CHAPTER III

ITALIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO EXPLORATION

(1200-1500)

Although in the fifteenth century Italy lost the commercial leadership which she had so long held, she did not cease to be the teacher of the other countries of Europe. In those arts which lay at the base of exploration, as in so many other fields, Italy was far in advance of all other Western countries. Through the Middle Ages she preserved much of the heritage of ancient skill and learning; by her Renaissance studies she recovered much that had been temporarily lost; and in geographical science she early made progress of her own. "The greatness of the Germans, the courtesy of the French, the valor of the English, and the wisdom of the Italians" is the tribute paid by a fifteenth- century Portuguese chronicler to the nations of his time, and this "wisdom of the Italians" he especially connects with exploration and navigation.[Footnote: Azurara, "Chronicle of Guinea," chap. ii.]

As a nation Italy played but a slight part in the discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but through her scattered sons she used her fine intelligence to initiate and guide much of the work that was completed by the ruder but more efficient and vigorous nations of the Atlantic seaboard. Educated men from Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence emigrated to other lands, carrying with them science, skill, and ingenuity unknown except in the advanced and enterprising Italian city republics and princ.i.p.alities. Italian mathematicians made the calculations on which all navigation was based; Italian cartographers drew maps and charts; Italian ship-builders designed and built the best vessels of the time; Italian captains commanded them, and very often Italian sailors made up their crews; while at least in the earlier period Italian bankers advanced the funds with which the expeditions were equipped and sent out.

Columbus, Cabot, Verrazzano, and Vespucci were simply the most famous of the Italians who during this period made discoveries while in the service of other governments. The Venetian Cadamosto led repeated and successful expeditions for Prince Henry of Portugal; Perestrello, the discoverer of Porto Santo, in the Madeiras, and Antonio de Noli, the discoverer of the Cape Verd Islands, were both Italians. [Footnote: Ruge, "Der Zeitalter der Entdeckungen," 217.] This was no new condition of affairs. In the time of Edward II. and Edward III., in the service of England, we find the names of Genoese such as Pesagno and Uso de Mare. Another Genoese, Emanuel Pesagno, was appointed as the first hereditary admiral of the fleet of Portugal, and by the terms of his engagement was required to keep the Portuguese navy provided with twenty Genoese captains of good experience in navigation. Of the sixty men who made up the complement of Magellan's fleet of 1519, in the service of Spain, twenty-three were Italians, mostly Genoese.

[Footnote: Navarrete, quoted in Ruge, Zeitalter, 466, n.] At the same time all Spanish taxes were administered by Genoese bankers, and they or other Italians had a monopoly of all loanable capital. [Footnote: Hume, Spain, Its Greatness and Decay, 87]

Long before the great period of discoveries Italians contributed to the increase of geographical knowledge by travel and narratives of travel over the world as it was already known, but only known vaguely and by dim report. Down to the middle of the thirteenth century the total knowledge of the lands and waters of the globe possessed by the educated men of Europe was not appreciably greater than it had been a thousand years earlier. The disintegration of the old Roman world, the more stationary habits of life, and the narrower interests of men during the early Middle Ages were unfavorable to travel.

The later Middle Ages were not lacking in keen intellect, in large knowledge, in powers of systematization and elaboration of what has already been acquired; but they had neither the material equipment nor the mental temperament to carry the boundaries of knowledge further.

What was known of the world to Ptolemy in the second century made up the sum of knowledge possessed by the geographers of all the following centuries to the thirteenth. Indeed, the mediaeval tendency to establish symmetrical measurements, to adopt fanciful explanations, and to find a.n.a.logies in all things, obscured earlier knowledge and made geographers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries less correct in their knowledge of the world than were those of the second or the third. [Footnote: Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography.]

The discoveries, conquests, and settlements of the Northmen in the north of Europe and the northern Atlantic were so detached from the knowledge of the south and came to a pause so early in time that notwithstanding their potential value they contributed practically nothing to the general geographical knowledge of Europe. Nor did Christian, Jewish, or Arabic accounts of Eastern lands written by travellers of the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries become widely known or influential. [Footnote: Ibid., II., chaps, i.- iv.] Even the knowledge brought home by the Crusaders was of a restricted territory, most of it already comparatively familiar; and therefore they added little to the common stock.

About the middle of the thirteenth century, however, began a series of journeys which were more fully recorded in narratives more widely circulated and in a more receptive period. Three incentives habitually carry men into distant and unknown lands--missionary zeal, desire for trade, and curiosity. Actuated by one or other of these influences, an increasing number of Europeans visited lands far beyond the eastern terminations of the trade-routes, and some of them brought back reports of which the influence was wide and lasting.

Among the earliest and most observant were a succession of Franciscan friars, sent after 1245 on missionary journeys to the court of the ruler of the great Tartar Empire, which was then so rapidly overspreading Asia and eastern Europe. The first of these was John de Piano Carpini, a native of Naples, who belonged to a Franciscan house near Perugia. He went through Bohemia, Poland, southern Russia, and the vast steppes of Turkestan, and found the Khan at Karakorum, in Mongolia. He was two years on the journey, and after his return wrote an exact and interesting account of his observations and experiences.

[Footnote: Travels of John de Piano Carpini (D'Avezac's ed.).]

A few years afterwards William de Rubruquis--a Fleming in this case, not an Italian--was sent to visit the Mongol emperor by Louis IX. when he was in the East. He followed a more southerly route than Carpini, skirting the northern sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Sea of Aral, and then pa.s.sing northward to Karakorum. Returning he crossed the Caucasus and pa.s.sed through Persia and the lands of the Turks, finally reaching the Mediterranean through Syria. The account which he wrote of his adventures was much fuller than that of Piano Carpini, and gives descriptions of China as well as of the central Asiatic lands.

[Footnote: Travels of William de Rubruquis (D'Avezac's ed).]

Just at the beginning of the next century two other travellers, John de Monte Corvino [Footnote: Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, II, chap v.] and Odoric de Pordenone, [Foornote: Travels of Odoric de Pordenone (D'Avezac's ed)] both Italians, made journeys through Persia, India, southern Asia, and China, and later wrote accounts of these more southern lands quite as full as were those already mentioned concerning the northern parts of the great eastern continent. The most famous of all mediaeval travellers in the East were the Venetian merchants Nicolo and Matteo Polo and their nephew Marco. These enterprising traders, leaving their warehouses in Soldaia on the Crimea, in two successive journeys made their way along the northern and central trade-routes to Pekin, in northern China, or Cathay, which had become the capital of the Great Khan. For almost twenty years the Polos were attached to the court of Kublai Khan, the nephew, Marco, rising higher and higher in the graces of that ruler.

Marco Polo was one of the well-known type of Italian adventurers who appeared at foreign courts, and, with the versatility of their race, made themselves useful, and indeed indispensable, to their masters. He learned the languages of the East, and went upon missions for the Great Khan to all parts of his vast empire. When, in 1292, the Polos obtained permission to return home they followed the longest and most important of the three main trade-routes which have been described. They sailed from Zaiton, a seaport of China, and pa.s.sing along the sh.o.r.es of Tonquin, Java, and farther India, made their way from port to port, through the Bay of Bengal to Ceylon, then to the Malabar coast of India, along which they pa.s.sed to Cambay, and thence through the Red Sea to Cairo, and so to Venice. Their journey homeward from China, with its long detentions in the East Indies, took almost three years.

All the world knows of Marco Polo's subsequent experiences in Venice, his capture and imprisonment in Genoa, the stories of his travels with which he whiled away the weary days of his captivity, and the gathering of these into a book which spread widely through Europe within the next few years and has been eagerly read ever since. [Footnote: Marco Polo (Yule's ed,), Introduction.]

Neither the travels of Marco Polo nor those of his predecessors or immediate successors disclosed any lands the existence of which was not before known to Europeans; but they gave fuller knowledge of many countries and nations of which the names only were known; and they gave this knowledge with astonishing freshness, minuteness, and accuracy.

The writers of these books travelled over many thousands of miles, and they described, in the main, what they saw, although, of course, they repeated, with more or less of exaggeration, much which they only knew from conversation or from hearsay. Besides the written stories of such experiences, other Europeans who accompanied these travellers, or who made independent journeys to various parts of Asia, spread knowledge of the same things. The author of a later popular volume of travels, pa.s.sing under the name of Sir John Mandeville, managed, by making use of a slight acquaintance with Asia, of a fuller knowledge of the writings of other travellers, and, most of all, of the resources of a fertile imagination, to weave a tissue of mendacious description which really lessened knowledge. [Footnote: Travels of Sir John Mandeville (ed. of 1900).]

Nevertheless, as a result of these travellers' reports, the traditions of earlier times and the knowledge of the nearer East possessed by traders were supplemented and popularized. The journeys of the travellers of the later thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries were a veritable revelation to Europe of the condition of Tartary, Persia, India, China, and many intervening lands. Especially strong was the impression made by the reports about China and j.a.pan. The land of the Seres, lying on the border of the eastern ocean, had indeed been known to the ancients, and mentioned by tradition as the source from which came certain well-known products; but under the name of Cathay, which Marco Polo and his contemporaries gave to it, it attained a new and strong hold on men's imaginations. Its myriad population, its hundreds of cities, its vast wealth, its advanced civilization, its rivers, bridges, and ships, its manufactures and active trade, the fact that it was the easternmost country of Asia, washed by the waters of the external ocean--all made Cathay a land of intense interest to the rising curiosity of thirteenth-century Europe. [Footnote: Pigeonneau, "Histoire du Commerce de la France," II, 12, etc.] Similarly the great island of c.i.p.angu, or j.a.pan, lying a thousand miles farther to the eastward, though never actually visited by Marco Polo, and described by him with a vague and extravagant touch, was of equally keen interest to his readers, as were the "twelve thousand seven hundred islands" at which he calculates the great archipelagoes which lie in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

It was his accounts of "the province of Mangi," the cities of Zaiton and Quinsay, "the Great Khan," "the island of c.i.p.angu," and of their vast wealth and active trade that took special hold on the mind of Columbus. His copy of Marco Polo may still be seen, its margins filled with annotations on such pa.s.sages, made by the great navigator; [Footnote: Vignaud, "Toscanelli and Columbus," 95.] and it was to these that his mind reverted when he had discovered in the West Indies, as he believed, the outlying parts of the Khan's dominions. [Footnote: "Columbus's Journal," October 21, 23, 24, 26, 30, November 1, etc.] To the westward also ancient knowledge was reacquired and made clearer.

The "Fortunate Isles" were rediscovered and identified as the Canaries by the Italian Lancelot Malocello in 1270 [Footnote: Beazley, Hakluyt Soc, "Publications," 1899, lxi, lxxviii.], then forgotten and rediscovered in 1341 [Footnote: Ibid, lx.x.x; Peschel, "Zeitalter der Entdecktungen," 37.] by some Portuguese ships, manned by Genoese, Florentines, Castilians, and Portuguese. In 1291 Tedisio Doria and Ugolino Vivaldi, Genoese citizens, equipped two galleys and sailed out through the Straits of Gibraltar and then to the southward, with the object of reaching the ports of India, but were never heard of again [Footnote: Peschel, "Zeitalter der Entdeckungen," 36.]. Both the Madeira Islands and the Azores became known as early as 1330, though perhaps only in a shadowy way, and were visited from time to time later in the fourteenth century, before they were regularly occupied in the fifteenth [Footnote: Nordenskiold, "Periplus," 111-115; Major, "Prince Henry the Navigator," chaps, v., viii., xiv.].

Through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, therefore, thanks for the most part to Italian travellers, substantial gains were made in exact.i.tude and clearness of knowledge of the Old World. Though the bounds of geographical knowledge were not carried much farther, and less than one-fourth of the surface of the globe was as yet known to Europeans, within these bounds knowledge became far more clear.

Ignorance and superst.i.tion were still abundant; a mythical kingdom of Prester John was believed by one geographer to exist in Africa, by another to be situated in India, and by still another to be in China; the Atlantic was still dreaded by some as the dark, unknown limit of the world; ignorant men may still have believed that the sea boiled at the equator, and that men with dogs' heads and other monsters had each its own part of the earth; but Italians of any education, especially those acquainted with the writings of their countrymen, must have been quite free from such mediaeval notions. By the year 1400 scientific information, critical habits of thought, and an interest in all forms of knowledge had reached in Italy a high degree of development and were fast spreading through Europe.

The theory that the earth was round was familiar to the Greeks and Romans, and was supported in the Middle Ages by the great authority of Aristotle. [Footnote: Aristotle, De Ccelo, II., 14.] The only difficulties lying in the way of an acceptance of this view through the mediaeval period were, in the first place, the mental effort required to conceive the earth as round when its visual appearance is flat; and, secondly, the opposition of churchmen, who interpreted certain texts in the Bible in such a way as to forbid the conception of the earth as a sphere. Yet neither of these influences was strong enough to prevail over the opinions of the majority of learned men. To them the earth was round, as it was to Aristotle, Ptolemy, and other ancients. [Footnote: Ruge, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen.] The ball which the Eastern emperors carried as an emblem of the world-wide extent of their rule, and which was borrowed from them by various mediaeval potentates, had probably not lost its meaning. Dante, in the Divina Commedia, not only plans his Inferno on the supposition of a spherical earth, but takes for granted the same conception, on the part of his readers. [Footnote: Inferno, canto 34, lines 100-108.]

The conception of the sphericity of the earth was really a matter of mental training. In the fifteenth century those who had gained this knowledge were fewer than in modern times, but the cla.s.s who did so believe were no less sure of it. Astronomers, philosophers, men of general learning, and even navigators and pilots were quite familiar with the idea and quite in the habit of thinking of the earth as a sphere. In all probability Columbus represented the beliefs of his cla.s.s, as well as his own, when he said, "I have always read that the world, comprising the land and the water, is spherical, as is testified by the investigations of Ptolemy and others, who have proved it by the eclipses of the moon and other observations made from east to west, as well as by the elevation of the pole from north to south." [Footnote: Hakluyt Soc., Publications, Hist. of Columbus--Third Voyage, II., 129.]

Opposition to voyages westward was based rather on the probability of the enormous size of the earth and on the supposed difficulty of sailing up the slope of the sphere than it was upon any serious doubt of its sphericity.

The habitable world was quite a different conception. It consisted of Europe, Asia, and Africa, these three continents forming a continuous stretch of land lying on the surface of the spherical earth, the rest of its surface being presumably covered with water. There was more or less speculation about the existence of other habitable lands on the earth than those which were known, but the interest in this possibility was languid at best, and it was denied by learned churchmen on biblical grounds.

The map-makers of that period continued, like those of the earlier Middle Ages, to base their work on mere half-mythical traditions, unrelieved and uncorrected by the results of actual discoveries. Their maps are still much like picture-books, filled with biblical and literary lore, indicating but a slight attempt to incorporate exact measurements and outlines. A development more revolutionary than the mere gradual increase of knowledge was necessary to break the bonds of academic tradition. [Footnote: Santarem, Essai sur L'Histoire de la Cosmographie, I., 75, 167, 178.]

Just at the beginning of the fourteenth century, however, a new line was struck out in map-making by the construction and steady development of sailing charts, or "portolani." These humble attempts at geographical representation were intended as practical aids to navigation for Mediterranean mariners, and were based on practical observation. During the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries they reached a wonderful degree of accuracy. The coasts, bays, islands, and promontories of the Mediterranean were plotted out in them and drawn with striking correctness. Some four hundred such sketch-maps remain to us, drawn by Italians from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, besides nearly a hundred made in other countries. [Footnote: Beazley, in Hakluyt Soc., Publications, 1899, cxx.] They did not undertake to give the internal features of the countries whose coast-lines they depicted, and as their main purpose was to aid Mediterranean trade, they did not extend so far beyond its sh.o.r.e as the erudition of the age would have made possible.

The best of the world maps of the fifteenth century were based on these Italian portolani rather than on mediaeval maps, and at the same time added such enlarged information as became common in the Italy of the fifteenth century. [Footnote: Ibid., cxxi., etc.]

Thus, at the very beginning of the fifteenth century European explorers had the benefit of the traditional ancient geography, of the new exactness of knowledge drawn from the observations of recent travellers, of the accurate but limited portolani of the Italian navigators, and finally of the more pretentious, if vague and often misleading, world maps of learned geographers. If a sailor wished to navigate the Mediterranean and its adjacent waters, if he planned to sail up the coast of Europe to the British Isles and on into the Baltic, or to pa.s.s down the Atlantic coast of Africa to Cape Nun, he might rely on the maps and charts which the Italian geographers could furnish him. Or if he launched his galleys on the Red Sea he might use their guidance down the east coast of Africa to the equator. He would also find tolerably accurate descriptions of all the southern coasts of Asia. In the interior a traveller by land could know beforehand the main features of the countries he might traverse. Beyond these limits, either by sea or by land, geographical knowledge must be sought by discovery or followed along the lines of dim report. If European sailors should follow the coast of Africa below the twenty-seventh parallel of north lat.i.tude, or of Europe above the sixtieth, or if they should direct their course into the western ocean beyond the Azores, they would be sailing into the unknown, and whatever they should find would be fresh acquisition.

The two instruments which were the most requisite for distant voyaging, the compa.s.s and the astrolabe (the predecessor of the quadrant), were already, in 1400, known and used by Mediterranean navigators. The property of turning towards the north, possessed by a magnetized needle, was certainly known as early as the close of the twelfth century; and even its use by sailors to find their directions when the sun and stars were obscured. More than one mediaeval writer describes the process by which a needle is rubbed on a piece of magnetic iron, then laid on a straw or attached to a piece of cork, and floated on water till its point turns towards the north star. [Footnote: Alexander Neckham, De Utensilibus; De Natura Rerum, book II., chap, xcviii.; Guyot de Provins, La Bible, Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis; Brunette Latini, Epistolas, who mentions Roger Bacon as showing him a magnet at Oxford in 1258. Quoted in Beazley, Hakluyt Soc, Publications, 1899, cxliv., etc.] But its properties savored of magic; the earlier sailors, who hugged the sh.o.r.e, scarcely needed it, and it came into general use as slowly and imperceptibly as most of the other great inventions of the world.

The introduction of the compa.s.s into general use is, by tradition, ascribed to the Italian city of Amain, and it is easy to believe that the enterprising sailors of this commercial republic brought it into established recognition. By the early years of the fifteenth century the compa.s.s was provided with the card, marked with the directions, placed in the compa.s.s-box, and made a well-known part of the equipment of the navigator. [Footnote: Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap ix.]

The mariner could now tell his directions wherever he might be, and the spider-web net-work of "compa.s.s-roses" on many of the early maps shows how anxious the map-maker was to provide lines along which the navigator might lay his course according to his compa.s.s. The makers of the better cla.s.s of portolani evidently had the use of the compa.s.s in drawing their charts. [Footnote: Santarem, Essai sur L'Histoire de la Cosmographie, I., 280-305.] The changed position of the heavenly bodies as the early traveller pa.s.sed northward or southward struck him with especial force. Marco Polo, describing the island of Sumatra, says, "But let me tell you one marvellous thing, and that is the fact that this island lies so far to the south that the north star, little or much, is never to be seen." [Footnote: Marco Polo (Yule's ed.), book III., chap. ix.] He also notes on his journey northward through India, when he sees it again, "two cubits above the water." When Cadamosto, the Venetian, saw the pole-star at "the third of a lance's length above the edge of the waves," he recorded it as one of the most striking phenomena of his journey towards the equator.

Two instruments were known by which the elevation above the horizon of the pole-star, or any other heavenly body could be measured. The older of these was the "cross-staff," or St. James's staff, a simple rod marked into degrees, at the end of which the eye was placed and along which a measured cross-piece was pushed, till one of its ends hid a point oh the horizon and the other the sun or star whose height was being measured. The astrolabe was a somewhat more elaborate instrument, consisting of a bra.s.s circle marked with degrees, against which two movable bars were fastened, each provided at the ends with a sight or projecting piece pierced by a hole. This was hung by a ring from a peg in the mast or from the hand, so that gravity would make one of its bars horizontal. Then the other bar was sighted to point towards some heavenly body. Chaucer, in 1400, gave to his "litel Lowis my sone" an astrolabe calculated "after the lat.i.tude of Oxenford," and wrote a charming treatise to explain to him in English its use, "for Latin ne canstow yit but smal, my lyte sone." In this treatise he described to him, among other things, "diverse tables of longitudes and lat.i.tudes of sterres." [Footnote: Chaucer, A Treatise on the Astrolabe, Prologue; Skeat, The Student's Chaucer, 396.] By means of either of these instruments lat.i.tude could be measured or calculated. Longitude was a more difficult problem; it involved the calculation of the difference of time as well as measurements of elevation of the heavenly bodies.

The calculations necessary to discover actual locations from an observation were too long and complicated to be made on each occasion; and "ephemerides," or calculated tables of elevations of planets and of differences of time, were required. Just when the earliest of such tables were constructed and when chronometers came into use is obscure, but they were in existence in at least a rudimentary form early in the fifteenth century. [Footnote: Humboldt, Examen Critique, I., 274.]

The condition of Europe early in the fifteenth century as compared with its condition early in the thirteenth shows a great advance in those lines which made extensive exploration possible, and this advance was chiefly due to Italians. Increased knowledge, improved equipment, instruments of astronomical observation, navigating charts, and a face of educated navigators, made a part of the European background of American history as truly as did the incentive to exploration afforded by the search for new routes to the East. Of course much progress remained to be accomplished in the making of maps and globes, in the improvement of instruments, and in the calculation of tables during the period of discovery. The awakened scientific interest which had already shown itself as part of the Renaissance found scope in the practical requirements of distant voyages. While men were discovering new continents and seas, they were at the same time solving many problems of geographical science and perfecting the equipment by which further advance was made practicable.

CHAPTER IV

PIONEER WORK OF PORTUGAL (1400-1527)

The great period of explorations, of which the discovery of America was a part, lay between the years 1485 and 1520, between the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Diaz and the circ.u.mnavigation of the globe by the ships of Magellan. Long before this period of fruition, however, there was a significant movement of discovery, and an important acquisition of knowledge, experience, and boldness in exploration. This early dawn, preparatory to the later day, consisted in a series of discoveries on the west coast of Africa, due to the energy of the Portuguese and to the enlightenment of their great Prince Henry.

Portugal was especially fitted to be the pioneer in modern maritime exploration. Without geographical or racial separation from the rest of the Iberian peninsula, the national distinctness of Portugal was largely a matter of sentiment gathering around the sovereign. The nationality of Portugal had been created in the first place by the policy of its rulers, and preserved by them until the growth of separate material interests, a national language and literature, and traditions of glorious achievements confirmed the separateness of the Portuguese nationality from that of Spain.

The desire to hold aloof from other Spanish countries turned the attention of the king of Portugal to more distant alliances, and the open western seaboard naturally suggested that these should be with maritime states. In 1294 a treaty of commerce was signed with England.

A century later, 1386, a much closer alliance with that country was formed and a new treaty signed at Windsor. [Footnote: Rymer, Foedera, II., 667, VII., 515-523.] This was followed in the next year by a marriage between the king of Portugal and Philippa, daughter of the English John of Gaunt and first cousin of King Richard. This "Treaty of Windsor" was renewed again and again by succeeding English and Portuguese sovereigns and remained the foundation of their relationship until it was superseded long afterwards by still closer treaty arrangements. With Flanders, Portugal had frequent peaceful intercourse, both in trade and in diplomacy. A Venetian fleet also called from time to time at the harbor of Lisbon on the way to and from England and Flanders, and thus brought Portugal into contact with the great Italian republic, and may have aroused an interest in far Eastern trade products of which loaded the galleys.

The contract before referred to by which Emanuel Pesagno was made hereditary lord high admiral, in 1317, continued to be fulfilled by the descendants of the first great admiral through the whole fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and kept up a constant connection with Genoa.

[Footnote: M. G. Ca.n.a.le, Storia del Commercio, Viaggi, &c., degl'

Italiani, book II., chap. x., etc., quoted by Payne, New World, 96.]

Thus the a.s.sociations of Portugal were with a line of seaboard states extending from England to Italy. After 1263 the maritime interests of the Portuguese kings became more distinct by their conquest from the Moors of the kingdom of Algarves, giving them a southern as well as a western sea-coast. [Footnote: Stephens, Hist. of Portugal, 81.] It was at Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, which juts out into the open Atlantic Ocean on the extreme southwest of this province, that Henry, the fifth son of John II. of Portugal, established his dwelling-place in 1419, and created a centre of maritime interest and a base of exploring effort which was of world-wide influence. Henry was duke of Viseu, lord of Cavailham, viceroy of Algarves, and grand master of the Order of Christ. He had no wife or children; his private estate was, therefore, available for the expenses of exploring voyages; and projects of geographical discovery became his chief occupation. Whatever other duties or services were required of him on account of his membership in the royal family, he always returned to Sagres and to his exploring expeditions. He possessed also the interest and support of his father and brother, who successively occupied the throne. After his death his work was carried on by his nephew, King Alfonso V. The work of Henry was, therefore, substantially the concern of the whole royal family of Portugal for three generations. [Footnote: Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, chaps. iv., vi., xiii., xviii.]

Prince Henry "the Navigator," as he has come to be called, gathered around him a body of men trained as sailors; he learned the use of charts and instruments, taught these arts to his captains, and ultimately made the neighboring port of Lagos the most famous point in the world for the departure and return of exploring expeditions.

[Footnote: Nordenskiold, Periplus, 121 A. For discussion of divergent views of Prince Henry's "school of navigation," see Beazley.] During forty years expedition after expedition was equipped almost yearly and sent down along the west coast of Africa, in the effort to solve its mystery and, if possible, to sail around its southern extremity.

In the process of exploration Prince Henry was governed by some of the strongest of human impulses. The crusading spirit was hot within him, and he hoped to continue in Africa the old struggle of the Portuguese Christians against the Moorish infidels. Gentler missionary ideals caused him to plan to spread Christianity into new lands, and to make connection with Prester John, the Christian ruler of the India which lay to the eastward of Africa. [Footnote: Hakluyt Soc., Publications, 1899, cvi.-cxii. Murara, Discovery of Guinea, chaps, vii., xvi.] His interest in trade was equally strong; he was familiar with the internal trade of Africa, and he lost no opportunity of developing traffic along the sea-coast. [Footnote: Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. vii]

Yet it was the instinct of the explorer that inspired Prince Henry with the steady devotion to his life work. The fine curiosity which placed geographical discovery above all material gain, and rewarded his captains, not in proportion to what they had accomplished, but in proportion to the efforts they had made to carry the boundaries of knowledge farther, kept him and them intent on the work of exploration.