cortez, who lands at Vera Cruz, overthrows the empire of Montezuma after a series of exploits unparalleled in history, and renders the whole coast of Mexico far to the north subject to the Spanish crown.

The voyages of Verazzani (1523) who sailed along the coast of the United States, and of Jacques Cartier (1524) who investigated the Bay of St. Lawrence, did not indeed widely extend geographical knowledge, as these navigators, who had been sent out by Francis I., did no more than examine more closely the previous discoveries of Cabot and Cortereal; their explorations however had the result of giving France possession of Canada, and of entitling her to a share in the fisheries of Newfoundland. Thus within half a century after the ever memorable day when Columbus first landed on Guanahani, we find almost the whole eastern coast of America rising into light from the deep darkness of an unknown past.

But while the western shores of the Atlantic were thus unrolling themselves before the wondering gaze of mankind, the Indian Ocean was the scene of no less remarkable events; for in the same year (1498) that Columbus first visited the American continent, Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope, which thus fully justified its auspicious name, crossed the Eastern Ocean, and on the 22nd of May landed at Calicut on the coast of Malabar, ten months and two days after leaving the port of Lisbon.

And now, as if by magic, the great revolution in commerce took place which the Venetians long had feared and the Portuguese had no less anxiously hoped for; for the latter lost no time in reaping the golden fruits of the glorious discoveries of Gama and his predecessors. In less than twenty years their flag waved in all the harbours of the Indian Ocean, from the east coast of Africa to Canton; and over this whole immense expanse a row of fortified stations secured to them the dominion of the seas. Their settlements in Diu and Goa awed the whole coast of Malabar, and cut off the intercourse of Egypt with India by way of the Red Sea. They took possession of the small island of Ormus, which commands the entrance of the Persian Gulf, and rendered this important commercial highway likewise tributary to their power. In the centre of the East-Indian world rose their chief emporium, Malacca, and even in distant China Macao obeyed their laws. The discovery of the Molucca Islands gave them the monopoly of the lucrative spice trade, which was destined at a later period, and more permanently, to enrich the thrifty Dutchman.

What vast changes had taken place since Prince Henry's first expeditions to the coast of Africa! How had old Ocean enlarged his bounds! He who as a child had still known the earth with her old and narrow confines might, before his hair grew white, have seen the Atlantic assume a definite form; Africa project like an enormous peninsula into the boundless world of waters, and one single ocean bathe all the coasts from Canton to the West Indies.

Yet a few years and the Pacific opens its gates, and all the discoveries of Columbus and Vasco seem small when compared with the vast regions which Magellan reveals to man.

CHAP. XXV.

Vasco Nuñez de Balboa.--His Discovery of the Pacific, and
subsequent Fate.--Ferdinand Magellan.--Sebastian el Cano, the
first Circumnavigator of the Globe.--Discoveries of Pizarro and
Cortez.--Urdaneta.--Juan Fernandez.--Mendoza.--Drake.--Discoveries
of the Portuguese and Dutch in the Western Pacific.--Attempts
of the Dutch and English to discover North-East and
North-West Passages to India.--Sir Hugh Willoughby and
Chancellor.--Frobisher.--Davis.--Barentz.--His Wintering in
Nova Zembla.--Quiros.--Torres.--Schouten.--Le Maire.--Abel
Tasman.--Hudson.--Baffin.--Dampier.--Anson.--Byron.--Wallis and
Carteret.--Bougainville.

The riches which the Indian trade had poured into the lap of Venice, and which at a later period fell to the share of the Portuguese, formed the chief incitement to the great maritime discoveries which illustrated the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century.

The hope to discover a new road to India had not only animated the Portuguese navigators, but also led Columbus and Cabot across the Atlantic. It caused the unfortunate Cortereal to sail into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, induced Juan de Solis to penetrate into the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, and was finally the chief end and aim of the wondrous expedition of Magellan. The time is now come when the barriers of the Pacific are to fall, but before crossing its vast bosom with the illustrious navigator who first traversed it from end to end, I shall detain the reader a few moments on the shores of the Gulf of Darien, where the wretched remains of the colony of Santa Maria el Antigua, founded by Ojeda in 1509, had, after the departure of that unfortunate adventurer, freely elected Vasco Nuñez de Balboa to be their governor. This great man, who would have emulated the fame of a Cortez or Pizarro if his good fortune had been equal to his merit, omitted no opportunity of justifying the choice of his comrades by the unremitting zeal he displayed for their welfare. Making up for the scantiness of his resources by unceasing activity, he subdued the neighbouring caciques, and collected a great quantity of gold, which abounded more in that part of the continent than in the islands.

It happened during one of his frequent excursions that a young Cacique, witnessing a very angry dispute among the Spaniards about a few grains of gold, asked them in a contemptuous tone why they quarrelled about such a trifle; and added, that, if they set such an exorbitant value upon a metal comparatively worthless in his eyes, he could gratify their utmost wishes by pointing out to them a land where gold was so plentiful that even common utensils were made of it. And when Balboa eagerly asked where that happy country was situated, "Six days' journey to the south," was the answer, "will bring you to another ocean along whose coast it lies!"

This was the first time the Spaniards ever heard of the Pacific and of gold-teeming Peru, and the intelligence was well calculated to inflame the enterprising spirit of their leader. Balboa immediately concluded that this sea must be that which Columbus and so many other navigators had vainly sought for, and that its discovery would beyond all doubt open the way to India, which, according to the geographical error of the times, was supposed to be far less distant from America than it really is.

The most brilliant prospects rose before his fancy, and he would immediately have gone forth to realise them, if prudence had not warned him first to provide all the means necessary to insure success. He therefore endeavoured before all to gain the good-will of the neighbouring Indian chiefs, and sent some trustworthy agents to Hispaniola with a considerable quantity of gold, whereby many adventurers were induced to flock to his standard. Having thus reinforced himself, he thought he might now safely undertake his important expedition.

The Isthmus of Darien, over which he had to force his way, is not above sixty miles broad, but this short distance was rendered difficult, or rather impervious, by the innumerable obstacles of a tropical wilderness. The high mountains running along the neck of land were covered with dense forests, and the low grounds beneath filled with deep swamps, from which arose exhalations deadly to a European constitution. Wild torrents rushed down the ravines, and often forced them to retrace their steps. A march through a country like this, thinly peopled by a few savages, and without any other guides than some Indians of doubtful fidelity, was an enterprise worthy of all the energies of a Balboa.

On the 1st of September, 1513, after the end of the rainy season, he set out with a small but well chosen band of 190 Spaniards, accompanied by 1000 Indian carriers. As long as he remained on the territories of the friendly Caciques his progress was comparatively easy, but scarce had he penetrated into the interior, when, besides the almost invincible obstacles of nature--forests, swamps, and swollen torrents,--he had to encounter the deadly enmity of the Indians. As he approached, some of the Caciques fled to the mountains, after having destroyed or carried along with them all that might have been of use to the hated strangers; while others, of more determined hostility, opposed his progress by force of arms. Although the Spaniards had been led to expect that a six days' march would bring them to their journey's end, they had already spent no less than twenty-five days in forcing their way through the wilderness, amidst incessant attacks and hardships. The greater part of them were rapidly giving way under fatigues almost surpassing the limits of mortal endurance, and even the strongest felt that they could not hold out much longer. But Balboa, ever the foremost to face danger or difficulty, whose spirits no reverse could damp, and whose fiery eloquence painted in glowing colours the glorious reward of their present privations, knew how to inspire his men with his own unconquerable spirit, so that without a murmur they kept toiling on through swamp and forest. At length the Indian guides pointed out to them a mountain-crest from which they promised them the view of the longed-for ocean. Filled with new ardour they climbed up the steep ascent, but before they reached the summit Balboa ordered them to halt, that he might be the first to enjoy the glorious prospect. As soon as he saw the Pacific stretch out in endless majesty along the verge of the distant horizon, he fell on his knees and poured forth his rapturous thanks to heaven for having awarded him so grand a discovery. And now also his impatient companions hurried on, and soon the primeval forest--accustomed only to the howlings of the brute or the eagle's scream--resounded with the loud exclamations of their astonishment, gratitude, and joy.