CHAPTER XVIII.

Discoveries of the PORTUGUESE in the Fifteenth Century, and their Effect on the Commerce of Europe-Madeira discovered-Pope's Bull, granting to the Portuguese the Countries explored by them-They double the Cape of Good Hope-De Gama reaches India-Goa taken - Their Objects opposed by the Venetians-Portuguese sail to China-Establish Macao-Effects on European Commerce-Rise of Antwerp and Amsterdam-Progress of Commerce and Manufactures in England.

As many of the most useful inventions in the arts have been the result of accident, it is not surprising that some even of the most remarkable of these should have been for ages known to mankind before they were called forth, or applied to any purposes of utility. The property of the magnetic needle, in turning constantly to the northern pole, was known in Europe as early as the thirteenth century; but it was not till above a century after that any one attempted to apply it to the purposes of navigation. That most ancient nation, the Chinese, are, indeed, said to have known the property of the magnet for a thousand years before us; yet it is believed that till our seventeenth century, when European example had reached them, they had never thought of using it in sailing. in sailing. The English, in the reign of Edward III., are said to have first enployed the compass in their ships, but the world owed to the Portuguese the first great experiments of the value of this invention in the advancement of navigation. Till the middle of the fifteenth century, none of the nations of Europe had ventured to sail out of the sight of their coasts. Their vessels were flatbottomed, and extremely shallow; and, as they followed in their navigation every turning of the coast, which exposed them continually to shifting and contrary winds, it was not unusual that a voyage, which would now be performed in a few months, lasted at that time four or five years. We have already remarked the very limited knowledge which the Greeks and Romans possessed of the habitable globe. The Eastern Ocean was known only by name, and the Atlantic scarcely attempted out of the sight of the coast of Europe. It was supposed that all to the west was an immense extent of ocean. The famous island of Atlantis, which Plato supposed to be situated in this sea, was a chimera of his own, and was generally treated as such. The torrid zone, as we have formerly remarked, was generally believed by the ancients to be uninhabitable from its heat; and this persuasion had pre

vented them, in their coasting voyages, from going beyond the northern tropic. The Periplus of Hanno is, indeed, an exception; but it is probable that he did not very well know the extent of his own voyage, which is supposed to have reached within five degrees of the line. If the ancients were acquainted with the coast of Africa thus far, it is at least certain, that the moderns, down to the period of the fifteenth century, never attempted to sail beyond the twenty-ninth degree of north latitude; and a promontory, on the African coast, lying in that parallel, was termed Cape Non, as being supposed the utmost limits of the habitable globe to the South.

In the beginning of the fifteenth century, John I., king of Portugal, having sent a considerable armament o ships to attack the Moors settled on the coast of Barbary, a few vessels were despatched, at the same time, with instructions to sail along the western shore of Africa, and to bring an account of the state of the countries beyond Barbary, which, it was supposed, might be incited to cooperate in the design of conquering the Moors. The vessels sent on this enterprise doubled Cape Non, and proceeded at once one hundred and sixty miles beyond it to another promontory, named Cape Boyador, within two degrees of the tropic of Cancer. But here the mariners, being affrighted by the rugged appearance of the coast, and a very tempestuous sea, returned to Portugal, and got great credit for the boldness of the attempt. Prince Henry, the son of John, king of Portugal, was a young man of great talents, possessed of that ardor which is fitted to patronise and promote every beneficial design, and that enthusiasm which the dangers and difficulties of an enterprise rather inflame. than relax. Struck with, the success of this first attempt of his countrymen, he endeavored to engage in his service all who wers eminent for their skill in navigation, both Portuguese and foreignHis first effort, however, was with a single ship, which was despatched with instructions to attempt, if possible, the doubling of Cape Boyador. The mariners, as usual, were afraid to quit

ers.

*The Portuguese writers acknowledge that the island of Madeira was discovered by one Masham, an Englishman, who carried thither a lady he had stolen; and, after her death, endeavoring to escape, was taken by the inhabitants of Africa; who, on account of his being overgrown with hair, by living long in a desolate place, sent him as a present to Don Pedro, then king of Castile; and to this Masham's reports they ascribe all their own and the Spaniards' subsequent discoveries.-Campbell's Political Survey, vol. i., p. 52.-Asia de Joan de Barros, decad. 1., lib. 1., cap. iii.-Hakluyt's Translation of D. Ant. Galvano's Discoveries, 4to., p. 2. -Purchase's Pilgrimage, vol. ii., pp. 1671, 1672.

In this manly and spirited undertaking, it appears that prince Henry had to encounter the inveterate prejudices of his countrymen. "The systematic philosophers," says a well-informed writer, "were alarmed lest their favorite theories should be perverted by the acquisition of real knowledge; the military beheld with impatience the increase of fame that was obtained by a profession they had always considered as inferior to their own; the nobility dreaded open ing a source of wealth, which might equalize the ascendency of rank; and the indolent and splenetic argued, that it was presumption to search for a passage to the southern extremity of Africa, which the wisest geographers had pronounced

the coasts, and consequently, encountered numberless difficulties. A squall of wind, however, driving them out to sea, landed them on a small island to the north of Madeira, which they named Porto Santo: thence they returned to Portugal to give an account of their discovery. Three ships were fitted out by prince Henry the subsequent year, which, passing Porto Santo, discovered the island which they denominated Madeira, from its being covered with wood. Here they fixed a small colony, and planted slips of the Cyprus vine, and of the sugar-cane from Sicily, for both which productions the island was remarkably favorable. I have formerly observed that it was from this island that the sugar-cane was transplanted to the West Indies, of which it is not a native.

The Portuguese, once accustomed to launch into the open sea, no longer kept to their former timid mode of navigation. In their first voyage after the discovery of Madeira, they passed Cape Boyador, and in the space of a few years, advancing above four hundred leagues to the south, they had discovered the river Senegal, and all the coast between Cape Blanco and Cape Verd; they were now near ten degrees within the torrid zone, and were surprised to find the climate still temperate and agreeable-yet, on passing the river Senegal, and observing the human species to assume a different form, the skin as black as ebony, the woolly hair, and that peculiarity of feature which distinguishes the Negroes, they naturally attributed this to the influence of heat, and began to dread the consequences of a nearer approach to the line. They returned to Portugal with the account of their discoveries, and the common voice of their countrymen dissuaded them from making any further attempts. But the enthusiasm of prince Henry was redoubled by the success of these experiments; and he resolved to employ the operation of a new and very powerful motive to the prosecution of his schemes of discovery. He applied to the pope, Eugene IV., and representing that the chief object of his pious wishes was to spread the knowledge of the Christian religion among those barbarous and idolatrous nations which occupied the greatest part of the continent of Africa, he procured a bull, conferring on the Portuguese an exclusive right to all the countries which they had discovered, or might discover, between Cape Non and the continent of India. Ridiculous as such a donation appears to us, it was never doubted at that time that the pope had a right to confer it, and, what is very singular, all the European powers, for a considerable space of time, paid the most implicit deference to the grant, and acknowledged the exclusive title of the Portuguese to almost the whole continent of Africa.

The death of prince Henry imposed a temporary check on

to be impracticable. It was even hinted, as a probable consequence, that the mariners, after passing a certain latitude, would be changed into blacks, and thu retain for ever a disgraceful mark of their temerity.”—Clarke's Progress of Maritime Discovery.

this spirit of enterprise, which revived, however, about twenty years afterwards, under the reign of John II. of Portugal. The Cape Verd Islands were colonized and planted; and the Portuguese fleets, advancing to the coast of Guinea, returned with a cargo of gold dust, ivory, gums, and other valuable commodities.

This enterprising people, perceiving now that they were to reap a substantial reward for the dangers and difficulties they had encountered, pushed onwards with great vigor to the south. They perceived presently that this immense continent began greatly to contract itself and to bend towards the east, which encouraged a hope that in place of extending (as the ancients supposed) to the south pole, its boundary by the sea was at no great distance. They passed the equator, and, for the first time, saw a new hemisphere, and perceived those stars which mark the southern pole of the earth. The magnet, which had hitherto pointed constantly to the north, it was now expected would have changed its direction and pointed to the south pole; but it still kept invariably to the north. The Portuguese, nevertheless, sailed on with intrepidity, and at length came in sight of the great promontory which forins the extremity of the continent. This cape, of which the projecting rocks seem to pierce into the clouds, was then clad in all its horrors. It was the season of winter, and the ocean was prodigiously tempestuous. The ships of the Portuguese were shattered with a long voyage, and it was deemed utterly impossible in that condition to double the Cabo Tormentoso, or the Cape of Storms. They returned, however, after a voyage of sixteen months, firmly persuaded that they had ascertained the limits of Africa, and that by doubling that cape, which they might expect to perform in a more moderate season, they should find a new and easy passage to India, and thus engross to themselves a commerce which could not fail to be an irexhaustible source of wealth and power.

The promontory was now tenned the Cape of Good Hope; and a strong armament was prepared for this new adventure, which presented such flattering prospects to the ambition of the Portuguese. It was in this very interval of time that Columbus, the Genoese, instigated by a similar spirit of adventurous ambition, discovered the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola, and, soon after, the great continent of America; but of this important discovery we shall afterwards particularly treat.

In the year 1479, the Portuguese fleet under Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Hitherto every thing bore an appearance of novelty,--a new race of men, black and barbarous, languages totally unknown, and no traces of resemblance to the European manners. Sailing onwards they were delighted to perceive at once the Arabian tongue, and to find a race of men who professed the religion of Mahomet. They now found that they had almost circumnavigated the continent of Africa, and that this

immense peninsula was connected with Asia by the narrow Isthmus of Suez. At length, by the aid of Mahometan pilots, passing the mouths of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, and stretching along the western coast of India, De Gama arrived at Calicut, on the coast of Malabar, after a voyage of 1500 leagues, performed in thirteen months.

Calicut was at that time a city of great wealth and splendor, the residence of one of those rajahs,* or petty sovereigns, who then occupied the greatest part of Indostan, and were chiefly tributaries to the Mogul emperors. De Gama formed an alliance with the rajah of Calicut, and returned to Lisbon with some specimens of the wealth and produce of the country. A fleet of thirteen ships was now fitted out with all despatch, and these, performing the voyage with equal good fortune, began to make settlements upon the coast. They found opposition from some of the petty princes, which obliged them to have recourse to arms; and a war once begun was not finished till the Portuguese had achieved the conquest of all the coast of Malabar

The court of Lisbon now appointed as viceroy or governor of the country, Alphonso de Albuquerque, a man of great spirit and resolution. The city of Goa, which belonged to the rajah of the Deccan, was taken by storm, and became now the residence of the Portuguese viceroy, and the capital of all their settlements in India.

While such was the state of affairs in the East, the Venetians, who had hitherto engrossed the whole trade from India, by means of the Red Sea and the port of Alexandria, soon perceived that this most lucrative commerce was on the point of annihilation, and that every advantage of the Indian trade must now be transferred to the Portuguese. Various expedients were thought of to obviate these impending misfortunes. It was the interest of the sultan of Egypt to concur with the Venetians in support of a trade from which he as well as they had derived great benefits. A plan was meditated for some time of cutting through the Isthmus of Suez, and thus joining the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; but the Egyptians were apprehensive that their low and flat country might be drowned altogether in this attempt, and therefore the project was abandoned. It was now proposed that an immense fleet should be equipped on the Red Sea, which should lie in wait for the Portuguese at the mouth of the Gulf, and destroy them on their passage to India. The sultan of Egypt had no wood to build a fleet, but the Venetians sent him the whole materials from Italy to Alexandria, from whence they were transported, with great difficulty and at an immense expense, over land to Suez. Here a fleet was immediately con

*

Rajah is evidently from the same original root with the Latin Rex-Regis but this is only one of a thousand such coincidences