The East had been sending her produce to the West ever since the West—by which term we here mean Europe—had been civilised enough to need and to value it. There was a very ancient overland route from the north-west of India through Persia and Mesopotamia to Tyre and the Mediterranean coast. Another way was oversea from some Indian port as far as the head, that is to say the northern end, of the Persian Gulf, and thence, as before, overland to a port on the coast of Syria. And thirdly, there was a route by longer sea, again starting from India, calling perhaps at one or two ports in Arabia and up through the Red Sea. At a port in the Red Sea the goods would be landed and taken, probably on camel-back, to the Nile, and would be brought down the river and transhipped at its mouth into vessels which would carry them to Venice or Genoa.
The chief Indian port from which the trading vessels sailed, whether to the Persian Gulf or to the Red Sea, was Calicut, which we still see marked on the maps of India. It is a town on what is called the Malabar Coast, on the western side of India, low down towards the west.
And not only did ships bearing the produce of India start from Calicut, but Calicut was also the port to which came ships, some of them of great size, from the farther East, bearing the silks of China, the spices of the islands of the Malay Archipelago, and so on.
All the carrying trade west of Calicut seems to have been in the hands of Mahommedans, by far the most part of them being Arabs, at the date of da Gama's adventurous voyage to India. It was, of course, by far the more adventurous and full of danger for that very reason, because here was he, a Christian, and therefore to be regarded as almost their natural enemy by all good Mahommedans, coming to interfere with a trade which they had made their own.
It does not seem possible that they did not realise what his coming was likely to mean for the future of that trade. The Arab traders themselves knew the eastern coast of Africa at least as far south as Mozambique, for it was at this point that da Gama first came into touch with them. And it is probable that they knew the African coast further south also. They must have realised that ships going round the Cape of Good Hope could carry goods from India to Europe very much more cheaply than they could be transported by means which involved several transhipments, the payment of duties at several ports, and a longer or shorter carriage overland.
The wonder is that da Gama, going with only three vessels and of no great size—they were of the kind that were known as caravels—was ever allowed by the Moslems to come home again. But he artfully pretended to them that these three were only part of a larger fleet from which they had become separated, and it may be that this pretence imposed upon the Arabs and deterred them from doing him any injury. As it was, he was imprisoned for awhile by one of the Sultans, or rulers of a territory on the Indian coast, but by some means he conciliated his captor and was allowed to trade and go home again with his ships laden with silks, pearls, rubies, and a variety of treasure. The question that naturally occurs now is why it should have been the Portuguese, of all the European nations, that were led to undertake this sailing round Africa. The answer is interesting, because it involves an explanation of a curious idea of the geographers of the day.
We saw, in the second volume of this Greatest Story, Arabs and Moors established along the fertile fringe of Northern Africa. Northward of this fringe lay the Mediterranean; behind it, that is to say to the south, the desert. But the African tribes had penetrated and traversed this desert. They had learnt that there was, on the far side of it, a fertile land again, a land which was later known as Guinea. And this land was watered by a great river, now known as the Senegal river, flowing from the east and coming out into the sea in the Gulf of Guinea. It appeared to come from much the same direction as that in which they rightly supposed lay the sources of the Nile, the river of Egypt; and they seem to have imagined it a western branch of that ancient river. If they could mount up this branch then far enough in their boats they deemed that they might come out on the Nile, and so, if they pleased, arrive again on the Mediterranean.
The land of slaves
Apart from this idea, the land in itself was rich and produced much that they valued—gold dust and ivory in the elephants' tusks which the natives brought or barter with them—but above the ivory and gold and the rest of the rich products they valued the natives themselves, whom they captured and brought to markets in the Mediterranean towns and sold for slaves. Slaves had a value then which is not easy for us to realise to-day when our great difficulty is to find work for men to do. At that time the difficulty was to find men to do the work; and perhaps this was more true of Portugal and Spain than of other European countries, because so much of their territory lay uncultivated and waste by reason of the continual wars which had been waged between the Christians and the Moors. They needed men badly to till those waste lands. This fertile country then, south of the extensive tract of desert, had much that might attract the Spaniard or the Portugee.
We do not know very precisely why it was that little Portugal, rather than great Spain, sent out the mariners which worked southward along the western coast of Africa. We do not know, but perhaps we may make a guess. Spain had a large stretch of coast, with many ports, along the Mediterranean, and it is likely that Portuguese vessels would not have been very welcome if they tried to trade in that direction. Moreover, the Mediterranean swarmed with pirates, both of Mahommedan and Christian nations. It was no peaceful sea for the trader. Again, Spain had a long coast line northward and north-eastward right away to where the Pyrenees come up to the Bay of Biscay. There was no warm welcome there for ships encroaching on Spanish trade. Therefore, if the Portuguese sailors were to be adventurous at all there was no other very apparent direction for their enterprise to take than that of the western coast of Africa and of the islands that lay off it, such as Madeira, the Canaries, and the Cape Verde islands.