A Wind From the North (9 page)

Yet men had not always been so superstitious or so ignorant. Centuries earlier, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Carthaginians had known as much, or more, than the early fifteenth-century navigators. The coasts of Asia Minor, Europe, and North Africa had all been explored by these early sailors. Greek astronomers and cartographers had plotted the general configuration and position of most of Europe and some, if not all, of its off-lying islands. Most astonishing of all, the fact that Africa could be circumnavigated had been known to the Greek historian Herodotus in the fifth century B.C.

“Libya [Africa] shows itself to be surrounded by water, except so much of it as borders upon Asia. Neco, King of Egypt, was the first whom we know of, to prove this … he sent certain Phoenicians in ships, with orders to sail back through the Pillars of Hercules into the northern sea [the Mediterranean] and so return to Egypt. The Phoenicians accordingly, setting out from the Red Sea, navigated the Southern Sea [Indian Ocean] ; when autumn came, they went ashore, and sowed the land, by whatever part of Libya they happened to be sailing and waited for harvest; than having reaped the com, they put to sea again. When two years had thus passed, in the third, having doubled the Pillars of Hercules, they arrived in Egypt, and related what to me does not seem credible, but may to others, that as they sailed round Libya, they had the sun on their right hand.”

This voyage was undertaken by the Phoenicians, those master mariners of the ancient world, about 600 B.C. The fact that even the “Father of History” disbelieved their report may have been the reason for the discovery’s being buried in obscurity. Prince Henry may possibly have heard this story from the scholars and savants whom he later collected at Sagres. If so, it must have reinforced his determination not to rest until the extent of Africa was known. Curiously enough, the fact that made the report suspect to Herodotus proves that the Phoenicians really did circumnavigate Africa. When rounding the Cape of Good Hope, in the latitude of about 35 degrees south of the equator, it would indeed have seemed to sailors used to the northern latitude of the Mediterranean that the sun at midday was “on their right hand.”

In these early years of Prince Henry’s life we know that he was concerned only with the western Atlantic coast of Morocco. The time had not yet come when men could say of him that he thought in continents and not in islands. He had some knowledge of the burning, barren coast that stretched beyond Tangier. He had met Arabs in Ceuta, and later he was to employ some of them among his cartographers, navigators, and astronomers. The Arabs knew that there were islands in the Atlantic; they knew at any rate about the Canaries. So did Prince Henry, for the Castilians, the French, and many others had made voyages to the Canaries. Only thirteen years before the capture of Ceuta, a Norman baron, Jean de Bethencourt, had colonized part of the islands and built churches there. The Canaries had even been known to the ancients as the Fortunate Islands. Standing at the outermost limits of the known world, they had been poeticized as the Elysian Fields, the Isles of the Blest—the land, in fact, “where it was always afternoon.” At this period of history, Arabic knowledge of geography and astronomy was superior to that of Europe. As traders and merchants they were in contact with Arabia and India by sea, and with the interior of Africa by overland routes. As early as the twelfth century the Xerife Idrisi had written a book of geography for King Roger II of Sicily, which was far in advance of any European knowledge at that time. Idrisi knew, for instance, that beyond the dreary wastes of the Sahara there was a fertile land beginning at the Senegal River. Called Bilad Ghana, “Land of Wealth,” it appears on a map made for King Roger about 1150. Even so, the Arabs’ knowledge was confined to the Mediterranean and North Africa and, to some extent, the east coast of Africa. Little was known about the Atlantic coast, and most people accepted the statement of the traveler Ibn Said that the world ended in the Sea of Obscurity near Cape Bojador. But whereas Cape Not—the limit of the world, according to the Portuguese fisherman’s saying —lies on the same latitude as the Canary Islands, Cape Boja-dor is 100 miles farther south. No doubt Prince Henry thought that the perils of Cape Bojador were also grossly exaggerated.

Azurara gives us a picture of Prince Henry’s early life at Sagres. “… After the taking of Ceuta, the Prince had ships always at sea to do battle against the Infidel.” It was these ships with the cross on their sails that now began to harry the Arab traders, just as the latter had, for centuries, harried the Christian merchantmen. Soon the Portuguese ships would do more than that, for Azurara tells us that “he desired to know what lands there were beyond the Canary Isles and a cape called Bojador. For at that time there was no knowledge, either in writing or in the memory of any man, of what might lie beyond this cape.”

Azurara states the reasons for Prince Henry’s embarking upon his career of discovery. It is particularly interesting that he gives first the scientific reason that “no sailor or merchant would undertake it, for it is very sure that such men do not dream of navigating other than to places where they already know they can make a profit.” Later historians have sometimes tended to denigrate Prince Henry by saying either that his aims were those of a militant medieval knight, or that he was guided solely by the desire of material gain. There seems no justification for either of these views. The fact that a contemporary like Azurara puts the scientific aspect first is evidence enough that he was impressed by this—at that time unusual—motive. As the second reason he gives the commercial one, that Henry wanted to know whether there were any Christians to the south of Morocco with whom the Portuguese might trade, and what harbors there might be. Thirdly he gives the strategic reason, that Henry wanted to know the strength of his enemy and how far south Moorish power extended.

Fourthly comes the political reason, the desire to know whether he might find a Christian ally against the Mohammedans. Only fifthly does he cite the religious motive: “to increase the Holy Faith … that lost souls might be saved.” Lastly—and curiously enough Azurara devotes considerable space to it—comes the fact that, astrologically, the disposition of the planets at Henry’s birth was such that he “was bound to engage in great and noble conquests and, above all, to attempt the discovery of things hidden from other men, and secret.” Henry was a “man of a star,” and it is evidence of the curious awe that surrounded him that his contemporaries should have felt this prince was not as other men.

A thing that strikes one at once about this early assessment of Henry’s motives in setting out on the exploration of Africa is the double reference to the possibility of finding a “Christian ally” somewhere to the south and beyond the kingdom of the Moors. What reason had anyone for thinking that a Christian country might lie hidden behind the iron curtain of Mohammedan power? The answer lies in that enigmatic, and still problematical, figure, Prester John.

Prester John was a legend, a dream of hope that had fascinated Europeans since the twelfth century. He was supposed to be a powerful Christian monarch living in either Africa or Asia—reports varied—and eternally at war with the heathen and the infidel. In 1144 a Syrian bishop had told Bishop Otto of Freisinger that a great victory had recently been won over the infidels by a king called Prester John, who was a Christian ruler and the descendant of the Magi. It now seems likely that at one time there really was such a ruler somewhere in central Asia. He was a powerful khan, who had been converted by Nestorian Christian missionaries, and who was known as the “Presbyter Khan”—the Priest King. His son, who is reputed to have succeeded him, was attacked and overthrown by Genghis Khan toward the end of the twelfth century, which put an end to the Christian khanate in that part of the world.

Inevitably, rumors of this Christian kingdom in Asia, which had reached Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, became inextricably confused with other rumors about the Christian kings of Abyssinia. In the fourteenth century a Franciscan friar, writing of Abyssinia and Nubia, says that “the Patriarch of these countries is Prester Juan who rules over many lands and cities of Christians.” He is also referred to by Marco Polo as ruling a kingdom somewhere near the Great Wall of China, while that old spinner of travelers’ tales, Sir John Mandeville, placed his kingdom in upper India.

There is no smoke without fire, and we see now that medieval Christians in Europe were not so far from the truth when they believed that somewhere to the south and east there was a Christian king and country. Their hope was to establish communication with him, form an alliance against the heretic Mohammedans, and thus be able to take them in the rear. In this they were doomed to disappointment.

The lure of Prester John was something that inevitably appealed to two sides of Prince Henry’s temperament. As grand master of the Order of Christ, he clearly had the duty to establish contact with this “lost” Christian ruler. It was practical politics for him, as a prince engaged in war against the Mohammedans, to try to establish a powerful alliance behind their backs. Prince Henry must have been further spurred in this quest when his brother Peter returned from his travels in 1428, bringing with him a copy of Marco Polo’s book, which the Venetians had given him.

How often in his long conversations with travelers and seafarers Prince Henry must have heard that name, Prester John.

The search for this long-dead, or nonexistent, monarch played as important a part in the history of navigation and discovery as the quest for the philosophers’ stone in the history of chemistry.

Henry was often alone these days. He was beginning his apprenticeship to the world of sea and silence. Below him in the bay a few ships drowsed at anchor. Around him lay the beginning of his palace, his fortress, and his naval base.

“How many times did the rising sun find him seated where it had left him the day before, waking all the hours of the night, without a moment of rest, surrounded by people of many nationalities… . Where will you find another human body capable of supporting, as his in battle, the fatigue from which he had so little rest in time of peace! I truly believe that if strength could be represented, its very form would be found in the countenance and body of this prince. It was not only in certain things that he showed himself to be strong, but in all. And what strength is there greater than that of the man who is conqueror of himself?”

The stern devotion to religious duties, which his mother had taught him, had disciplined him to long hours, and days even, of self-denial. As grand master of the Order of Christ he was dedicated to a chaste and ascetic life—but these were obligations that many a prince or nobleman would have taken lightly.

In Henry they were as binding as his mother’s dying command, and the banked-up fires of sexuality provided the immense reserves of energy that astounded his fellow men. During those first months at Sagres he spent many a night vigil engaged in a contemplation that was part religious and part scientific. It was after one of these long nights alone that the period of inaction was suddenly broken.

It was early morning and the headland was cool, damp with the night dew and heady with the northern wind. He could hear the sound of the sea where it made up against the headland, a sound that had become part of his silence. The light was just beginning to bring color back into the world, and the dark water in the bay was like pewter. His attendants, his sailors, and the strange people who made up his stranger court— sea captains, Jewish cartographers, Moors, adventurers, and men-at-arms—were asleep. They were awakened by the Prince himself. With drawn face but shining eyes, he came among them like a strange spirit, and the simple, superstitious men were frightened by the power they saw in him.

“Two ships are to be prepared at once,” he said. “They are to set sail and go as far south along the Moroccan coast as possible.”

He must know more about that coast. He must know which way it trended, and how the capes lay, and whether there were anchorages safe from storms.

It was as if, during the night, he had seen a vision. This was to be no marauding expedition against Moorish shipping. This was to be the first of hundreds of voyages of exploration, voyages that seemed pointless and dangerous to the sailors, and a gross waste of money to the courtiers.

They were all a little afraid of him, though, for his anger could be terrifying. Normally a quiet and gently spoken man, one who would always listen with reason to the excuses and complaints of the men who worked for him, there came a moment when his face would freeze and his eyes become like ice. The anger that seized him then was a cold anger of the will— unlike the hot words or blows of other men.

“To sail south,” murmured the sailors. “What is the point of that? How can we possibly pass beyond the bounds that are established? What profit can the Prince gain from the loss of a few poor sailors? There have been other princes who have tried to find out more than man was meant to know—and what did they achieve? Nothing.”

They knew that beyond Cape Bojador there were no human beings. The land was as barren as the deserts of Libya, and there was no water at all. The sun baked men black, and the sea was so shallow that ships could not pass. And the tides were so strong—that eternal rush of great waters—that no ship could ever return.

“You will go south,” said the Prince.

They went down to the ships, and made them ready for sea.

These first two ships to sail on a voyage of pure exploration were not caravels, but small square-sailed barks of the type in which most of the trade was carried. They were about fifty tons, half-decked, with a high poop. They were admirable ships for running before the wind, but the sailors had good reason for fearing that they would have difficulty in beating back against it. In the summer months the prevailing wind from the north, which cools the hot plains and valleys of Portugal, blows almost steadily. It was this wind, combined with Portugal’s geographical position, that made the country ideally sited for Atlantic exploration. The wind that had been blowing when Queen Philippa died was to boost the ships of Portugal down all the trade routes of the world. It gave them the initial “lift” off the rocky Atlantic coast of Europe. Once they had gone far enough south, beyond the Canary Islands, they would find the northeast trades, which would ultimately carry them to the South Atlantic and South America.