While thus the South-European navigators unfurled their sails on the Atlantic, and gave the first impulse to the glorious discoveries that in the following century were destined to open up the ocean, and reveal its hitherto unknown greatness to mankind, the Indian Sea still remained closed to their enterprise; for though the Venetians by this time rivalled, if they did not surpass the ancient maritime greatness of the Tyrians in the Mediterranean, they did not, like them, directly fetch the rich produce of the South in their own ships from the East-African and Indian ports, but received them at second hand from the Arabian masters of Syria and Egypt.
But though no ship of theirs was ever seen in the Indian seas, through them the knowledge of the Arabian discoveries in those parts penetrated to Europe, and widely extended the knowledge of the ocean. For when the Arabs, fired by the prophetic ardour of Mahomet, suddenly emerged from the obscurity of pastoral life, and appeared as conquerors before the astonished world, the trade of the Indian Ocean fell into the hands of these new masters of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, who soon learnt to pursue it with an energy which the Romans and Persians had never known. The town of Bassora was founded by the caliph Omar on the western shore of the great stream formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, and soon emulated Alexandria herself in the greatness of its commerce. From Bassora the Arabs sailed far beyond the Siamese Gulf, which had formerly bounded European navigation. They visited the unknown ports of the Indian archipelago, and established so active a trade with Canton, that the Chinese emperor granted them the use of their own laws in that city.
This progress of the Arabs, and the vast treasures accruing to Venice from the overland Indian trade, could not fail to excite the envy of the other seafaring powers, and to call forth an increasing desire of discovering a new maritime route to the wealth-teeming regions of Southern Asia.
The wonderful narratives of the first travellers who wandered by land to the distant East likewise contributed in no small degree to foment the ardour of discovery. The most celebrated of these geographical pioneers was Marco Polo, a noble Venetian who had resided many years at the court of the Mongol ruler, Kublai Khan, and visited the most remote regions of Asia. He was the first European that ever sailed along the western shores of the Pacific, the first that told his astonished countrymen of the magnificence of Cambalu or Peking, the capital of the great kingdom of Cathay, and of the splendour of Zipanga or Japan situated on the confines of a vast ocean extending to the east. He also made more than one sea-voyage in the Indian Ocean, and to him Europe owed her first knowledge of the Moluccas, the east coast of Africa, and the island of Madagascar.
This greatest of all the mediæval travellers, who without exaggeration may be said to have enlarged the boundaries of the known earth as much as Alexander the Great, was followed by Oderich of Portenau, who travelled as far as India and China (1320-1330); by Sir John Mandeville, who visited almost all the lands described by Marco Polo; by Schildberger of Munich, who accompanied the barbarous Tamerlane on his locust expeditions; and finally by Clavigo, sent in the year 1403 by the Spanish court on an embassy to Samarcand. The truths which these bold travellers communicated to their countrymen about the riches and the commerce of the nations they had visited, as well as the fables in which their credulity or their extravagant fancy indulged, made an enormous impression on the European mind, and raised to a feverish heat the longing after those sunny lands and isles which imagination adorned with all the charms of an earthly paradise.
[CHAP. XXIV.]
Prince Henry of Portugal.—Discovery of Porto Santo and Madeira.—Doubling of Cape Bojador.—Discovery of the Cape Verde Islands.—Bartholomew Diaz.—Vasco de Gama.—Columbus.—His Predecessors.—Discovery of Greenland by Günnbjorn.—Bjorne Herjulfson.—Leif.—John Vaz Cortereal.—John and Sebastian Cabot.—Retrospective View of the Beginnings of English Navigation.—Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci.—Vincent Yañez Pinson.—Cortez.—Verazzani.—Cartier.—The Portuguese in the Indian Ocean.