The Martyrdom of Man - Winwood Reade (golden son ebook txt) 📗
- Author: Winwood Reade
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unpopular in Lisbon. The Guinea trade did not pay, and it was
strenuously urged at the council that the West African
Settlements should be abandoned. The friends of exploration
were obliged to stand on the defensive. They could not carry
the proposal of Columbus; it was all that they could do to save
the African expeditions. But when Columbus had won for Castile
the east coast of Asia (as was then supposed) the king
perceived that if he wished to have an Indian empire he must
set to work at once. He accordingly conducted the naval
expeditions with such vigour that the Cape of Storms was
discovered, was then called the Cape of Good Hope, and, was
then doubled, though without immediate result, the sailors
forcing their captain to return. The king also sent a
gentleman, named Covilham, to visit the countries of the East
by land. His instructions were to trace the Venetian trade in
drugs and spices to its source, and to find out Prester John.
Covilham went to Alexandria in the pilgrim’s garb, but instead
of proceeding to the Holy Land, he passed on to Aden, and
sailed round the Indian Ocean or the Green Sea, that Lake of
Wonder with the precious ambergris floating on its waters and
pearls strewed upon its bed, whitened with the cotton sails of
the Arab vessels, of the Gujrat Indians, and even of the
Chinese, whose four-masted junks were sometimes to be seen
lying in the Indian harbours with great wooden anchors dangling
from their bows. The east coast of Africa, as low down as
Madagascar, or the Island of the Moon, was lined with large
towns in which the Arabs resided as honoured strangers, or
in which they ruled as kings. On this coast Covilham obtained in
formation respecting the Cape. He then crossed over to the India
shore; he sailed down the coast of Malabar from city to city, and
from port to port. He was astounded and bewildered by what he
saw: the activity and grandeur of the commerce; the magnificence
of the courts; the half-naked kings blazing with jewels, saying their
prayers on rosaries of precious stones, and using golden
goblets as spittoons; the elephants with pictures drawn in
bright colours on their ears, and with jugglers in towers on
their backs; the enormous temples filled with lovely girls; the
idols of gold with ruby eyes; the houses of red sandal wood;
the scribes who wrote on palm leaves with iron pens; the pilots
who took observations with instruments unknown to Europeans;
the huge bundles of cinnamon or cassia in the warehouses of the
Arab merchants; the pepper vines trailing over trees; and
drugs, which were priceless in Europe, growing in the fields
like corn.
He returned to Cairo, and there found two Jews, Rabbi Abraham
and Joseph the Shoemaker, whom the king had sent to look after
him. To them he gave a letter for the king, in which he wrote
that the ships which sailed down the coast of Guinea might be
sure of reaching the termination of the continent by keeping on
to the south; and that when they arrived in the Eastern ocean,
they must ask for Sofala and the Island of the Moon.”
Covilham himself did not return. He had accomplished one part
of his mission; he had traced the Venetian commerce to its
source; but he had now to find out Prester John.
A fable had arisen, in the Dark Ages, of a great Christian king
in Central Asia; and when it was clearly ascertained that the
Grand Khan was not a Christian, and that none of the Tartar
princes could possibly be Christians, as they could not keep
Lent, having no fish or vegetables in their country, it was
hoped that Prester John, as the myth was called, might be found
elsewhere. Certain pilgrims were met with at Jerusalem who were
almost negroes in appearance. Their baptism was of three kinds-of fire, of water, and of blood: they were sprinkled, they were
circumcised, they were seared on the forehead with a red-hot
iron in the form of a cross. Their king, they said, was a good
Christian and a hater of the Moslems, and was descended from
the Queen of Sheba. This swarthy king, the ancestor of
Theodore, could be no other than Prester John; and Covilham
felt it his duty to bear him the greetings of his master before
he went home to enjoy that reputation which he had so
gloriously earned, and to take a part in the great discoveries
that were soon to be made.
But the king of Abyssinia wanted a tame white man. He gave his
visitor wife and lands; he treated him with honour; but he
would not let him go. This kind of complimentary captivity is a
danger to which African travellers are always exposed. It is
the glory and pride of a savage king to have a white man at his
court. And so Covilham was detained, and he died in Abyssinia.
But he lived to hear that Portugal had risen in a few years to
be one of the great European powers, and that the flag he loved
was waving above those castles and cities which he had been the
first of his nation to behold. His letter arrived at the same
time as the ship of Dias, who had doubled the Cape. The king
determined that a final expedition should be sent, and that
India should be reached by sea.
It was a fête day in Lisbon. The flags were flying on every
tower; the fronts of the houses were clothed in gorgeous
drapery, which swelled and floated in the wind; stages were
erected on which mysteries were performed; bells were ringing,
artillery boomed. Marble balconies were crowded with ladies and
cavaliers, and out of upper windows peeped forth the faces of
girls, who were kept in semi-Oriental seclusion. Presently the
sound of trumpets could be heard; and then came in view a
thousand friars, who chanted a litany, while behind them an
immense crowd chanted back in response. At the head of this
procession rode a gentleman richly dressed; he was followed by
a hundred and forty-eight men in sailors’ clothes, but bare-footed, and carrying tapers in their hands. On they went till
they reached the quay where the boats, fastened to the shore,
swayed to and fro with the movement of the tide, and strained
at the rope as if striving to depart. The sailors knelt. A
priest of venerable appearance stood before them, and made a
general confession, and absolved them in the form of the Bull
which Prince Henry had obtained. Then the wives and mothers
embraced their loved ones whom they bewailed as men about to
die. And all the people wept. And the children wept also,
though they knew not why.
Thirty-two months passed, and again the waterside was crowded,
and the guns fired, and the bells rang. Again Vasco da Gama
marched in procession through the streets; and behind him
walked, with feeble steps, but with triumph gleaming in their
eyes, fifty-five men — the rest were gone. But in that
procession were not only Portuguese, but also men with white
turbans and brown faces; and sturdy blacks, who bore a chest
which was shown by their straining muscles to be of enormous
weight; and in his hand the Captain General held a letter which
was written with a pen of iron on a golden leaf, and which
addressed the king of Portugal and Guinea in these words:
“Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of thy house, came to my country,
of whose coming I was glad. In my country there is plenty of
cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and precious stones. The things which
I am desirous to have out of thy country are silver, gold,
coral, and scarlet.”
That night all the houses in Lisbon were illuminated; the
gutters ran with wine; the skies, for miles round, were
reddened with the light of bonfires. The king’s men brought ten
pounds of spices to each sailor’s wife, to give away to her
gossips. The sailors themselves were surrounded by crowds, who
sat silent and open-mouthed, listening to the tales of the
great waters, and the marvellous lands where they had been.
They told of the wonders of the Guinea coast, and of the men
near the Cape, who rode on oxen and played sweet music on the
flute; and of the birds which looked like geese, and brayed
like donkeys, and did not know how to fly, but put up their
wings like sails, and scudded along before the wind. They told
how as they sailed on towards the south, the north star sank
and sank, and grew fainter and fainter, until at last it
disappeared; and they entered a new world, and sailed beneath
strange skies; and how, when they had doubled the Cape, they
again saw sails on the horizon, and the north star again rose
to view. They told of the cities on the Eastern shore, and of
their voyage across the Indian Ocean, and of that joyful
morning when, through the grey mists of early dawn, they
discerned the hills of Calicut.
And then they sank their voices, and their eyes grew grave and
sad as they told of the horrors of the voyage; of the long,
long nights off the stormy Cape when the wind roared, and the
spray lashed through the rigging, and the waves foamed over the
bulwarks, and the stones that were their cannon-shot crashed
from side to side, and the ships like live creatures groaned
and creaked, and hour after hour the sailors were forced to
labour at the pumps till their bones ached, and their hands
were numbed by cold. They told of treacherous pilots in the
Mozambique, who plotted to run their ships ashore; and of the
Indian pirates, the gipsies of the sea, who sent their spies on
board. They told of that new and horrible disease which, when
they had been long at sea, made their bodies turn putrid and
the teeth drop from their jaws. And as they told of those
things, and named the souls who had died at sea, there rose a
cry of lamentation, and widows in new garments fled weeping
from the crowd.
That night, the Venetian ambassador sat down and wrote to his
masters that he had seen vessels enter Lisbon harbour laden
with spices and with India drugs. His next letter informed them
that a strong fleet was being prepared, and that Vasco da Gama
intended to conquer India. The Venetians saw that they were
ruined. They wrote to their ally, the Sultan of Egypt, and
implored him to bestir himself. They gave him artillery to send
to the India princes. They offered to open the Suez canal at
their own expense, that their ships might arrive in the Indian
Ocean before the Portuguese. On the other hand, came the
terrible Albuquerque, who told the Sultan to beware, or he
would destroy Mecca and Medina, and turn the Nile into the Red
Sea. The Indian Ocean became a Portuguese lake. There was
scarcely a town upon its shores which had not been saluted by
the Portuguese bombardiers. Not a vessel could cross its waters
without a Portuguese passport. As a last resource, the
Venetians offered to take the India produce off the king’s
hands, and to give him a fair price. This offer was declined,
and Lisbon, instead of Venice, became the market-place of the
India trade. The great cities on the Euphrates, the Tigris, and
the Nile fell into decay; the caravan trade of Central Asia
declined; the throne of commerce was transferred from the basin
of the Mediterranean to the basin of the Atlantic; and the
oceanic powers, though rigidly excluded from the commerce
itself,
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