Volume II Part 8 (1/2)

[Sidenote: Events of the voyage.] The chief events of the voyage of Columbus were, 1st. The discovery of the line of no magnetic variation, which, as we shall see, eventually led to the circ.u.mnavigation of the earth. 2nd. The navigability of the sea to the remote west, the weeds not offering any insuperable obstruction. When the s.h.i.+ps left Palos it was universally believed that the final border or verge of the earth is where the western sky rests upon the sea, and the air and clouds, fogs and water, are commingled. Indeed, that boundary could not actually be attained; for, long before it was possible to reach it, the sea was laden with inextricable weeds, through which a s.h.i.+p could not pa.s.s. This legend was perhaps derived from the stories of adventurous sailors, who had been driven by stress of weather towards the Sarga.s.so Sea, and seen an island of weeds many hundreds of square miles in extent--green meadows floating in the ocean. 3rd. As to the new continent, Columbus never knew the nature of his own discovery. He died in the belief that it was actually some part of Asia, and Americus Vespucius entertained the same misconception. Their immediate successors supposed that Mexico was the Quinsay, in China, of Marco Polo. For this reason I do not think that the severe remark that the ”name of America is a monument of human injustice” is altogether merited. Had the true state of things been known, doubtless the event would have been different. The name of America first occurs in an edition of Ptolemy's Geography, on a map by Hylacomylus.

[Sidenote: End of Patristic Geography.] Two other incidents of no little interest followed this successful voyage: the first was the destruction of Patristic Geography; the second the consequence of the flight of Pinzon's parrots. Though, as we now know, the conclusion that India had been reached was not warranted by the facts, it was on all sides admitted that the old doctrine was overthrown, and that the admiral had reached Asia by sailing to the west. This necessarily implied the globular form of the earth. As to the second, never was an augury more momentous than that flight of parrots. It has been well said that this event determined the distribution of Latin and German Christianity in the New World.

[Sidenote: Previous Scandinavian discovery.] The discovery of America by Leif, the son of Eric the Red, A.D. 1000, cannot diminish the claims of Columbus. The wandering Scandinavians had reached the sh.o.r.es of America first in the vicinity of Nantucket, and had given the name of Vinland to the region extending from beyond Boston to the south of New York. But the memory of these voyages seems totally to have pa.s.sed away, or the lands were confounded with Greenland, to which Nicolas V. had appointed a bishop A.D. 1448. Had these traditions been known to or respected by Columbus, he would undoubtedly have steered his s.h.i.+ps more to the north.

[Sidenote: The papal grant to Spain.] Immediately on the return of Columbus, March 15, 1493, the King and Queen of Spain despatched an amba.s.sador to Pope Alexander VI. for the purpose of insuring their rights to the new territories, on the same principle that Martin V. had already given to the King of Portugal possession of all lands he might discover between Cape Bojador and the East Indies, with plenary indulgence for the souls of those who perished in the conquest. The pontifical action was essentially based on the principle that pagans and infidels have no lawful property in their lands and goods, but that the children of G.o.d may rightfully take them away. The bull that was issued bears date May, 1493. Its principle is, that all countries under the sun are subject of right to papal disposal. It gives to Spain, in the fulness of apostolic power, all lands west and south of a line drawn from the Arctic to the Antarctic pole, one hundred leagues west of the Azores. The donation includes, by the authority of Almighty G.o.d, whatever there is toward India, but saves the existing rights of any Christian princes. It forbids, under pain of excommunication, any one trading in that direction, threatening the indignation of Almighty G.o.d and his holy apostles Peter and Paul. It directs the barbarous nations to be subdued, and no pains to be spared for reducing the Indians to Christianity.

[Sidenote: The magnetic line of no variation.] This suggestion of the line of no magnetic variation was due to Columbus, who fell into the error of supposing it to be immovable. The infallibility of the pontiff not extending to matters of science, he committed the same mistake. In a few years it was discovered that the line of no variation was slowly moving to the east. It coincided with the meridian of London in 1662.

[Sidenote: Patristic ethnical ideas.] The obstacles that Patristic Geography had thrown in the way of maritime adventure were thus finally removed, but Patristic Ethnology led to a fearful tragedy. With a critical innocence that seems to have overlooked physical impossibilities and social difficulties, it had been the practice to refer the peopling of nations to legendary heroes or to the patriarchs of Scripture. The French were descended from Francus, the son of Hector; the Britons from Brutus, the son of aeneas; the genealogy of the Saxon kings could be given up to Adam; but it may excite our mirthful surprise that the conscientious Spanish chronicles could rise no higher than to Tubal, the grandson of Noah. The divisions of the Old World, Asia, Africa, and Europe, were a.s.signed to the three sons of Noah--Shem, Ham, and j.a.pheth; and the parentage of those continents was given to those patriarchs respectively. In this manner all mankind were brought into a family relations.h.i.+p, all equally the descendants of Adam, equally partic.i.p.ators in his sin and fall. As long as it was supposed that the lands of Columbus were a part of Asia there was no difficulty; but when the true position and relations of the American continent were discovered, that it was separated from Asia by a waste of waters of many thousand miles, how did the matter stand with the new-comers thus suddenly obtruded on the scene? [Sidenote: Denial that the Indians are men.] The voice of the fathers was altogether against the possibility of their Adamic descent. St. Augustine had denied the globular form and the existence of Antipodes; for it was impossible that there should be people on what was thus vainly a.s.serted to be the other side of the earth, since none such are mentioned in the Scriptures. The l.u.s.t for gold was only too ready to find its justification in the obvious conclusion; and the Spaniards, with appalling atrocity, proceeded to act toward these unfortunates as though they did not belong to the human race. Already their lands and goods had been taken from them by apostolic authority. [Sidenote: The American tragedy.] Their persons were next seized, under the text that the heathen are given as an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. It was one unspeakable outrage, one unutterable ruin, with out discrimination of age or s.e.x. Those who died not under the lash in a tropical sun died in the darkness of the mine. From sequestered sand-banks, where the red flamingo fishes in the grey of the morning; from fever-stricken mangrove thickets, and the gloom of impenetrable forests; from hiding-places in the clefts of rocks, and the solitude of invisible caves; from the eternal snows of the Andes, where there was no witness but the all-seeing Sun, there went up to G.o.d a cry of human despair. By millions upon millions, whole races and nations were remorselessly cut off. The Bishop of Chiapa affirms that more than fifteen millions were exterminated in his time! [Sidenote: The crime of Spain.] From Mexico and Peru a civilization that might have instructed Europe was crushed out. Is it for nothing that Spain has been made a hideous skeleton among living nations, a warning spectacle to the world?

Had not her punishment overtaken her, men would have surely said, ”There is no retribution, there is no G.o.d!” It has been her evil destiny to ruin two civilizations, Oriental and Occidental, and to be ruined thereby herself. With circ.u.mstances of dreadful barbarity she expelled the Moors, who had become children of her soil by as long a residence as the Normans have had in England from William the Conqueror to our time.

In America she destroyed races more civilized than herself. Expulsion and emigration have deprived her of her best blood, her great cities have sunk into insignificance, and towns that once had more than a million of inhabitants can now only show a few scanty thousands.

The discovery of America agitated Europe to its deepest foundations. All cla.s.ses of men were affected. The populace at once went wild with a l.u.s.t of gold and a love of adventure. Well might Pomponius Laetus, under process for his philosophical opinions in Rome, shed tears of joy when tidings of the great event reached him; well might Leo X., a few years later, sit up till far in the night reading to his sister and his cardinals the ”Oceanica” of Anghiera.

[Sidenote: Vasco de Gama. African coasting voyages.]

If Columbus failed in his attempt to reach India by sailing to the west, Vasco de Gama succeeded by sailing to the south. He doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and retraced the track of the s.h.i.+ps of Pharaoh Necho, which had accomplished the same undertaking two thousand years previously. The Portuguese had been for long engaged in an examination of the coast of Africa under the bull of Martin V., which recognised the possibility of reaching India by pa.s.sing round that continent. It is an amusing instance of making scientific discoveries by contract, that King Alphonso made a bargain with Ferdinand Gomez, of Lisbon, for the exploration of the African coast, the stipulation being that he should discover not less than three hundred miles every year, and that the starting-point should be Sierra Leone.

[Sidenote: Papal confines of Spain and Portugal.] We have seen that a belief in the immobility of the line of no magnetic variation had led Pope Alexander VI. to establish a perpetual boundary between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions and fields of adventure. That line he considered to be the natural boundary between the eastern and western hemispheres. An accurate determination of longitude was therefore a national as well as a nautical question. Columbus had relied on astronomical methods; Gilbert at a subsequent period proposed to determine it by magnetical observations. The variation itself could not be accounted for on the doctrine vulgarly received, that magnetism is an effluvium issuing forth from the root of the tail of the Little Bear, but was scientifically, though erroneously, explained by Gilbert's hypothesis that earthy substance is attractive--that a needle approaching a continent will incline toward it; and hence that in the midst of the Atlantic, being equally disturbed by Europe and America, it will point evenly between both.

[Sidenote: News that Africa might be doubled.] Pedro de Covilho had sent word to King John II., from Cairo, by two Jews, Rabbi Abraham and Rabbi Joseph, that there was a south cape of Africa which could be doubled.

They brought with them an Arabic map of the African coast. This was about the time that Bartholomew Diaz had reached the Cape in two little pinnaces of fifty tons apiece. He sailed August, 1486, and returned December, 1487, with an account of his discovery. Covilho had learned from the Arabian mariners, who were perfectly familiar with the east coast, that they had frequently been at the south of Africa, and that there was no difficulty in pa.s.sing round the continent that way.

[Sidenote: De Gama's successful voyage. He reaches India.] A voyage to the south is even more full of portents than one to the west. The accustomed heavens seem to sink away, and new stars are nightly approached. Vasco de Gama set sail July 9, 1497, with three s.h.i.+ps and 160 men, having with him the Arab map. King John had employed his Jewish physicians, Roderigo and Joseph, to devise what help they could from the stars. They applied the astrolabe to marine use, and constructed tables.

These were the same doctors who had told him that Columbus would certainly succeed in reaching India, and advised him to send out a secret expedition in antic.i.p.ation, which was actually done, though it failed through want of resolution in its captain. Encountering the usual difficulties, tempestuous weather, and a mutinous crew, who conspired to put him to death, De Gama succeeded, November 20, in doubling the Cape.

On March 1st he met seven small Arab vessels, and was surprised to find that they used the compa.s.s, quadrants, sea-charts, and ”had divers maritime mysteries not short of the Portugals.” With joy he soon after recovered sight of the northern stars, so long unseen. He now bore away to the north-east, and on May 19, 1498, reached Calicut, on the Malabar coast.

[Sidenote: A commercial revolution the result.] The consequences of this voyage were to the last degree important. The commercial arrangements of Europe were completely dislocated; Venice was deprived of her mercantile supremacy; the hatred of Genoa was gratified; prosperity left the Italian towns; Egypt, hitherto supposed to possess a pre-eminent advantage as offering the best avenue to India, suddenly lost her position; the commercial monopolies so long in the hands of the European Jews were broken down. The discovery of America and pa.s.sage of the Cape were the first steps of that prodigious maritime development soon exhibited by Western Europe. And since commercial prosperity is forthwith followed by the production of men and concentration of wealth, and moreover implies an energetic intellectual condition, it appeared before long that the three centres of population, of wealth, of intellect were s.h.i.+fting westwardly. The front of Europe was suddenly changed; the British islands, hitherto in a sequestered and eccentric position, were all at once put in the van of the new movement.

[Sidenote: Ferdinand Magellan enters the Spanish service.] Commercial rivalry had thus pa.s.sed from Venice and Genoa to Spain and Portugal. The circ.u.mnavigation of the earth originated in a dispute between these kingdoms respecting the Molucca Islands, from which nutmegs, cloves, and mace were obtained. Ferdinand Magellan had been in the service of the King of Portugal; but an application he had made for an increase of half a ducat a month in his stipend having been refused, he pa.s.sed into the service of the King of Spain along with one Ruy Falero, a friend of his, who, among the vulgar, bore the reputation of a conjurer or magician, but who really possessed considerable astronomical attainments, devoting himself to the discovery of improved means for finding the place of a s.h.i.+p at sea. Magellan persuaded the Spanish government that the Spice Islands could be reached by sailing to the west, the Portuguese having previously reached them by sailing to the east, and, if this were accomplished, Spain would have as good a t.i.tle to them, under the bull of Alexander VI., as Portugal. [Sidenote: His great voyage commenced.]

Five s.h.i.+ps, carrying 237 men, were accordingly equipped, and on August 10, 1519, Magellan sailed from Seville. The Trinitie was the admiral's s.h.i.+p, but the San Vittoria was destined for immortality. He struck boldly for the south-west, not crossing the trough of the Atlantic as Columbus had done, but pa.s.sing down the length of it, his aim being to find some cleft or pa.s.sage in the American Continent through which he might sail into the Great South Sea. For seventy days he was becalmed under the line. He then lost sight of the north star, but courageously held on toward the ”pole antartike.” He nearly foundered in a storm, ”which did not abate till the three fires called St. Helen, St.

Nicholas, and St. Clare appeared playing in the rigging of the s.h.i.+ps.”

In a new land, to which he gave the name of Patagoni, he found giants ”of good corporature” clad in skins; one of them, a very pleasant and tractable giant, was terrified at his own visage in a looking-gla.s.s.

[Sidenote: He penetrates the American continent.] Among the sailors, alarmed at the distance they had come, mutiny broke out, requiring the most unflinching resolution in the commander for its suppression. In spite of his watchfulness, one s.h.i.+p deserted him and stole back to Spain. His perseverance and resolution were at last rewarded by the discovery of the strait named by him San Vittoria, in affectionate honour of his s.h.i.+p, but which, with a worthy sentiment, other sailors soon changed to ”the Strait of Magellan.” [Sidenote: Reaches the Pacific Ocean.] On November 28, 1520, after a year and a quarter of struggling, he issued forth from its western portals and entered the Great South Sea, shedding tears of joy, as Pigafetti, an eye-witness, relates, when he recognized its infinite expanse--tears of stern joy that it had pleased G.o.d to bring him at length where he might grapple with its unknown dangers. Admiring its illimitable but placid surface, and exulting in the meditation of its secret perils soon to be tried, he courteously imposed on it the name it is for ever to bear, ”the Pacific Ocean.” While baffling for an entry into it, he observed with surprise that in the month of October the nights are only four hours long, and ”considered, in this his navigation, that the pole antartike hath no notable star like the pole artike, but that there be two clouds of little stars somewhat dark in the middest, also a cross of fine clear stars, but that here the needle becomes so sluggish that it needs must be moved with a bit of loadstone before it will rightly point.”

[Sidenote: The Pacific Ocean crossed.] And now the great sailor, having burst through the barrier of the American continent, steered for the north-west, attempting to regain the equator. For three months and twenty days he sailed on the Pacific, and never saw inhabited land. He was compelled by famine to strip off the pieces of skin and leather wherewith his rigging was here and there bound, to soak them in the sea and then soften them with warm water, so as to make a wretched food; to eat the sweepings of the s.h.i.+p and other loathsome matter; to drink water that had become putrid by keeping; and yet he resolutely held on his course, though his men were dying daily. As is quaintly observed, ”their gums grew over their teeth, and so they could not eat.” He estimated that he sailed over this unfathomable sea not less than 12,000 miles.

In the whole history of human undertakings there is nothing that exceeds, if indeed there is anything that equals, this voyage of Magellan's. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a display of superhuman courage, superhuman perseverance--a display of resolution not to be diverted from its purpose by any motive or any suffering, but inflexibly persisting to its end. Well might his despairing sailors come to the conclusion that they had entered on a trackless waste of waters, endless before them and hopeless in a return.

”But, though the Church hath evermore from Holy Writ affirmed that the earth should be a wide-spread plain bordered by the waters, yet he comforted himself when he considered that in the eclipses of the moon the shadow cast of the earth is round; and as is the shadow, such, in like manner, is the substance.” It was a stout heart--a heart of triple bra.s.s--which could thus, against such authority, extract unyielding faith from a shadow.

[Sidenote: Succeeds in his attempt, and dies.] This unparalleled resolution met its reward at last. Magellan reached a group of islands north of the equator--the Ladrones. In a few days more he became aware that his labours had been successful; he met with adventurers from Sumatra. But, though he had thus grandly accomplished his object, it was not given to him to complete the circ.u.mnavigation of the globe. At an island called Zebu, or Mutan, he was killed, either, as has been variously related, in a mutiny of his men, or as they declared--in a conflict with the savages, or insidiously by poison. ”The general,” they said, ”was a very brave man, and received his death wound in his front; nor would the savages yield up his body for any ransom.” Through treason and revenge it is not unlikely that he fell, for he was a stern man; no one but a very stern man could have accomplished so daring a deed.

Hardly was he gone when his crew learned that they were actually in the vicinity of the Moluccas, and that the object of their voyage was accomplished. On the morning of November 8, 1521, having been at sea two years and three months, as the sun was rising they entered Tidore, the chief port of the Spice Islands. The King of Tidore swore upon the Koran alliance to the King of Spain.

[Sidenote: Circ.u.mnavigation of the earth.] I need not allude to the wonderful objects--destined soon to become common to voyagers in the Indian Archipelago--that greeted their eyes: elephants in trappings; vases, and vessels of porcelain; birds of Paradise, ”that fly not, but be blown by the wind;” exhaustless stores of the coveted spices, nutmegs, mace, cloves. And now they prepared to bring the news of their success back to Spain. Magellan's lieutenant, Sebastian d'Elcano, directed his course for the Cape of Good Hope, again encountering the most fearful hards.h.i.+ps. Out of his slender crew he lost twenty-one men.

He doubled the Cape at last; and on September 7, 1522, in the port of St. Lucar, near Seville, under his orders, the good s.h.i.+p San Vittoria came safely to an anchor. She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the history of the human race. She had circ.u.mnavigated the earth.

[Sidenote: Elcano, the lieutenant of Magellan.] Magellan thus lost his life in his enterprise, and yet he made an enviable exchange. Doubly immortal, and thrice happy! for he impressed his name indelibly on the earth and the sky, on the strait that connects the two great oceans, and on those clouds of starry worlds seen in the southern heavens. He also imposed a designation on the largest portion of the surface of the globe. His lieutenant, Sebastian d'Elcano, received such honours as kings can give. Of all armorial bearings ever granted for the accomplishment of a great and daring deed, his were the proudest and n.o.blest--the globe of the earth belted with the inscription, ”Primus circ.u.mdedisti me!”

[Sidenote: Results of the circ.u.mnavigation.] If the circ.u.mnavigation of the earth by Magellan did not lead to such splendid material results as the discovery of America and the doubling of the Cape, its moral effects were far more important. Columbus had been opposed in obtaining means for his expedition because it was suspected to be of an irreligious nature. Unfortunately, the Church, satisfying instincts impressed upon her as far back as the time of Constantine, had a.s.serted herself to be the final arbitress in all philosophical questions, and especially in this of the figure of the earth had committed herself against its being globular. Infallibility can never correct itself--indeed, it can never be wrong. Rome never retracts anything; and, no matter what the consequences, never recedes. It was thus that a theological dogma--infallibility--came to be mixed up with a geographical problem, and that problem liable at any moment to receive a decisive solution. So long as it rested in a speculative position, or could be hedged round with mystification, the real state of the case might be concealed from all except the more intelligent cla.s.s of men; but after the circ.u.mnavigation had actually been accomplished, and was known to every one, there was, of course, nothing more to be said. It had now become altogether useless to bring forward the authority of Lactantius, of St.