Читать книгу The Voyage of the Endeavour - G Arnold Wood - Страница 8

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One reason why the voyage of the Endeavour is so interesting to us is that Captain Cook, her commander, was the first European who sailed all round New Zealand, and the first European who sailed along the East coast of Australia. It would be wrong to say that Captain Cook discovered New Zealand and Australia, for parts of New Zealand and of Australia had been discovered more than a century before the Endeavour sailed. But his discoveries first made people understand the coastline of the whole of New Zealand, and of the whole of Australia; and they also made Britishers for the first time begin to think that it might be a good plan, sooner or later, to make British colonies in those lands.

Perhaps the best plan is first to tell the story of earlier voyages, so that we may understand what men knew about lands in the South Sea when the Endeavour sailed in 1768; and, when they knew nothing, what they guessed, and expected to find.

It was not till the 15th Century that European seamen sailed south of the Equator. They had quite enough to do in Europe. Their ships, good enough for inland Seas like the Mediterranean, were not good enough to sail forth into unknown Oceans which stretched no man knew whither. And, moreover, even if their ships had been good enough, seamen would not have dared to leave the coast. For they had no compass to tell them which was North, South, East and West; and they had none of the instruments which now enable seamen, by observing sun, moon and stars, to know where in the world they are, and what they must do in order to get home again.

And, further, what reason could you give a sensible man for sailing South? The further South you sailed, he would tell you, the hotter you grew. You sailed into a "roasted sea"; and, if you went on, you would in the end, no doubt, yourself be roasted. And if you had luck, and got through only half-roasted into cooler weather, what would you find there? Greek geographers long ago had said, it is true, that the world was a globe, and that probably there were big, rich and populous lands in the South as well as in the North. But, how absurd was this opinion! A man standing on the down side of a globe will fall off!

"See!" said one writer, "I'll draw you a globe with four men standing on it. Look at it! Turn it round whichever way you like! Come now! tell me, can all these men rightly be said to be standing upright? Is it not as certain as anything can be that all but one of them will fall off?"

In later days a few scholars came to understand that it would be possible for both Englishmen and Australians—if there were Australians—to stand upright at the same time. But what reason was there to believe that there were Australians, and that, if there were, Australians were people worth knowing? What reason, in short, could you give good enough to persuade a sensible man that it was worth his while to run the risk of being roasted in order to find out what perchance might be the state of the world down South?

But in the 15th Century, for the first time, it became possible to give two reasons good enough to make sensible men change their minds. The first reason was that changes had taken place in Asia which made it very desirable to get to Asia by sea; and the best way to get to Asia by sea seemed to be by sailing Southward round Africa. There were certain good things which came from Asia, and only from Asia, which every lady and every gentleman must have. Ladies and gentlemen cannot live as ladies and gentlemen ought to live, unless they have muslins and silks and jewels and spices; and muslins and silks and jewels and spices came from Asia, and from nowhere else. Hitherto they had come by caravans to ports in the Mediterranean, and had been taken by ships of Venice and Genoa to all the countries of Europe. But now savage Turks had captured those ports, and had cut the throat of the trade with Asia. What misery! What dismay! Is life worth living without muslins, without silks, without jewels, without spices? No! If they can no longer come from Asia to us, we must go to Asia for them. And, as we cannot go by land, we must go by sea—round Africa. And, if our ships and nautical instruments are not good enough for such a voyage, we must make them good enough.

So—and this is the second reason that made sensible men change their minds—ships and nautical instruments had been made that were good enough. Even before this time great improvements had been made. The compass and other instruments had been invented by which seamen were able to find out where they were, and where other places were. And ships had been built that had some chance of sailing right into the unknown, and of coming home again. And now the idea came into the mind of a Prince of Portugal, Henry "the Navigator," to make further improvements so great that his seamen might be able to push through "the roasted sea"—which after all might prove to be no worse than half-roasted—till they came to Africa's tip, if Africa had a tip, to round it, and to sail up Africa's other side till they came to Asia.

Prince Henry was called "the Navigator," not because he navigated, but because he made it possible for people to navigate.

"Stick close to your desk (says the song) And never go to sea, And you all may be the rulers Of the Queen's Navee!"

Prince Henry stuck close to his desk, and never went to sea; but at his desk he studied navigation; and, helped by the most famous scholars in Europe, he made the best ocean-going ships, and the best naval instruments that had ever yet been made. And voyage after voyage, Portuguese seamen, in Prince Henry's ships, groped their slow long way down the African coast.

It was a very slow way; and when Prince Henry died, after 42 years' hard work, his captains had sailed only as far as a ship now steams in four days! But, though progress was slow it was sure. The seamen sailed through "the roasted sea"; and, hardly worse roasted than before, they came in time to cooler weather. Yet it was a very long way—far longer than they had hoped. Africa lengthened itself out before you, till you feared it had no tip. But at last, in 1486, they came to the tip, rounded it and called it "the Cape of Good Hope." On Christmas Day, 1497, a Portuguese captain, named Vasco da Gama, sailed round the Cape, and came to a land which he named "Natal"—the land of Christ's birthday. He sailed along the East coast of Africa, struck across to India, landed, and asked for spices!

The Portuguese made trade-settlements in East Africa, in Arabia, in Persia and in India; and in a few years they were overlords of the whole Indian Ocean, ruling a sea-empire whose frontier was "a jagged semi-circle of over 15,000 miles." But what especially interests us is their voyages towards Australia. What they wanted more than anything else was spices, especially cloves, which grew only in a group of tiny islands—Ternate, Tidore, Amboyna, Banda—called the Moluccas or Spice Islands. Now the way from India to the Spice Islands was through the Straits of Malacca, the Ocean Junction of all trade-routes between East and West. In 1511 the Portuguese captured Malacca; and three ships sailed through the Straits and then along the North coasts of the islands that stretch like stepping-stones from Sumatra to New Guinea and Australia—"so near the one to the other," said the seamen, "that they seem at first to be one entire and main land." If they had turned South, and had sailed through one of the narrow and dangerous passages between these islands, they would very soon have come to Australia. But they were looking, not for Australia, but for the Spice Islands. So they turned, not South, but North, and they found—actually found—the Spice Islands, the world's desire! And a Portuguese captain, Francisco Serrano, settled in them, did a huge trade in spices, and thought himself the luckiest man in the world.

Now Serrano had a dear friend, named Ferdinand Magellan, who had fought by his side in battles in the East and had now got back to Portugal; and Serrano wished that the friend, who had shared his dangers, should also share his luck. So he wrote to Magellan to tell him the good news. He had found, he said, "yet another new world, larger and richer than that found by Gama!" Magellan, soldier-seaman, strong and true as steel, was eager to go. But he had been listening to voyagers' tales, and had been studying strange new maps, and his plan was to go to the Spice Islands by a new route. And, to understand this new route, we must see the wonderful discoveries that had by this time been made by other seamen.

While the Portuguese were groping their slow long way down the coast of Africa, Christopher Columbus was wondering whether he could not make a short cut to Asia by sailing West. Clearly if you sailed West from Europe, you were bound, if only you could sail far enough to sail into Asia. The question was, how far you would have to sail. Columbus believed—nay, he was quite sure!—that Japan was only 2500 miles away. That is to say, he thought that the Eastern coast of Asia was no further from Europe than the Eastern coast of America actually is. He hoped, therefore, to reach Asia by a way as much shorter than the Portuguese way as to-day a voyage to America is shorter than a voyage round the Cape to India. Look at a map and see how much shorter it is.

After a vast deal of trouble, Columbus persuaded Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Spain, to give him command of a ship. And in 1492, six years before Gama reached India, he sailed Westward, and hoped to get there first. He sailed 2500 miles; and, as he had expected, he found an island which he believed was Japan: we call it Hayti. And he found a long coast which he believed was the coast of China: we call it the coast of Cuba. And in another voyage more Southward, he came to the mouth of a huge river, which he believed must drain a huge continent to the South of Asia: we call the river the Orinoco, and we call the huge continent South America. And, in his last voyage, he believed that he had nearly discovered the Straits of Malacca in what we call the Isthmus of Panama. He understood the natives to say that the Straits were close by, and that, after passing through them, in ten days' sail he would reach the mouth of the Ganges.

Columbus always believed that he had reached Asia. But later voyagers gradually came to understand that the coasts they were sailing along were the coasts, not of the Old World, but of a New World that stretched far North and far South as a barrier between Europe and Asia. That was bad. But, after all, could you not find a passage through this barrier? If so, you might still make a short cut, and reach Asia in a few days. So now began the search for a passage. Some, like Columbus, believed there was a passage through the Isthmus of Panama. But the search for it was in vain. In 1513, Balboa—"the man who knew not what it was to be deterred"—climbed a peak in Darien, and saw a sea on the other side—"the Sea of the South"! But no one could say how big was the sea, nor how far away was Asia. Others looked for a passage further North—through Virginia, up the Hudson River, up the St. Lawrence, or through some North-West passage; but they also looked in vain. Others sailed Southward, and hoped to find a passage through the "new world" that was taking the shape of South America. And among those who felt that a passage would be found here was Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese captain, to whom Serrano had sent news of the "other new world" he had found in the Spice Islands. Magellan determined to go to the Spice Islands by a passage he would find—he was sure of it—by sailing further South than any seaman had yet sailed. Once through that passage, he might still perhaps get to Asia by a short cut.

As the King of Portugal did not approve his plan, Magellan went to the King and Queen of Spain, and persuaded them to give him the command of five ships. "They are very old and patched," said a Portuguese who saw them, and he hoped they would never be heard of again. And in 1520, sailing in these rotten ships, Magellan found the Strait that bears his name, passed through it, and—instead of making a short cut—plunged into "a sea so vast that the human mind can scarcely grasp it." After a very long and very terrible voyage, in which the seamen ate sawdust and leather, and bought rats as "a delicacy," he came at last to the Philippine Islands. He had sailed a course so northerly that he came nowhere near Australia.

In the Philippine Islands, Magellan fought the heathen to make them Christians, and was killed. But the Spaniards sailed on in one of his ships, named the Victoria, and reached the Spice Islands. They "bought cloves like mad," and then sailed for home. As they feared to meet the Portuguese—for the Portuguese allowed none but Portuguese to trade in the islands—they did not go by the Portuguese way, but struck Southward by a passage between the islands. They called at the island of Timor, and their course cannot have been very far from the North-West coast of Australia, though it is unlikely that they saw it. And so the Victoria rounded the Cape, and sailed home to Spain, the first ship to put a girdle round the earth—in three and a half years!

So both Portuguese and Spaniards had sailed fairly near Australia, but they had not seen Australia; and I do not think that, in the 16th Century, they ever saw Australia. The Portuguese sailed to their settlement in the Spice Islands by way of the East coast of Africa, India, and the Straits of Malacca; a way that would not take them in sight of Australia. They came to know the North coast of Sumatra, of Java and of the string of islands east of Java. And they came to New Guinea, and called it a "large island," which seems to show that they knew something about the South coast, as well as about the North. But I feel pretty sure they never reached Australia; though they may possibly have heard islanders talk of a very unpleasant land in the South to which you were sometimes driven by storms, and whence you got away as fast as you could, for it was a land in which no sensible person would live who had a chance to live anywhere else.

And the Spaniards were equally unlikely to see Australia. After a time they made a settlement in the Philippine Islands; but they sailed thither from Mexico—for the way through the Straits of Magellan was given up as too long, too dangerous, too terrible. And their voyages between the Philippines and Mexico did not take them within sight of Australia; though, like the Portuguese, they got some little knowledge of New Guinea, and wondered whether it was an island. Of what lay further South no one knew anything, and therefore everyone could guess what he liked.