The reigning idea of a century finds always one or more eminent spirits, in whom and through whose agency the desires and hopes of thousands ripen into deeds, and are changed from dreams into realities. One of these rare and highly gifted men was Prince Henry of Portugal, a son of King John I., who made it the chief aim of his life to extend the boundaries of maritime discovery, and devoted with glowing ardour all the powers of his energetic mind, and all the influence of rank and riches to the attainment of this noble object. From the castle of Sagres near Cape St. Vincent, where, far from the court, he had fixed his residence in order to be less disturbed in his favourite studies, his eye glanced over the Atlantic, which constantly reminded him of the unknown lands which held out such brilliant prospects to the navigator who should venture to steer southwards along the African coast. The experienced seamen and learned geographers that surrounded him confirmed him in his hopes, and encouraged him to attempt the realisation of his generous ideas. Fortunately all outward circumstances combined to favour the prince's projects. At that time Portugal was not plunged, as at present, in a state of slothful lethargy, but full of the bold and enterprising spirit which the expulsion of the Moors and long intestine wars had called to life. The geographical position of the country, bounded on every side by the dominions of a mightier neighbour, forbade all extension by land, and pointed to the ocean as the only field in which a comparatively small The first two ships which Prince Henry sent out on a voyage of discovery along the African coast (1412) did not reach farther than Cape Bojador, whose rocky cliffs stretching far out into the Atlantic intimidated their inexperienced commanders. Six years later (1418) Juan Gonsalez Zarco and Tristan Vaz Tejeira were intrusted with a new expedition, and sailed with express commands to double that ill-famed promontory; but a terrible gale drove them out to sea, and forced them to seek a refuge on an unknown island, to which they thankfully gave the name of Porto Santo. This discovery, though extremely unimportant in itself, served to confirm the prince in his projects, and encouraged him to send out in the following year a new expedition under the same commander, to take possession of the island. This led to a more important discovery, for on landing on Porto Santo the attention of the Portuguese was struck by a black and prominent spot, rising above the southern horizon. To this they now directed their course, and were equally delighted and surprised to see it swell out as they approached to the ample proportions of a large island; to which, on account of the dense forests which at that time covered its verdant hill-slopes up to the very top, they gave the name of Madeira. Prince Henry immediately equipped a considerable fleet to carry a colony of his countrymen to the new land of promise, and furnished them with the vine of Cyprus, and the sugar-cane of Sicily, which throve so well on the Atlantic isle, that after a few years the produce of Madeira began to be of consequence in the trade of the mother country. Thus the first undertakings of Prince Henry were not left unrewarded; but, besides the commercial advantages arising from the possession of Madeira, it encouraged the Portuguese navigators no longer servilely to creep along the coasts, but boldly to steer into the open sea. Thus Don Gilianez, by avoiding the shore-currents, succeeded at last in doubling the dreaded Cape Bojador (1433), and opening a new sphere to navigation. One discovery now rapidly followed another. Gonsalez and NuÑo Tristan (1440-1442) penetrated as far as the Senegal; Cape de Verd was reached in 1446; and three years later, the limits of In the year 1471 the line was crossed for the first time, and the Portuguese thus detected the error of the ancients, who believed that the intolerable heat of a vertical sun rendered the equatorial regions uninhabitable by man. Under John the Second a mighty fleet discovered the kingdoms of Benin and Congo (1484), followed the coast above 1500 miles beyond the equator, and revealed to Europe the constellations of another hemisphere. The farther their ships penetrated to the south, the higher rose the flood tide of their hopes. As the African continent appeared sensibly to contract itself, and to bend towards the East as they proceeded, they no longer doubted that the way to the Indian Ocean would now soon be found, and give them the exclusive possession of a trade which had enriched Venice, and made that city the envy of the world. The ancient long-forgotten tale of the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa now found belief, and Bartholomew Diaz sailed from Lisbon for the purpose of solving the important problem. The storms of an unknown ocean, the famine caused by the loss of his store-ship, and the frequent mutinies of a dispirited crew, could not stop the progress of this intrepid mariner, who, boldly advancing in the face of a thousand difficulties, at length discovered the high promontory which forms the southern extremity of Africa. But, as his weather-beaten ships were no longer able to confront While Tropical America is separated from Europe and Africa by a vast tract of intervening ocean, and even the advanced posts of the Azores and Cape de Verd Islands are far distant from the western shores of the Atlantic, Iceland and Greenland appear to us in the north as stations linking at comparatively easy distances the Old World and the New. It is, therefore, by no means surprising that the discovery of Iceland by the Norwegian Viking or pirate Nadod, and the somewhat later colonisation of the island by Ingolf, in the year 875, should in the following century have led the Norsemen to the discovery of America, particularly when we consider that no people ever equalled them in daring and romantic love of adventure: "Kings of the main their leaders brave, Their barks the dragons of the wave." Greenland, discovered by GÜnnbjorn in the year 876 or 877, was indeed not colonised by the Icelanders before 983; a delay excusable enough when we consider the uninviting climate of that dreary peninsula or island, but three years after the latter date, we already find Bjorne Herjulfson undertaking a cruise from the new settlement to the south-west, and successively discovering Nantucket, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, though without making any attempts to land. Bjorne was followed Besides his well-authenticated Norman predecessors, Columbus may possibly have had others. Traces of early Irish and Welsh discoveries are pointed out by the Northern historians, and John Vaz Cortereal, a Portuguese navigator, is said to have visited the coasts of Newfoundland some time previous to the voyages of Columbus and Cabot. If before the first voyage of the great Genoese navigator a mighty longing to penetrate to distant countries pervaded the public mind of Europe, it may be imagined to what a feverish glow this reigning idea of the century was excited, when the If Columbus was undoubtedly the first discoverer of the West Indian islands (the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, 1492; Lesser Antilles, 1493; Jamaica, 1494), the honour of having preceded him on the American continent belongs to John Cabot, a Venetian merchant settled in Bristol, and to the youthful energy of his son Sebastian, since they landed on the coast of Labrador (24th June, 1497) seventeen months before the continent of Tropical America, in the delta of the Orinoco, was discovered by Columbus on his third voyage. Thus Genoa and Venice, the great Mediterranean rivals, divide the glory of having revealed a new world to mankind, but it was ordained that the laurels of their sons should bloom under a foreign flag, and the fruits of their endeavours be reaped by other nations. For as Columbus steered into the western ocean in the service of the Spanish monarch, the Cabots were sent by Henry the Seventh of England across the Atlantic to discover a north-western passage to India. This, of course, they did not accomplish, but the discovery of Newfoundland and of the coast of America from Labrador to Virginia rewarded their efforts, and laid the foundation of Britain's colonial greatness. Their voyage is also remarkable as having been the first expedition of the kind that ever left the shores of England, which at that time held a very inferior rank among the maritime nations, and gave but taint indications of her future naval supremacy. On this occasion it may not be uninteresting to cast a retrospective glance on the modest beginnings of British navigation. In the year 1217 the first treaty of commerce was concluded with Norway, and in the beginning of the fourteenth century Bergen After this short digression I return to America, where, in 1499, Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci were the first to sail along the coast of Paria. The following year was uncommonly rich in voyages of discovery, as well in the south as in the north. In the western ocean the line was first crossed by Vincent YaÑez Pinson, who doubled Cape Saint Augustin, discovered the mouths of the Amazon river, and thence sailed northwards along the coast as far as the island of Trinidad, which Columbus had discovered two years before. About the same time a Portuguese fleet, sailing under the command of Pedro Alvarez Cabral to the Indian Ocean, was driven by adverse winds to the coast of the Brazils; so that, if the genius of Columbus had not evoked, as it were, America out of the waves, chance would have effected her discovery a few years later. A third voyage, which renders the year 1500 remarkable in maritime annals, is that of Gaspar Cortereal, a son of John Vaz Cortereal whom I have already mentioned as one of the doubtful precursors of Columbus. Hoping to realise the dream of a north-west passage to the riches of India, Gaspar appeared on the inhospitable shores of Labrador, and penetrated into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Storms and ice-drifts forced him to retreat, but firmly resolved to prosecute his design, he again set sail in the following year with two small vessels. It is supposed that on this second voyage he penetrated into Frobisher Bay, but here floating ice-masses As in our times the uncertain fate of Franklin has called forth a series of heroic deeds, so the doubtful destiny of the Portuguese explorer allowed his brother Miguel no rest, whom in the following spring we find hastening with three ships on the traces of the lost Gaspar. But Miguel also disappeared for ever among the ice-fields of the north. A third brother of this high-minded family yet remained, who earnestly implored the king that he also might be allowed to go forth and seek for his missing kindred. But Emanuel steadfastly refused permission, saying that these deplorable enterprises had already cost him two of his most valuable servants, and he could afford to lose no more. In the year 1501 Rodrigo de Bastidas sailed to the coast of Paria, and discovered the whole shore-line from Cape de Vela to the Gulf of Darien. In the year 1502 the aged Columbus, entering with youthful ardour upon his fourth and last voyage, set sail with four wretched vessels, the largest of which was only seventy tons burthen, and discovered the coast of the American continent from Cape Gracias Á Dios to Porto-Bello. The east coast of Yucatan was explored in the year 1508 by Juan Diaz de Solis and Vincent YaÑez Pinson, and the island of Cuba circumnavigated for the first time by Sebastian de Ocampo. In 1512 Juan Ponce de Leon is led by his evil star to Florida, where, instead of finding as he hoped the fountain of eternal youth, he is doomed to a miserable end; and in 1517 the above-mentioned Solis sails along the coasts of the Brazils to the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, where he is killed in a conflict with the Indians. In 1518 Cordova makes his countrymen acquainted with the north and west coasts of Yucatan, and in the same year Grijalva discovers the Mexican coast from Tabasco to San Juan de Ulloa. In 1518 he is followed by the great Cortez, who lands at Vera Cruz, overthrows the empire of Montezuma after a series of exploits unparalleled in history, and renders the whole coast of Mexico far to the north subject to the Spanish crown. The voyages of Verazzani (1523) who sailed along the coast of the United States, and of Jacques Cartier (1524) who investigated But while the western shores of the Atlantic were thus unrolling themselves before the wondering gaze of mankind, the Indian Ocean was the scene of no less remarkable events; for in the same year (1498) that Columbus first visited the American continent, Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope, which thus fully justified its auspicious name, crossed the Eastern Ocean, and on the 22nd of May landed at Calicut on the coast of Malabar, ten months and two days after leaving the port of Lisbon. And now, as if by magic, the great revolution in commerce took place which the Venetians long had feared and the Portuguese had no less anxiously hoped for; for the latter lost no time in reaping the golden fruits of the glorious discoveries of Gama and his predecessors. In less than twenty years their flag waved in all the harbours of the Indian Ocean, from the east coast of Africa to Canton; and over this whole immense expanse a row of fortified stations secured to them the dominion of the seas. Their settlements in Diu and Goa awed the whole coast of Malabar, and cut off the intercourse of Egypt with India by way of the Red Sea. They took possession of the small island of Ormus, which commands the entrance of the Persian Gulf, and rendered this important commercial highway likewise tributary to their power. In the centre of the East-Indian world rose their chief emporium, Malacca, and even in distant China Macao obeyed their laws. The discovery of the Molucca Islands gave them the monopoly of the lucrative spice trade, which was destined at a later period, and more permanently, to enrich the thrifty Dutchman. What vast changes had taken place since Prince Henry's first expeditions to the coast of Africa! How had old Ocean Yet a few years and the Pacific opens its gates, and all the discoveries of Columbus and Vasco seem small when compared with the vast regions which Magellan reveals to man. |