“The first voyage undertaken under the direction of Prince Henry was in 1419, and covered only five degrees of latitude. The expedition was driven out to sea and landed at a small island north-east of Madeira, which they named Porto Santo. The next year three vessels were sent for a longer voyage. This fleet reached the dreaded cape, and discovered Madeira. On the next voyage they doubled Cape Bojador; and, having exploded the superstition, in the course of a few years they advanced four hundred leagues farther, and discovered the Senegal River. Here they found men with woolly hair and skins as black as ebony; and they began to dread a nearer approach to the equator.
“When they returned, their countrymen with one voice attempted to dissuade Prince Henry from any further attempts; but he would hear of no delay. He applied to Pope Eugene IV.; and, representing that his chief object was the pious wish to spread a knowledge of the Christian faith among the idolatrous people of Africa, he obtained a bull conferring on the people of Portugal the exclusive right to all the countries they had discovered, or might discover, between Cape Nun—about three hundred miles north of Cape Bojador—and India. Such a donation may appear ridiculous enough to us; but it was never doubted then that the pope had ample right to bestow such a gift; and for a long time all the powers of Europe considered the right of the Portuguese to be good, and acknowledged their title to almost the whole of Africa. About this time Prince Henry died, and little progress was made in discovery for some years. But the Portuguese had begun to push boldly out to sea, and had lost all dread of the burning zone.
“In the reign of John II., from 1481 to 1495, discoveries were pushed with greater vigor than ever before. The Cape de Verde Islands were colonized; and the Portuguese ships, which had advanced to the coast of Guinea, began to return with cargoes of gold-dust, ivory, gums, and other valuable products. It was during the reign of this monarch that Columbus visited Lisbon, and offered his services to Portugal; and it appears that the king was inclined to listen to the plans of the great navigator, but he was dissuaded from doing so by his own courtiers.
“The revenue derived at this time from the African coast became so important that John feared the vessels of other nations might be attracted to it. To prevent this, the voyages there were represented as being in the highest degree dangerous, and even impossible except in the peculiar vessels used by the Portuguese. The monarchs of Castile had some idea of what was going on, and were very eager to learn more; and in one case came very near succeeding. A Portuguese captain and two pilots, in the hope of a rich reward, set out for Castile to dispose of the desired information; but they were pursued by the king’s agents. When overtaken, they refused to return; but two of them were killed on the spot, and the other brought back to Evora and quartered. The attempt of a rich Spaniard, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to build vessels in English ports for the African trade, turned out no better. King John reminded the English king, Edward IV., of the ancient alliance between the two crowns; and so these preparations were prohibited.
“In 1497 a Portuguese fleet under Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope, or the Cape of Storms as they called it then; and soon the voyagers began to hear the Arabian tongue spoken on the other shore of the continent, and found that they had nearly circumnavigated Africa. At length, with the aid of Mohammedan pilots, they passed the mouths of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, and, stretching along the western coast of India, arrived, after a cruise of thirteen months, at Calicut, on the shore of Malabar, less than three hundred miles from the southern point of the peninsula.
“The Court of Lisbon now appointed a viceroy to rule over new countries discovered. Expeditions followed each other in rapid succession; and, in less than half a century more, the Portuguese were masters of the entire trade of the Indian Ocean. Their flag floated triumphantly along the shores of Africa from Morocco to Abyssinia, and on the Asiatic coast from Arabia to Siam; not to mention the vast regions of Brazil, which this nation began to colonize about the same time. These conquests were not made without opposition; but the Portuguese were as remarkable for their valor as for their enterprise, in those days; and, for a time, their prowess was too much for their enemies in Africa, in India, and even in Europe. The Venetians, who had lost the trade between India and Europe, were of course their enemies; and the Sultan of Egypt was hostile when he found that he was about to lose the profitable trade that passed through Alexandria. These two powers joined hands; and the Venetians sent from Italy to the head of the Red Sea, at an immense expense, the materials for building a fleet to meet and destroy the Portuguese vessels on their passage to India. But, as soon as this fleet was ready for active operations, it was attacked and destroyed by the Portuguese navy.
“Thus the Portuguese were masters of an empire on which the sun never set. It reached the height of its glory in the reign of John III., from 1521 to 1557. He was succeeded by his son Dom Sebastian, who made several expeditions against the Moors in Africa. In the last of these, he was utterly routed, his army destroyed, and he perished on the battle-field. This disaster seemed to initiate the decline of Portugal; and it continued to run down till it was only the shadow of its former greatness.
“Concerning Dom Sebastian, a very remarkable superstition prevails, even at the present time, in Portugal, to the effect that he will return, resume the crown, and restore the realm to its former greatness. For nearly two hundred years this belief has existed, and was almost universal at one time, not among the ignorant only, but in all classes of society. It was claimed that he was not killed in the battle, though his body was recognized by his page, and that he will come back as the temporal Messiah of Portugal. Several persons have appeared who have claimed to be the prince, the most remarkable of whom turned up at Venice twenty years after the prince’s presumed death. He told a very straight story; but the Senate of Venice banished him, and he was afterwards imprisoned in Naples and Florence for insisting upon the truth of his statements. He finally died in Castile; and many believed that he was not an impostor. Several times have been fixed for his coming; but it is not likely that he will be able to put in an appearance, on account of the two hundred years that have elapsed since he was in the flesh.
“As Sebastian did not come back from Africa, his uncle Henry assumed the crown; and at his death, as he had no direct heirs, Philip II., the Prince of Parma, and the Duchess of Braganza, claimed the throne, as did several others; but Philip settled the question by sending the Duke of Alva into Portugal, and taking forcible possession of the kingdom. In 1580, therefore, the whole of the vast dominions I have described were annexed to the Spanish empire. This connection lasted for sixty years; and the Portuguese call it ‘the sixty years’ captivity.’ During this time the people were never satisfied with their government, and in 1640 got up a revolution, and placed the Duke of Braganza on the throne, under the title of John IV. This was the beginning of the house of Braganza, which has held the throne up to the present time.
“Even in the seventeenth century Portugal had fallen from her high estate. She had lost part of her possessions and all her prestige; and from that time till the present she has had no great weight in European politics. Some of her colonial territories returned to the original owners, while others were taken by the Dutch, the English, and the Spaniards. For two centuries the most remarkable events in her history have been misfortunes. In 1755 an earthquake destroyed half the city of Lisbon, and buried thirty thousand people under its ruins. It came in two shocks, the second of which left the city a pile of ruins. Thousands of men and women fled from the falling walls to the quays on the river. Suddenly the ground under them sank with all the crowd upon it; and not one of the bodies ever came up. At the same time all the boats and vessels, loaded down with fugitives from the ruin, were sucked in by a fearful whirlpool; and not a vestige of them returned to the surface.