The Story of Mankind [84]
dies of sheer exhaustion.
Under those circumstances you will understand that the sea
did not attract the best elements of the population. Famous
discoverers like Magellan and Columbus and Vasco da Gama
travelled at the head of crews that were almost entirely composed
of ex-jailbirds, future murderers and pickpockets out
of a Job.
These navigators certainly deserve our admiration for the
courage and the pluck with which they accomplished their
hopeless tasks in the face of difficulties of which the people of
our own comfortable world can have no conception. Their
ships were leaky. The rigging was clumsy. Since the middle
of the thirteenth century they had possessed some sort of a
compass (which had come to Europe from China by way of
Arabia and the Crusades) but they had very bad and incorrect
maps. They set their course by God and by guess. If luck
was with them they returned after one or two or three years.
In the other case, their bleeched bones remained behind on
some lonely beach. But they were true pioneers. They gambled
with luck. Life to them was a glorious adventure. And
all the suffering, the thirst and the hunger and the pain were
forgotten when their eyes beheld the dim outlines of a new coast
or the placid waters of an ocean that had lain forgotten since
the beginning of time.
Again I wish that I could make this book a thousand pages
long. The subject of the early discoveries is so fascinating.
But history, to give you a true idea of past times, should be
like those etchings which Rembrandt used to make. It should
cast a vivid light on certain important causes, on those which
are best and greatest. All the rest should be left in the shadow
or should be indicated by a few lines. And in this chapter I
can only give you a short list of the most important discoveries.
Keep in mind that all during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the navigators were trying to accomplish just ONE
THING--they wanted to find a comfortable and safe road to the
empire of Cathay (China), to the island of Zipangu (Japan)
and to those mysterious islands, where grew the spices which
the mediaeval world had come to like since the days of the
Crusades, and which people needed in those days before the
introduction of cold storage, when meat and fish spoiled very
quickly and could only be eaten after a liberal sprinkling of
pepper or nutmeg.
The Venetians and the Genoese had been the great navigators
of the Mediterranean, but the honour for exploring the
coast of the Atlantic goes to the Portuguese. Spain and Portugal
were full of that patriotic energy which their age-old
struggle against the Moorish invaders had developed. Such
energy, once it exists, can easily be forced into new channels.
In the thirteenth century, King Alphonso III had conquered
the kingdom of Algarve in the southwestern corner of the
Spanish peninsula and had added it to his dominions. In the
next century, the Portuguese had turned the tables on the
Mohammedans, had crossed the straits of Gibraltar and had
taken possession of Ceuta, opposite the Arabic city of Ta'Rifa
(a word which in Arabic means ``inventory'' and which by way
of the Spanish language has come down to us as ``tariff,'') and
Tangiers, which became the capital of an African addition to
Algarve.
They were ready to begin their career as explorers.
In the year 1415, Prince Henry, known as Henry the
Navigator, the son of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the
daughter of John of Gaunt (about whom you can read in
Richard II, a play by William Shakespeare) began to make
preparations for the systematic exploration of northwestern
Africa. Before this, that hot and sandy coast had been visited
by the Phoenicians and by the Norsemen, who remembered it
as the home of the hairy ``wild man'' whom we have come to
know as the gorilla. One after another, Prince Henry
and his captains discovered
Under those circumstances you will understand that the sea
did not attract the best elements of the population. Famous
discoverers like Magellan and Columbus and Vasco da Gama
travelled at the head of crews that were almost entirely composed
of ex-jailbirds, future murderers and pickpockets out
of a Job.
These navigators certainly deserve our admiration for the
courage and the pluck with which they accomplished their
hopeless tasks in the face of difficulties of which the people of
our own comfortable world can have no conception. Their
ships were leaky. The rigging was clumsy. Since the middle
of the thirteenth century they had possessed some sort of a
compass (which had come to Europe from China by way of
Arabia and the Crusades) but they had very bad and incorrect
maps. They set their course by God and by guess. If luck
was with them they returned after one or two or three years.
In the other case, their bleeched bones remained behind on
some lonely beach. But they were true pioneers. They gambled
with luck. Life to them was a glorious adventure. And
all the suffering, the thirst and the hunger and the pain were
forgotten when their eyes beheld the dim outlines of a new coast
or the placid waters of an ocean that had lain forgotten since
the beginning of time.
Again I wish that I could make this book a thousand pages
long. The subject of the early discoveries is so fascinating.
But history, to give you a true idea of past times, should be
like those etchings which Rembrandt used to make. It should
cast a vivid light on certain important causes, on those which
are best and greatest. All the rest should be left in the shadow
or should be indicated by a few lines. And in this chapter I
can only give you a short list of the most important discoveries.
Keep in mind that all during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the navigators were trying to accomplish just ONE
THING--they wanted to find a comfortable and safe road to the
empire of Cathay (China), to the island of Zipangu (Japan)
and to those mysterious islands, where grew the spices which
the mediaeval world had come to like since the days of the
Crusades, and which people needed in those days before the
introduction of cold storage, when meat and fish spoiled very
quickly and could only be eaten after a liberal sprinkling of
pepper or nutmeg.
The Venetians and the Genoese had been the great navigators
of the Mediterranean, but the honour for exploring the
coast of the Atlantic goes to the Portuguese. Spain and Portugal
were full of that patriotic energy which their age-old
struggle against the Moorish invaders had developed. Such
energy, once it exists, can easily be forced into new channels.
In the thirteenth century, King Alphonso III had conquered
the kingdom of Algarve in the southwestern corner of the
Spanish peninsula and had added it to his dominions. In the
next century, the Portuguese had turned the tables on the
Mohammedans, had crossed the straits of Gibraltar and had
taken possession of Ceuta, opposite the Arabic city of Ta'Rifa
(a word which in Arabic means ``inventory'' and which by way
of the Spanish language has come down to us as ``tariff,'') and
Tangiers, which became the capital of an African addition to
Algarve.
They were ready to begin their career as explorers.
In the year 1415, Prince Henry, known as Henry the
Navigator, the son of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the
daughter of John of Gaunt (about whom you can read in
Richard II, a play by William Shakespeare) began to make
preparations for the systematic exploration of northwestern
Africa. Before this, that hot and sandy coast had been visited
by the Phoenicians and by the Norsemen, who remembered it
as the home of the hairy ``wild man'' whom we have come to
know as the gorilla. One after another, Prince Henry
and his captains discovered