WORKS ISSUED BY
The Hakluyt Society.
THE CHRONICLE
OF
THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST
OF GUINEA.
VOL. II.
first series. no. c-mdcccxcix
STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY IN ARMOUR AT BELEM.
THE CHRONICLE
OF THE
DISCOVERY
AND
CONQUEST OF GUINEA.
WRITTEN BY
GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA;
NOW FIRST DONE INTO ENGLISH
BY
CHARLES RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A., F.R.G.S.,
fellow of merton college, oxford; corresponding member
of the lisbon geographical society;
and
EDGAR PRESTAGE, B.A.Oxon.,
knight of the most noble portuguese order of s. thiago; corresponding
member of the lisbon royal academy of sciences,
the lisbon geographical society, etc.
VOL. II.
(CHAPTERS XLI-XCVII).
With an Introduction on the
Early History of African Exploration, Cartography, etc.
BURT FRANKLIN, PUBLISHER
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Published by
BURT FRANKLIN
514 West 113th Street
New York 25, N. Y.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
COUNCIL
OF
THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY.
Sir Clements Markham, K.C.B., F.R.S., Pres. R.G.S., President.
The Right Hon. The Lord Stanley of Alderley, Vice-President.
Rear-Admiral Sir William Wharton, K.C.B., Vice-President.
C. Raymond Beazley, Esq., M.A.
Colonel G. Earl Church.
Sir Martin Conway.
Albert Gray, Esq.
F. H. H. Guillemard, Esq., M.A., M.D.
The Right Hon. Lord Hawkesbury.
Edward Heawood, Esq., M.A.
Dudley F. A. Hervey, Esq., C.M.G.
Admiral Sir Anthony H. Hoskins, G.C.B.
J. Scott Keltie, Esq., LL.D.
F. W. Lucas, Esq.
Vice-Admiral Albert H. Markham.
E. J. Payne, Esq.
Sir Cuthbert E. Peek, Bart.
E. G. Ravenstein, Esq.
Howard Saunders, Esq.
Charles Welch, Esq., F.S.A.
William Foster, Esq., B.A., Honorary Secretary.
PREFATORY NOTE.
This Volume continues and ends the present Edition of the Chronicle of Guinea, the first part of which was published in 1896 (vol. xcv of the Hakluyt Society's publications). Here we have again to acknowledge the kind advice and help of various friends, particularly of Senhor Batalhaȧ Reis and Mr. William Foster. As to the Maps which accompany this volume: the sections of Andrea Bianco, 1448, and of Fra Mauro, 1457-9, here given, offer some of the best examples of the cartography of Prince Henry's later years in relation to West Africa. These ancient examples are supplemented by a new sketch-map of the discoveries made by the Portuguese seamen during the Infant's lifetime along the coast of the Dark Continent. The excellent photograph of Prince Henry's statue from the great gateway at Belem is the work of Senhor Camacho. As to the Introduction and Notes, it is hoped that attention has been given to everything really important for the understanding of Azurara's text; but the Editors have avoided such treatment as belongs properly to a detailed history of geographical advance during this period.
C. R. B.
E. P.
April 1899.
INTRODUCTION.
n this it may be well to summarise briefly, for the better illustration of the Chronicle here translated, not only the life of Prince Henry of Portugal, surnamed the Navigator, but also various questions suggested by Prince Henry's work, e.g.—The history of the Voyages along the West African coast and among the Atlantic islands, encouraged by him and recorded by Azurara; The History of the other voyages of Prince Henry's captains, not recorded by Azurara; The attempts of navigators before Prince Henry, especially in the fourteenth century, to find a way along West Africa to the Indies; The parallel enterprises by land from the Barbary States to the Sudan, across the Sahara; The comparative strength of Islam and Christianity in the Africa of Prince Henry's time; The State of Cartographical Knowledge in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and its relation to the new Portuguese discoveries; The question of the "School of Sagres," said to have been instituted by the Navigator for the better training of mariners and map-makers.
I.—The Life of Prince Henry.
Henry, Duke of Viseu, third[[1]] son of King John I of Portugal, surnamed the Great, founder of the House of Aviz, and of Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt and niece of King Edward III of England, was born on March 4th, 1394.
We are told by Diego Gomez,[[2]] who in 1458 sailed to the West Coast of Africa in the service of Prince Henry, and made a discovery of the Cape Verde islands, that in 1415 John de Trasto was sent by the Prince on a voyage of exploration, and reached "Telli," the "fruitful" district of Grand Canary. Gomez here gives us the earliest date assigned by any authority of the fifteenth century for an expedition of the Infant's; but in later times other statements were put forward, assigning 1412 or even 1410 as the commencement of his exploring activity. This would take us back to a time when the Prince was but sixteen or eighteen years old; and though it is probable enough that Portuguese vessels may have sailed out at this time (as in 1341) to the Canaries or along the West African coast, it is not probable that Henry took any great share in such enterprise before the Ceuta expedition of 1415. In any case, it is practically certain that before 1434, no Portuguese ship had passed beyond Cape Bojador. Gil Eannes' achievement of that year is marked by Azurara and all our best authorities as a decided advance on any previous voyage, at least of Portuguese mariners. We shall consider presently how far this advance was anticipated by other nations, and more particularly by the French. Cape Non, now claimed by some as the southernmost point of Marocco, had been certainly passed by Catalan and other ships[[3]] before Prince Henry's day; but it had not been forgotten how rhyme and legend had long consecrated this point as a fated end of the world. Probably it was still (c. 1415) believed by many in Portugal—
"Quem passar o Cabo de Não Ou tornará, ou não."
and the Venetian explorer, Cadamosto, preserves a mention of its popular derivation in Southern Europe from the Latin "Non," "as beyond it was believed there was no return possible." The real form was probably the Arabic Nun or "Fish."[[4]]
Prince Henry's active share in the work of exploration is usually dated only from the Conquest of Ceuta. Here we are told in one of our earliest authorities (Diego Gomez) he gained information, from Moorish prisoners, merchants, and other acquaintance "of the passage of traders from the coasts of Tunis to Timbuktu and to Cantor on the Gambia, which led him to seek those lands by the way of the sea;" and, to come to details, he was among other things, "told of certain tall palms growing at the mouth of the Senegal [or Western Nile], by which he was able to guide the caravels he sent out to find that river." It will be important hereafter to examine the evidence which had been accumulated for such belief up to the fifteenth century: now it will be enough to say: 1. That Prince Henry was probably of the same opinion as the ordinary cartographer of his time about the peninsular shape of Africa. 2. That the "shape" in question was usually satisfied with what we should now call the Northern half of the Continent, making the Southern coast of "Guinea" continue directly to the Eastern, Abyssinian, or Indian Ocean. 3. That trade had now (c. 1415) been long maintained between this "Guinea coast" and the Mediterranean seaboard—chiefly by Moorish caravans across the Sahara. 4. That something, though little, was known in Western Christendom about the Christian faith and king of Abyssinia; for "Prester John's" story in the fifteenth century had really become a blend of rumours from Central (Nestorian) Asia and Eastern (Abyssinian) Africa.
In Prince Henry's work we may distinguish three main objects—scientific, patriotic, and religious. First of all he was a discoverer, for the sake of the new knowledge then beginning. He was interested in the exploration of the world in general, and of the sea-route round Africa to India in particular. Dinis Diaz, returning from his discovery of Cape Verde (Az., ch. xxxi.), brought home a "booty not so great as had arrived in the past," but "the Infant thought it very great indeed, since it came from that land", and he proportioned his rewards to exploration rather than to trade profits. Nuno Tristam in 1441 (Az., ch. xiii.) reminds Antam Gonçalvez that "for 15 years" the Infant has "striven ... to arrive at ... certainty as to the people of this land, under what law or lordship they do live."
Azurara, though always more prone to emphasize the emotional than the scientific, himself assigns as the first reason for the Infant's discoveries, his "wish to know the land that lay beyond the isles of Canary and that cape called Bojador, for that up to his time, neither by writings nor by the memory of man, was known with any certainty the nature of the land" (Az., ch. vii.).
Again, Henry was founding upon his work of exploration an over-sea dominion, a "commercial and colonial" empire for his country. He desired to see her rich and prosperous, and there cannot be any reasonable doubt that his ideas agreed with those of Italian land and sea travellers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He and they were agreed in thinking it possible and very important to secure a large share of Asiatic, especially of Indian, trade for their respective countries. By exploring and making practicable the maritime route around Africa to the Indies, he would probably raise Portugal into the wealthiest of European nations. Azurara's "second reason" for the "search after Guinea" is that "many kinds of merchandise might be brought to this realm ... and also the products of this realm might be taken there, which traffic would bring great profit to our countrymen."
Thirdly, Prince Henry had the temperament of a Crusader and a missionary. Of him, fully as much as of Columbus, it may be said that if he aimed at empire, it was for the extension of Christendom. Azurara's three final reasons for Henry's explorations all turn upon this. The Prince desired to find out the full strength of the Moors in Africa, "said to be very much greater than commonly supposed," "because every wise man" desires "a knowledge of the power of his enemy." He also "sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian princes" who would aid him against the enemies of the faith. And, lastly, he desired to "make increase in the faith of Jesus Christ, and to bring to Him all the souls that should be saved."
It has often been pointed out how the Infant was aided in his work by the tendencies of his time and country; how in him the spirit of mediæval faith and the spirit of material, even of commercial, ambition, were united; how he was the central representative of a general expansive and exploring movement; and how he took up and carried on the labours of various predecessors. At the same time it must be recognised that his work forms an epoch in the history of geographical, commercial, and colonial advance; that he gave a permanence and a vitality to the cause of maritime discovery which it had never possessed before; that even his rediscoveries of islands and mainland frequently had all the meaning and importance of fresh achievements; that he made his nation the pioneer of Europe in its conquest of the outer world; and that without him the results of the great forty years (1480-1520) of Diaz, Columbus, Da Gama, and Magellan must have been long, might have been indefinitely, postponed.
Barros (Decade I, i, 2) tells us a story, probable enough, about the inception of the Infant's plans of discovery. He relates how one night, after much meditation, he lay sleepless upon his bed, thinking over his schemes, till at last, as if seized with a sudden access of fury, he leapt up, called his servants, and ordered some of his barcas to be immediately made ready for a voyage to the south along the coast of Marocco. His court was astonished, and attributed this outburst to a divine revelation. It was natural enough—the resolution of a man, weary with profound and anxious thought, to take some sort of decisive action, to embark without further delay on the realisation of long-cherished schemes.
To summarise the course of the Prince's life, from 1415, before entering on any discussion of special points: After the Conquest of Ceuta he returned to Portugal; was created Duke of Viseu and Lord of Covilham (1415), having already received his knighthood at "Septa"; and began to send out regular exploring ventures down the West Coast of Africa—"two or three ships" every year beyond Cape Non, Nun, or Nam. In 1418 he successfully went to the help of the Governor of Ceuta against the Moors of Marocco and Granada.[[5]] On this second return from Africa, when in 1419 he was created Governor of the Algarve or southmost province of Portugal, he is supposed by some to have taken up his residence at Sagres,[[6]] near Cape St. Vincent, and to have begun the establishment of a school of cartography and navigation there. All this, however, is disputed by others, as is the tradition of his having established Chairs of Mathematics and Theology at Lisbon.[[7]]
In 1418-20, however, his captains, João Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz Teixeira, certainly re-discovered Porto Santo and Madeira.[[8]] In 1427, King John and Prince Henry seem to have sent the royal pilot, Diego de Sevill, to make new discoveries in the Azores; and, in 1431-2, Gonçalo Velho Cabral made further explorations among the same; but the completer opening up and settlement of the Archipelago was the work of later years, especially of 1439-66. We shall return to this matter in a special discussion of Prince Henry's work among the Atlantic islands. To the same we must refer the traditional purchase of the Canaries in 1424-5 and the settlement of Madeira in the same year,[[9]] confirmed by charters of 1430 and 1433. King John, on his death-bed, is said to have exhorted Henry to persevere in his schemes, which he was at this very time pursuing by means of a fresh expedition to round Cape Bojador, under Gil Eannes (1433). Azurara from this point becomes our chief authority down to the year 1448, and this and the subsequent voyages are fully described in his pages. Gil Eannes, unsuccessful in 1433,[[10]] under the stimulus of the Infant's reproaches and appeals passed Cape Bojador in 1434;[[11]] and next summer (1435) the Portuguese reached the Angra dos Ruyvos (Gurnet Bay), 150 miles beyond Bojador, and the Rio do Ouro, 240 miles to the south. Early in 1436 the "Port of Gallee," a little North of C. Branco (Blanco), was discovered by Baldaya, but as yet no natives were found; no captives, gold dust, or other products brought home. Exploration along the African mainland languished from this year till 1441;[[12]] but in 1437 the Prince took part in the fatal attack on Tangier, and in 1438 the death of King Edward caused a dispute over the question of the Regency during the minority of his young son Affonso. Throughout these internal troubles Henry played an important part, successfully supporting the claims of his brother Pedro against the Queen-mother, Leonor of Aragon. All this caused a break of three or four years in the progress of his discoveries; but the colonisation of the Azores went forward, as is shown by the license of July 2, 1439, from Affonso V, to people "the seven islands" of the group, then known.
In 1441[[13]] exploration began again in earnest with the voyage of Antam Gonçalvez, who brought to Portugal the first native "specimens"—captives and gold dust—from the coasts beyond Bojador; while Nuno Tristam in the same year pushed on to Cape Blanco. These decisive successes greatly strengthened the cause of discovery in Portugal, especially by offering fresh hopes of mercantile profit. In 1442 Nuno Tristam reached the Bight or Bay of Arguim,[[14]] where the Infant erected a fort in 1448, and where for some years the Portuguese made their most vigorous and successful slave-raids. Private venturers now began to come forward, supplementing Prince Henry's efforts by volunteer aid, for which his permission[[15]] was readily granted. Especially the merchants and seamen of Lisbon and of Lagos, close to Sagres, showed interest in this direction. Whatever doubts exist as to the earlier alleged settlement of the Infant at Cape St. Vincent, it is certain that after his return from Tangier (1437) he erected various buildings[[16]] at Sagres, and resided there during a considerable part of his later life. This fact is to be connected with the new African developments at Lagos.[[17]]
In 1444 and 1445 a number of ships sailed with Henry's license to "Guinea," and several of their commanders achieved notable successes. Thus Dinis Diaz, Nuno Tristam, and others reached the Senegal. Diaz rounded Cape Verde in 1445,[[18]] and in 1446 Alvaro Fernandez sailed on as far as the River Gambia (?) and the Cape of Masts (Cabo dos Mastos). In 1445, also, João Fernandez spent seven months among the natives of the Arguim coast, and brought back the first trustworthy account of a part of the interior. Gonçalo de Sintra and Gonçalo Pacheco, in 1445, and Nuno Tristam in 1446,[[19]] fell victims to the hostility of the Moors and Negroes, who, perhaps, felt some natural resentment against their new visitors. For, in Azurara's estimate, the Portuguese up to the year 1446 had carried off 927 captives from these parts; and the disposition and conversion of these prisoners occupied a good portion of the Infant's time. He probably relied on finding efficient material among these slaves for the further exploration and Christianization of the Coast, and even of the Upland. We know that he used some of them as guides and interpreters.[[20]]
One of the latest voyages recorded by Azurara is that of "Vallarte the Dane" (1448), which ended in utter destruction near the Gambia, after passing Cape Verde. The chronicler, though writing in 1453, does not continue his record beyond this year, 1448; his promise to give us the remainder of the Infant's achievements in a second chronicle seems never to have been fulfilled; and his descriptions of Madeira and the Canaries, in the latter part of the Chronicle of Guinea, are unfortunately of only slight value for the history of discovery. Yet, before the Prince's death in 1460[[21]] and in the last six years of his life, several voyages of some importance prove that Azurara's silence is merely accidental. Cadamosto's two journeys of 1455-6, and Diego Gomez' ventures of 1458-60, advanced West African discovery almost to Sierra Leone. The former, a Venetian seaman in the service of Prince Henry, also explored part of the courses of the Senegal and the Gambia and gained much information about the native tribes. One of his chief exploits, an alleged discovery of the Cape Verde islands, has been disputed in the name of Diego Gomez, who in 1458-60 twice sailed to Guinea, and on the second voyage "sighted islands in the Ocean, to which no man had come before." We postpone this point for further examination, only adding that we believe Cadamosto's prior claim to be sound, although the islands in question do not appear in any document before 1460.
Meanwhile the Prince, when his explorations (from 1441) first began to promise important results, obtained from Pope Eugenius IV a plenary indulgence to those who shared in the war against the Moors consequent on the new discoveries,[[22]] and from the Regent D. Pedro he also gained a donation of the Royal Fifth on the profits accruing from the new lands, as well as the sole right of permitting voyages to these parts. The Infant's work, was moreover, recognised in bulls of Nicholas V (1455) and of Calixtus III (March 13th, 1456). In earlier life—apparently soon after the capture of Ceuta and the embassy of Manuel Palæologus asking for help against the Turks—he had been invited, Azurara tells us, by a predecessor[[23]] of the Pontiffs above-named to take command of the "Apostolic armies," and similar invitations reached him from the Emperor of Germany,[[24]] the King of England (Henry V or VI)[[25]] and the King of Castille.[[26]] We may also briefly notice in this place, referring to a later page for a more detailed treatment of the subject, that the Infant, in 1445 and 1446, repeated his earlier attempts (in 1424 and 1425) to secure the Canaries for Portugal, both by means of purchase and of armed force; and that, from 1444-5 especially, he colonised, as well as discovered, and traded with increased energy in the Madeira Group, the Azores, and (if his experiment at Arguim in 1448 may stand as an example) even on the mainland coast of Africa.
The Infant's share in home politics was considerable, but this is not the place to discuss it at any length. It is probably a correct surmise that his ultimate ambition on this side was to detach Portugal as far as possible from Spain and Peninsular interests, and by making her a world-power at and over sea, to give her that importance she could never of herself acquire in strictly European politics. We have already noticed that after the victory of Ceuta he seems to have been made Governor for life of the Algarve province[[27]] of Portugal, by his father King John (1419); that he was a leading promoter of the scheme for the Tangier campaign of 1437;[[28]] and that after the death of his brother King Edward (Duarte), the successor of King John (September, 1438), he supported the claims of his eldest surviving brother, Pedro, as regent and guardian of the young Affonso V, and by his wise counsels effected a reconciliation with Affonso's mother Leonor, acting for a time as partner in a Council of Regency with Pedro and the Queen. Further, it must be said that, in 1447, when a long succession of differences between D. Pedro and his royal ward ended in an armed rising of the former against "evil Counsellors," Henry stood by the Sovereign, and took, if not an active, at least a passive part in overthrowing the insurrection, which was ended by the battle of Alfarrobeira (May 21st, 1449). Finally, it is recorded that "the Navigator" somewhat recovered the military honour he had compromised at Tangier, by his successes in the African expeditions of Affonso V, especially at the capture of Alcacer the Little in 1458; in this last year he received his Sovereign in due form at or near Sagres, before sailing for "Barbary." His traditional but on the whole credible work as Protector of the Studies of Portugal has been alluded to already, in connection with his alleged foundation of professorships of mathematics and theology in the University of Lisbon, and of a school of nautical instruction and of cosmography at Sagres. This point, however, will be reconsidered in a following section.[[29]]
It is perhaps in his connection with the fall of D. Pedro that the severest criticism has been passed upon Henry the Navigator. "Genius is pitiless" it has been said; and the action of the younger brother has been blamed as a piece of ruthlessness and ingratitude, though extolled by Azurara as a proof of loyalty under temptation. It may have seemed to him impossible to support any rebellion, however justified, against royal authority, or even to take the position of a neutral, when the central government of his country was on its trial. Our sympathies are usually with Pedro, as the most wise, liberal, and learned of his people—with one exception—and as the victim of the intrigues of courtiers, especially of King John's bastard son, the Count of Barcellos and Duke of Braganza; but the Governor of Algarve parted for ever from his favourite brother when he took up arms to right himself; and perhaps he was not more wrong than the people of England in refusing to allow the nobles of the Tudor time to dictate to even the most despotic of our more modern English sovereigns.[[30]]
The Infant was, among his other dignities, Master of the Order of Christ, which, as the direct successor of the Templars in Portugal, held a very high rank, and was, by its "artificial ancestry," as Hobbes would have said, one of the most ancient Orders in Christendom. Henry's father, King John, had been also at one time Head of an Order of Chivalry, the Knights of Aviz; but on coming to the throne he had obtained a dispensation from his vow of celibacy as Master, a dispensation which his son never required. The banner of this Order seems to have floated over most if not all of Prince Henry's African expeditions; in its name he required the aid of Pope Eugenius IV; its special duty—military order as it was in origin—should have been to spread the Christian faith in Moslem and heathen Africa: perhaps its work was considered to extend only to the slaying of Moslems, or Moormen, and the bringing back to Europe of heathen Africans who could be reared as Christians in Portugal. No mission to preach the faith seems to have been undertaken by the Fraternity. Upon this Order the Prince bestowed the tithes of the Island of St. Michael in the Azores, and one half of its sugar revenues; also the tithe (afterwards reduced to the twentieth) of all merchandise from Guinea, as well as the ecclesiastical dues of Porto Santo, Madeira, and the Desertas. The Prince's nephew, D. Fernando, succeeded him (in 1460) in the Mastership of the Order of Christ.[[31]]
It has sometimes been said that the Infant Henry was also titular King of Cyprus. This assertion is derived from Fr. Luiz de Souza (Historia de S. Domingos, Bk. VI., fol. 331) and José Suares de Silva (Memoirs of King João I.), who tell us that the Prince was elected King of Cyprus. But this "Kingdom" remained in the posterity of Guy de Lusignan till 1487; and the mistake has probably arisen from a confusion of Henry, Prince of Galilee, son of James I., King of Cyprus, with Prince Henry of Portugal.[[32]]
In prosecuting his explorations, Prince Henry incurred heavy expenses. His own revenues were not sufficient, and he was obliged to borrow largely. Thus, in 1448, he owed his bastard half-brother, the Duke of Braganza, 19394½ crowns of gold, to pay which he had pledged his lands and goods; and this debt was afterwards increased by 16084 crowns, as stated in the declaration of the Duke of Braganza, November 8, 1449, and in the will of the same nobleman. These debts were partly paid by his nephew and adopted son, D. Fernando, and partly by Fernando's son, D. Manuel.
[1] Fifth, counting two children who died in infancy.
[2] As repeated by Martin Behaim (see Major, Henry Navigator, pp. 64, 65). Gomez was Almoxarife, or superintendent, of the Palace of Cintra.
[3] Some of which had reached at least as far as Cape Bojador, as depicted on the Catalan Map of 1375.
[4] So Zul-nun, Lord of the Fish, is a term for the prophet Jonah (see Burton, Camoëns, iii, p. 246).
[5] On this occasion he planned, but did not attempt, the seizure of Gibraltar.
[6] Sagres, from "Sacrum Promontorium," the ordinary name of Cape St. Vincent in the later classical Geography; "à 91 Kilom. Ouest de Faro,... sur un cap, à 4,500 metres E.S.E. du Cap St. Vincent" (Viv. St. Martin). The harbour is sandy, protected from the N.-W. winds. A Druid temple stood there, and the Iberians of the Roman time assembled there at night. It was a barren cape, its only natural vegetation a few junipers. O. Martins (Filhos de D. João I, p. 77), suggests that the name of Sagres did not come into ordinary use till after the Prince's death, 1460.
[7] In 1431 he is said to have purchased house-room for the University of Lisbon; on March 25th, 1448, to have established there a professorship of theology; and on September 22, 1460, to have confirmed this by a charter dated from his Town at Sagres. The Professor was to have twelve marks in silver every Christmas from the tithes of the Island of Madeira (see Azurara, Guinea, c. v). As to the Chair of Mathematics, we only know that it existed in 1435; that the Infant was interested in this study; and that tradition connected him with a somewhat similar foundation at Sagres. The houses purchased in Lisbon for the University were bought of João Annes, the King's Armourer, for 400 crowns. Hence, according to some, came the Prince's title of "Protector of Portuguese Studies."
[8] O. Martins thinks these island discoveries were a surprise to Henry, who at first only contemplated discovery along the mainland coast South and East towards India. We do not believe in this limitation of view (see Barros, Dec. I, Lib. I, c. 2, 3).
The previous voyage of the Englishman Macham to the "Isle of Wood" ("Legname" on the fourteenth-century Portolani) is another controversial matter which must be taken separately.
[9] Zarco and Vaz became Captains Donatory or Feudal Under-lords of Madeira, as Bartholemew Perestrello (whose daughter Columbus married) of Porto Santo.
[10] It has been shewn, e.g., by the British Admiralty Surveys, that the old stories of dangerous reefs and currents at Bojador, "such as might well have frightened the boldest mariner of that time," are unfounded, like the old belief in strong Satanic influence at this point.
[11] 1432, according to Galvano (see Barros, I, i, 4).
[12] Till 1440, according to the opposition chronology of O. Martins.
[13] O. Martins dates Porto do Cavalleiro, 1440; C. Branco, 1442.
[14] Aliter, 1443 (Barros, I, i, 7) or 1444 (Galvano, who apparently dates the discovery of the Rio do Ouro 1443). See, in this connection, Affonso V's Charters of October 22, 1433, and February 3, 1446, granted to Prince Henry. In 1442 the Infant was created a Knight of the Garter of England. He was the 153rd Knight of the Order; and his collar descended, through many holders, to the late Earl of Clarendon.
[15] Necessary by decree of the Regent Pedro, for any "Guinea" or African voyage (Azurara, Guinea, ch. xv).
[16] Especially a palace, a church or chapel, and an observatory.
[17] Which seems to have shown the way, in this respect, to its greater sister, Lisbon.
[18] 1454 in O. Martins.
[19] 1447, according to Barros (I, i, 14) and Galvano.
[20] Cf. Azurara, Guinea, chs. xiii, xvi.
[21] Aliter 1462 or 1463 (Galvano and Barros, who also date the discovery of C. Verde and the Senegal by "Dinis Fernandez," 1446: Barros, I i, 9, 13); but this date is certainly incorrect.
[22] Barros and Galvano make Prince Henry obtain Indulgences from Pope Martin [V, who reigned 1417-31] in 1441-2, by the embassy of Fernam Lopez d'Azevedo (see p. xv).
[23] Martin V?
[24] Sigismund?
[25] Henry VI made the Infant a Knight of the Garter, and is more likely than the conquering Henry V to have asked a foreign Prince to aid him against the French.
[26] John II.
[27] Technically "kingdom."
[28] The "Marocco Campaigns" of 1418, 1437, 1458, etc., were apparently considered by Prince Henry as only another side of his coasting explorations and projected conquests. Having then no idea of the enormous southerly projection of Africa, he probably aspired to a Portuguese North African dominion, which should control the Continent. For Guinea, in the ideas of the time, was commonly supposed to be quite close to Marocco on the south-west and west. Apparently, soon after 1437, Henry was just starting on another Moorish expedition, when the King and Council "hindered the voyage" (see Az., ch. v, p. 20 of our version).
[29] "School of Sagres," etc.
[30] It has been suggested, e.g., by Sir C. Markham, that the portrait of the Infant in mourning dress prefixed to the Paris MS. of Azurara represents him immediately after the death of D. Pedro. It is perhaps more likely a mark of sorrow for D. Fernand, the Constant Prince, who died in his Moorish captivity, June 5th, 1443, and whose heart was conveyed to Portugal, June 1st, 1451, and buried at Batalha, Prince Henry joining the funeral procession at Thomar.
[31] Already, in 1451, Henry had designated him as his heir.
[32] Santarem corrects this; see note in Major's Henry Navigator, p. 306. So Azurara's allusion, "No other uncrowned prince in Europe had so noble a household,"—Guinea, ch. iv.
Voyages of Prince Henry's Seamen Along the West African Coast.
(Not recorded by Azurara.)
Prince Henry's work was, above all, justified by its permanence. Unlike earlier ancient and mediæval attempts at West African exploration, his movement issued in complete success. Azurara gives us, no doubt, a fairly complete account of the earlier stages of that movement, but it is probable that even his record omits some of the ventures undertaken from Portugal along the West African mainland; while it is certain that we must look elsewhere for a completer picture of the Infant's activity among the Atlantic Islands and in the Great Ocean. These additional sources of information must be examined in turn. First of all, it will be advisable to finish the chronicle of West African coasting down to the Navigator's death. After that, the triumphant prosecution of this line of advance to the Cape of Good Hope will call for a brief notice. And, thirdly, something must be said about the progress of discovery and colonisation in the archipelagos of Madeira, the Canaries, the Azores, and the Cape Verdes, especially considered in relation to that Westward route to India which Columbus advocated and commenced.
It has already been stated that although Azurara's Chronicle officially ends in 1453, and appears to record nothing later than the events of 1448, yet very important expeditions were sent forth in the last years of the Prince's life, especially those of Cadamosto[[33]] and Diego Gomez. An attempt has been made to prove that the second voyage of Cadamosto, on which he claimed to have discovered the Cape Verde Islands, is untruly reported and may be dismissed as fabulous. But there seems no sufficient ground for this. "In an account of travels, printed long after its author's death, some contradictory statements, possibly arising through copyists' errors, do not justify such a conclusion." And the mistakes contained in the assailed narrative are not serious or unexplainable enough for rejecting it as a whole.[[34]] Luigi, Alvise, or Aloysius, da Ca da Mosto[[35]] was a young Venetian (a noble, according to some) who had embarked on August 8, 1454, with Marco Zeno on a commercial venture,[[36]] and was delayed by storm near Cape St. Vincent while on his voyage from Venice to Flanders. He now heard of the "glorious and boundless conquests" of Prince Henry, "whence accrued such gain that from no traffic in the world could the like be had. The which," continues the candid trader, "did exceedingly stir my soul, eager as it was for profit above all other things, and so I made suit to be brought before the Infant"—who was then at the village of Reposeira, near Sagres. Cadamosto was easily persuaded to sail in the service of Portugal,[[37]] and set out, with Vicente Diaz, on March 22, 1455. He visited Porto Santo and Madeira, and at Cape Branco began a "peaceful exploration" of the interior, for the study of its natural conditions, inhabitants, trade, and so forth. Proceeding to the Senegal, he continued his investigations; which were extended to the Canaries as well as to Madeira. He notices the fort built by the Prince's orders in the Bight of Arguim (1448), and the new start lately made by Portuguese trade with the natives. This trade at Arguim had included nearly a thousand slaves a year, so that the Europeans, who used to plunder all this coast as far as the Senegal, now found it more profitable to trade. Slave-raiding among the Azanegue tribes north of the Senegal had ceased, "for the Prince will not allow any wrong-doing, being only eager that they should submit themselves to the law of Christ."[[38]] Before passing Cape Verde, Cadamosto met with two ships, one commanded by a Genoese, Antonio, or Antoniotto, surnamed Ususmaris or Uso di Mare,[[39]] the other by an unnamed Portuguese in Henry's service. The expeditions united and sailed on together to the Gambia, where they were unable to open intercourse with the natives, and so returned to Portugal. Cadamosto gives very full descriptions of the life, habits, government, trade, etc., of both the "Moors" (Azanegues) and Negroes (Jaloffs) of Guinea, which have been often noticed,[[40]] and sometimes paraphrased; and which show a great development of commercial interest and statesmanlike inquiry on anything recorded in Azurara. At his furthest point the explorer noticed that the North Star was so low that it appeared almost to touch the sea, and here he seems to have seen the Southern Cross.
In the next year, 1456, Cadamosto sailed out again with Antoniotto Uso di Mare, made straight for Cape Branco, and found, three days' sail from this point, "certain islands" off Cape Verde "where no one had been before."[[41]] The explorer then, in his own as well as in the official, "Ramusian," or Venetian, account, proceeded to the Gambia, opened trade successfully with the natives, and explored the coast "about 25 leagues" beyond this river as far as the Bissagos Islands, or some point of the mainland not far distant.
Cadamosto's account of his two voyages is rightly praised[[42]] as "detailed and vivid." He certainly compiled a map of his journeys, for in noticing the river Barbasini beyond Cape Verde, he says: "I have named it so on the Chart which I have made." The interesting suggestion, that some of Benincasa's portolanos (especially that of 1471) were based on Cadamosto's descriptions and plans of the West African shore-land, is hardly susceptible of proof, but it is not without some corroborative evidence, as may be seen elsewhere.[[43]] Also, "the journeys of this Marco Polo of West Africa were undertaken in a more scientific spirit, and were more free from chivalrous outrages," than most of those who preceded him along this coast.[[44]] This is not merely due to himself. It appears from his express statements that the Infant now discouraged slave-raiding, and urged his captains to something of higher value than seal and sea-calf hunting. The value of Cadamosto's work was mainly in his observations and descriptions. He advanced only a little way beyond some of the Prince's earlier explorers (e.g., Alvaro Fernandez), except for his discovery of the Cape Verde islands, but he seems to have named[[45]] and mapped out more carefully than before a good many points of the littoral beyond Cape Verde, and his writings surpass in geographical value anything to be found in Azurara. His notes are also of high value for ethnology and anthropology, and give a better account of the trade-routes, etc. of North-west Africa than any Christian writing of the time. Finally, he is more reliable than many subsequent and more pretentious travellers, and his narrative is as picturesque and effective as it is reliable. For "one inquisitive person shall bring home a better account of countries than twenty who come after him."
A little subsequent to what we may suppose was the second return of the Venetian adventurer from Africa, in 1456, the Infant sent out Diego Gomez with orders to "go as far as he could." The explorer passed a "great river beyond the Rio Grande," when strong currents in the sea alarmed him and caused him to put back. Like Cadamosto, however, he trafficked and conversed with the natives, especially of the Gambia, and gained some useful information about their trade, politics, and geography. Some of the facts he related about wars among the negro states of the interior were confirmed by a "merchant in Oran," who corresponded with the Prince.[[46]] As a result of Gomez' first voyage, the Infant seems to have sent out, in 1458, a mission to convert the negroes of the Gambia "with a priest, the Abbot of Soto de Cassa, and a young man of his household named John Delgado." Two years after this (i.e., in 1460) Gomez went out again. Near the Gambia he fell in with two ships—one under Gonçalo Ferreira, of Oporto, who was trading in horses with the negroes for native produce; the other was under Antonio Noli, of Genoa. Soon after, Gomez and Ferreira seized an interloper, one De Prado, who had come to Cape Verde without permission to dispose of a rich cargo, as Gomez was informed by a "caravel from Gambia." It is noticeable how the West African trade had now increased, and how many expeditions are incidentally mentioned in this one record of Gomez.
He concludes by stating that he and Noli left the mainland coast, and after sailing two days and one night towards Portugal, "sighted islands in the Ocean," which are described in terms very similar to Cadamosto's. These were certainly the Cape Verde Islands of modern geography, which are first mentioned in documentary history in a Portuguese Decree of December 3rd, 1460. Gomez makes no reference to any previous visit or claim of a prior discovery of these islands, but that is natural enough.
Was such a previous visit made? Around this point, and the consequent prior claim of the Venetian, a long controversy has been waged, which is briefly discussed in the section of this Introduction on the "Atlantic Islands" (especially pp. xcii-xcvi).
The second voyage of Diego Gomez was probably among the last ventures of which the Prince received any account. He must have died soon after the second return of the explorer, who seems to have attended him in his last illness (13th November, 1460). But it is probable that before his end he had prepared for the expedition which Pedro de Sintra carried out in 1461, and which is described by Cadamosto, apparently before the close of 1463.
[33] 1507 (Vicenza) Edition, is the earliest text of Cadomosto's Voyages, printed in "Paesi novamente retrovati et novo mondo da Alberico Vesputio Florentino intitulato." This was republished at Milan in 1508; and in this year two versions appeared: 1. In Latin, by Madrignano, "Itinerarium Portugallensium ...," Milan. 2. In German, by Jobst Ruchamer, "Neue unbekanthe landte," Nürnberg. In 1516 appeared in Paris a French version by Mathurin du Redouer: "Sensuyt le nouveau monde ..." A good many discrepancies occur in these various editions and translations.
[34] See pp. xcii-xcvi of this Introduction.
[35] House or Family (Casa) of Mosto.
[36] In 1454 the Venetian Senate ordered three galleys to be equipped for the voyage to Flanders and England; and ordered Marco Zeno, as commander, to enquire about the goods of Venetian subjects landed in England.
[37] The Prince was said especially to wish for Venetians to enter his service, as they knew more about the spice trade than anyone; and he was convinced that his expeditions would ultimately find spices (i.e., in India). As to Vicente Diaz, cf. Azurara's Guinea, chs. lx, lviii, etc.
[38] Cf. Azurara, Guinea, end of ch. xcvi.
[39] This seems one of the earliest notices of non-Portuguese craft in these waters. But Uso di Mare was almost certainly in the Prince's service, like "Vallarte the Dane," and "Balthasar the German," noticed in Azurara, Guinea, chs. xvi. and xciv. Uso di Mare's letter to his creditors of December 12, 1455, seems to show that the expedition had returned before Christmas.
[40] As in the collections of Ramusio, Temporal, Astley, and Stanier Clarke; in Major, Henry Navigator, chs. xv.-xvi.; and in "Heroes of Nations" life of Prince Henry, ch. xvi.
[41] Of these two were "very large," and on these they landed, finding no inhabitants but plenty of animal life. Five more isles were sighted in the distance, but not visited. They called the first discovered "Boa Vista," and the largest of the group "St. James," from the day of the discovery. This is, of course, the Santiago which forms the centre of the Cape Verde archipelago.
[42] See Nordenskjöld, Periplus, 120, and Map section of this Introduction; also pp. xcii-xcvi of the same.
[43] See p. cxxxii of this Introduction.
[44] The same change is observable in the narrative of Diego Gomez. Cf. his treatment of the Chief Bezeghichi, whom he freely releases when in his power, in order to make him less "bitter against the Christians."
[45] E.g., the rivers Barbasini, Casamansa, Santa Anna, St. Domingo, and Cape Roxo.
[46] An allusion of high importance. See the section of this Introduction, "Preliminary African Exploration," especially pp. xlv, etc.
Voyages of the Portuguese completing Prince Henry's Work.
A word must be added on the completion of Prince Henry's work after his death, and by agents whom in many cases he had trained. King Affonso V, though rather more of a tournament king than a true successor of the great Infant, such as John II, had yet caught enough of his uncle's spirit to push on steadily, though slowly, the advance round Africa. In 1461 he repaired the fort in the Bight of Arguim and sent out Pedro de Sintra[[47]] to survey the coast beyond Cadamosto's furthest point. De Sintra proceeded 600 miles along the "southern coast of Guinea," passed a mountain which was called Sierra Leone (according to one account) from the lion-like growl of the thunder on its summits, and turned back at the point afterwards known as St. George La Mina.[[48]] Soon after (probably in 1462), Sueiro da Costa followed De Sintra,[[49]] but without any new results, and it was not till 1470 that a fresh advance was made.[[50]] In 1469 King Affonso leased the West African trade to Fernam Gomez, a citizen of Lisbon, for five years, Gomez paying 1,000 ducats a year. To this lease was annexed the condition that Gomez should make annual explorations along the unknown West coast of Africa for 300 miglia, counted from Sierra Leone, "where Pedro de Sintra and Sueiro da Costa turned back."[[51]]
Accordingly, in 1470, Gomez sent out João de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar, accompanied by the two leading Portuguese pilots, Martin Fernandez and Alvaro Esteves, as "directors of the navigation." On the 29th December, they discovered St. Thomas island, and on 17th January, 1471, the Isle of St. Anne, afterwards Ilha do Principe, both close to the Equator on the open side of the Bight of Biafra.
Another voyage seems to have been made, under Gomez' auspices, in 1471. Fernando Po now reached the island in the angle of the Central African coast which is still called after him; and men began to find that the Eastern bend of the continent, which had been followed since 1445-6 with some hope of a direct approach to Asia, now took a sharp turn to the South.
In spite of this disappointment, Fernandez and Esteves in 1472-3 passed beyond the furthest of earlier travellers, and crossed the Equator[[52]] into that Southern Hemisphere on the edge of which the caravels had long been hovering, as mariners like Cadamosto saw ever more clearly stars unknown in the Northern Hemisphere, and ever more nearly lost sight of the Arctic pole. In 1474-5 Cape Catherine, two degrees South of the Line, was reached, and here the advance of exploration stopped for a time till the accession of John II in 1481.
Now, in six years, the slow advance of the past sixty was exceeded.[[53]] Less than four months after his father's death, John, who as heir apparent had drawn part of his income from the African trade and its fisheries, sent out Diego de Azambuga, who in 1482 built under the King's orders the celebrated fort at St. George La Mina. He trafficked with success, but made no great advance along unknown Africa, even if he commenced a new era in the permanent colonisation of the Continent. King John was not disposed to be satisfied with this. In 1484, Diego Cão was ordered to go as far to the South as he could, and not to "wait anywhere for other matters." He penetrated to the mouth of the Zaire or Congo, where he erected (at Cape Padron?) a stone pillar in sign of possession,[[54]] and brought back four natives to Portugal. These he took out with him in his second voyage (1485); on this expedition Martin Behaim was (wrongly) said to have accompanied him. Cão claimed in this year to have reached 22° S. lat., half way between the Congo and the Cape of Good Hope; but this is probably an exaggeration;—18° S. lat.[[55]] perhaps marks his furthest point, rather than Walvisch Bay, as in the old tradition.
After Cão's return, King John renewed his efforts with fresh energy. Already, in 1484, a negro embassy to Portugal had brought such an account of an inland prince, one "Ogane, a Christian at heart," that all the Court of Lisbon thought he must be the long lost Prester John, and men were sent out to seek this "great Catholic Lord" by sea and land.
Bartholemew Diaz sailed in August 1486, with two ships, to try his fortune by the sea-route, and even if he could not reach the Prester's country, to discover as far as possible on the "way round Africa." Two other envoys, Covilham and Payva, were sent out by way of "Jerusalem, Arabia, and Egypt," to find the Priest-King and the Indies; yet another expedition was to ascend the Negro Nile, or Senegal, to its supposed junction with the Nile of Egypt; a fourth party started to explore a road to Cathay by the North-East Passage.
Bartholemew Diaz, accompanied by João Iffante, rounded the southernmost point of Africa, and passed some way beyond the site of the modern Port Elizabeth. The picturesque story of his voyage is well known. He sailed with two vessels of 50 tons apiece, in the belief that "ships which sailed down the coast of Guinea might be sure to reach the end of the land by persisting to the South." His first pillar was set up at Angra dos Ilheos,[[56]] at the south side of Angra Pequena. He made another stay at Angra das Voltas, in 29° S. lat., immediately after passing the Orange River. Then, putting well out to sea, Diaz ran thirteen days due south before the wind, hoping by this wide sweep to round the furthest point of the Continent, which many traditions agreed in fixing not very far from his last halting-place. Finding the sea and air at last becoming cold, he changed his course to east, and as no land appeared after five days, to north. In this last course the Portuguese reached a bay where cattle were feeding, named by the Portuguese Angra dos Vaqueiros, now Flesh Bay.[[57]] After putting ashore two natives (probably some of those lately carried from Congo to Portugal, and sent out again to act as scouts for the European explorers), Diaz continued east to a small island still called "Santa Cruz," W. of our Port Elizabeth, and even further to a river called, after his partner, Rio do Iffante, now the Great Fish River, in 32° 23' S. lat., and midway between the present Port Elizabeth and East London, where the coast begins gradually but steadily to trend north-east. Here the expedition put back, sighting on its homeward way the Land's End, or "Cape of Storms," re-named by John II "Cape of Good Hope" on their return. Almost at the same time as Diaz' reappearance in Lisbon (Dec. 1487), Covilham, who had reached Malabar by way of Egypt, wrote home from Cairo more than confirming the hopes already drawn from the success of the last maritime ventures. "If you keep southward, the continent must come to an end. And when ships reach the Eastern Ocean, let your men ask for Sofala and the Island of the Moon (Madagascar), and they will find pilots to take them to India."
Yet another chapter of discoveries was opened by King John's expeditions for the ascent of the Western Nile, and for the exploration of the North-East Passage to Cathay. Neither of these achieved complete success, but some more light was gained upon the interior of Africa (where the Portuguese made such notable advances in the sixteenth century); it has even been claimed, but apparently without foundation, for the explorers of John II, that a Portuguese discovery of Novaia Zemlya rewarded their enterprise.
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.
[47] This voyage is described by Cadamosto as an appendix to his own voyages. A young Portuguese who accompanied De Sintra described to Cadamosto the stretch of coast now discovered beyond the Rio Grande, the anchorages of the fleet, and the names given to points on the shore. "This account, without any rhetorical embellishment, is of special interest as a specimen of a Portuguese sailing-direction from a sailor of Henry the Navigator's School" (Nordenskjöld, Periplus, 121). De Sintra reached 5° further South than any before him. His nomenclature still survives at many points: e.g., Cape Verga, Sierra Leone, Cape Santa Anna, Cape del Monte, Cape Mesurado. Cape Sagres, "the highest promontory they had ever seen," between Cape Verga and Cape Ledo, has been re-named. De Sintra also noticed especially a "great green forest"—"Bosque de St. Maria," in 5° 30' N. lat. (?)—and near his furthest point (at Rio dos Fumos) an immense quantity of smoke from native fires. Cf. Hanno's language in his Periplus, on the fiery rivers running down into the sea; and see J. N. Bellin's Petit Atlas Maritime, Paris, 1764; Part iii, Map 105.
[48] Elmina.
[49] According to some, he accompanied De Sintra in the voyage of 1461.
[50] Cadamosto explicitly says that when he left Portugal on February 1, 1463, no voyages had been made in continuation of De Sintra's venture, recorded by him.
[51] According to Cadamosto's account, De Sintra had gone a good deal further.
[52] It is not very clearly recorded who first crossed the line among the Portuguese sailors of this time. Some conclude as stated in text, but Nordenskjöld believes it was "perhaps Lopo Gonçalvez, after whom a promontory directly south of the Equator is named"; he also thinks this great event was accomplished on Gomez' first expedition, under Santarem, Escobar, Fernandez and Esteves, in 1470-1. As to progress eastwards, towards India, it was much exaggerated by many. While his caravels were still off the Guinea coast, King Affonso V believed the meridian of "Tunis, and even of Alexandria," had been already passed.
[53] It is probably right to ascribe great importance to the work of Fernam Gomez, during his five years' lease. His wealth gave a new character to the equipment of the African Expeditions of Portugal. Formerly there had been too much waste of energy through indefiniteness of object; too much discretion had been left to mariners themselves; now the definite contract for geographical discovery with the Crown caused a more rapid and continuous advance, and long stretches of coast were explored and mapped.
[54] According to King John's orders. Wooden crosses (often of Madeira wood?) had hitherto been erected by Portuguese discoverers in new lands. Now stone pillars 6 ft. high were to be used, and on them was to be inscribed, in Portuguese and Latin, the date, with the name of the reigning monarch, and those of the discoverers.
[55] Near C. Frio. So it is placed (at Arenarum Aestuarium or Manga das Arenas) on Pl. X in Livio Sanuto's Geographia of 1588. We have mentioned that Martin Behaim, of Nüremberg, claimed to have accompanied Cão to West Africa; but his globe, so famous afterwards, executed in 1492 at the order of the Nüremberg Town Council, shows very little evidence of this. Behaim's West Africa is often obstinately Ptolemaic, at the end of the century which had revolutionised the knowledge of this part of the world. He inserts all the legendary Atlantic islands, and puts the Cape Verdes far out of their proper place.
[56] ? Diaz Point, at the Serra Parda or "Dark Hills" of Barros.
[57] Some way beyond Cape Agulhas, and immediately to the east of the River Gauritz.
[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]]
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.
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.
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.
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 in his narrative the voyage of Polybius with 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]]
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.
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]]
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.
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.
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 Marocco 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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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]]
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]]
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.
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.
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]]
Reliable evidence of French voyages to the Gold Coast of Guinea can only be quoted for the sixteenth century. Thus Braun in 1617, and Dapper some time shortly before 1668, inspected buildings and collected traditions from the natives on that shore which alone would prove these later expeditions, if they were not confirmed by several documents in Ramusio, Temporal, and Hakluyt.[[127]] Equally reliable is the tradition of Béthencourt's Conquest of the Canaries in 1402, etc.; yet the authors of this history, Béthencourt's chaplains, give no hint of any knowledge possessed by their countrymen about the mainland coast beyond Cape Bojador, but rather imply the reverse. Finally, though so many of the best sixteenth-century maps are Dieppese, none of these show the fourteenth-century settlements, which are also wanting in all charts of the earlier time. The controverted names are first found on a map of 1631, by Jean Guérand; and this is probably not unconnected with the fact that in 1626 Rouen and Dieppe united for trade with the Guinea coast.
It is of course possible, as M. d'Avezac long ago argued from the evidence of the great Portolani of the fourteenth century, especially the Laurentian or Medicean[[128]] of 1351, the Pizzigani[[129]] of 1367, and the Catalan of 1375, that some unrecorded advance was accomplished along the African mainland coast during the middle years of this century; the imperfection of our records must never be forgotten; and we shall return to this question in another section. But nothing definite and certain can be gathered about the coast beyond Cape Bojador, except in a few small points.[[130]] With the Atlantic islands the case was very different.
The expedition[[131]] (1402-12) of the Sieur de Béthencourt, Lord of Granville la Teinturière, of the Pays de Caux in Normandy, was chiefly concerned with the Canaries[[132]]—like the voyages of the Spaniards Francisco Lopez (1382), and Alvaro Becarra (? 1390, etc.) But, after achieving fair success in the islands, De Béthencourt attempted (apparently in 1404) an exploration of the mainland coast "from Cape Cantin, half way between the Canaries and Spain," to Cape "Bugeder" or Bojador,[[133]] the famous promontory to the right or east of the Canaries. But this was left unfinished; and De Béthencourt's chaplains, in describing their Seigneur's intentions beyond the "Bulging Cape," can only fall back on a certain Book of a Spanish Friar,[[134]] which professed to give a description of Guinea, and the River of Gold. This last was said by the Friar to be 150 leagues from "the Cape Bugeder," and the French priests declare that "if things were such as described," their lord hoped sometime to reach the said river, "whereby access would be gained to the land of Prester John, whence come so many riches."
Thus the French colonists in the early fifteenth century, in Prince Henry's boyhood, know nothing first-hand, nothing save half-legendary rumours, about the African coast beyond Cape Bojador. They are anxious to reach the River of Gold, and traffic there, but they do not know the way. Of Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, La Mine, and other Norman settlements or factories beyond Cape Verde, they give no sign.
The late and doubtful[[135]] tradition of Macham's discovery of Madeira (c. 1350-1370) does not concern the exploration of the African mainland, except that after the death of the "discoverer" in his island, some of his sailors were said to have escaped in the ship's boat (according to the story) to the Continent, to have been made prisoners by the Berbers, and to have been held in slavery till some of the survivors were ransomed in 1416. But all this, if true, belongs to the well-known coast within Cape Non, and in no manner furthered exploration, except as regarded the island group of Madeira and Porto Santo.[[136]]
Fra Mauro preserves a tradition[[137]] of two voyages from India or the East coast of Africa round the Southern Cape—one in 1420, the other at an unfixed date. These, he says, had been accomplished by a person with whom he actually spoke, who claimed to have passed from Sofala to "Garbin," in the middle of the West coast, as it is marked on Fra Mauro's planisphere. If genuine, they would be the last anticipations of Prince Henry's enterprises left to chronicle; but few have placed much confidence in these statements, which seem indeed incredible in the form they are related by the Venetian draughtsman.
[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.
[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."
[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.
[62] Near Cape Non.
[63] This can hardly be the Senegal and Lake Nguier, as suggested by V. de St. Martin.
[64] Cape Verde?
[65] The Gambia?
[66] Cabo dos Mastos?
[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.
[68] In the Sierra Leone range?
[69] Near Sherboro' island?
[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.
[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).
[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.
[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.
[74] Hist. Nat., v, i.
[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."
[76] Or Western Horn.
[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.
[78] The younger, "King of Numidia."
[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.
[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.
[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 (?).
[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.
[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.
[84] Cf. what is said about Prince Henry's correspondent, the merchant at Oran, p. xxvi of this Introduction.
[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.
[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.
[87] See Edrisi, Climate I, § i; Wappaüs, Heinrich der Seefahrer, pp. 65, etc.
[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).
[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.
[90] See Otto Blau, Chronik von Bornu, p. 322, Z. D. M. G., vi, 1852.
[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.
[92] Edrisi, Climate I, section iv; vol. i, p. 35 (Jaubert). See Duchesne, Eglises Séparées.
[93] Ibn-Batuta, iv, 396. (Defrémery and Sanguinetti).
[94] See Alvarez, Hakl. Soc. Edition, p. 352.
[95] Ruins?
[96] See Nerazzini, Musulman Conquest of Ethiopia, Rome 1891. (Ital. Transl. from Arab MS.).
[97] Africa.
[98] Azurara, c. vii.
[99] Ibid., c. xvii.
[100] See Maqrīzī, Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks de l'Egypte, Quatremère, 1837-45, t. ii, Pt. 11, p. 183.
[101] Portugal.
[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).
[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.
[104] See Mas Latrie, Afrique Septentrionale, passim, and especially pp. 61-2, 192, 266-7, 273.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[109] = Lancelote? See pp. lxxviii-lxxix.
[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.
[111] At or near Cape Non, which, on the Pizzigani Map of 1367, is marked "Caput Finis Gozole."
[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.
[113] In 1455?
[114] Nile.
[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.
[116] I.e., Guinea.
[117] 10th August.
[118] See Papers presented to Archives of Genoa by Federico Federici, 1660. Reference discovered by Gräberg af Hemsö.
[119] The River of Gold.
[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."
[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."
[122] Such as dealt in Guinea products, especially malaguette pepper, at Nismes, Marseilles, and Montpellier.
[123] "The Mine" of Hakluyt and early English geographers.
[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 XIV.me au XVI.me 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.
[125] Especially some of the ivory carvings said to have been made from spoils of this fourteenth-century trade.
[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.
Villaut de Bellesfond, Estancelin, and Labat, narrate the same incidents as follows: Charles V encouraged commerce, so in November, 1364, the Dieppese fitted out two ships, of 100 tons each, for the Canaries. About Christmas they reached C. Verde, and anchored before Rio Fresco, which in 1669 was still called "Baie de France." Afterwards they went on to a place they called "Petit Dieppe," and the Portuguese "Rio Sestos," beyond Sierra Leone; for objects of small value they gained gold, ivory, and pepper; returning in 1365 they realised great wealth; and in September of the same year the merchants of Rouen joined with those of Dieppe to fit out four ships, two for trade between Cape Verde and Petit Dieppe, the other two for exploration of the coast beyond. One of these last stopped at Grand Sestere, on the Malaguette coast, and loaded pepper; the other ship traded on the Ivory Coast, and went on as far as the Gold Coast, and depôts were fixed at Petit Dieppe and Grand Sestere, which was re-named Petit Paris. Factories or "Loges" were established to prepare cargoes for the ships. The native languages long retained French words, as was found in 1660. In 1380 the Company sent out Notre Dame de bon Voyage, of 150 tons, from Rouen to the Gold Coast (September). At end of December they reached the same landing where the French had traded fifteen years before. In the summer of 1381 the Notre Dame returned to Dieppe richly laden; in 1382 three ships set sail together, September 28th, viz, La Vierge, Le Saint Nicholas, L'Espérance. La Vierge stopped at La Mine, the first place discovered on the Gold Coast. The St. Nicholas traded at Cape Corse and at Mouré below La Mine, and L'Espérance went as far as Akara, trading at Fanting, Sabon and Cormentin. Ten months after, the expedition returned with rich cargoes. Three more ships were sent out in 1383, one to go to Akara, the others to build an outpost at La Mine; there they left ten or twelve men, and returned after ten months. A church was afterwards built for the new colony, and in 1660 this still preserved the arms of France. After the accession of Charles VI, the African trade was soon ruined. Before 1410 La Mine was abandoned, and until after 1450 the Normans, it is believed, abandoned maritime explorations.
[127] See De Bry's Collection des petits Voyages, Frankfort, 1625; Oliver Dapper's Description of Africa (in Dutch), Amsterdam, 1668; Ramusio's Collection, Ed. of 1565, iii. p. 417 verso, in the Discorso sopra la Nuova Francia; Dr. David Lewis' Letter to Burleigh, March 9, 1577. Santarem's Priority of Portuguese Discoveries, etc. (1842), is mainly directed against the French claims.
[128] Genoese.
[129] Venetian.
[130] Unless the contour of the Laurentian Map of 1351 is held to prove a circumnavigation of Africa shortly before 1351. The comparative accuracy of this outline, so incredibly good as mere guesswork, must remain one of the chief cruces of Mediæval geography.
[131] See the Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canarians by Jean de Béthencourt, written by Pierre Bontier, monk, and Jean le Verrier, priest. Edited for the Hakluyt Society by R. H. Major, 1872.
[132] See section of this Introduction on the African Islands, pp. lxxxii-lxxxiv.
[133] Buyetder on the Catalan Atlas of 1375.
[134] This is identified by Nordenskjöld, Periplus 79, following Espada, with the recently rediscovered Libro del Conosçimiento de todos los reynos & tierras & señorios que son por el mundo & de las señales & armas que han cada tierra & señorio por sy & de los reyes & Señores que los proueen. This was lost sight of till 1870, when it was found by Marcos Jimenez de la Espada, who published it in the Boletin de la Sociedad Geographica de Madrid 1877. "It is certainly not a record of actual travel, but probably the description of an imaginary journey, compiled with the help of a richly illustrated typical portolano, reports by far-famed and travelled men, and such geographical works as were accessible to the author. Many names here occurring are, however, not to be found on the portolanos of the fourteenth century.... Every city or country spoken of in the book has a chapter to itself, followed by a representation of the flag or arms of the State. These also seem ... taken from some portolano." See the Conquest of the Canaries (Hakluyt Soc. ed., ch. 55). The Conosçimiento cannot well be of later date than 1330-1340. In many places it copies Edrisi.
[135] Admitted by Nordenskjöld with singular facility: Periplus, pp. 115-6. As to the Portuguese sailor named Machico, and the possibility that the Machico district of Madeira was named after him or one of his descendants, see below, pp. lxxxiv-lxxxv.
[136] See Atlantic Islands.
[137] See Map section.
The Atlantic Islands.
i. before prince henry.
The history of the exploration of the Azores, the Canaries, and the Madeira group, before Prince Henry's time, seems to deserve a special notice in this place.
It is pretty certain that the Fortunate Islands of ancient geography were our Canaries. Eudoxus of Cyzicus was said to have discovered off the West African coast an uninhabited island, so well provided with wood and water, that he intended to return there and settle for the winter. According to Plutarch, Sertorius (b.c. 80-72) is said to have been told by some sailors whom he met at the mouth of the Baetis[[138]] of two islands[[139]] in the ocean, from which they had just arrived. These they called the "Atlantic Islands," and described as distant from the shore of Africa 10,000 stadia (1,000 miles), and enjoying a perpetual summer. Sertorius wished to fly from his war with the Romans in Spain, and take refuge in these islands, but his followers would not agree to this.[[140]]
Leaving out of serious consideration the Atlantis story in Plato's Timaeus (which may possibly owe something to early Phœnician and Carthaginian discoveries among the Atlantic islands), it is noticeable that no such Western Ocean lands occur in Strabo (b.c. 30). On the other hand the Canaries are described by Statius Sebosus, as reported in Pliny[[141]] (b.c. 30-a.d. 70), and by King Juba the younger of Mauretania (fl. b.c. 1); are laid down under the name of Fortunate Islands by Ptolemy; and are adopted in his reckonings as the Western limit of the world. Sebosus mentions Junonia, 750 miles from Gades; near this, Pluvialia and Capraria; and 1,000 miles from Gades, off the South-west coast of Mauretania or Marocco, the Fortunatae, Convallis or Invallis, and Planaria.
Juba[[142]] again makes five Fortunate Isles: Ombrios, Nivaria, Capraria, Junonia, and Canaria, all fertile but uninhabited. Large dogs were found, however, in the last-named, and two of these had been brought to Juba himself, who called the island after them. Date-palms also abounded. Juba also, according to Pliny, discovered the Purple islands (Purpurariae) off the coast of Mauretania, which have been carelessly identified by some with the Madeira group, though wanting the two essential conditions of Juba's description: (1) producing Orchil; (2) lying very close to the shore of Mauretania. Lançarote and Fuerteventura agree with Juba's conditions on these points,[[143]] but then why are they made a separate group from Nivaria, etc., which are undoubtedly the main body of the Canaries? Juba's account is the most clear and valuable we have from ancient geography, dealing with the Canaries, and is far better than that[[144]] of the Alexandrian geographer. Ptolemy lays down the Fortunate Islands—assuming the Canaries to be meant—incorrectly both in latitude and longitude, in a position really corresponding better to that of the Cape Verdes. Hence it has been supposed that he confounded the two groups in one; whereas the Cape Verdes, lying out to sea 300 miles from the Continent, are not likely to have been known, even in his day. An error in position is so common with Ptolemy that it is quite unnecessary to be disturbed by it. But he clearly had some definite knowledge that islands existed in the ocean to the west of Africa, and in his map he probably reproduces the statements of others, without first-hand information of his own, assigning such a position as suited best with his theories. For he not merely brings the southernmost of the Fortunate Isles down to 11° N. lat., but scatters the group through 5° of latitude, placing the northernmost in latitude, 16° N. His names vary much from Juba's, for he gives us six: Canaria, the Isle of Juno, Pluïtala,[[145]] Aprositus (the Inaccessible), Caspiria, and Pinturia or Centuria; at the western extremity of these, after the example of Marinus, he drew the first meridian of longitude.[[146]]
The Arabs seem to have lost all definite knowledge of the Atlantic islands, an impossible possession to a race with such a deep horror of the Green Sea of Darkness. Masudi, indeed, tells us a story, already noticed, of one Khoshkhash, the young man of Cordova, who some years before the writer's time[[147]] had sailed off upon the Ocean, and after a long interval returned with a rich cargo; but nothing more definite is said about this venture.
Some tradition of the Canaries or the Madeira group seems to have been preserved among Moslem geographers, under the name of Isles of Khaledat, or Khaledad, but we have only one narrative from the collections of these authors which suggests a Musulman visit to the same. This is found in Edrisi, in its earlier form, and must refer to some time before 1147, when Lisbon finally became a Christian city. It probably belongs to a year of the eleventh century, and has perhaps left its impression in the Brandan legend as put forth in the oldest MS., of about 1070.
The Lisbon Wanderers, or Maghrurin, from Moslem Spain, commemorated by Edrisi and by Ibn-al-Wardi, did not apparently venture to the South of Cape Non, but they seem to have reached the Madeira group as well as the Canaries. The adventurers were eight in number, all related to one another. After eleven days' sail, apparently from Lisbon, they found themselves in a sea due[[148]] West of Spain, where the waters were thick, of bad smell, and moved by strong currents.[[149]] Here the weather became as black as pitch. Fearing for their lives they now turned South, and after twelve days sighted an island which they called El Ghanam, the Isle of Cattle,[[150]] from the sheep they saw there without any shepherd. The flesh of these cattle was too bitter for eating, but they found a stream of running water and some wild figs. Twelve more days to the South brought them to an island[[151]] with houses and cultivated fields. Here they were seized, and carried prisoners to a city on the sea-shore. After three days the King's interpreter, who spoke Arabic, came to them, and asked them who they were and what they wanted. They replied, they were seeking the wonders of the Ocean and its limits. At this the King laughed, and said: "My father once ordered some of his slaves to venture upon that sea, and after sailing it for a month, they found themselves deprived of sun-light and returned without any result." The Wanderers were kept in prison till a west wind arose, when they were blindfolded and turned off in a boat. After three days they reached Africa. They were put ashore, their hands tied, and left. They were released by the Berbers,[[152]] and returned to Spain, when a "street at the foot of the hot bath in Lisbon took the name of 'Street of the Wanderers.'"
El Ghanam has been identified by Avezac and others with Legname, the old Italian name for Madeira, and their description of the "bitter mutton" of that island has suggested to some the "coquerel" plant of the Canaries, which in more recent times gave a similar flavour to the meat of the animals who browsed upon it.[[153]]
Some have conjectured that the "White Man's Land" and "Great Ireland," which the Norsemen of Iceland professed to have seen in 983-4, 999, and 1029, was a name for the Canaries, rather than for any point of America, but this appears entirely conjectural—though it is probable enough that some of the Vikings in their wanderings may have visited these islands. In 1108-9, King Sigurd of Norway meets a Viking fleet in the Straits of Gibraltar ("Norva Sound");[[154]] and in the course of their many attacks on the "Bluemen" or Moors of "Serkland" (Saracen-land) the Northern rovers who reached the New World, Greenland, and the White Sea, may well have sighted and ravaged the Fortunate Islands of the Atlantic, beyond Cape Non.
No further reference, even conjectural, to the Atlantic Islands is known until the later thirteenth century, when the Mediæval revival in Christian lands, finding its expression in the Crusades and in the Asiatic land-travels of John de Plano Carpini, Simon de St. Quentin, Rubruquis, and the Polos, among others, led to attempts in search of a maritime route to India from the Mediterranean ports. The earliest of these followed immediately on the return of the elder Polos from Central Asia (1269).
In 1270 the voyage of the Genoese, Lancelot Malocello, already referred to as a possible reconnaissance on the African coast route to the Far East, resulted in a re-discovery of some of the Canaries. At any rate, he stayed[[155]] long enough to build himself a "castle" there; and the recognition of this island, as well as of the adjoining "Maloxelo," as Genoese on maps of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries,[[156]] was probably due to this. During Béthencourt's "Conquest," some of the followers of his colleague, Gadifer de la Salle, stored barley, we are told, in an old castle which had been built by Lancelot Maloisel. It has been supposed that Petrarch, writing c. 1335 a.d., and referring to the armed Genoese fleet which had penetrated to the Canaries a generation before (a Patrum memoria), was thinking of Malocello's venture, but the expression is better suited to the Expedition of 1291, led by Tedisio Doria and the Vivaldi.
It is possible that the Portuguese followed up Malocello's visit by voyages of their own (besides the well-known venture of 1341) before the year 1344,[[157]] when Don Luis of Spain obtained a grant of the Canaries from the Pope[[158]] at Avignon (November 15, 1344). This grant conferred on Luis de la Cerda, Count of Talmond, the title of Prince of Fortune, with the lordship of the Fortunate Islands, in fief to the Apostolic See, and under a tribute of 400 gold florins, to be paid yearly to the Chair of St. Peter. The Pontiff also wrote to various sovereigns, among others to the King of Portugal, Affonso IV, recommending the plans of Don Luis to their support. To this Affonso replied (February 12, 1345), reminding the Pope that he had already sent expeditions to the Canaries, and would even now be despatching a greater Armada if it were not for his wars with Castille and with the Saracens.
As early as 1317, King Denis of Portugal secured the Genoese, Emmanuele Pezagno (Pessanha), as hereditary admiral of his fleet. Pezagno and his successors were to keep the Portuguese navy supplied with twenty Genoese captains experienced in navigation and the earliest Portuguese ventures were almost certainly connected with this arrangement.
This was shown in the expedition of 1341, which left Portugal for the Canaries under Genoese pilotage, and quite independently of Don Luis, as far as we know. It was composed of two vessels furnished by the King of Portugal, and a smaller ship, all well-armed, and manned by Florentines, Genoese, Castilians, Portuguese, and "other Spaniards."[[159]] They set out from Lisbon on July 1, 1341; on the fifth(?) day they discovered land; and in November they returned. They brought home with them four natives, many goat and seal skins, dye-wood, bark for staining, red earth, etc. Nicoloso de Recco, a Genoese, pilot of the expedition, considered these islands nearly 900 miles distant from Seville. The first[[160]] discovered was supposed to be about 150 miles round; it was barren and stony, inhabited by goats and other animals, as well as by naked people, absolutely savage. The next[[161]] visited was larger than the former, and contained many natives, most of them nearly naked, but some covered with goats' skins. The people had a chief, built houses, planted palms and fig trees, and cultivated little gardens with vegetables. Four men swam out to the ships, and were carried off. The Europeans found on the island a sort of temple, with a stone idol, which was brought back to Lisbon.
From this island several others were visible—one remarkable for its lofty trees,[[162]] another containing excellent wood and water, wild pigeons, falcons, and birds of prey.[[163]] In the fifth visited were immense rocky mountains reaching into the clouds.[[164]] Eight other islands were sighted. In all, five of the new-found lands were peopled, the rest not. None of the natives had any boats, and there was no good store of harbours. On one island was a mountain, which they reckoned as 30,000 feet high, and on its summit a fortress-like rock, with a mast atop of it rigged with a yard and lateen sail—a manifest proof of enchantment. No wealth was found in any of the islands, and hence perhaps the venture of 1341 was not followed up by Portugal for many years; but it is probable that the results of this year are commemorated in the delineation of the Fortunate Isles upon the Laurentian Portolano of 1351.[[165]]
Nothing, so far as we know, was done for the further exploration of the Canaries (after 1341) till 1382, when one Captain Francisco Lopez, while on his way from Seville to Galicia, was driven south by storms, and took refuge (June 5th) at the mouth of the Guiniguada, in Grand Canary. Here he landed with twelve of his comrades; the strangers were kindly treated, and passed seven years among the natives, instructing many in the doctrines of Christianity. Suddenly Lopez and his men were accused of sending into Christian countries a "bad account" of the islands, and were all massacred. Before dying, they seem to have given one of their converts a written "testament," and this was found by the men of Jean de Béthencourt in 1402.
Apparently, very shortly before the invasion of the latter (? in 1390-5), another Spaniard, Alvaro Becarra, visited the islands,[[166]] and it was (according to one authority) from information directly supplied by him and two French adventurers who accompanied him, that De Béthencourt was induced to undertake his expedition.
The Lord of Grainville set out with a body of followers, among whom the knight Gadifer de la Salle was chief, from Rochelle, on May 1st, 1402. Eight days' sail from Cadiz, he reached Graciosa. Thence he went to Lançarote, where he built a fort called Rubicon. Going on to Fuerteventura, he was hampered by a mutiny among his men, and by lack of supplies. He returned to Spain, procured from Henry III of Castille what he needed, and reappeared at Lançarote. During his absence, Gadifer, left in command, accomplished a partial exploration of Fuerteventura, Grand Canary, Ferro, Gomera and Palma. The "King" of Lançarote was baptised on February 20th, 1404; but after this, Gadifer quarrelled with his leader and returned to France. All attempts to conquer the Pagans of Grand Canary were fruitless, and De Béthencourt finally quitted the islands, appointing his nephew Maciot[[167]] to be governor in his place of the four Christian colonies in Palma and Ferro, Lançarote and Fuerteventura.
The Madeira group are laid down[[168]] in the Conosçimiento de todos los Reynos of the early fourteenth century, as well as in the Laurentian Portolano of 1351; in the Soleri Portolani of 1380 and 1385; and in the Combitis Portolan of about 1410. But in 1555,[[169]] A. Galvano, in his Discoveries of the World, claimed that an Englishman in the reign of Edward III(?) was the discoverer. He was copied by Hakluyt in 1589, and English patriotism has been loath to surrender the tradition.
"About this time," says Galvano [viz., between 1344 and 1395, the two dates named immediately before and after this entry], the "island of Madeira was discovered by ... [Robert] Macham,[[170]] who sailing from England, having run away with a woman,[[171]] was driven by a tempest ... to that island, and cast ashore in that haven, which is now called Machico, after ... Macham." Here the ship was driven from its moorings; and, according to one account[[172]] both lovers died; according to the older version, Macham escaped to the African mainland, and was finally saved and brought to the King of Castille. His old pilot, Morales, was supposed to have guided J. G. Zarco in Prince Henry's rediscovery of Madeira (1420). Azurara, however, says nothing about Macham; and it has been conjectured, from a document rediscovered in 1894, that the Machico district of Madeira—whose title, given by the Portuguese in 1420, has often been quoted as an acknowledgement of Macham's claim—derived its name from a Portuguese seaman of that name, who was living in 1379, or from one of his relations.[[173]]
The Azores, or Western Islands, are also (in part) laid down in the Conosçimiento above quoted (of about a.d. 1330), and in the Medicean Portolano of 1351;[[174]] and when the Infant sent out Gonçalo Cabral[[175]] in this direction he was aided, it is said, by an Italian portolano, on which the aforesaid islands were depicted.[[176]] But no record of any voyage thereto earlier than that of Diego de Sevill[[177]] (1427) has been preserved; nor did any one before the Prince's time attempt, as far as is known, the colonisation or complete exploration of the Azores. To these, however, like the other Atlantic islands, Nordenskjöld's emphatic words[[178]] apply, as the cartographical evidence requires. To some extent at least all these groups "were known ... to skippers long before organised ... expeditions were sent to them by great feudal lords." Absolute novelty in geographical discovery is one of the most difficult things to prove, and in no field of historical inquiry does the saying more often occur to the inquirer: "Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona, multi."
The Cape Verdes is the only group of Atlantic Islands as to which we may be reasonably sure that the mediæval discovery at least was not made before Prince Henry's lifetime. Here the Infant's claim of priority is probably most in danger from Phœnician and Carthaginian sailors;[[179]] but even here the challenge is not very serious, unless we insist on considering as proven a number of pretensions which are almost impossible to substantiate.
[138] Guadalquivir.
[139] Madeira and Porto Santo(?)
[140] Plutarch, Sertorius, c. 8.
[141] Pliny, Hist. Nat., vi, 32.
[142] Copied by Solinus and many mediæval writers (see Pliny, Hist. Nat., vi, 31). Juba's work was dedicated to Caius Cæsar, b.c. 1, when just about to start on an expedition to the East. Ombrios, from its mountain lake, has been identified with Palma; Nivaria more easily with Teneriffe and Canaria with Grand Canary; Junonia is difficult to fix, as we have the statement that a second and smaller island of the same name is in its neighbourhood; Capraria is supposed to be Ferro. The remaining two of our modern archipelago, Lancarote and Fuerteventura, are supposed by some to be the "Purpurariae" of Juba.
[143] And are therefore accepted as the Purpurariae by D'Anville Gossellin, Major, and, with some hesitation, by Bunbury.
[144] "A mere confused jumble of different reports." Bunbury, Anc. Geog. ii, 202.
[145] Perhaps a corruption of Sebosus' Pluvialia. "The Inaccessible" is possibly Teneriffe. Canaria and the Isle of Juno are of course identical with Juba's nomenclature.
[146] Cerne, so important a mark in Hanno's Periplus, he places in the Ocean 3° from the mainland, in clear opposition to the Carthaginian authorities whom some have thought he possessed and used. Cerne is in latitude 25° 40', and east longitude 5° on Ptolemy's map.