“The devil take you! What brought you here!” was the compliment addressed to the Portuguese by a Moor in Calicut; and in Mozambique and Mombasa the Moors (we will henceforward use this word as a generic term, as aforesaid) persuaded or forced Samundri Rajah (Zamorin) king or count (India was under a pseudo-feudal rule) of Calicut, to exterminate the Portuguese. Calicut was the commercial empire of the coast of Malabar, and the dominions of the rajah formed the so-called kingdom of Kanara.
It was an easy matter no doubt to persuade the ruler that Vasco da Gama was a pirate and his king a myth; certainly the Moors of Calicut defined, in advance and unawares, the Portuguese dominion, which differed from common piracy only in that it was rapine organised by a political state. Convinced or constrained, the rajah ordered the navigators to be pursued, but they embarked and defended themselves, August 30th. After remaining some months in the island of Anjediva, upon the coast, Vasco da Gama resolved to return and set sail for Portugal on the 10th of July, 1498. A year later on the same date he reached Lisbon. Great was the enthusiasm. Dom Emmanuel also had his Indies, and Portugal her Columbus. But what tidings of Prester John? And what of Covilhão? None. The navigator had succeeded in overcoming the cape and discovering India, but he had not succeeded in solving the enigma which at that time had baffled their search for three centuries. This was of small account in history. The essential point was the solving of a greater enigma—that of the “dark ocean.” Little was now wanting; in twenty years there would not remain an unknown corner of land in the whole circumference of the globe, nor a span unexplored in the vast expanse of seas. “Under the wild waves to learn the secrets of the earth, and the mysteries and illusions of the sea,” the Portuguese with heroic curiosity took in their hands the future of Europe and of the world. In the year after the discovery of India, Pedro Alvares Cabral, who was sent thither with an imposing fleet, could not resist the temptation of curiosity. Steering east in the Atlantic a question constantly tormented him—what lay to the west? In that direction Columbus had discovered the Indies in the northern hemisphere; were there not perhaps Indies in the southern hemisphere also? He steered west to explore—what were a few months more or less in the long journey to the east? Thus he discovered Brazil; the western land lay from the extreme north to the extreme south, extending through the two hemispheres. Not till then could it be said that America was completely discovered (1500).
The news of the discovery of new lands made little impression in Lisbon; the fervent desire of the court was the discovery of the Prester, the enchanted Prester John, in order to make a good alliance with him and bring to Portugal a little at least of those good things which Vasco da Gama had seen with his own eyes, the report of which inflamed the whole nation with cupidity. Cabral was sent for this purpose, not to discover lands; the names in their repertory were now barely sufficient to designate the islands, capes, ports, bays, coasts, and continents. Their desires were set on other things; other hopes seethed within them: “Good luck! good luck! Many rubies, many emeralds!”
It was resolved to send a fleet to India, for now that the way was known there was nothing to fear and no reason to diminish the number or tonnage of the ships. Pedro Alvares Cabral was appointed admiral of the fleet, which consisted of thirteen ships and carried twelve hundred men. The fleet raised anchor in the Tagus on the 9th of March, 1500. The shouts of the sailors as they worked at the capstan in unison, a sound as sad and mournful as the sea; the low murmur of the cables in the hawses; the whistle of the masters as they directed the manœuvres; the many-coloured flags flying in the breeze; the sails half-furled upon the masts, made a vivid picture of the nation which in the year 1500 was also setting out, shriven and well-disposed, upon this long voyage of a little more than a century, full of disease and shipwreck, at the end of which waited a tomb vast as the sea and silent as the ocean in the funereal calm of the tropics.
Cabral’s voyage, besides beginning the Portuguese dominion in India, had really two desirable results: it swept away the two legends of Prester John and of the “sea of darkness.” He discovered Brazil and returned to tell Emmanuel that the supposed emperor of the East was a miserable black heathen king, intrenched in the inaccessible mountains of Abyssinia. In pursuit of a myth, drawn by an abyss, Portugal discovered the continents and islands of the Atlantic and reached India. For the sake of an illusion they achieved the reality which struck the world with wonder. The world is a mirage and men are but shadows borne upon the cunning winds of destiny. With the lands discovered and the seas ploughed from east to west, it still remained to unite these two halves of the known world, and sail round them, to make sure that they lay whole and complete in the hands of men. This was the effect of the voyage of Magellan (Magalhães) twenty years after. The sea was dark no more, the great conquest was complete. But a new enterprise now revealed itself—to devour what was discovered, to assimilate the world. The whole of Portugal embarked for India in Cabral’s fleet.
THE CONQUEST OF INDIA
[1500-1502 A.D.]
On the 13th of September of the year 1500, Cabral reached Calicut. He went, not like Vasco da Gama, as a discoverer, but as the emissary of the noble Portuguese monarch, the bearer of his letters and proposals of alliance to the rajah of Calicut. As such he was received in a solemn audience. The Portuguese, donning their richest clothes and their best and brightest arms, thought to make an impression upon the Eastern potentate by their riches; but the representatives of Europe, poor and strong, were to be outdone by the magnificence of opulent India. The polish of their arms was dimmed by the blaze of precious stones “whose rays were blinding.”
The rajah was borne in a palanquin, or litter, upon the shoulders of his nobles, reclining upon silken cushions among coverlets worked in gold thread, falling in folds and edged with borders encrusted with precious stones. The litter advanced slowly, under a silken canopy fringed with gold, and within this double tabernacle appeared the black rajah, covered with precious stones. It was blinding to look upon him. On each side of the canopy were pages stirring the air with fans of peacock feathers, and beside the palanquin came those who bore the insignia of royalty—the sword and dagger, the foil of gold, the symbolical lily-flower, the ewer of water, and finally the cup into which the king spat the betel, the chewing of which makes the teeth pink, and gives “a most sweet breath.”
Throughout the whole length of the procession and bringing up the rear were bands of musicians rending the air with their drums, tom-toms of gold and silver suspended by cords from poles of bamboo, and enormous trumpets, some straight and some curved, raised in the air, which gave the musicians the appearance of elephants with golden trunks, their flags encrusted with rubies and emeralds.