Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8): Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8): Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
Prince Henry had been with his father at the capture of Ceuta, opposite
Gibraltar, in 1415, when the Portuguese got their first foothold in
Africa. In 1418 he established a school of nautical observation at
Sagres,[145] the southwestern promontory of his father’s kingdom, and
placed the geographer, Jayme,[146] of Majorca, in charge of it. The
Prince at once sent out his first expedition down the Barbary coast;
but his vessel, being driven out of its course, discovered the Island
of Porto Santo. Expedition after expedition reached, in successive
years, the vicinity of Cape Bojador; but an inexpressible dread of the
uncertainty beyond deferred the passage of it till 1434. Cape Blanco
was reached in 1445; Cape Verde shortly after; and the River Gambia in
1447.
Cadamosto and his Venetians pushed still farther, and saw the Southern
Cross for the first time.[147] Between 1460 and 1464 they went beyond
Cape Mesurado. Prince Henry dying in 1463, King Alfonso, in 1469,
farmed out the African commerce, and required five hundred miles to be
added yearly to the limit of discovery southward. Not long after, Diego
Cam reached the Congo coast, Behaim accompanying him. In 1487, after
seventy years of gradual progress down six thousand miles of coast,
southward from Cape Non, the Portuguese under Diaz reached the Stormy
Cape,—later to be called the Cape of Good Hope. He but just rounded it
in May, and in December he was in Portugal with the news. Bartholomew,
the brother of Columbus, had made the voyage with him.[148] The
rounding of the Cape was hardly a surprise; for the belief in it was
firmly established long before. In 1457-1459, in the map of Fra Mauro,
which had been constructed at Venice for Alonzo V., and in which Bianco
assisted, the terminal cape had been fitly drawn.[149]
[Illustration: PORTUGUESE MAP, 1490.
This map follows a copy in the Kohl Collection (no. 23), after the
original, attached to a manuscript theological treatise in the British
Museum. An inscription at the break in the African coast says that to
this point the Portuguese had pushed their discoveries in 1489; and as
it shows no indication of the voyages of Columbus and Da Gama, Kohl
places it about 1490. It may be considered as representing the views
current before these events, Asia following the Ptolemean drafts. The
language of the map being partly Italian and partly Portuguese, Kohl
conjectures that it was made by an Italian living in Lisbon; and he
points out the close correspondence of the names on the western coast
of Africa to the latest Portuguese discoveries, and that its contour is
better than anything preceding.]
[Illustration: HO COMDE ALMIRANTE (_Da Gama’s Autograph_).]
[Illustration: VASCO DA GAMA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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