Ocean's Story; or, Triumphs of Thirty Centuries / Maritime Adventures, Achievements, Explorations, Discoveries and Inventions; and of the Rise and Progress of Ship-Building and Ocean Navigation, from the Ark to the Iron Steamships

by Frank B. Goodrich

CHAPTER XII.

THE PORTUGUESE ON THE COAST OF AFRICA—THE SPANIARDS AND THE CANARY ISLES—DON HENRY OF PORTUGAL—THE TERRIBLE CAPE, NOW CAPE BOJADOR—THE SACRED PROMONTORY—DISCOVERY OF THE MADEIRAS—A DREADFUL PHENOMENON—A PROLIFIC RABBIT AND A WONDERFUL CONFLAGRATION—HOSTILITY OF THE PORTUGUESE TO FURTHER MARITIME ADVENTURE—THE BAY OF HORSES—THE FIRST GOLD DUST SEEN IN EUROPE—DISCOVERY OF CAPE VERD AND THE AZORES—THE EUROPEANS APPROACH THE EQUATOR—JOURNEY OF CADA-MOSTO—DEATH OF DON HENRY—PROGRESS OF NAVIGATION UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THIS PRINCE.

We are now to consider at some length a series of voyages, tedious and fruitless at first, successful in the end, undertaken by the Portuguese, in their age of maritime heroism, to discover a passage by sea to the famous commercial region of the Indies, some general knowledge of which had been preserved since the Persian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires. The achievements which we are about to narrate were so surprising, so significant, and so complete, that, as has been aptly remarked, they can never happen again in history, unless, indeed, Providence were to create new and accessible worlds for discovery and conquest, or to replunge mankind for ages into ignorance and superstition. But, before proceeding with the discoveries of the Portuguese, we must mention a previous discovery made by accident in the same region by the French and Spanish.

About the year 1330, a French ship was driven among a number of islands which lay off the coast of the Desert of Sahara. These had been known to the ancients as the Fortunate Islands, and Juba of Mauritania, who is quoted by Pliny, calls two of them by name,—Trivaria, or Snow Island, and Canaria, or Island of Dogs. They had been lost to the knowledge of the Europeans for a thousand years, and it was a storm which revealed their existence, as we have said, to a vessel forced by stress of weather to escape from the coast into the open sea. The Spaniards profited by the vicinity of the group to make discoveries and settlements among them. Trivaria became Teneriffe, and Canaria the Grand Canary. It was here that superstition now placed the limits of navigation, and expressed the idea upon maps, by representing a giant armed with a formidable club, and dwelling in a tower, as threatening ships with destruction if they ventured farther out to sea. It is in this immediate neighborhood that we are now about to follow the flaring and patient enterprises of the Portuguese.

CAPE BOJADOR.

Don Henry, the fifth son of John I. of Portugal, was placed by his father, in 1415, in command of the city of Ceuta, in Africa, which he had just conquered from the Moors. During his stay here, the young prince acquired much information relative to the seas and coasts of Western Africa, and this first suggested in his mind a plan for maritime discovery, which afterwards became his favorite and almost exclusive pursuit. He sent a vessel upon the first voyage of exploration undertaken by any nation in modern times. The commander was instructed to follow the western coast of Africa, and, if possible, to pass the cape called by the Portuguese Cape Non, Nun, or Noun. This had hitherto been considered the utmost southern limit of navigation by the Europeans, and had obtained its name from the negative term in the Portuguese language—implying that there was nothing beyond. A current proverb expressed the idea thus:

Whoe'er would pass the Cape of Non
Shall turn again, or else begone.

The fate of this vessel has not been recorded; but Don Henry continued for many years to send other vessels upon the same errand. Several of them proceeded one hundred and eighty miles beyond Cape Non, to another and more formidable promontory, to which they gave the name of Bojador—from bojar, to double—on account of the circuit which must be made to get around it, as it stretches more than one hundred miles into the ocean. The tides and shoals here formed a current twenty miles wide; and the spectacle of this swollen and beating surge, which precluded all possibility of creeping along close to the coast, filled these timid navigators with terror and amazement. They dared not venture out of sight of land, and, seized with a sudden remembrance of the fabulous horrors of the torrid zone, they regarded the interposition of this terrific cape as a providential warning, and sailed hastily back to Portugal. There, with that fancy for embellishment peculiar to sailors of all ages, they narrated stories, or, as would be said in the present day, yarns, calculated forever to dissuade from further ventures in the latitudes of Capes Non and Bojador.