The magnetic line of no variation.This suggestion of the line of no magnetic variation was due to Columbus, who fell into the error of supposing it to be immovable. The infallibility of the pontiff not extending to matters of science, he committed the same mistake. In a few years it was discovered that the line of no variation was slowly moving to the east. It coincided with the meridian of London in 1662.
Patristic ethnical ideas.The obstacles that Patristic Geography had thrown in the way of maritime adventure were thus finally removed, but Patristic Ethnology led to a fearful tragedy. With a critical innocence that seems to have overlooked physical impossibilities and social difficulties, it had been the practice to refer the peopling of nations to legendary heroes or to the patriarchs of Scripture. The French were descended from Francus, the son of Hector; the Britons from Brutus, the son of Æneas; the genealogy of the Saxon kings could be given up to Adam; but it may excite our mirthful surprise that the conscientious Spanish chronicles could rise no higher than to Tubal, the grandson of Noah. The divisions of the Old World, Asia, Africa, and Europe, were assigned to the three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and the parentage of those continents was given to those patriarchs respectively. In this manner all mankind were brought into a family relationship, all equally the descendants of Adam, equally participators in his sin and fall. As long as it was supposed that the lands of Columbus were a part of Asia there was no difficulty; but when the true position and relations of the American continent were discovered, that it was separated from [166] Asia by a waste of waters of many thousand miles, how did the matter stand with the new-comers thus suddenly obtruded on the scene? Denial that the Indians are men. The voice of the fathers was altogether against the possibility of their Adamic descent. St. Augustine had denied the globular form and the existence of Antipodes; for it was impossible that there should be people on what was thus vainly asserted to be the other side of the earth, since none such are mentioned in the Scriptures. The lust for gold was only too ready to find its justification in the obvious conclusion; and the Spaniards, with appalling atrocity, proceeded to act toward these unfortunates as though they did not belong to the human race. Already their lands and goods had been taken from them by apostolic authority. The American tragedy. Their persons were next seized, under the text that the heathen are given as an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. It was one unspeakable outrage, one unutterable ruin, with out discrimination of age or sex. Those who died not under the lash in a tropical sun died in the darkness of the mine. From sequestered sand-banks, where the red flamingo fishes in the grey of the morning; from fever-stricken mangrove thickets, and the gloom of impenetrable forests; from hiding-places in the clefts of rocks, and the solitude of invisible caves; from the eternal snows of the Andes, where there was no witness but the all-seeing Sun, there went up to God a cry of human despair. By millions upon millions, whole races and nations were remorselessly cut off. The Bishop of Chiapa affirms that more than fifteen millions were exterminated in his time! The crime of Spain. From Mexico and Peru a civilization that might have instructed Europe was crushed out. Is it for nothing that Spain has been made a hideous skeleton among living nations, a warning spectacle to the world? Had not her punishment overtaken her, men would have surely said, "There is no retribution, there is no God!" It has been her evil destiny to ruin two civilizations, Oriental and Occidental, and to be ruined thereby herself. With circumstances of dreadful barbarity she expelled the Moors, who had become children of her soil by as long a residence as the Normans have had in England from William [167] the Conqueror to our time. In America she destroyed races more civilized than herself. Expulsion and emigration have deprived her of her best blood, her great cities have sunk into insignificance, and towns that once had more than a million of inhabitants can now only show a few scanty thousands.
The discovery of America agitated Europe to its deepest foundations. All classes of men were affected. The populace at once went wild with a lust of gold and a love of adventure. Well might Pomponius Lætus, under process for his philosophical opinions in Rome, shed tears of joy when tidings of the great event reached him; well might Leo X., a few years later, sit up till far in the night reading to his sister and his cardinals the "Oceanica" of Anghiera.
Vasco de Gama. African coasting voyages.If Columbus failed in his attempt to reach India by sailing to the west, Vasco de Gama succeeded by sailing to the south. He doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and retraced the track of the ships of Pharaoh Necho, which had accomplished the same undertaking two thousand years previously. The Portuguese had been for long engaged in an examination of the coast of Africa under the bull of Martin V., which recognised the possibility of reaching India by passing round that continent. It is an amusing instance of making scientific discoveries by contract, that King Alphonso made a bargain with Ferdinand Gomez, of Lisbon, for the exploration of the African coast, the stipulation being that he should discover not less than three hundred miles every year, and that the starting-point should be Sierra Leone.
Papal confines of Spain and Portugal.We have seen that a belief in the immobility of the line of no magnetic variation had led Pope Alexander VI. to establish a perpetual boundary between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions and fields of adventure. That line he considered to be the natural boundary between the eastern and western hemispheres. An accurate determination of longitude was therefore a national as well as a nautical question. Columbus had relied on astronomical methods; Gilbert at a [168] subsequent period proposed to determine it by magnetical observations. The variation itself could not be accounted for on the doctrine vulgarly received, that magnetism is an effluvium issuing forth from the root of the tail of the Little Bear, but was scientifically, though erroneously, explained by Gilbert's hypothesis that earthy substance is attractive—that a needle approaching a continent will incline toward it; and hence that in the midst of the Atlantic, being equally disturbed by Europe and America, it will point evenly between both.
News that Africa might be doubled.Pedro de Covilho had sent word to King John II., from Cairo, by two Jews, Rabbi Abraham and Rabbi Joseph, that there was a south cape of Africa which could be doubled. They brought with them an Arabic map of the African coast. This was about the time that Bartholomew Diaz had reached the Cape in two little pinnaces of fifty tons apiece. He sailed August, 1486, and returned December, 1487, with an account of his discovery. Covilho had learned from the Arabian mariners, who were perfectly familiar with the east coast, that they had frequently been at the south of Africa, and that there was no difficulty in passing round the continent that way.
De Gama's successful voyage.A voyage to the south is even more full of portents than one to the west. The accustomed heavens seem to sink away, and new stars are nightly approached. Vasco de Gama set sail July 9, 1497, with three ships and 160 men, having with him the Arab map. King John had employed his Jewish physicians, Roderigo and Joseph, to devise what help they could from the stars. They applied the astrolabe to marine use, and constructed tables. These were the same doctors who had told him that Columbus would certainly succeed in reaching India, and advised him to send out a secret expedition in anticipation, which was actually done, though it failed through want of resolution in its captain. Encountering the usual difficulties, tempestuous weather, and a mutinous crew, who conspired to put him to death, De Gama succeeded, November 20, in doubling the Cape. On March 1st he met seven small Arab vessels, and was surprised to find that they used the compass, quadrants, sea-charts, [169] and "had divers maritime mysteries not short of the Portugals." He reaches India. With joy he soon after recovered sight of the northern stars, so long unseen. He now bore away to the north-east, and on May 19, 1498, reached Calicut, on the Malabar coast.
A commercial revolution the result.The consequences of this voyage were to the last degree important. The commercial arrangements of Europe were completely dislocated; Venice was deprived of her mercantile supremacy; the hatred of Genoa was gratified; prosperity left the Italian towns; Egypt, hitherto supposed to possess a pre-eminent advantage as offering the best avenue to India, suddenly lost her position; the commercial monopolies so long in the hands of the European Jews were broken down. The discovery of America and passage of the Cape were the first steps of that prodigious maritime development soon exhibited by Western Europe. And since commercial prosperity is forthwith followed by the production of men and concentration of wealth, and moreover implies an energetic intellectual condition, it appeared before long that the three centres of population, of wealth, of intellect were shifting westwardly. The front of Europe was suddenly changed; the British islands, hitherto in a sequestered and eccentric position, were all at once put in the van of the new movement.