A Wind From the North (28 page)

Cadamosto’s second voyage, which took place in 1456, started from Lagos. This time three caravels sailed in company and went direct to Cape Blanco, without putting in at Madeira or the Azores. Prince Henry, having found in the Venetian a man of Nuno Tristao’s caliber and an astute merchant into the bargain, was eager for Cadamosto to go even farther south. Having sighted Cape Blanco, Cadamosto stood out from the land for three days. On the third day, a masthead lookout reported two islands off the starboard bow, and the caravels altered course toward them. They landed exploration parties and found that the islands were uninhabited. The first they came to they called Boa Vista, and the second Sao Tiago. Sao Tiago, St. James, was discovered on the feast day of St. James —the very day that, forty-one years before, Prince Henry, his father, and his brothers Edward and Peter had embarked for Ceuta.

The remainder of this archipelago of fourteen islands was gradually discovered over the next ten years. Unlike Madeira and the Azores, they did not invite colonization, for the climate was unsuitable for Europeans, and their volcanic nature made them unattractive. It was not until the close of the fifteenth century that the islands were properly colonized, mostly by Africans imported from the Cape Verde region. Their importance in the later phase of exploration lay in the fact that the Cape Verde Islands are in the track of the northeast trade winds. From November to May the trades are fairly constant, and once the Portuguese ships had dropped the Cape Verdes behind them, they had following winds to lift them across the South Atlantic to Brazil.

After his discovery of the first two islands, Cadamosto went on again to Gambia. Here he made friends with the local chieftain and traded manufactured goods for gold and slaves. Seeing that these were the same natives who the year before had attacked Cadamosto and his crews, and who had been responsible for the deaths of Nuno Tristao and his companions, this was a notable advance. It was now obvious to Prince Henry’s captains that punitive raiding parties (which had been sufficient to quell the natives in areas like Arguim Bay) could no longer be employed against the inhabitants of this continent. Although the slave trade still continued, it was now carried on by an exchange of goods and merchandise. Prince Henry’s policy of establishing friendly relations and “peace by agreement and not by force” was seen to be the better.

From the Gambia, Cadamosto also brought back some ivory for Prince Henry, and some elephant’s flesh, which he described as “harsh and disagreeable.” Fever aboard his ships compelled him to leave the river, but he was still not satisfied. He had been as far as the Gambia before, and he was determined not to return to Portugal without having extended his knowledge of the coastline.

He went south again, passing the mouths of great rivers until he reached one whose estuary seemed so wide that, at first, he thought it was a gulf and not a river at all. Closing the shore, he managed to make friendly contact with some of the natives. He named the river the Rio Grande, but did not stay long in the area, for his interpreters were unfamiliar with the language. On his way back to Portugal he also sighted the Bissagos Islands, which lie just off the coast—more new land, more islands to report to the Prince. The North Star, he noted, was even lower in the sky, and the “Southern Chariot” was clear above the horizon. The unknown shore still trended southward, but he saw that its general direction was now a little east of south. Was it possible that they were nearing the end of Africa?

That year Cadamosto reached a latitude of about 11 degrees north of the equator. The eastward trend of the coast, which the navigators noticed, was the point where Africa begins its slow curve into the great Bight of Benin. They had, in fact, passed the continent’s westernmost point some years before at Cape Verde. From now on all the new voyages would be a little east of south.

At about the same time as Cadamosto’s second voyage, Diogo Gomes not only came down to the Gambia River, but went several hundred miles upstream to drop anchor off the city of Cantor. Cantor was a center from which radiated caravan and trade routes to the Sahara and Morocco, inland to Timbuktu itself, and south to the Niger. Gomes did some good trade with cloth and jewelry in return for gold, and heard a great deal about the gold mines that lay beyond the mountains of Sierra Leone. He gathered information for the Prince about the cities and the trade of the continent.

Not all the news that he brought back to Sagres was unfamiliar to Prince Henry. It is an interesting proof of the efficiency of Henry’s intelligence service that when Gomes told him about a great battle that had recently taken place in the interior, the Prince replied that he already knew about it. One of his agents, a merchant in the North African city of Oran, had passed on this piece of information two months before Gomes returned from his voyage. Thus, by the voyages of his sea captains and by his informants along the African coast, Henry was gradually piecing together a picture of the continent. When his ships left Sagres, the Prince was no less active than his captains on the sea. At Raposeira, at Sagres, and at Lagos a stream of information reached him. He was at the center of a web whose perimeter stretched from the Levant to the Gambia.

Gomes was finally forced to withdraw his caravels from the Gambia because the heat, humidity, and fever were beginning to take a toll of his crew. His had been a remarkable voyage, nearly 500 miles upstream into the interior of Africa. It was a triumph of seamanship, endurance, and tact as well, for he had managed to keep his relations with the natives on a friendly basis. So much was this so that during his stay at Cantor, natives for miles around flocked to the town to see the white men and to trade with them. Thus, with the success of his policy of peaceful trading, Prince Henry was already accomplishing one of his dreams. He was outflanking the Moorish empire. He was bringing goods and gold to Europe that would otherwise have had to come through Cairo, or one of the Moroccan ports.

Gomes was also successful in making peace with a chief called Nomi Mansa, who had previously been hostile to the Portuguese. Gomes had already made friends with another important Gambian chief, but his success with Nomi Mansa was further enhanced when the chief embraced Christianity and expelled his Moslem priests. Nomi Mansa also asked if Prince Henry would send a priest out to the Gambia to teach the Christian faith and to baptize him. In the letter he dictated to Prince Henry, the African chieftain asked him for the gift of a falcon trained for hunting, some sheep, geese, and pigs.

Nomi Mansa was clearly an astute man, for he also asked for two Portuguese workmen who knew how to build houses and plan a city.

On this same voyage Diogo Gomes attempted to chart new territory to the south. He passed beyond the Rio Grande but found that the currents were “so strong that no anchor could hold.” The context in which this passage occurs suggests that it was the Portuguese habit, when coasting down an unknown shore, to drop anchor for the night—a sensible precaution when navigating in unchartered waters. In this delta land, where the mouths of so many rivers spill out into the Atlantic, and where the banks and shoals are constantly changing, it was not surprising that the caravels ran into some alarming currents. Curiously enough, this is one of the last occasions when we hear the revival of the old fears that the world came to an end off Africa. The captains of the two caravels who were in company with Gomes insisted that they put back because “they were at the limits of the ocean.” In places off this coast, a little south of the Rio Grande, the south-going current sometimes runs at nearly four knots. In a fifty-ton caravel, with a maximum speed of about seven knots, such a current would certainly seem alarming.

Gomes achieved a further success on this voyage. He was on his way back to Portugal when he met two canoes just off Cape Verde. His interpreter warned him against these natives and told him that the chief of this area, Beseguiche, “an evil and treacherous man,” was in one of the canoes. Gomes asked all the natives aboard his caravel and entertained them. He made them presents, and all the time pretended that he was unaware of the identity of his principal guest.

Just before the natives left, he asked, “Is this the country of Beseguiche?”

“Yes,” the chief answered.

“Then why is he so hostile to Christians?” said Gomes. “Surely it would be better for him to trade with them in peace? If he did that, he would have horses and merchandise like the other African chiefs. Take back this message to him—that I have captured you at sea, but out of good will toward him I have let you go free.”

He waited until all the natives had piled into their canoes to paddle back to the beach, and then he leaned over the caravel’s side.

“Beseguiche! Beseguiche!” he shouted. “Do not imagine that I did not recognize you! I had you in my power and yet I behaved well toward you. See that you do the same to all Christians!”

In 1458 Prince Henry fulfilled the promise that had been made to Chief Nomi Mansa. He sent out an abbot to instruct him and his people in the faith, and the African chieftain was baptized. He took the Christian name of Henry, after the great Prince across the sea. Tact and treaties, friendship and trading posts, were the keys to the new world, as Henry had always maintained.

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From the age of sixty until his death at sixty-six Henry’s energy and ability were unflagging. Even his personal life now seems to have been happy. The unmarried man had found a son in Fernando, Affonso’s younger brother. He found comfort in his grandchildren, Fernando’s sons and daughters by Beatrice, the daughter of Prince John. To the young and to children he remained as indulgent as he had always been.

Perhaps it was the association of the name Fernando with his own brother, dead so long ago in Fez, that made him load presents on his adopted son. Certainly Henry never allowed the memory of his martyred brother to fade. When Father Alvares, a priest who had been one of Fernando’s fellow prisoners in Tangier and Fez, was ransomed from the Moors, Henry ordered him to write the life and death of The Blessed Prince Fernando as a monument to his brother. He never allowed himself to forget that the price of his failure at Tangier, as well as the retention of Ceuta, had been paid by Fernando. If ever he felt proud of his achievements, he could soon humble himself by reading of his brother’s captivity, courage, and death.

When Father Alvares returned to Portugal in 1451, he had brought with him a casket containing the heart of Fernando, which he and his fellow prisoners had preserved from the tom and mutilated body. Henry had met Father Alvares when he landed, and had followed the procession as it made its way to the great church of Batalha. There he had heard the Martyrs’ Mass sung, and had knelt in silence beside the casket before it was buried.

Six years after Alfarrobeira, the body of Prince Peter was also brought home from the obscure church where it had lain since his death. Prince Henry organized the funeral of the last of his brothers. Peter was the one who had been nearest to him in his life, and he may well have felt some measure of responsibility for his death. Now, in the chapel that King John had prepared for himself, his wife, and his sons, there was only one place empty.

While the caravels were every year achieving new successes, Henry began to dream once more of a crusade into Morocco. Morocco had a particular claim on his attention at this moment. It was there that the only Christian success against the Moslems had been gained in nearly half a century. Everywhere else, the crescent was triumphant over the cross, and the situation in eastern Europe had become increasingly desperate with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The capture of this great capital of Christendom by the Turks paralyzed Europe. The Sultan, Mohammed II (the Conqueror), had triumphantly reversed the Portuguese success at Ceuta, and it must have been with bitterness and anger that Prince Henry heard how the great cathedral of St. Sophia had been turned into a Moorish mosque. Already, in 1456, the year of Diogo Gomes’s voyage to Gambia, Mohammed’s armies had swept across Serbia and were at the gates of Belgrade. Now, if ever, was the time for an attack on the Mohammedans of Morocco.

The Pope, Calixtus III, appealed fruitlessly to the other kings and rulers of Europe for a crusade. Notorious for his nepotism, Calixtus was the uncle of Rodrigo Borgia (the future Pope Alexander VI), and not the man who could rally Christendom at such a moment. Only on the far iBank of Moslem power was there a country and a man prepared to take up the challenge, and the Pope did not appeal in vain to Portugal and the grand master of the Order of Christ. King Affonso was as eager as Prince Henry to raise an army and sail for Morocco. He longed for another Ceuta to add glory to his reign.

He was even prepared, he said, to take a force of twelve thousand men into the Mediterranean and carry the war home against the Turks. But at this suggestion, even the most enthusiastic of his councilors demurred. Portugal was a small country, and could not afford to keep so large a force in the field several thousand miles away from home. In any case, what obligation did they have to do so, when the rulers of Italy were not prepared to do anything for the security of their own shores? If there was to be an overseas expedition at all, then Morocco was the only sensible field for a Portuguese crusade. They already had a fine base at Ceuta, troops who were familiar with the terrain, and as adviser to Affonso there was the veteran of Morocco, Prince Henry himself.

Absorbed though he was in his many affairs, Henry diverted his energy and enthusiasm into this new project. If the King and his cousins would assemble the fleets of Porto and Lisbon, then he would muster the men and the ships of the province of Algarve. This time he was determined there would be no repetition of Tangier.

On September 30, 1458, King Affonso sailed south to join his uncle at Sagres. The Portuguese objective had already been decided upon. It was the coastal town and trading port of Alcagar.j lying a little west of Ceuta, almost halfway between the Portuguese garrison and Tangier. At first Affonso had tried to revive the dream of a Portuguese Tangier, but even Prince Henry advised against any sea-borne attempt on that city. Alcagar was an easier objective, and from Alcagar their garrison forces would soon be able to harass Tangier’s trade and caravan routes. Later the day might come when they could add the great seaport to the Portuguese crown, but Henry knew by bitter experience that it would not fall to a simple frontal assault. Alcagar, slightly smaller than Ceuta, was another matter.