Читать книгу A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama 1497-1499 - Anonymous - Страница 4

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HE discovery of an ocean route to India, in 1497–98, marks an epoch in the history of geographical exploration no less than in that of commerce. It confirmed the hypothesis of a circumambient ocean, first put forward by Hecataeus, but rejected by Ptolemy and his numerous followers; and, at the same time diverted into a new channel the profitable spice trade with the East which for ages had passed through Syria and Alexandria. In consequence of this diversion Venice lost her monopoly, and Lisbon became for a time the great spice-market of Europe.

But Portugal was a small country whose resources were hardly even equal to the task of waging the continuous wars with the Moors in which she had so unwisely been engaged for generations past. And when, in addition to her African forces, she was called upon to maintain great fleets in the distant East, in order to enforce her monopoly of the spice trade, at first in the face only of the Moors, and afterwards in that of powerful European rivals, her resources speedily came to an end, and she found herself exhausted and helpless. It may well be asked whether Portugal would not be happier now, and richer, too, had she never had the opportunity of dwelling upon these ancient glories; had the wealth of the Indies never been poured into her lap, only to breed corruption; and had her strength not been wasted in a struggle to which she was materially unequal, and which ended in exhaustion and ruin.

Vasco da Gama.

(From a Contemporary Medallion in the Cloister of Belem.)

Portugal, however, notwithstanding the sad ending of her vast Eastern enterprises, is still justly proud of the achievements of her “great” Vasco da Gama, and boldly places him by the side of Magelhães and Christopher Columbus, as one of a noble triad which occupies the foremost rank among the great navigators of an Age of Great Discoveries.

Vasco da Gama was born, about 1460,1 at Sines, of which coast-town his father, Estevão, was alcaidemór. He was the youngest of three brothers. Genealogists trace back his pedigree to a valiant soldier, Alvaro Annes da Gama, who resided at Olivença in 1280, and greatly distinguished himself in the wars with the Moors. The Gamas could thus boast of gentle blood, though they neither belonged to the aristocracy of Portugal, nor were they possessed of much worldly wealth.

We know next to nothing of Vasco da Gama’s youth. When King João, after the return of Bartholomeu Dias, decided to fit out an armada to complete the discovery of an ocean highway to India, he selected Vasco da Gama as its captain-major, and this choice of the King was confirmed by his successor, D. Manuel.2 Such an appointment would not have been made had not Vasco da Gama already been known as a man of energy, capacity and competent knowledge. We ought therefore not be surprised if Garcia de Resende, in his Chronicle of D. João II (c. 146), tells us that he was a man whom the King trusted, as he had already served in his fleets and in maritime affairs, and whom he had consequently charged, in 1492, with the task of seizing the French vessels lying in the ports of Algarve, in reprisal for the capture by a French pirate of a Portuguese caravel returning from S. Jorge da Mina with gold.3

Castanheda (I, c. 2) speaks of Vasco as having done good service in the time of King João II, and as being experienced in the affairs of the sea. Mariz (Dial., iv, c. 14; v, c. 1) calls him a young man (mancebo), high-spirited and indefatigable, who had such a thorough knowledge of navigation (arte maritima) that he would have been able to hold his own with the most experienced pilots of Europe. We know, moreover, from Barros and Goes that he landed at S. Helena Bay with his pilots in order to determine the latitude. These extracts show, at all events, that Vasco da Gama was not a mere landsman; nor is it likely that the command of an expedition, the one object of which was discovery, and not trade or war, would have been entrusted to such an one.

He was, moreover, well qualified for his post in other respects. His indomitable firmness made him shrink from no obstacle which opposed itself to the success of his expedition; and notwithstanding the unheard-of length of the voyage and the hardships endured, he retained the confidence of his men to the very last.

The question whether Da Gama can fairly be ranked with Columbus and Magelhães, has frequently been discussed.

The first place among these three undoubtedly belongs to Magelhães, the renegade Portuguese, who first guided a ship across the wide expanse of the Pacific. The second place is almost universally accorded to Columbus, whose unconscious discovery of a new world, fit to become the second home of the European races, was immensely more far-reaching in its consequences than the discovery of an ocean highway to India, now largely discarded in favour of the shorter route across the isthmus of Suez.

It is maintained, in support of the claims of Columbus, that he was the originator of the scheme the success of which covered him with everlasting glory, whilst Vasco da Gama simply obeyed the behests of his King, when he took the lead of an expedition which was to crown the efforts made by little Portugal for generations past.

There is much truth in this contention. The scheme of reaching the East by a westward course across the Atlantic had no doubt been entertained in Portugal in the reign of Affonso the African [1438–81]. Fernão Martinz, the Royal Chaplain, had discussed its prospects with Paolo Toscanelli, when in Italy, and had been instructed to apply for further particulars to the Florentine physician, in response to which he had received the famous letter of June 25th, 1474, and the chart which accompanied it. But practically nothing was done, except that an adventurer or two4 were authorised to seek for the islands supposed to lie to the west of the Azores. Prince Henry the Navigator would perhaps have acted upon such a suggestion, had he been still alive, but the King’s resources were devoted to Africa, or wasted in two disastrous wars with Spain.

Columbus, on the other hand, made the discarded scheme his own; he, too, applied to Toscanelli for counsel,5 and found confirmation of that physician’s erroneous hypothesis as to the small breadth of the Atlantic by studying the Imago Mundi of Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, and other writings. Nor did he rest until he found in Queen Isabella the Catholic a patron who enabled him to put his theories to the test of practical experience. It was his good fortune that Providence had placed the new world as a barrier between him and Marco Polo’s Cipangu (Japan), which was his goal, or he might never have returned to claim the reward of his success.

On the accession of D. João II, in 1481, the discovery of Africa was resumed with renewed vigour, and the councillors of that King acted wisely when they advised him to decline the offers of Columbus,6 for the resources of Portugal were quite unequal to pursuing at one and the same time a search for a western route and continuing the efforts for opening a practical route around the southern extremity of Africa. And thus it happened that Columbus “discovered a new world for Castile and Leon”, and not for Portugal.

When, however, we come to consider the physical difficulties which had to be overcome by these great navigators in the accomplishment of their purpose, the greater credit must undoubtedly be awarded to Vasco da Gama. Columbus, trusting as implicitly to the chart and sailing directions of Toscanelli as did Vasco da Gama to those of Dias, and, perhaps, of Pero de Covilhão, shaped a course westward of Gomera; and, having sailed in that direction for thirty-six days, and for a distance of 2,600 miles, made his first landfall at Guanahani, being favoured all the while by the prevailing easterly winds. The task which Vasco da Gama undertook was far more difficult of accomplishment. Instead of creeping along the coast, as had been done by his predecessors, he conceived the bold idea of shaping a course which would take him direct through the mid-Atlantic from the Cape Verde Islands to the Cape of Good Hope. The direct distance to be covered was 3,770 miles, but the physical obstacles presented by winds and currents could only be overcome by taking a circuitous course, and thus it happened that he spent ninety-three days at sea before he made his first landfall to the north of the bay of St. Helena. This first passage across the southern Atlantic is one of the great achievements recorded in the annals of maritime exploration.

Once beyond the Cape, Vasco had to struggle against the Agulhas current, which had baffled Bartholomeu Dias, and against the current of Mozambique; and it was only after he had secured a trustworthy pilot at Melinde that the difficulties of the outward voyage can be said to have been overcome.

In one other respect Vasco da Gama, or, perhaps, we ought to say his pilots, proved themselves the superiors of Columbus, namely, in the accuracy of the charts of their discoveries which they brought home to Portugal. Accepting the Cantino Chart7 as a fair embodiment of the work done by this expedition, we find that the greatest error in latitude amounts to 1° 40´. The errors of Columbus were far more considerable. In three places of his Journal the latitude of the north coast of Cuba is stated to be 42° by actual observation; and that this is no clerical error, thrice repeated in three different places, seems to be proved by the evidence of the charts. On that of Juan de la Cosa, for instance, Cuba is made to extend to lat. 35° N. (instead of 23° 10´), and even on the rough sketch drawn by Bartolomeo Columbus after the return from the Fourth Voyage, Jamaica and Puerto Rico (Spagnola) are placed 6° too far to the north.8

Verily, the Portuguese of those days were superior as navigators to their Spanish rivals and the Italians.

Posterity is fortunate in possessing a very full abstract of the Journal which Columbus kept during his first voyage to the West Indies.9 No such trustworthy record is available in the case of Vasco da Gama, whose original reports have disappeared. They were consulted, no doubt, by João de Barros and Damião de Goes; but these writers, much to our loss, dealt very briefly with all that refers to navigation. The only available account written by a member of the expedition is the Roteiro or Journal, a translation of which fills the bulk of this volume, and of which, later on, we shall speak at greater length. The only other contemporary accounts, which we also reproduce, are at second-hand, and are contained in the letters written by King Manuel and Girolamo Sernigi immediately after the return of Vasco da Gama’s vessels from India.

Apart from these, our chief authorities regarding this voyage are still the Decades of João de Barros and the Chronicle of King Manuel, by Damião de Goes. Both these authors held official positions which gave them access to the records preserved in the India House. Castanheda relied almost wholly upon the Roteiro, but a few additional statements of interest may be found in his pages.

As to the Lendas of Gaspar Correa, we are unable to look upon his account of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage as anything but a jumble of truth and fiction,10 notwithstanding that he claims to have made use of the diary of a priest, Figueiro, who is stated to have sailed in Vasco’s fleet. Correa’s long residence in India—from 1514 to the time of his death—must have proved an advantage when relating events which came under his personal observation, but it also precluded him from consulting the documents placed on record in the Archives of Lisbon. This much is certain: that whoever accepts Correa as his guide must reject the almost unanimous evidence of other writers of authority who have dealt with this important voyage.11

A few additional facts may be gleaned from Faria y Sousa’s Asia Portuguesa, from Duarte Pacheco Pereira and Antonio Galvão; but in the main we are dependent upon the Roteiro, for recent searches12 in the Torre do Tombo have yielded absolutely nothing, so far as we are aware, which throws additional light upon Da Gama’s First Voyage, with which alone we are concerned.

And now we shall proceed to give an account of the Roteiro.

The Manuscript of the “Roteiro”.

In giving an account of the manuscript of this Journal, we entrust ourselves to the guidance of Professors Kopke and Antonio da Costa Paiva, the two gentlemen who first published it.