The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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the ocean continually inflamed his thoughts. It was a cold,
bleak headland, with a few juniper trees scattered here and
there: all other vegetation had been withered by the spray. But
Prince Henry was not alone. He invited learned men from all
countries to reside with him. He established a court, in which
weather-beaten pilots might discourse with German
mathematicians and Italian cosmographers. He built an
observatory, and founded a naval school. He collected a
library, in which might be read the manuscript of Marco Polo,
which his elder brother had brought from Venice; copies on
vellum of the great work of Ptolemy; and copies also of
Herodotus, Strabo, and other Greek writers, which were being
rapidly translated into Latin under the auspices of the Pope at
Rome. He had also a collection of maps and sea-charts engraved
on marble or on metal tables, and painted upon parchment. At a
little distance from the castle were the harbour and town of
Sagres, from which the vessels of the Prince went forth with
the cross of the order painted on their sails.
They sailed down the coast of the Sahara; on their right was a
sea of darkness, on their left a land of fire. The gentlemen of
the household who commanded the ships did not believe in the
country of green trees beyond the ocean of sand. Instead of
pushing rapidly along, they landed as soon as they detected any
signs of the natives β the old people of Masinissa and
Jugurtha β attacked them crying, Portugal! Portugal! and
having taken a few prisoners returned home. In every expedition
the commander made it a point of honour to go a little further
than the preceding expedition. Several years thus passed, and
the Black Country had not been found. The Canary Islands were
already known to the Spaniards: but the Portuguese discovered
Porto Santo and Madeira. A ship-load of emigrants was
despatched to the former island, and among the passengers was a
female rabbit in an interesting situation. She was turned down
with her young ones on the island, and, there being no checks
to rabbit-population, they increased with such rapidity that
they devoured every green thing, and drove the colonists across
into Madeira. In that island the colonists were more fortunate;
instead of importing rabbits they introduced the vine from
Cyprus, and the sugar-cane from Sicily; and soon Madeira wine
and sugar were articles of export from Lisbon to London and to
other ports. In the meantime the expeditions to Africa became
exceedingly unpopular. The priests declared that the holy money
was being scandalously wasted on the dreams of a lonely madman.
That castle on the Atlantic shore, which will ever be revered
as a sacred place in the annals of mankind, was then regarded
with abhorrence and contempt. The common people believed it to
be the den of a magician, and crossed themselves in terror when
they met in their walks a swarthy strong-featured man, with a
round barret cap on his head, wrapped in a large mantle, and
wearing black buskins with gilt spurs. Often they saw him
standing on the brink of the cliff, gazing earnestly towards
the sea, his eyes shaded by his hand. It was said that on fair
nights he might be seen for hours and hours on the tower of
Babel which he had built, holding a strange weapon in his
hands, and turning it towards the different quarters of the
sky.
There was an orthodox geography at that period founded
upon statements in the Jewish writings, and in the Fathers of
the Church. The earth was in the centre of the universe; the
sun and the moon and the stars humbly revolving round it.
Jerusalem was in the precise centre of the earth. In Eastern
India was the Terrestrial Paradise, situated on high ground,
and surrounded by a wall of fire, reaching to the sky. St.
Augustine, Lactantius, and Cosmas Indicopleustes opposed the
Antipodes as being contrary to Scripture; and there could not
be people on the other side of the earth, for how would they be
able to see the Son of God descending in his glory? It was also
generally believed that there was a torrid zone, an impassable
belt on both sides of the equator, which Providence had created
for the lower animals, and in which no man could live. It was
to this fiery land that the Prince kept sending vessel after
vessel. The Portuguese did not see what would come of these
expeditions except to make widows and orphans. βThe Prince
seems to think,β said they, βthat because he has discovered two
desert islands he has conferred a great blessing upon us but we
have enough uncultivated land without going across the seas for
more. His own father, only a little while ago, gave land to a
nobleman of Germany, on condition that he should people it with
emigrants. But Dom Henry sends men out of Portugal instead of
asking them in. Let us keep to the country that God has given
us. It may be seen how much better suited those lands are for
beasts than men by what happened with the rabbits. And even if
there are in that unfound land as many people as the Prince
pretends, we do not know what sort of people they are; and if
they are like those in the Canaries who jump from rock to rock,
and throw stones at Christian heads, of what use is it to
conquer a land so barren, and a people so contemptible?
However, an incident occurred which produced a revolution in
popular and ecclesiastic feeling. The prisoners captured on the
desert coast offered a ransom for their release and this ransom
consisted of negro slaves and gold. The place where this metal
first made its appearance was called the Golden River. It was
not in reality a river but an arm of the sea, and the gold had
been brought from the mines of Bambouk in the country of the
negroes. Its discovery created an intense excitement: the
priests acknowledged that it could not have been placed there
for the use of the wild animals. Companies were formed and were
licensed by the Crown, which assigned to the Prince a fifth
part of the cargoes returned. He himself cared little for the
gold but the discovery of this precious metal, of which India
was proverbially the native land, suggested the idea that by
following the coast of Africa the Indies might be reached by
sea. Letters and maps which he received from his Venetian
correspondents encouraged him in this belief, and he obtained
without delay a Bull from the Pope granting to the Crown of
Portugal all lands that its subjects might discover as far as
India inclusive, with license to trade with infidels, and
absolution for the souls of those that perished in these semi-commercial, semi-crusading expeditions.
The practice of piracy was now partly given up: the Portuguese,
like the Phoenicians of old, traded in one place and kidnapped
in another. The commodities which they brought home were gold
dust, seal skins, and negroes. Yet still they did not reach the
negro land, till at last a merchant of Lagos, one time an
equerry in the Princeβs service, knowing his old master had
exploration at heart more than trade, determined to push on,
without loitering on the desert coast. He was rewarded with the
sight of trees growing on the banks of a great river, which
Prince Henry and his cosmographers supposed to be the Nile. On
one side were the brown men of the desert with long tangled
hair, lean, and fierce in expression, living on milk, wandering
with their camels from place to place. On the other side were
large, stout, comely men with hair like wool, skins black as
soot, living in villages and cultivating fields of corn.
The Portuguese had now discovered the coast of Guinea, and they
were obliged to give up their predatory practices. Instead of
an open plain in which knights habited in armour and men
dressed in quilted cotton jackets could fight almost with
impunity against naked Moors, they entered rivers the banks of
which were lined with impenetrable jungles. The negroes,
perched in trees, shot down upon them from above, or attacked
the shipsβ boats in mid-channel with their swift and light
canoes. The Portuguese had no firelocks, and the crossbow bolt
was a poor missile compared with the arrows which the negroes
dipped in a poison so subtle that as soon as the wounded man
drank he died, the blood bursting from his nose and ears. A
system of barter was therefore established, and the negroes
showed themselves disposed to trade. The Gold Coast was
discovered: a fort and a chapel were built at Elmina, where a
commandant was appointed to reside. This ancient settlement has
just been ceded to the English by the Dutch. The ships carried
out copper bracelets, brass basins, knives, rattles, looking-glasses, coloured silks, and woollen goods, green Rouen cloth,
coral, figured velvet, and dainty napkins of Flanders
embroidered with gold brocade, receiving chiefly gold dust in
exchange. This trade was farmed out to a company for five
years, on condition that the company should each year explore
to a certain distance along the coast.
The excitement which followed the discovery of gold dust, and
the institution of the House of Mines, gradually died away. The
noble Prince Henry was no more. The men who went out to the
coast were not of the class who devote their lives to the
chivalry of enterprise. An official who had just returned from
Elmina being presented to the king, His Majesty asked him how
it was that although he had lived in Africa his face and hands
were so white. The gentleman replied that he had worn a mask
and gloves during the whole period of his absence in that
sultry land; upon which the king told him what he thought he
was fit for in words too vigorous to be translated. This same
king, John the second, was a vigorous-minded man, and in him
the ambition of Prince Henry was revived. He found in a chest
belonging to the late king a series of letters from a Venetian
gentleman giving much information about the India trade, and
earnestly advising him to prosecute his explorations along the
coast. The librarians of St. Mark had also sent maps in which
the termination of the continent was marked. The king sent out
new expeditions and fostered the science of nautical astronomy.
A Jew named Zacuto and the celebrated Martin Behem improved the
marinerβs compass and modified the old Alexandrian astrolabe,
so that it might be used at sea. Wandering knights from distant
lands volunteered for these expeditions desiring to witness the
tropical storms and the strange manners of the New World, as it
was called.
Many skilful mariners and pilots visited Lisbon, were
encouraged to remain, and became naturalised Portuguese.
Among these was the glorious Christopher Columbus, who made
more than one voyage to the Gold Coast, married a Portuguese
lady, and lived for some time in the Azores. It was his
conviction that the eastern coast of Asia could be reached by
sailing due west across the ocean. It was his object not to
discover a new land, but to reach by sea the country which
Marco Polo had visited by land. He eventually sailed with
letters to the Emperor of China in his pockets and came back
from the West India Islands thinking that he had been to Japan.
He made his proposals in the first place to the king, who
referred it to a council of learned men. There were now two
plans for sailing to India before the court: the one by
following the African coast, the other by sailing west across
the ocean. But expeditions of
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