CHAPTER XIX.
WHAT PORTUGAL HAS DONE IN THE WORLD.
Mr. Lowington and the two vice-principals had a hearty laugh over the misadventure of poor Bill Stout, and then discussed their plans for the future. The Prince had been in the river five days; and the Josephines and Tritonias were all ready to start for Badajos the next morning. It was Friday night; and if the party left the next morning they would be obliged to remain over Sunday at Badajos; or, if they travelled all the next night, they would arrive at Toledo on Sunday morning, and this was no place for them to be on that day. It was decided that they should remain on board of the Prince till Monday morning, and that the Princes should go on board the next morning to hear Professor’s Mapps’s lecture on Portugal.
“Have you heard any thing of Raimundo or Lingall?” asked the principal.
“Only what we got out of Stout,” replied Mr. Pelham. “But he was too tipsy to tell a very straight story.”
“I don’t see how he got tipsy so quick; for he must have reached the Prince within fifteen or twenty minutes after he left this hotel,” added Mr. Lowington. “However, he told me all he knew—at least, I suppose he did—about the others who ran away with him. It seems that Raimundo did not leave the Tritonia, and must have stowed himself away in the hold.”
“But we searched the hold very thoroughly,” said Mr. Pelham.
“Did you look under the dunnage?”
“No, sir: he could not have got under that.”
“Probably he did,—made a hole in the ballast. He must have had some one to help him,” suggested the principal.
“If any one assisted him it must have been Hugo; for, as he is a Spaniard, they were always very thick together.”
“I have informed Don Francisco, the lawyer, that Raimundo had gone to Oran; and I suppose he will be on the lookout for him. I have also written to Manuel Raimundo in New York. He must get my letter in a day or two,” continued the principal. “It is a very singular case; and I should as soon have thought of Sheridan running away as Raimundo.”
“He must have had a strong reason for doing so,” added the vice-principal of the Tritonia.
The next morning Mr. Pelham directed Peaks to bring his prisoner into the cabin. Bill Stout did not remember what he had said the night before; but he had prepared a story for the present occasion.
“Good-morning, Stout,” the vice-principal began. “How do you feel after your spree?”
“Pretty well, sir; I did not drink but once, and I couldn’t help it then,” replied the culprit, beginning to reel off the explanation he had got up for the occasion.
“You couldn’t help it? That’s very odd.”
“No, sir. I met a couple of sailors on shore, and asked them if they could tell me where the American Prince lay. They pointed the steamer out to me, and they insisted that I should take a drink with them. They wouldn’t take No for an answer, and I couldn’t get off,” whined Bill; and he always whined when he was in a scrape.
“Doubtless you gave them No for an answer,” laughed Mr. Pelham.
“I certainly did; for I never take any thing. They made me drink brandy; but I put very little into the glass, and, as I am not used to liquor, it made me very drunk.”
“One horn would not have made you as tipsy as you were, Stout. I think you had better tell that story to the other marines.”
“I am telling the truth, sir: I wouldn’t lie about it.”
“I think it is a bad plan to do so,” added the vice-principal. “Then you were coming on board, were you?”
“Yes, sir: I wanted to see you, and own up.”
“Oh! that was your plan, was it?” laughed Mr. Pelham, amused at the pickle into which the rascal was putting himself.
“Yes, sir: I came from Valencia on purpose to give myself up to you. I’m sorry I ran away. I got sick of it in a day or two.”
“This was after Lingall left you, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir; but I was sorry for it before he left. We were almost murdered in the felucca; and I had a hard time of it.”
“And this made you penitent.”
“Yes, sir. I shall never run away again as long as I live.”
“I hope you will not. And you came all the way across Spain and Portugal to give yourself up to me,” added Mr. Pelham. “You were so very anxious to surrender to me, that you were not content to stay a single night at the hotel with Mr. Lowington, who is my superior.”
“I wanted to see you; and that’s the reason I left the hotel, and came on board last night,” protested the culprit.
“That’s a very good story, Stout; but for your sake I am sorry it is only a story,” said the vice-principal.
“It is the truth, sir. I hope to”—
“No, no; stop!” interposed Mr. Pelham. “Don’t hope any thing, except to be a better fellow. Your story won’t hold water. I was at the gangway when you came on board, and you told me that you wanted to go to England.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying,” pleaded Bill, taken aback by this answer.
“Yes, you did: you were not as tipsy as you might have been; for, when I told you the steamer was not going to England, you called your boatman back. It is a plain case; and you can stay in the brig till the ship returns to Barcelona.”
The lies did not help the case a particle; and somehow every thing seemed to go wrong with Bill Stout, but that was because he went wrong himself.
The boats were sent on ashore for the Princes; and when they arrived all hands were called to attend the lecture in the grand saloon.
“Young gentlemen, I am glad to meet you again,” the professor began. “I have said all I need say about the geography of the peninsula. Some of you have been through Spain and Portugal, and have seen that the natural features of the two countries are about the same. The lack of industry and enterprise has had the same result in both. The people are alike in one respect, at least: each hates the other intensely. ‘Strip a Spaniard of his virtues, and you have a Portuguese,’ says the Spanish proverb; but I fancy one is as good as the other. There are plenty of minerals in the ground, plenty of excellent soil, and plenty of fish in the waters of Portugal; but none of the sources of wealth and prosperity are used as in England, France, and the United States. The principal productions are wheat, wine, olive-oil, cork, wool, and fruit. Of the forty million dollars’ worth of agricultural products, twelve are in wine, ten in grain, and seven in wool. More than two-thirds of the exports are to England.
“The population of Portugal is about four millions. It has few large towns, only two having over fifty thousand inhabitants. Lisbon has two hundred and seventy-five thousand, and Oporto about ninety thousand. Coimbra,—which has the only university in the country,—Elvas, Evora, Braga, and Setubal, are important towns. The kingdom has six provinces; and we are now in Estremadura, as we were yesterday morning, though it is not the same one.
“The government is a constitutional monarchy, not very different from that of Spain. The present king is Luis II. The army consists of about eighteen thousand men; and the navy, of twenty-two steamers and twenty-five sailing vessels. The colonial possessions of Portugal have a population equal to the kingdom itself.
“The money of Portugal will bother you.”
At this statement Sheridan and Murray looked at each other, and laughed.
“You seem to be pleased, Captain Sheridan,” said the professor. “Perhaps you have had some experience with Portuguese money.”
“Yes, sir: I went into a store to buy some photographs; and, when I asked the price of them, the man told me it was one thousand six hundred and forty reis. I concluded that I should be busted if I bought that dozen pictures.”
“It takes about a million of those reis to make a dollar,” added Murray.
“But, when I came to figure up the price, I found it was only a dollar and sixty-four cents,” continued Sheridan.
“A naval officer who dined a party of his friends in this very city, when he found the bill was twenty-seven thousand five hundred reis, exclaimed that he was utterly ruined, for he should never be able to pay such a bill; but it was only twenty-seven dollars and a half. You count the reis at the rate of ten to a cent of our money,—a thousand to a dollar. About all the copper and silver money has a number on the coin that indicates its value in reis. For large sums, the count is given in milreis, which means a thousand reis. The gold most in use is the English sovereign, which passes for forty-five hundred reis. We will now give some attention to the history of the country.
“Portugal makes no great figure on the map of Europe. Looking at this narrow strip of territory, one would naturally suppose that its history would not fill a very large volume. But small states have had their history told in voluminous works; and Portugal happens to belong to this class. There are histories and chronicles of this country in the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English, and Latin languages, not to mention some Arabic works which I have not had time to examine,” continued the professor, with a smile. “Some of these works consist of from ten to thirty volumes. Even the discoveries and conquests of this people in the East and West require quite a number of large volumes; for there was a time when Portugal filled a large place in the eye of the world, though that time was short, hardly reaching through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
“But the history of this country does not begin at all till the eleventh century. There was, indeed, the old Roman province of Lusitania, which corresponded very nearly in size with modern Portugal, except that the latter extends farther north and not so far east. The ancient Lusitanians were a warlike people; and a hundred and fifty years before our era they gave the Romans a great deal of trouble to conquer them. Under Viriathus, the most famous of all the Lusitanians, they routed several Roman armies; and might have held their ground for many years longer, if their hero had not been treacherously murdered by his own countrymen.
“The lines of the old Roman provinces were not preserved after the barbarians, of whom I have spoken to you before, entered the peninsula in the fifth century. The Arabs occupied this province with the rest of the peninsula, after the defeat and death of King Roderick, or Don Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain; and held it till near the close of the eleventh century, a part of it somewhat later. In 1095 Alfonso VI., of Castile and Leon, bestowed a part of what is now Portugal upon his son-in-law, Henri of Burgundy, who had fought with Alfonso against the Moors, and seemed to have the ability to protect the country given him from the inroad of the Moslems. The region granted to Henri extended only from the Minho to the Tagus; and its capital was Coimbra, for Lisbon was then a Moorish city. The new ruler was called a count; and he had the privilege of conquering the country as far south as the Guadiana. His son Dom Alfonso defeated the Moors in a great battle near the Tagus, and was proclaimed king of Portugal on the battle-field. This was in the time of the crusades; but Spain and Portugal had infidels enough to fight at home, without going to the Holy Land, where hundreds of thousands were sent to die by other countries of Europe. Other additions were made to the country during the next century; but since the middle of the thirteenth century, when Sancho II. died, no increase has been made in the peninsula. The wealth and power of Portugal at a later period were derived from her colonies in America, Asia, and Africa.
“John I.—Dom João, in Portuguese—led an expedition against Ceuta, a Moorish stronghold just across the Strait of Gibraltar, and captured the place. After this began their wonderful series of discoveries, which brought the whole world to the knowledge of Europe. But the Portuguese were not the first to carry on commerce by sea. Though merchandise had been mainly transported by land in the East, there was some trade on the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and on the Indian Ocean. It does not appear that the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians, or the Greeks, ever sailed on the Baltic Sea; and, though the Romans explored some parts of it, they never went far enough to ascertain that it was bounded on all sides by land.
“The Eastern Empire of the middle ages, with its capital at Constantinople, carried on a much more extensive commerce than was ever known to the Romans in the days of their universal dominion. At first the goods brought from the East Indies were imported into Europe from Alexandria; but, when Egypt was conquered by the Arabs, a new route had to be found. Merchandise was conveyed up the Indus as far as that great river was navigable, then across the land to the Oxus, now the Amoo, flowing into the Sea of Aral, but then having a channel to the Caspian. From the mouth of this river it was carried over the Caspian Sea, and up the Volga, to about the point where there is now a railroad connecting this river with the Don. Then it was transported by land again to the Don, and taken in vessels by the Black Sea to Constantinople. The Suez Canal, opened this present year, makes an easy and expeditious route by water for steamers, connecting all the ports of Europe with those of India.
“During this period another commercial state was growing up. After the fall of the Roman empire, when the Huns under Attila were ravaging Italy, the inhabitants of Venetia fled for safety to the group of islands near the northern shore of the Adriatic, and laid the foundation of the illustrious city and state of Venice. The people of the city soon began to fit out small merchant fleets, which they sent to all parts of the Mediterranean, and particularly to Syria and Egypt, after spices and other products of Arabia and India. Soon after, the city of Genoa, on the other side of Italy, became a rival of Venice in this trade, and Florence and Pisa followed their example; but the Venetians, having some natural advantages, outstripped their rivals in the end, and became a great military and commercial power. The crusades, in which others wasted life and treasure, were a source of wealth to these Italian cities. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the commerce of Europe was almost wholly confined to the Italians. The merchants of Italy scattered themselves in every kingdom; and the Lombards (for this was the name by which they were known) became the merchants and bankers everywhere. After a time, however, the commercial spirit began to develop itself, and to make progress in other parts of Europe; but, up to the fifteenth century, vessels were accustomed, in their voyages, to creep along the coast; and, though it was known that the magnetic needle points constantly to the North Pole, no use was made of this knowledge for purposes of navigation.
“In 1415 the commercial spirit had reached Portugal; and the Ceuta expedition was undertaken quite as much in the interest of trade as of religion, for the place was held by pirates who were daily disturbing Portuguese commerce. Immense treasures fell to the victors as the reward of their enterprise.
“Dom Henrique, or Henry, the son of King John, afterwards so famous in the history of his country, had a decided taste for study. He was an able mathematician, and made himself master of all the astronomy known to the Arabians, who were then the best mathematicians of Europe. Henry also studied the works of the ancients. At this period Ptolemy was the highest authority in geography; and he taught that the African Continent reached to the South Pole. But Henry had read the ancient accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phœnicians and others; and he believed, that, whether these voyages had or had not been made, good ships might sail around the southern point of the continent. If this could be done, the Portuguese would find a way to India by sea, and thus control the entire trade of the East.
“The prince had many obstacles to overcome. Vessels in that day were not built for the open sea; and every headland and far-stretching cape seemed to be an impossible barrier. There was a notion that near the equator was a burning zone, where the very waters of the ocean actually boiled under the intolerable heat of the sun. A superstition also prevailed, that whoever doubled Cape Bojador—on the coast of Africa, about a thousand miles south of Lisbon—would never return; and it was feared that the burning zone would change those who entered it into negroes, thus dooming them to wear the black marks of their temerity to the grave.
“The first voyage undertaken under the direction of Prince Henry was in 1419, and covered only five degrees of latitude. The expedition was driven out to sea and landed at a small island north-east of Madeira, which they named Porto Santo. The next year three vessels were sent for a longer voyage. This fleet reached the dreaded cape, and discovered Madeira. On the next voyage they doubled Cape Bojador; and, having exploded the superstition, in the course of a few years they advanced four hundred leagues farther, and discovered the Senegal River. Here they found men with woolly hair and skins as black as ebony; and they began to dread a nearer approach to the equator.
“When they returned, their countrymen with one voice attempted to dissuade Prince Henry from any further attempts; but he would hear of no delay. He applied to Pope Eugene IV.; and, representing that his chief object was the pious wish to spread a knowledge of the Christian faith among the idolatrous people of Africa, he obtained a bull conferring on the people of Portugal the exclusive right to all the countries they had discovered, or might discover, between Cape Nun—about three hundred miles north of Cape Bojador—and India. Such a donation may appear ridiculous enough to us; but it was never doubted then that the pope had ample right to bestow such a gift; and for a long time all the powers of Europe considered the right of the Portuguese to be good, and acknowledged their title to almost the whole of Africa. About this time Prince Henry died, and little progress was made in discovery for some years. But the Portuguese had begun to push boldly out to sea, and had lost all dread of the burning zone.
“In the reign of John II., from 1481 to 1495, discoveries were pushed with greater vigor than ever before. The Cape de Verde Islands were colonized; and the Portuguese ships, which had advanced to the coast of Guinea, began to return with cargoes of gold-dust, ivory, gums, and other valuable products. It was during the reign of this monarch that Columbus visited Lisbon, and offered his services to Portugal; and it appears that the king was inclined to listen to the plans of the great navigator, but he was dissuaded from doing so by his own courtiers.
“The revenue derived at this time from the African coast became so important that John feared the vessels of other nations might be attracted to it. To prevent this, the voyages there were represented as being in the highest degree dangerous, and even impossible except in the peculiar vessels used by the Portuguese. The monarchs of Castile had some idea of what was going on, and were very eager to learn more; and in one case came very near succeeding. A Portuguese captain and two pilots, in the hope of a rich reward, set out for Castile to dispose of the desired information; but they were pursued by the king’s agents. When overtaken, they refused to return; but two of them were killed on the spot, and the other brought back to Evora and quartered. The attempt of a rich Spaniard, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to build vessels in English ports for the African trade, turned out no better. King John reminded the English king, Edward IV., of the ancient alliance between the two crowns; and so these preparations were prohibited.
“In 1497 a Portuguese fleet under Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope, or the Cape of Storms as they called it then; and soon the voyagers began to hear the Arabian tongue spoken on the other shore of the continent, and found that they had nearly circumnavigated Africa. At length, with the aid of Mohammedan pilots, they passed the mouths of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, and, stretching along the western coast of India, arrived, after a cruise of thirteen months, at Calicut, on the shore of Malabar, less than three hundred miles from the southern point of the peninsula.
“The Court of Lisbon now appointed a viceroy to rule over new countries discovered. Expeditions followed each other in rapid succession; and, in less than half a century more, the Portuguese were masters of the entire trade of the Indian Ocean. Their flag floated triumphantly along the shores of Africa from Morocco to Abyssinia, and on the Asiatic coast from Arabia to Siam; not to mention the vast regions of Brazil, which this nation began to colonize about the same time. These conquests were not made without opposition; but the Portuguese were as remarkable for their valor as for their enterprise, in those days; and, for a time, their prowess was too much for their enemies in Africa, in India, and even in Europe. The Venetians, who had lost the trade between India and Europe, were of course their enemies; and the Sultan of Egypt was hostile when he found that he was about to lose the profitable trade that passed through Alexandria. These two powers joined hands; and the Venetians sent from Italy to the head of the Red Sea, at an immense expense, the materials for building a fleet to meet and destroy the Portuguese vessels on their passage to India. But, as soon as this fleet was ready for active operations, it was attacked and destroyed by the Portuguese navy.
“Thus the Portuguese were masters of an empire on which the sun never set. It reached the height of its glory in the reign of John III., from 1521 to 1557. He was succeeded by his son Dom Sebastian, who made several expeditions against the Moors in Africa. In the last of these, he was utterly routed, his army destroyed, and he perished on the battle-field. This disaster seemed to initiate the decline of Portugal; and it continued to run down till it was only the shadow of its former greatness.
“Concerning Dom Sebastian, a very remarkable superstition prevails, even at the present time, in Portugal, to the effect that he will return, resume the crown, and restore the realm to its former greatness. For nearly two hundred years this belief has existed, and was almost universal at one time, not among the ignorant only, but in all classes of society. It was claimed that he was not killed in the battle, though his body was recognized by his page, and that he will come back as the temporal Messiah of Portugal. Several persons have appeared who have claimed to be the prince, the most remarkable of whom turned up at Venice twenty years after the prince’s presumed death. He told a very straight story; but the Senate of Venice banished him, and he was afterwards imprisoned in Naples and Florence for insisting upon the truth of his statements. He finally died in Castile; and many believed that he was not an impostor. Several times have been fixed for his coming; but it is not likely that he will be able to put in an appearance, on account of the two hundred years that have elapsed since he was in the flesh.
“As Sebastian did not come back from Africa, his uncle Henry assumed the crown; and at his death, as he had no direct heirs, Philip II., the Prince of Parma, and the Duchess of Braganza, claimed the throne, as did several others; but Philip settled the question by sending the Duke of Alva into Portugal, and taking forcible possession of the kingdom. In 1580, therefore, the whole of the vast dominions I have described were annexed to the Spanish empire. This connection lasted for sixty years; and the Portuguese call it ‘the sixty years’ captivity.’ During this time the people were never satisfied with their government, and in 1640 got up a revolution, and placed the Duke of Braganza on the throne, under the title of John IV. This was the beginning of the house of Braganza, which has held the throne up to the present time.
“Even in the seventeenth century Portugal had fallen from her high estate. She had lost part of her possessions and all her prestige; and from that time till the present she has had no great weight in European politics. Some of her colonial territories returned to the original owners, while others were taken by the Dutch, the English, and the Spaniards. For two centuries the most remarkable events in her history have been misfortunes. In 1755 an earthquake destroyed half the city of Lisbon, and buried thirty thousand people under its ruins. It came in two shocks, the second of which left the city a pile of ruins. Thousands of men and women fled from the falling walls to the quays on the river. Suddenly the ground under them sank with all the crowd upon it; and not one of the bodies ever came up. At the same time all the boats and vessels, loaded down with fugitives from the ruin, were sucked in by a fearful whirlpool; and not a vestige of them returned to the surface.
“Fifty-five years later came the French Revolution; in the results of which Portugal was involved. In 1807 she entered into an alliance with Great Britain; and Napoleon decided to wipe off the kingdom from the map of Europe. A French army was sent to Lisbon; and at its approach the Court left for Brazil, where it remained for several years. An English army arrived at Oporto the next year; and with these events began the peninsular war. The struggle lasted till 1812, and many great battles were fought in this kingdom. The country was desolated by the strife, and the sufferings of the people were extremely severe. Subscriptions were raised for them in England and elsewhere; and Sir Walter Scott wrote ‘The Vision of Don Roderick’ in aid of the sufferers.
“In 1821 Brazil declared her independence; but it was not acknowledged by Portugal till 1825. After fourteen years of absence, the Court—John VI. was king, having succeeded to the throne while in Brazil—returned to Portugal. During this period the home kingdom was practically a colony of Brazil; and the people were dissatisfied with the arrangement. A constitution was made, and the king accepted it. He had left his son as regent of Brazil, and he was proclaimed emperor of that country as Pedro I. He was the father of the present emperor, Pedro II.
“John VI. died in 1826. His legitimate successor was Pedro of Brazil; but he gave the crown to his daughter Maria. Before she could get possession of it, Dom Miguel, a younger son of John VI., usurped the throne. As he did not pay much deference to the constitution, the people revolted; and civil war raged for several years. Pedro, having abdicated the crown of Brazil in favor of his son, came to Portugal in 1832, to look after the interests of his daughter. He was made regent,—Maria da Gloria was only thirteen years old,—and with the help of England, cleaned out the Miguelists two years later. The little queen was declared of age at fifteen, and took the oath to support the constitution. She died in 1853; and her son, Pedro V., became king when he was fifteen. But he lived only eight years after his accession, and was followed by his brother, Luis I., the present king. There have been several insurrections since the Miguelists were disposed of, but none since 1851. The royal family have secured the affections of the people; for the sons of Maria have proved to be wise and sensible men. The finances are in bad condition; for the expense of the government exceeds the income every year. Now you have heard, and you may go and see for yourselves.”