University of Virginia Library

See the life of Don Henry, Prince of Portugal, in the Preface.

The discovery of some of the West-Indian islands by Columbus was made in 1492 and 1493. His discovery of the continent of America was not till 1498. The fleet of Gama sailed from the Tagus in 1497.

Called by the ancients Insulæ Purpurariæ. Now Madeira and Porto Sancto. The former was so named by Juan Gonzales, and Tristan Vaz, from the Spanish word Madera, wood. These discoverers were sent out by the great Don Henry.

Called by Ptolemy Caput Assinarium.

The province of Jalofo lies between the two rivers, the Gambea and the Zanago. The latter has other names in the several countries through which it runs. In its course it makes many islands, inhabited only by wild beasts. It is navigable 150 leagues, at the end of which it is crossed by a stupendous ridge of perpendicular rocks, over which the river rushes with such violence, that travellers pass under it without any other inconveniency than the prodigious noise. The Gambea, or Rio Grande runs 180 leagues, but is not so far navigable. It carries more water, and runs with less noise than the other, though filled with many rivers which water the country of Mandinga. Both rivers are branches of the Niger. Their waters have this remarkable quality; when mixed together they operate as an emetic, but when separate do not. They abound with great variety of fishes, and their banks are covered with horses, crocodiles, winged serpents, elephants, ounces, wild boars, with great numbers of others, wonderful for the variety of their nature and different forms. Faria y Sousa.

Tombotu, the mart of Mandinga gold, was greatly resorted to by the merchants of Grand Cairo, Tunis, Oran, Tremisen, Fez, Morocco, &c.

Contra hoc promontorium (Hesperionceras) Gorgades insulæ narrantur, Gorgonum quondam domus, bidui navigatione distantes a continente, ut tradit Xenophon Lampsacenus. Penetravit in eas Hanno Pœnorum imperator, prodiditque hirta fœminarum corpora viros pernicitate evasisse, duarumque Gorgonum cutes argumenti et miraculi gratia in Junonis templo posuit, spectatas usque ad Carthaginem captam. Plin. Hist. Nat. l. 6. c. 31.

During the reign of John II. the Portuguese erected several forts, and acquired great power in the extensive regions of Guinea. Azambuja, a Portuguese captain, having obtained leave from Caramansa, a Negro Prince, to erect a fort on his territories, an unlucky accident had almost proved fatal to the discoverers. A huge rock lay very commodious for a quarry; the workmen began on it; but this rock, as the Devil would have it, happened to be a Negro God. The Portuguese were driven away by the enraged worshippers, who were afterwards with difficulty pacified by a profusion of such presents as they most esteemed.

The Portuguese having brought an Ambassador from Congo to Lisbon sent him back instructed in the faith. By this means the King, Queen, and about 100,000 of the people were baptized; the idols were destroyed and churches built. Soon after the Prince, who was then absent at war, was baptized by the name of Alonzo. His younger brother, Aquitimo, however, would not receive the faith, and the father, because allowed only one wife, turned apostate, and left the crown to his Pagan son, who, with a great army, surrounded his brother, when only attended by some Portuguese and Christian Blacks, in all only thirty-seven. By the bravery of these, however, Aquitimo was defeated, taken, and slain. One of Aquitimo's officers declared, they were not defeated by the thirty-seven Christians, but by a glorious army who fought under a shining cross. The idols were again destroyed, and Alonzo sent his sons, grandsons, and nephews to Portugal to study; two of whom were afterwards bishops in Congo. Extracted from Faria y Sousa.

According to fable, Calisto was a nymph of Diana. Jupiter having assumed the figure of that goddess, completed his amorous desires. On the discovery of her pregnancy Diana drove her from her train. She fled to the woods, where she was delivered of a son. Juno changed them into bears, and Jupiter placed them in heaven, where they form the constellation of Ursa major and minor. Juno still enraged, entreated Thetis never to suffer Calisto to bathe in the sea. This is founded on the appearance of the northern pole-star, to the inhabitants of our hemisphere: but when Gama approached the austral pole, the northern, of consequence, disappeared under the waves.

The constellation of the southern pole was called The Cross by the Portuguese sailors, from the appearance of that figure formed by seven stars, four of which are particularly luminous. Dante, who wrote before the discovery of the southern hemisphere, has these remarkable lines in the first canto of his Purgatorio.

Voltaire somewhere observes, that this looked like a prophecy, when, in the succeeding age, these four stars were known to be near the Antartic pole. Dante, however, spoke allegorically of the four cardinal virtues.

In the southern hemisphere, as Camoens observes, the nights are darker than in the northern, the skies being adorned with much fewer stars.

Is thus accounted for in natural history. The sulphureous vapours of the air, after being violently agitated by a tempest, unite, and when the humidity begins to subside, as is the case when the storm is almost exhausted, by the agitation of their atoms they take fire, and are attracted by the masts and cordage of the ship. Being thus naturally the pledges of the approaching calm, it is no wonder that the superstition of sailors should in all ages have esteemed them divine, and

In the expedition of the Golden Fleece, in a violent tempest these fires were seen to hover over the heads of Castor and Pollux, who were two of the Argonauts, and a calm immediately ensued. After the apotheoses of these heroes, the Grecian sailors invoked these fires by the names of Castor and Pollux, or the sons of Jupiter. The Athenians called them Σωτηρες Saviours; and Homer, in his hymn to Castor and Pollux, says,

In this book, particularly in the description of Massilia, the Gorgades, the fires called Castor and Pollux, and the water-spout, Camoens has happily imitated the manner of Lucan. It is probable that Camoens, in his voyage to the East-Indies, was an eye witness of the phænomena of the fires and water-spout. The latter is thus described by Pliny, l. 2. c. 51. Fit et caligo, belluæ similis nubes dira navigantibus vocatur et columna, cum spissatus humor rigensque ipse se sustinet, et in longam veluti fistulam nubes aquam trahit. When the violent heat attracts the waters to rise in the form of a tube, the marine salts are left behind by the action of rarefaction, being too gross and fixed to ascend. It is thus, when the overloaded vapour bursts, that it descends

The Astrolabium, an instrument of infinite service in navigation, by which the altitude of the sun, and distance of the stars is taken. It was invented in Portugal during the reign of Johh II. by two Jew Physicians, named Roderic and Joseph. It is asserted by some that they were assisted by Martin of Bohemia, a celebrated Mathematician. Partly from Castera. Vid. Barros, Dec. 1. l. 4. c. 2.

Camoens, in describing the adventure of Fernando Veloso, by departing from the truth of history, has shewn his judgment as a Poet. The Place where the Portuguese landed they named the Bay of St. Helen. They caught one of two negroes, says Faria, who were busied in gathering honey on a mountain. Their behaviour to this savage, whom they gratified with a red cap, some glasses and bells, induced him to bring a number of his companions for the like trifles. Though some who accompanied Gama were skilled in the various Ethiopic languages, not one of the natives could understand them. A commerce however was commenced by signs and gestures. Gama behaved to them with great civility; the fleet was chearfully supplied with fresh provisions, for which the natives received cloaths and trinkets. But this friendship was soon interrupted by a young rash Portuguese. Having contracted an intimacy with some of the negroes, he obtained leave to penetrate into the country along with them, to observe their habitations and strength. They conducted him to their huts with great good nature, and placed before him, what they esteemed an elegant repast, a sea-calf dressed in the way of their country. This so much disgusted the delicate Portuguese, that he instantly got up and abruptly left them. Nor did they oppose his departure, but accompanied him with the greatest innocence. As fear, however is always jealous, he imagined they were leading him as a victim to slaughter. No sooner did he come near the ships, than he called aloud for assistance. Coëllo's boat immediately set off for his rescue. The Ethiopians fled to the woods; and now esteeming the Portuguese as a band of lawless plunderers, they provided themselves with arms, and lay in ambush. Their weapons were javelins, headed with short pieces of horn, which they throw with great dexterity. Soon after, while Gama and some of his officers were on the shore taking the altitude of the sun by the astrolabium, they were suddenly and with great fury attacked by the ambush from the woods. Several were much wounded, multos convulnerant, inter quos Gama in pede vulnus accepit, and Gama received a wound in the foot. The Admiral made a speedy retreat to the fleet, prudently chusing rather to leave the negroes the honour of the victory, than to risque the life of one man in a quarre so foreign to the destination of his expedition, and where, to impress the terror of his arms could be of no service to his interest. When he came nearer to the East-Indies he acted in a different manner. He then made himself dreaded whenever the treachery of the natives provoked his resentment. Collected from Faria and Osorius.

The critics, particularly the French, have vehemently declaimed against the least mixture of the Comic, with the dignity of the Epic Poem. It is needless to enter into any defence of this passage of Camoens, farther than to observe, that Homer, Virgil, and Milton have offended the critics in the same manner, and that this piece of raillery in the Lusiad is by much the politest, and the least reprehensible of any thing of the kind in the four Poets. In Homer are several strokes of low raillery. Patroclus having killed Hector's charioteer, puns thus on his sudden fall. “It is a pity he is not nearer the sea! He would soon catch abundance of oysters, nor would the storms frighten him. See how he dives from his chariot down to the sand! What excellent divers are the Trojans! Virgil, the most judicious of all Poets, descends even to burlesque, where the commander of a galley tumbles the Pilot into the sea:

And though the character of the speakers, the ingenious defence which has been offered for Milton, may, in some measure, vindicate the raillery which he puts into the mouths of Satan and Belial, the lowness of it, when compared with that of Camoens, must still be acknowledged. Talking of the execution of the diabolical artillery among the good angels, they, says Satan,

The partiality of Translators and Editors is become almost proverbial. The admiration of their author is supposed when they undertake to introduce him to the public; that admiration therefore, may without a blush be confessed; but if the reputation of judgment is valued, all the jealousy of circumspection is necessary, for the transition from admiration to partiality and hypercriticism is not only easy, but to oneself often imperceptible. Yet however guarded against this partiality of hypercriticism the Translator of Camoens may deem himself, he is aware that some of his colder readers, may perhaps, in the following instance accuse him of it. Regardless however of the sang froid of those who judge by authority and not by their own feelings, he will venture to appeal to the few whose taste, though formed by the classics, is untainted with classical prejudices. To these he will appeal, and to these he will venture the assertion, that the fiction of the apparition of the Cape of Tempests, in sublimity and awful grandeur of imagination, stands unsurpassed in human composition.—Voltaire, and the foreign Critics, have confessed its merit.— In the prodigy of the Harpies in the Æneid, neither the

Though Virgil, to heighten the description, introduces it with

Nor the predictions of the harpy Celæno, can, in point of dignity, bear any comparison with the fiction of Camoens. The noble and admired description of Fame, in the fourth Æneid, may seem indeed to challenge competition:

The Mobilitate viget, the Vires acquirit eundo, the Parva metu primo, &c. the Caput inter nubila condit, the plumæ, oculi linguæ, ora, and aures, the Nocte volat, the Luce sedet custos, and the Magnas territat urbes, are all very great, and finely imagined. But the whole picture is the offspring of careful attention and judgment; it is a noble display of the calm majesty of Virgil, but it has not the enthusiasm of that heat of spontaneous conception, which the ancients honoured with the name of inspiration. The fiction of Camoens, on the contrary, is the genuine effusion of the glow of poetical imagination. The description of the spectre, the awfulness of the prediction, and the horror that breathes through the whole, till the phantom is interrupted by Gama, are in the true spirit of the wild and grand terrific of an Homer, or a Shakespeare. But however Camoens may, in this passage, have excelled Virgil, he himself is infinitely surpassed by two passages of Holy Writ. “A thing was secretly brought to me,” says the Author of the book of Job, “and mine ear received a little thereof. In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake: then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up: It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice: Shall mortal man be more just than God! shall a man be more pure than his Maker! Behold he put no trust in his servants, and his angels be charged with folly: how much less them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, and who are crushed before the moth!

This whole passage, particularly the indistinguishable form and the silence, are as superior to Camoens in the inimitably wild terrific, as the following, from the Apocalypse, is in grandeur of description. “And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, cloathed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire . . . . and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot upon the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth . . . . . and he lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever, . . . . . that Time should be no more.

On the return of Gama to Portugal, a fleet of thirteen sail, under the command of Pedro Alvarez Cabral, was sent out on the second voyage to India, where the admiral with only fix ships arrived. The rest were mostly destroyed by a terrible tempest at the Cape of Good Hope, which lasted twenty days. The day-time, says Faria, was so dark that the sailors could scarcely see each other, or hear what was said for the horrid noise of the winds. Among those who perished was the celebrated Bartholomew Diaz, who was the first modern discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, which he named the Cape of Tempests.

Don Francisco de Almeyda. He was the first Portuguese viceroy of India, in which country he obtained several great victories over the Mohammedans and Pagans. He was the first who conquered Quiloa and Mombassa or Mombaze. On his return to Portugal he put into the bay of Saldanna, near the Cape of Good Hope, to take in water and provisions. The rudeness of one of his servants produced a quarrel with the Caffres, or Hottentots. His attendants, much against his will, forced him to march against the blacks. “Ah, whither (he exclaimed) will you carry the infirm man of sixty years.” After plundering a miserable village, on the return to their ships they were attacked by a superior number of Caffres, who fought with such fury in rescue of their children, whom the Portuguese had seized, that the viceroy and fifty of his attendants were slain.

This poetical description of the miserable catastrophe of Don Emmanuel de Souza, and his beautiful spouse Leonora de Sà, is by no means exaggerated. He was several years governor of Diu in India, where he amassed immense wealth. On his return to his native country, the ship in which was his lady, all his riches, and five hundred men, his sailors and domestics, was dashed to pieces on the rocks at the Cape of Good Hope. Don Emmanuel, his lady, and three children, with four hundred of the crew escaped, having only saved a few arms and provisions. As they marched through the wild uncultivated deserts, some died of famine, of thirst, and fatigue; others, who wandered from the main body in search of water, were murdered by the savages, or destroyed by the wild beasts. They arrived at last at a village inhabited by Ethiopian banditti. At first they were courteously received, but the barbarians, having unexpectedly seized their arms, stripped the whole company naked, and left them destitute to the mercy of the desert. The wretchedness of the delicate and exposed Leonora was encreased by the brutal insults of the negroes. Her husband, unable to relieve, beheld her miseries. After having travelled about 300 leagues, her legs swelled, her feet bleeding at every step, and her strength exhausted, she sunk down, and with the sand covered herself to the neck, to conceal her nakedness. In this dreadful situation, she beheld two of her children expire. Her own death soon followed. Her husband, who had been long enamoured of her beauty, received her last breath in a distracted embrace. Immediately he snatched his third child in his arms, and uttering the most lamentable cries, he ran into the thickest of the wood, where the wild beasts were soon heard to growl over their prey. Of the whole four hundred who escaped the waves, only six and twenty arrived at another Ethiopian village, whose inhabitants were more civilized, and traded with the merchants of the Red sea, from whence they found a passage to Europe, and brought the tidings of the unhappy fate of their companions. Jerome de Cortereal, a Portuguese poet, has written an affecting poem on the shipwreck and deplorable catastrophe of Don Emmanuel and his beloved spouse. Partly from Castera.

Doris, the sister and spouse of Nereus, and mother of the Nereides. By Nereus, in the physical sense of the fable, is understood the water of the sea, and by Doris, the bitterness or salt, the supposed cause of its prolific quality in the generation of fishes.

The circumstances of the disappearance of the spectre are in the same poetical spirit of the introduction. If we may be allowed to allegorise the amour of Adamastor, it will be found a necessary part of the fiction, and, at any rate, to suppose the spectre the Spirit of that huge promontory the Cape of Tempests, which by night makes its awful appearance to the fleet of Gama, while wandering in an unknown ocean, is a noble flight of imagination; nor need one scruple to affirm, that the deception of the lover, and the metamorphosis, are in the best manner of Ovid. As already observed in the preface, the poem of Camoens is often allegorical: To establish Christianity in the East, is expresly said in the Lusiad to be the great purpose of the Hero. By Bacchus, the demon who opposes the expedition, must, of consequence, be meant the genius of Mohammedism: and accordingly in the eighth book, the Evil Spirit and Bacchus are mentioned as the same personage; where, in the figure of Mohammed, he appears in a dream to a Mohammedan priest. In like manner by Adamastor, the genius of Mohammedism must be supposed to be meant. The Moors, who professed that religion, till the arrival of Gama, were the sole navigators of the eastern seas, and by every exertion of force and fraud they endeavoured to prevent the settlements of the Christians. In the figure of the spectre, the French translator finds an exact description of the person of Mohammed, his fierce demeanour and pale complexion, but he certainly carries his unravelment too far in several instances: to mention only two; “Mohammed (says he) was a false prophet, so is Adamastor, who says Emmanuel de Souza and his spouse shall die in one another's arms, whereas, the husband was devoured by wild beasts in the wood. . . . By the metamorphosis of Adamastor into an huge mass of earth and rock, laved by the waves, is meant the death and tomb of Mohammed. He died of a dropsy, behold the waters which surround him; voi a les eaux qui Péntourent.—His tomb was exceeding high, behold the height of the promontory.” By such latitude of interpretation, the allegory which was really intended by an author, becomes suspected by the reader. As Camoens, however, has assured us that he did allegorise, one need not hesitate to affirm, that the amour of Adamastor is an instance of it. By Thetis is figured Renown, or true Glory, by the fierce passion of the giant, the fierce rage of ambition, and by the rugged mountain that filled his deluded arms, the infamy acquired by the brutal conqueror Mohammed. The hint of this last circumstance is adopted from Castera.

Variety is no less delightful to the reader than to the traveller, and the imagination of Camoens gave an abundant supply. The insertion of this pastoral landscape, between the terrific scenes which precede and follow, has a fine effect. “Variety,” says Pope, in one of his notes on the Odyssey, “gives life and delight; and it is much more necessary in epic than in comic or tragic poetry, sometimes to shift the scenes to diversify and embellish the story.” The authority of another celebrated [illeg.]ter offers itself: “Les Portugais naviguant sur l'océan Atlantique, decouvrirent la pointe le plus méridionale de l'Afrique; ils virent une vaste mer; elle les porta aux Indes Orientales; leurs périls fur cette mer, et la découverte de Mozambique, de Melinde, et de Calecut, ont été chan és par le Camoëns, dont le poëme fait sentir quelque chose de charmes de l'Odyssée, et de la magnificence de l'Eneïde.” i. e. The Portuguese sailing upon the Atlantic ocean discovered the most southern point of Africa: here they found an immense sea, which carried them to the East Indies. The dangers they encountered in the voyage, the discovery of Mozambic, of Melinda, and of Calecut, have been sung by Camoens, whose poem recalls to our minds the charms of the Odyssey, and the magnificence of the Eneid. Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, b. xxi. c. 21.

A small island, named Santa Cruz by Bartholomew Diaz, who discovered it. According to Faria y Sousa, he went twenty-five leagues further, to the river del Infante, which, till past by Gama, was the utmost extent of the Portuguese discoveries.

It was the force of this rushing current which retarded the further discoveries of Diaz. Gama got over it by the assistance of a tempest. The seasons, when these seas are safely navigable, are now perfectly known.

The frequent disappointments of the Portuguese, when they expect to hear some account of India, is a judicious imitation of several parts of Virgil; who, in the same manner, magnifies the distresses of the Trojans in their search for the fated seat of Empire:

It had been extremely impolitic in Gama to mention the mutiny of his followers to the king Melinda. The boast of their loyalty besides, has a good effect in the poem, as it elevates the heroes, and gives uniformity to the character of bravery, which the dignity of the Epopea required to be ascribed to them. History relates the matter differently. In standing for the Cape of Good Hope, Gama gave the highest proofs of his resolution, “In illo autem cursu valdé Gamæ virtus enituit.” The fleet seemed now tossed to the clouds, ut modo nubes contingere, and now sunk to the lowest whirlpools of the abyss. The winds were unsufferably cold, and to the rage of the tempest was added the horror of an almost continual darkness. The crew expected every moment to be swallowed up in the deep. At every interval of the storm, they came round Gama, asserting the impossibility to proceed further, and imploring to return. This he resolutely refused. A conspiracy against his life was formed, but was discovered by his brother. He guarded against it with the greatest courage and prudence, he put all the pilots in chains, and he himself, with some others, took the management of the helms. At last, after having many days withstood the tempest, and a perfidious combination, invicto animo, with an unconquered mind, a favourable change of weather revived the spirits of the fleet, and allowed them to double the Cape of Good Hope. Extr. from Osor.

When Gama arrived in the East, a considerable commerce was carried on between the Indies and the Red Sea by the Moorish traders, by whom the gold mines of Sofala, and the riches of the oriental or Ethiopic coast of Africa were enjoyed. The traffic of the East was by land brought to Grand Cairo, from whence Europe was supplied by the Venetian and Antwerpian merchants.

Rio dos bons sinais.

It was the custom of the Portuguese navigators to erect crosses on the shores of the new-discovered countries. Gama carried materials for pillars of stone along with him, and erected six of these crosses during his expedition. They bore the name and arms of the king of Portugal, and were intended as proofs of the title which accrues from the first discovery.

This poetical description of the Scurvy is by no means exaggerated above what sometimes really happens in the course of a long voyage.

See En. V. 833.

The Lotophagi, so named from the plant Lotus, are thus described by Homer.

The natural history of the Lotos, however, is very different. There are various kinds of it. The Lybian Lotos is a shrub like a bramble, the berries like the myrtle, but purple when ripe, and about the bigness of an olive. Mixed with bread-corn it was used as food for slaves. They also made an agreeable wine of it, but which would not keep above ten days. See Pope's note in loco.

The gift of Æolus to Ulysses.

The companions of Ulysses imagined that these bags contained some valuable treasure, and opened them while their leader slept. The tempests bursting out drove the fleet from Ithaca, which was then in sight, and was the cause of a new train of miseries.

See the third Eneid.

See the sixth Eneid, and the eleventh Odyssey.