Captives taken previously were again put to use, albeit in a modified role. The two male blacks seized by Cão were on board, as were four females kidnapped at an earlier, unknown time. The women were to be set ashore splendidly dressed in the European style and bearing gifts including samples of gold, silver and various desired spices, which the Portuguese were seeking in trade. They were to proclaim the greatness of the king of Portugal and his desire to communicate with Prester John. It was believed they would be respected, even if a tribal war was raging.75 It was hoped that word would spread to the elusive monarch, who would then make an attempt to contact the Portuguese king or, at the least, anticipate favourable contact by a Portuguese expedition. As the women were not originally from the regions where they were to be abandoned, it was believed they would return to the coast, where Dias would retrieve them on his return leg.76
Dias’s three ships sailed in August 1487 and called first at the fortress at El Mina for water and fresh provisions, then journeyed on to the site of modern-day Port Alexander, remaining well to sea to avoid the unhealthy shoreline. There Dias restored to their friends two natives whom Cão had seized. It is believed that he also left his supply ship here, for this was a safe anchorage with plentiful fish. Also relations with the locals were initially good and they had herds of both cattle and sheep for which the Portuguese could trade.
Dias pressed on, landing at the location of Cão’s final pillar in modern-day Namibia. Here he placed ashore at least one of the women, then at Cabo da Volta, south of the Orange river, he erected a pillar and released a second woman, whom he turned over to native fishermen. It was a desolate coastline and the wind from the interior was so hot that Dias named this uninviting area ‘Hell’. Faced with difficult winds and uncertain, generally contrary, currents at sea, Dias nevertheless resumed his passage along the southwestern coast of Africa. The waters of the Atlantic had turned increasingly cold as he made his way south, and the weather was becoming disturbing even to experienced seamen.
Now at latitude 29º south Dias was faced with extremely severe weather. He made harbour to wait out a raging storm, but as the days passed he feared his ships would be beached and damaged beyond repair, so he daringly decided to put to sea and ride it out. He reportedly made several attempts to sail into the wind and was blown back more than once, but finally his two small caravels reached open water and began making their way southward into the violent storm.
This was a very dangerous manoeuvre but a certain sign of the confidence the Portuguese placed in their ships and sailing ability away from land. Barros records that the ships sailed for thirteen days ‘with sails at half-mast. The boats were small and seas were getting colder, not at all like the Gulf of Guinea. The seas around the Spanish coast were very rough in stormy weather but these were fatal.’ As the ships reached the ‘Roaring 40s’they entered extremely treacherous sailing conditions and his crew was in ‘mortal fear’. The average temperature here is 50º Fahrenheit or less and would have been very hard on the exposed Portuguese crew, accustomed to warmer climes.77
At last the storm mercifully passed and Dias found himself in new waters, unlike any he had previously seen or that had been described. He headed first to the east for several days, sailing with difficulty directly against the prevailing southeasterly winds, seeking the inevitable African coast, but he found nothing except open and heavy seas. The currents were different here and the ocean nothing like it had been, even when standing well out as he had passed the continent of Africa to his east. Suspecting the truth, almost afraid to hope he was correct, Dias ordered the two ships to turn north. If he was right, they had already passed the tip of Africa.
The two caravels sailed north nearly 500 miles, then on 3 February 1488 spotted the tops of mountains on the horizon and soon entered what is today Mossel Bay. Dias was now 100 miles east of the southernmost point of Africa. He surely felt that the expedition had done what it had set out to do, but he needed to make absolutely certain. And if it was true that he and his crew had finally doubled Africa, then the way to India, albeit at an unknown distance, lay before him. The excitement and drama aboard the two ships were overwhelming.
The land around the bay was pleasant green pasture, and from the ships the Portuguese spotted herdsmen quietly tending many cattle. Once ashore, they learned the men spoke no language that any of the interpreters understood. They were also suspicious of these newcomers and refused the trinkets offered as presents.
Dias himself landed with his crew to take on fresh water but as he did so the locals shouted at his men in an attempt to drive them away and even pelted Dias with stones, showing no fear of the armed Europeans. Attempts to hold the locals at bay with demonstrations and threats of violence were not successful. They clearly had no idea what a crossbow was, as one of the locals was killed with a bolt by Dias himself when he approached aggressively, despite repeated warnings. The others quickly drove their herds inland and out of sight.
Once they were resupplied, Dias gave order to continue following the coastline east, though the sailing was very difficult as it went against both the current and winds. Along the coast, the land continued angling ever northward, adding to the certainty of what they had accomplished. After several days the two ships arrived at Algoa Bay, the modern site of Port Elizabeth. Here Dias left the last of his black women, the other having died on board, placing her in the company of two women gathering sea shells. In the vast bay on an island the Portuguese erected a wooden cross. There is no record of any of the black Africans released by Dias ever being seen or heard of again.78
Dias sailed on, with his crew muttering and in despair over the extreme distance they had already come. It had been necessary to leave a large part of their provisions in the supply vessel when the two small caravels had taken to the open sea.79 Barros records that the men were
very tired and still suffering from the effects of the tempestuous seas they had sailed through. They began to complain and asked not to continue, saying that provisions were running out and that they should return to the supply ship and that the further they went on, the greater would be the distance to sail back to the extra supplies and that they would all die of hunger.
The vessels then reached a point where the coastline made a decided turn more distinctly to the north. Dias had been instructed to consult with his officers on all important matters and so he summoned them and some of the senior seamen for a meeting ashore. He pressed his reasons for continuing to follow the coast and sail on, perhaps even to India itself, the distance to which was unknown. They had two sound ships and the means for maintenance and repair, so there was no practical reason not to continue. The mythical land could be just beyond the horizon. His officers, however, did not agree. They voted in favour of returning.
This placed Dias in an impossible situation for someone not wanting to abandon the passage to India. As an experienced captain he also knew how the story might change later in the comfort of their native land and so required each of the men to sign a document under oath, stating their decision to return.
Then Dias resumed his argument in favour of continuing, pointing out no doubt the vast rewards each would receive if they returned with spice from India itself. To acquire spices they would not even have to reach the fabled land but merely one of its trading ports. A great deal of very valuable information could be gathered as well, for which the king would be very grateful. His arguments were to no avail. The best he could manage was an agreement to sail on for another two or three days and then, unless something was discovered during that time to change their minds, the expedition would return to Portugal.
The two small ships resumed sailing and on the third day reached the vicinity of the Great Fish river, some 25 leagues east of Algoa Bay. The waters were warmer now and a steady current flowed northward. There could be no doubt but that Africa had been rounded and here Dias erected a pillar. In his mind’s eye, we are told, Dias could see the distant ‘land of India, but, like
Moses and the promised land, he did not enter it’.80
They returned to Cross Island in Algoa Bay, as they had named it, where Barros records that Dias was filled with sorrow and
remembered the dangers they had all faced and how far they had come to achieve nothing more because God had not granted the main thing. When they left that place they saw the great and noble cape which had stood there for so many years and it seemed to promise a new world of lands.11
Bartolomeu Dias and his men named it Cape of Storms [Cabo Tormentoso] because of the dangers and storms they had suffered on rounding it. However, when they returned to the kingdom, King John gave it another name. He called it the Cape of Good Hope [Cabo da Boa Esperança] because it promised the long awaited discovery of India.
This last may come from myth-making, for at least one source records that Dias himself named the tip of Africa the Cape of Good Hope.
At the cape itself Dias erected his last pillar. As he sailed passed it, we are told, he stood at the rail of his battered caravel and ‘took leave of it as from a beloved son whom he never expected to see again’. His sense of the moment proved true, for twelve years later he drowned at sea, along with his brother, almost within sight of this pillar.81
Dias knew that a defining moment in the history of his nation and in his own life had been reached. It was seventy-three years since the conquest of Ceuta when at last the Portuguese doubled Africa. The riches of India, and the power that came with them, were finally within reach.
Nine months after leaving it, Dias and his men rejoined their supply ship. Six of the nine men he had left with it had been killed in trade disputes with the locals. A seventh, who had apparently given the rest up for dead and was extremely weak from illness, reportedly died from joy at seeing Dias and his shipmates. Not surprisingly, the ship was worm-eaten and unfit for the return voyage. The remaining stores were transferred and the ship burnt, as had long been the custom, to recover nails and other metal fittings.
The rest of the return voyage is known only in fragmentary form. Dias is known to have taken aboard the survivors of a shipwreck and to have landed in west Africa at the Rio do Resgate long enough to buy slaves, ‘so as not to come home empty-handed’. The governor of the fortress at El Mina apparently turned over to him for delivery to the king the gold he had obtained through trade.82
In December 1488 Dias entered the Tagus river after a voyage of sixteen and a half months. Steady attrition had taken a relentless toll on the crew, who were now largely broken in health. When Dias made his report to John II, he expressed his bitter disappointed for not having information concerning either Prester John or India, reporting that the people he had encountered ‘along the coast were almost all savages’. Dias presented to the king a detailed colour map of the new region he had penetrated. King John directed that an official map be prepared to include this new information. Inscribed on the chart were the words, ‘This is the true shape of modern Africa, according to the description of the Portuguese.’83
Interestingly, Christopher Columbus was present when Dias made his report to the king. Columbus had been languishing in Spain, awaiting an audience with the king and queen. Having made no more progress there than he had in Portugal, he wrote to John II in 1488 requesting permission to explain once again his proposed venture. The king granted his request, and so Columbus was in Lisbon when Dias returned. He was allowed to hear his presentation to the king and his advisers, especially as Dias and Columbus had known one another for some years.
Columbus was so impressed with what he heard that he recorded an extended marginal note of the voyage on his personal copy of the Imago Mundi, the map created in 1410 by the French cardinal Pierre d’Ailly that was responsible for a measure of Columbus’s confusion about the distance from Europe to Asia sailing west. The work presented an Earth much smaller than it actually is. Since Dias now reported doubling Africa, King John had no need to try to reach India by another route and lost whatever interest he had had in Columbus’s enterprise. Columbus soon left Portugal, filled with a fresh sense of urgency to find the way to India by sailing directly west.
Dias had discovered 1,260 miles of new coastline and sailed farther than any European heretofore, yet there is no record of the rewards he received, if any. Given the practice begun by Henry, it is difficult to believe there were none, and Dias certainly continued to enjoy the king’s favour. He commanded the royal ship Sao Christovão from 1490 until 1495, was Grand Captain of the port of Lisbon for a time and still later was commander of El Mina. He also served a pivotal role in preparations for the voyage of Vasco da Gama.
With Dias’s return to Lisbon the way to India finally lay conclusively before the Portuguese, yet, for reasons never entirely explained, King John hesitated. At least two more significant events were to take place before the final push and fulfilment of the quest.
One of those was the arrival of Christopher Columbus in Lisbon that stormy March 1493, just over four years later. If John II had seriously considered that Columbus’s new lands might be Portuguese, as he said, might not the Spanish monarchs just as well argue that any new Portuguese discoveries were theirs? Almost immediately King John entered into negotiations with the king and queen of Spain.
The predicament existed because the world was round. Asia could be reached both by sailing east and by sailing west –in theory. While King John’s junta was confident that Columbus was mistaken as to the true size of the Earth, it was possible that he had found islands and lands that could provide reprovisioning as the Spanish continued their probing towards Asia by going west. The situation was aggravated by a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella to Pope Alexander VI after Columbus’s return, asking that ‘all discovered and to be discovered lands should be theirs’.84 Alexander VI was no impartial arbiter. He had been born Rodrigo Borgia –of the notorious family – near Valencia and held longstanding ties to the Spanish monarchs.
At the same time as dispatching emissaries for negotiations John II ordered a fleet to be gathered to seize by force the new Spanish discoveries in the Americas. Eager to avoid war, in June 1494, at the Spanish village of Tordesillas, the Portuguese and Spanish sovereigns entered into a treaty intended to divide the new lands being discovered and yet to be found. An earlier treaty was confirmed, affirming that Granada and the Canary Islands were both Spanish and that John II was king of the Algarve and of his possessions in Africa. The new treaty established a line separating the areas of discovery into two parts. Set at 370 leagues12
west of the Cape Verde Islands and running north to south, the lands east of it were within Portugal’s sphere of influence while those to the west were Spain’s. The effect of the treaty granted Spain the so-called New World, save for Brazil, while for a time safely placing Asian lands yet to be discovered in Portuguese hands. So complete was the separation and so audacious its breadth that it is said a young boy in Tordesillas coming upon the negotiators taking a stroll stopped them at a bridge to ask, ‘So you are the men who are dividing the world?’
But in sending Dias out to discover the route to India, John II had not shot his only bolt. Lack of information had increasingly been seen as the most serious obstacle the Portuguese faced now that the physical limitations were falling before them. If any Portuguese captain was to reach India and return safely, he must know his final destination and have some sense of what awaited him in this alien land. The way must also be prepared to enter into friendly relations with Prester John, for the captain and his men would be far from help and in need of an ally. To accomplish this, John II turned to the most ancient factfinding device used by mankind: espionage.
8
The spies
At about this time two princes from Ethiopia, alternatively described by Barros as friars, arrived in Portugal and met with an enthusiastic King John. He asked if their ruler was a king or a pope, and whether his name was Prester John. Was his land located in Asia? They told the king what he wanted to hear, since that was the surest
route to a liberal reward.
Exhilarated at the prospect of actually establishing contact with Prester John, the king quickly dispatched an abbot and layman to locate Ethiopia and, if possible, India but the pair only got as far as Jerusalem. There, according to Barros, they met with Ethiopian monks on pilgrimage to the city who offered to have the pair accompany them on their return trip. It turned out that the two men were commonly known to be emissaries of the king of Portugal and they were warned by others not to attempt to journey further as they lacked a knowledge of the language and the local customs. The pair considered the wisdom of what they heard, then returned to Portugal to explain why it had not been possible to carry out the king’s orders.85
For some time King John had been in correspondence with a Venetian merchant who executed commissions for him. The merchant provided the king with much useful information about how the spice trade was conducted close to its origin. In one letter the merchant gave a long account of India, as he understood it, though he expressed regret at not knowing the land’s exact location, along with a description of how the spices were dispersed, the profits accrued and where. Although it ‘incited . . . his great desire’,86 the information was not of sufficient detail and accuracy to satisfy the Portuguese king.
Unknown Seas: The Portuguese Captains and the Passage to India Page 13
