CHAPTER XXXV.
MS. LEGEND OF EL CABO DOS TORMENTOS.
It is written—says the Spanish Dominican Friar and Missionary Priest, the Padre Navarette—that the first time reports reached Europe of a spectre haunting the Cape of Storms, was by the narratives of certain Portuguese adventurers, who sailed into the Southern Sea, with the Senhor Bartholomew Diaz, in the early part of the fifteenth century, when Dom Joam II. occupied the throne of Portugal.
His cousin and successor, King Emmanuel, fired by the discoveries made in the reigns of his predecessors, who had planted their flag and cross on the shores of Madeira, the Azores, and Isles of the Cape de Verd, resolved to accomplish what they had failed in, and with praiseworthy zeal despatched an admiral to discover a passage to India by sea.
After a long absence this cavalier returned and reported that he had found the southern extremity of the mighty African continent; but, that his ships had encountered great perils when off a flat-headed mountain of wondrous form, which he had named El Cabo dos Tormentos.
The King of Portugal suggested that "El Cabo de Buena Esperanto, (i.e., the Cape of Good Hope), would be a better term;" and it was at once adopted by his courtiers, though the mariners of the Admiral adhered to "the Cape of Torments," as they alleged that, not only had they nearly been swallowed by the waves of a black and stormy sea, but that they had seen a stupendous form, resembling a human figure, riding upon the whirling scud above the Table Mountain, and spreading his giant arms as if to clasp them in his terrible embrace, and hurl them into the yawning deep.
They insisted that this dangerous promontory was the end of the habitable world—the abode of devils, spectres, and torments—a place wherein nothing human could dwell; and that the seas which washed its shore should be shunned by all future navigators.
They ridiculed the title of Buena Esperança, and urged that no mariner in his senses would visit the place again; for the old salts of those days devoutly believed in tales of
"That sea-snake tremendous curled,
Whose monstrous circle girds the world,"
and that the earth was girt with fire at the Equator; that whoever passed the tempestuous Cape Bojador, which was first doubled by the Portuguese in 1433, and which forms the southern limit of Morocco, was doomed never to return, as a mysterious breeze (the trade wind?) blew for ever against them; that ships got into currents that ran down hill—currents against which they might beat and struggle in vain, till their shattered hulls were cast upon Bermuda—the "vexed Bermoothes" of Shakespeare, which, as Stowe tells us, "were supposed to be inhabited by witches and devils"—an iron shore where perpetual storms raged, and fated ships were dashed upon the rocks.
Despite these terrors, animated by a spirit of adventure, Vasco da Gama, a valiant mariner and cavalier of Alentejo, resolved to sail in quest of this terrible cape, accompanied by many of his friends, among whom was a noble young hidalgo, named Vasco da Lobiera, grandson of the gallant knight of that name, who fought at the battle of Aljubarotta, and received his spurs on the field from King Joam of good memory, at whose feet, in after years, he laid his famous romance, "Amadis de Gaul."