A Wind From the North (26 page)

There are many faces in Nuno Gongalves’s masterpiece: the young Affonso, his Queen, knights and nobles, priests, and men in armor with swords and pikes. Close to the youthful form of Saint Vincent (as close as Sagres to the cape that bears the Saint’s name) there is a figure like a dark rock. In contrast to the jeweled clothes, the caps sewn with pearls, the elaborate armor of the men, and the gem-set pendants of the women, Henry wears the robes of mourning. His hair is cut short, and on his head he wears a dark barret cap with a long trailing fold that lies on his right shoulder. Most of the faces around are pale, his is brown and weathered. The forehead is furrowed, there are lines under the eyes, and the eyes themselves gaze on, and out of the picture. They are fixed on something far away. A heavy mustache in the English fashion shadows his upper lip. The mouth itself is curious. The lower lip is quite full, but the upper lip has a sad, almost sardonic, twist, and the right corner is turned down. This was Henry in the last years of his life, clothed in mourning for his brother Peter, and wearing the impenetrable reserve that had become part of his nature.

It may well be that the reason he was refused permission to retire to North Africa was that Affonso and his advisers felt they could not risk the interpretation that the other courts of Europe would put on this act of self-banishment. For within a few months of Alfarrobeira the storm broke. The Duke of Braganga and his party had not been slow to help themselves to the castles and estates that now lay vacant, and this seemed further proof of their guilt—and of the dead man’s innocence —in the eyes of the other European countries. There was an ing of Cape Bojador in 1434 might have gone unremarked except by seafarers and cartographers. But the arrival of black slaves from Africa, of gold from the Rio de Ouro, of wine and sugar from faraway islands, were things that aroused the interest of everyone in Europe. On a headland at the far end of Portugal, in a place that Henry described as “remote from the tumult of men,” a revolution was taking place. Artists, philosophers, and scientists, living obscure lives in remote places, have often initiated the great changes that alter man’s conception of the world and of the universe, but few have done so more decisively than Prince Henry on Sagres.

By the time he was fifty-six, even distant parts of Europe had heard of the discoveries. In the same way that, today, we hear of giant galactic systems being discovered by radiotelescope in outer space, so they heard of new islands in the Atlantic and of a great continent stretching to the south. Sailors who had called at Lagos or Lisbon, or who had anchored for a night in the bay below the Prince’s austere palace, brought confirmation of the stories. By 1448 nearly one thousand Africans had been shipped to Portugal. The sailors had seen their faces in the streets of Portuguese ports; tall Berbers, coffee-colored halfcastes, and ebony Negroes from the land of the Senegal and Gambia.

There were parrots and other strange birds on sale in the booths of Lagos: canaries, hombills, and many singing birds captured on the African coast. In the jewelers’ shops gold was being worked that had come, not through the markets of North Africa, but direct from caravan routes leading to the new trading post in Arguim Bay. There were sugar cane and wine from Madeira, salted fish from the Azores, and quantities of sardine and gurnard from the fishery that had been set up in Gurnard Bay. In the carpenters’ and shipwrights’ shops, where the scent of resinous wood hung on the air, they were cutting and planing unfamiliar trees for which they were only just inventing names. In the pharmacists’ stores dragon’s blood from the Canaries was on sale, and spices that had come from Ceuta. There were sailors swaggering through the streets who had been hundreds of miles south of Cape Bojador. There were men who had seen the fertile lands beyond the desert, and the great river that was probably the mouth of the western Nile. They told of poisoned arrows, of long-legged flamingos, and of the hot heavy smell of Africa.

British, Dutch, French, and Scandinavian sailors, who were on the northern run between the Mediterranean and the Channel, had seen these new Portuguese vessels called caravels. They reported them small boats compared with their own trading craft, but with fine lines, and looking rather like the Arabic sailing boats of the Levant. The Portuguese captains and navigators, they said, were secretive about these new islands and the African coastline. The courses they steered, the charts they used, the wind and weather south of the Canaries, and the nature of the coastline were almost impossible for foreigners to discover. It was even rumored that only caravels could sail in these unknown regions.

Strange gifts—presents between sea captains, or between one courtier and another—began to circulate throughout Europe. Ostrich eggs arrived in Italy and in England, and the silversmiths of these countries cut them carefully in halves and mounted them as two matching goblets. One of the strangest gifts of all was brought back by Joao Fernandes, the man who of his own accord had once spent seven months living in the Sahara among the Berbers.

Fernandes was the first European on record to have penetrated the interior of Africa, and his travels in some areas anticipated those of the Scottish explorer Mungo Park by over three centuries. On this particular voyage, which took place in 1447, Fernandes went down to the Moroccan coast in a caravel, taking eighteen captive Moors to exchange against Africans in one of the ports north of Cape Not. Fifty Africans were considered a fair ransom price for the Moors, and having put them aboard, Fernandes then bargained for a suitable present for Prince Henry. A live African lion was added to the deck cargo. But at this point “the wind began to blow so strongly from the south that the caravel had to make sail and return home at once. So they brought back the lion to the Prince, who afterward sent it to a place called Galway, as a gift for one of his followers who lived in that country. For it was known that such an animal had never been seen there… .”

Tangible proofs like this began to open men’s eyes to the world that lay beyond their small villages, their local fishing ports, and their familiar coastline. Cartographers, navigators, and men of education might understand what Prince Henry and his pioneers were doing, but it took something like a lion in Galway Bay to bring the reality of it home to ordinary people.

❖
 

The fame that Prince Henry’s explorations brought to Portugal was reflected on Affonso’s reign. The birth of a son in 1455 ensured the succession of his dynasty, and peace and prosperity settled again over the country. As he grew older, Affonso matured into a capable and energetic ruler. He treated the last of his uncles with affection and respect, wishing perhaps to efface the grim and sordid events that had disfigured his early years. Henry seemed to watch the rise of the House of Braganga with indifference.

From 1450 onward there were so many voyages being made that many of them went unrecorded. Things that had been marvels twenty years ago were now accepted as commonplace. But the whole achievement still seemed little short of miraculous to visiting foreigners. One of these was a Venetian named Alvise Cadamosto.

Cadamosto was only twenty-two when he arrived in a galley, bound from Venice for the Netherlands, and anchored beneath the rock of Sagres. He had been to the Netherlands before as a merchant, and he was on his way there again, when a sudden Atlantic storm forced his galley to run for shelter. Prince Henry was at Raposeira at the time, and the news that a foreign ship was anchored in Sagres roads was brought to him.

The young Venetian was surprised to find himself visited by the Prince’s secretary as well as by the Venetian consul. They brought with them sugar from Madeira, dragon’s blood, and other produce of the newly discovered islands. Prince Henry, knowing the reputation of the Venetians as traders, thought that such things might be of interest to him. Cadamosto was more than interested. He had an audience with the Prince, and almost at once the whole course of his life was altered.

The stories Prince Henry told him of these new lands, the charts he showed him, and the whole conception of this vast ocean, which made the Mediterranean seem like a lake, inspired Cadamosto with a desire to see this new world. He at once asked the Prince on what terms it might be possible to make an expedition to Africa. Henry gave him two choices. Either Cadamosto could equip and freight a caravel at his own expense, and pay one-fourth of the profits to Prince Henry on return, or the Prince himself would provide the ship and freight, but in this case half of any profit would be his.

Cadamosto’s galley sailed for Venice without him. He had made arrangements about the consignment of his goods and had suggested that he make a trading voyage for Prince Henry on a half-share basis. “The Prince,” he wrote, “was very pleased that I stayed on at Cape St. Vincent.” In the early days of exploration, the best men for African voyages had been like Nuno Tristao and Gil Eannes, knights and veterans of action, men who found their stimulus in danger. But already, by 1455, a new quality was called for in dealing with Africa—the ability to trade peacefully and to assess gold, spices, and the unfamiliar products of the continent.

A new caravel was fitted out, a Portuguese sailing captain appointed, and Alvise Cadamosto left on March 22, 1455, for Africa. The ship followed what had by now become the standard route for all outward-bounders. From Lagos she made for Madeira, reaching Porto Santo after three days. The Venetian noted that the rabbits, which had been the curse of Perestrello, still abounded. But wheat and oats were growing, the coastal fishery thrived, and honey and dragon’s blood were being exported. Thirty-seven years ago, this had been a wild, uninhabited island lost in the Atlantic.

From Porto Santo they sailed across to Madeira toward the strange cloud on the horizon that had so disturbed Zarco’s sailors years before. Madeira was already a monument to Portuguese industry and to the visionary scope of the man who had sent young Cadamosto on his voyage. It was an Eden, green and fertile. Glowing under the sun, it was laced with shining rivers and artificial irrigation channels. They landed at Machico (where once, perhaps, the unfortunate Robert Machin and his mistress had met their end), but a Machico that was already unrecognizable. Sawmills spun under the driving currents of water, boats were building, and wood was being cut for export to Portugal. The cane that had been brought from Sicily produced so much sugar, and of such good quality, that the Venetian grew as ecstatic over the candied sweetmeats as he did over the fruit and wine.

“There is nothing more beautiful in all the world!” he cried, as he looked at the luxuriance of the terraced vines, over which the Atlantic wind passed like a wave. There were partridges, quail, and wild boar, peacocks, honey, and wheat in abundance. “The whole island is a garden!” Madiera was already a thriving colony, with nearly a thousand inhabitants divided among four main settlements. The climate was even better than that of Cyprus or Sicily. And all this, he reflected, had been achieved through the farsightedness of one man.

They unloaded the cargo they had brought from Portugal and took aboard fresh meat, fruit, and fish. Then, having topped up their water barricoes, they sailed south again for the Canaries. Cadamosto, who was familiar with the Mediterranean and the northern route to Europe, now grew to know this vast ocean, which seemed to be always heaving under the impulse of some spent gale or far-off wind. Even the calms were unlike those of the Mediterranean, for the rhythm of the •ocean was ceaseless. The mornings were crystal; brighter, sharper, and cleaner than those of the inland sea. Soon the caravel was driving before the northeasters in a steady hush of foam.

The Canaries, though, he found disappointing after fertile Madeira. If only the Prince had had control of these islands, Cadamosto thought, they too might already be green with cultivation and busy with ships and men.

He recognized the truth of this even more when he saw Arguim Island. It was more barren than the most desolate of the Canaries, yet it was already active with trade. Caravans came bringing gold and Negroes from the interior. A thriving fishing industry and fish-salting business were already established, and ships were coming and going as if this were a port in Europe—and not just an inlet on what, until a few years ago, had been a desolate coast.

Dropping Arguim Bay astern of him, Cadamosto sailed down to Cape Blanco. From here he made an expedition inland by camel to a trading post where the caravan routes converged. He heard of the gold routes: how they met at Timbuktu, and then separated, some going across the continent to Cairo, some to Tunis in the north, and others to the Atlantic seaboard at Safi and Tangier. White pepper from the interior was one of the spices that were already reaching Portugal from here. Cadamosto the Venetian, although he was probably unaware of it, was witnessing the opening of those new trade routes that would ultimately lead to the decline of his own proud republic.

He was an observant man, an observer of human beings as well as of commerce and communications, and he noted in his diary points of interest about the food and drink and customs of the Berbers and Arabs. They were Mohammedans, living mostly on dates, barley, and camels’ milk. Their coinage was the cowrie shell, which, as Cadamosto knew, came to them via Venice, which imported them from the Levant. To his Latin eye, their criterion of female beauty was unattractive, for it was the length of the breast that made a woman seem desirable in this strange country. Young girls even tied cords round their breasts to break down the tissue and stretch them. A really beautiful woman was one whose breasts hung right down to her navel.

His mission completed, Cadamosto rejoined the caravel and went on to Cape Verde and the lands round the Senegal. Here the inhabitants lived mainly by pillage, and by carrying off their neighbors for sale to the Berbers and the Moors. They were very clean in their personal habits, washing three or four times a day, and spending long hours on their hairdressing. Their table manners, on the other hand, were barbarous in the extreme, and in all things he found them a strange mixture of opposites. They were great liars, yet at the same time so hospitable that even the poorest would freely give food and lodging to strangers. The King of the Senegal region had some thirty wives and spent most of his time traveling between one village and another, visiting them. The duty of entertaining him and his retinue fell entirely on the village concerned, and in this way the King and his followers were never obliged to work. Their only task was warfare. His children were very numerous, and as soon as one of his wives became pregnant, the King left her and moved on to another wife in another village.