The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem
husbandry; and hence it was that agriculture was of old improved and
diffused by the Phoenician colonies.
[44] At the reduction of Ceuta in Africa, and in other engagements,
Prince Henry displayed military genius and valour of the first
magnitude. The important fortress of Ceuta was in a manner won by his
own sword.
[45] Nam, in Portuguese, a negative. It is now called by corruption Cape
Nun.
[46] Cape Bojador, from the Spanish, _bojar_, to compass or go about.
[47] Unluckily, he also left on this island two rabbits, whose young so
increased that in a few years it was found not habitable, every
vegetable being destroyed by the great increase of these animals.
[48] Madeira in Portuguese signifies timber.--_Ed._
[49] If one would trace the true character of Cortez and the Americans,
he must have recourse to the numerous Spanish writers, who were either
witnesses of the first wars, or soon after travelled in these countries.
[The reader cannot do better than refer to Prescott's _History of the
Conquest of Mexico and Peru_ for information on these points.--_Ed._] In
these he will find many anecdotes which afford a light not to be found
in our modern histories. Cortez set out to take gold by force, and not
by establishing any system of commerce with the natives, the only just
reason for effecting a settlement in a foreign country. He was asked by
various states, what commodities or drugs he wanted, and was promised
abundant supply. He and his Spaniards, he answered, had a disease at
their hearts, which nothing but gold could cure; and he received
intelligence that Mexico abounded with it. Under pretence of a friendly
conference, he made the Mexican emperor, Montezuma, his prisoner, and
ordered him to pay tribute to Charles V. Immense sums were paid, but the
demand was boundless. Tumults ensued. Cortez displayed amazing
generalship, and some millions of those who boasted of the greatness of
Montezuma were sacrificed to the disease of Cortez's heart. Pizarro,
however, in the barbarity of his character, far exceeded him. There is a
bright side to the character of Cortez, if we can forget that his
avarice was the cause of a most unjust and most bloody war; but Pizarro
is a character completely detestable, destitute of every spark of
generosity. He massacred the Peruvians because they were barbarians, and
he himself could not read. Atabalipa, the Peruvian Inca, amazed at the
art of reading, got a Spaniard to write the word Dios (God) on his
finger. On trying if the Spaniards agreed in what it signified, he
discovered that Pizarro could not read. And Pizarro, in revenge of the
contempt he perceived in the face of Atabalipa, ordered that prince to
be tried for his life, for having concubines, and being an idolater.
Atabalipa was condemned to be burned; but on submitting to baptism, he
was only hanged. See Prescott's _Conquest of Peru_.
[50] The difficulties he surmounted, and the assistance he received, are
sufficient proofs that an adventurer of inferior birth could never have
carried his designs into execution.
[51] Don Pedro was villainously accused of treacherous designs by his
illegitimate brother, the first Duke of Braganza. Henry left his town of
Sagrez to defend his brother at court, but in vain. Pedro, finding the
young king in the power of Braganza, fled, and soon after was killed in
defending himself against a party who were sent to seize him. His
innocence, after his death, was fully proved, and his nephew, Alonzo V.,
gave him an honourable burial.
[52] Henry, who undertook to extend the boundaries which ignorance had
given to the world, had extended them much beyond the sensible horizon
long ere Columbus appeared. Columbus indeed taught the Spaniards the use
of longitude and latitude in navigation, but that great mathematician,
Henry, was the author of that grand discovery, and of the _use_ of the
compass. Every alteration ascribed to Columbus, had almost fifty years
before been effected by Henry. Even Henry's idea of sailing to India was
adopted by Columbus. It was everywhere his proposal. When he arrived in
the West Indies he thought he had found the Ophir of Solomon, and thence
these islands received their general name, and on his return he told
John II. that he had been at the islands of India. To find the Spice
Islands of the East was his proposal at the court of Spain; and even on
his fourth and last voyage in 1502, three years after Gama's return, he
promised the King of Spain to find India by a westward passage. But
though great discoveries rewarded his toils, his first and last purpose
he never completed. It was reserved for Magalhaens to discover the
westward route to the Eastern world.
Gomara and other Spanish writers relate, that while Columbus lived in
Madeira, a pilot, the only survivor of a ship's crew, died at his house.
This pilot, they say, had been driven to the West Indies, or America, by
tempest, and on his death-bed communicated the journal of his voyage to
Columbus.
[53] Or Bethlehem, so named from the chapel.
[54] Now called St. Helen's.
[55] The voyage of Gama has been called merely a coasting one, and
therefore regarded as much less dangerous and heroical than that of
Columbus, or of Magalhaens. But this is one of the opinions hastily
taken up, and founded on ignorance. Columbus and Magalhaens undertook to
navigate unknown oceans, and so did Gama; with this difference, that the
ocean around the Cape of Good Hope, which Gama was to encounter, was
believed to be, and had been avoided by Diaz, as impassable. Prince
Henry suggested that the current of Cape Bojador might be avoided by
standing out to sea, and thus that Cape was first passed. Gama for this
reason did not coast, but stood out to sea for upwards of three months
of tempestuous weather. The tempests which afflicted Columbus and
Magalhaens are by their different historians described with
circumstances of less horror and danger than those which attacked Gama.
All the three commanders were endangered by mutiny; but none of their
crews, save Gama's, could urge the opinion of ages, and the example of a
living captain, that the dreadful ocean which they attempted was
impassable. Columbus and Magalhaens always found means, after detecting
a conspiracy, to keep the rest in hope; but Gama's men, when he put the
pilots in irons, continued in the utmost despair. Columbus was indeed
ill obeyed; Magalhaens sometimes little better; but nothing, save the
wonderful authority of Gama's command, could have led his crew through
the tempest which he surmounted ere he doubled the Cape of Good Hope.
Columbus, with _his_ crew, must have returned. The expedients which he
used to soothe them, would, under _his_ authority, have had no avail in
the tempest which Gama rode through. From every circumstance it is
evident that Gama had determined not to return, unless he found India.
Nothing less than such resolution to perish or attain his point could
have led him on.
[56] It afterwards appeared that the Moorish King of Mombas had been
informed of what happened at Mozambique, and intended to revenge it by
the total destruction of the fleet.
[57] Amerigo Vespucci, describing his voyage to America, says, "Having
passed the line, _e come desideroso d'essere autore che segnassi la
stella_--desirous to be the namer and discoverer of the Pole-star of the
other hemisphere, I lost my sleep many nights in contemplating the stars
of the other pole." He then laments, that as his instruments could not
discover any star of less motion then ten degrees, he had not the
satisfaction of giving a name to any one. But as he observed four stars,
in form of an almond, which had but little motion, he hoped in his next
voyage he should be able to mark them out.--All this is curious, and
affords a good comment on the temper of the man who had the art to
defraud Columbus, by giving his own name to America; of which he
challenged the discovery. Near fifty years before the voyage of Amerigo
Vespucci, the Portuguese had crossed the line; and Diaz fourteen, and
Gama nearly three years before, had doubled the Cape of Good Hope; had
discovered seven stars in the constellation of the south pole, and from
the appearance of the four most luminous, had given it the name of "The
Cross," a figure which it better resembles than that of an almond.
[58] Properly "Samudra-Rajah," King of the Sea, corrupted into
Zamorim.--_Ed._
[59] "Kotwâl" signifies Superintendent of the Police.--_Ed._
[60] Faria y Sousa.
[61] It was the custom of the first discoverers to erect crosses at
various places remarkable in their voyage. Gama erected six: one,
dedicated to St. Raphael, at the river of Good Signs; one to St. George,
at Mozambique; one to St. Stephen, at Melinda; one to St. Gabriel, at
Calicut; and one to St. Mary, at the island thence named, near
Anchediva.
[62] _The Lusiad_; in the original, Os Lusiadas, The Lusiads, from the
Latin name (_Lusitania_) of Portugal, derived from Lusus or Lysas, the
companion of Bacchus in his travels, who settled a colony in Lusitania,
See Plin. 1, iii. c. i.
[63] _Thro' seas where sail was never spread before._--M. Duperron de
Castera, who has given a French prose translation, or rather paraphrase,
of the Lusiad, has a long note on this passage, which, he tells us, must
not be understood literally. Our author, he says, could not be ignorant
that the African and Indian Oceans had been navigated before the times
of the Portuguese. The Phoenicians, whose fleets passed the straits of
Gibraltar, made frequent voyages in these seas, though they carefully
concealed the course of their navigation that other nations might not
become partakers of their lucrative traffic.--See the Periplus of Hanno,
in Cory's Ancient Fragments.--_Ed._
[64] _And all my country's wars._--He interweaves artfully the history
of Portugal.--VOLTAIRE.
[65] _To Holy Faith unnumber'd altars rear'd._--In no period of history
does human nature appear with more shocking, more diabolical features
than in the wars of Cortez, and the Spanish conquerors of South America.
Zeal for the Christian religion was esteemed, at the time of the
Portuguese grandeur, as the most cardinal virtue, and to propagate
Christianity and extirpate Mohammedanism were the most certain proofs of
that zeal. In all their expeditions this was professedly a principal
motive of the Lusitanian monarchs, and Camoëns understood the nature of
epic poetry too well to omit it.
[66] Ulysses, who is the subject of the Odyssey.
[67] The voyage of Æneas, described in the Æneid of Virgil.
[68] Alexander the Great, who claimed to be the son of Jupiter Ammon.
[69] Vasco de Gama is, in a great measure, though not exclusively, the
hero of the Lusiad.
[70] King Sebastian, who came to the throne in his minority. Though the
warm imagination of Camoëns anticipated the praises of the future hero,
the young monarch, like Virgil's Pollio, had not the happiness to fulfil
the prophecy. His endowments and enterprising genius promised, indeed, a
glorious reign. Ambitious of military laurels, he led a powerful army
into Africa, on purpose to replace Muley Hamet on the throne of Morocco,
from which he had been deposed by Muley Molucco. On the 4th of August,
1578, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, he gave battle to the usurper
on the plains of Alcazar. This was that memorable engagement, to which
the Moorish Emperor, extremely weakened by sickness, was carried in his
litter. By the impetuosity of the attack, the first line of the Moorish
infantry was broken, and the second disordered. Muley Molucco on this
mounted his horse, drew his sabre, and would have put himself at the
head of his troops, but was prevented by his attendants. His emotion of