CHAPTER II.

DISCOVERY OF THE THREE OCEANS.

Who opened up to men the great distant navigation? Who revealed the Ocean, and marked out its zones and its liquid highways? Who discovered the secrets of the Globe? The Whale and the Whaler!

And all this before Columbus and the famous gold seekers, who have monopolized all the glory, found again, with much outcry about their discovery, what had so long before been discovered by the Whalers.

That crossing of the Ocean which was so boastfully celebrated in the fifteenth century, had often been made, not only by the narrow passage between Iceland and Greenland, but also by the open sea; for the Basques went to Newfoundland. The smallest danger was the mere voyage, for these men, who went to the very end of the then world, to challenge the Whale to single combat. To steer right away into the Northern seas, to attack the mighty monster, amid darkness and storms, with the dense fog all around and the foaming waves below, those who could do this, were, believe it well, not the men to shrink from the ordinary dangers of the voyage.

Noble warfare; great school of courage! That Fishery was not then, as it is now, an easy war to wage, made from a distance, and with a potently murderous machine. No; the fisher then struck with his own strong hand, impelled and guided by his own fearless heart; and he risked life to take life. The men of that day killed but few Whales, but they gained infinitely in maritime ability, in patience, in sagacity, and in intrepidity. They brought back less of oil; but more, far more, of glory.

Every nation has its own peculiar genius. We recognize each by its own style of procedure. There are a hundred forms of courage, and these graduated varieties, formed, as it were, another heroic game. At the North, the Scandinavian, the ruddy race from Norway to Flanders, had their sanguine fury. At the South, the wild burst, the gay daring, the clear-headed excitement, that impelled, at once, and guided them over the world. In the center, the silent and patient firmness of the Breton, who, yet, in the hour of danger could display a quite sublime eccentricity. And lastly, the Norman wariness, considerately courageous; daring all, but daring all for success.

Such was the beauty of man, in that sovereign manifestation of human courage.

We owe a vast deal to the Whale. But for it, the fishers would still have hugged the shore; for almost every edible fish, seeks the shore, and the river. It was it that emancipated them, and led them afar. It led them onward, and onward still, until they found it, after having almost unconsciously, passed from one world to the other. Greenland did not seduce them, it was not the land that they sought, but the sea, and the tracks of the Whale. The Ocean at large is its home, and especially the broad and open Sea. Each species has its especial preference for this or that latitude, for a certain zone of water; more or less cold. And it was that preference which traced out the great divisions of the Atlantic.

The tribe of inferior Whales, that have a dorsal fin, (Baleinopteres) are to be found in the warmest, and in the coldest seas; under the line, and in the polar seas. In the great intermediate region, the fierce Cachalot inclines towards the South, devastating the warm waters. On the contrary, the Free Whale fears the warm waters; we should rather say that they did, formerly, fear them;--they have become so scarce! Especially affecting, for their food, the molluscs, and other forms of elementary life, they sought them in the temperate waters, a little to the northward. They are never found in the warm, southern current; it was that fact that led to the current being noticed, and thence to the discovery of the _true course from America to Europe_. From Europe to America, the trade winds will serve us.

If the Free Whale has a perfect horror of the warm waters, and cannot pass the Equator, it is clear that he cannot double the southern end of America. How happens it, then, that when he is wounded on one side of America, in the Atlantic, he is sometimes found on the other side of America, and in the Pacific? _It proves that there is a north-western passage._ Another discovery which we owe to the Whale, and one which throws a broad light alike on the form of the globe, and the geography of the seas!

By degrees, the Whale has led us everywhere. Rare as he is at present, he has led us to both poles, from the uttermost recesses of the Pacific to Behring's strait, and the infinite wastes of the Antarctic waters. There is even an enormous region that no vessel, whether war ship or merchantman, ever traverses, at a few degrees beyond the southern points of America and Africa. No one visits that region but the Whalers.

Had they chosen, the magnates of the earth might much earlier have made the discoveries of the fifteenth century. They should have addressed themselves to the sea rovers, to the Basques, to the Icelanders, to the Norwegians, and to our Normans. For very many reasons, they could not venture to do so. The Portuguese were unwilling to employ any but men of their own nationality, and formed in their own school. They feared our Normans, whom they chased and dispossessed from the coast of Africa. On the other hand, the kings of Castile always felt suspicious of their subjects, the Basques, whose privileges rendered them a kind of republic within a monarchy, and who, moreover, were well known to be both bold and dangerous. It was this feeling which caused these princes to fail, in more than one enterprise. We need mention only one of them, the miserably ruined Armada, so proudly and absurdly called the _Invincible_. Philip II, who had two veteran Basque Admirals, gave the command of the Armada, to a Castilian. The advice of the veterans was neglected, and thence the disaster.

A terrible disease broke out in the fifteenth century. The hunger, the thirst, the raging thirst for gold. Kings, priests, warriors, people, all cried aloud for gold. There was no longer any means of balancing income and expenditure. False money, cruel persecutions, atrocious wars, all and every thing, were employed, but still the cry was for gold, and the gold was not forthcoming. The alchemists confidently promised that they would soon make it; but it was to be waited for, that gold; still, still, it was not forthcoming. The treasury became furious as a hungry Lion, devoured the Jews, devoured the Moors, and of all that mighty devouring there was not a morsel left between the teeth of the still gold-hungry nations.

The peoples were quite as eager as the kings. Lean and sucked to the very bone, they begged, they prayed, they implored, for a miracle that would bring down gold from Heaven.

We all know the story of Sinbad the Sailor, that capital story in the _Arabian Nights_. The poor porter, Hindbad, bending under a load of wood, stops before the doors of Sinbad's palace, to listen to the music, and bitterly complains of the contrast between the lot of the poor porter Hindbad, and that of Sinbad, the returned, renowned, and magnificently rich Sinbad. But when the enriched sailor related all the perils he had undergone, and all the sufferings he had endured, Hindbad stood aghast at the tale. The entire effect of the story is to exaggerate the dangers of the great game, the vast lottery of travelling, but also to exaggerate the profits that may be made by it, and to discourage steady and humble industry.

The legend, which, in the fifteenth century, influenced so many hearts, and turned so many brains, was a rehash of the fable of the Hesperides, an Eldorado, a land of gold, which was located in the Indies; a terrestrial paradise, still existing here below. The only difficulty consisted in finding that same golden land. They did not care to seek it in the North, which was the reason why so little use was made of the discovery of Newfoundland and Greenland. In the South, on the contrary, gold dust had already been found in Africa. That was encouraging.

The learned dreamers of a pedantic century heaped up texts and commentaries, and the discovery, by no means difficult in itself, was rendered so, by dint of lectures, reflections, and utopian dreams. Was this land of gold, Paradise, or was it not? Was it at our antipodes? and, in fact, have we any antipodes? And at this last question all the Doctors, all the men of the black robe, stopped the learned quite short, and reminded them that upon that point, the Church was quite positive; the heretical doctrine of the Antipodes having been formally and expressly condemned. Behold a serious difficulty! Our learned dreamers were stopped short.

But why was it so difficult to discover the already discovered America? The reason seems to be that the discovery was at once hoped for and dreaded.

The learned Italian bookseller, Columbus, felt quite satisfied upon the subject. He had been in Iceland to collect traditions, and on the other hand the Basques told him all that they knew about Newfoundland. A Gallician had been cast away there and had lived there. Columbus selected for his associates the Pinçons, Andalusian pilots, who are with much probability supposed to be identical with the Pinçons of Dieppe. We say that this is very probable because our Basques and Normans, subjects of Castile, were intimately connected. They are the same who, under the name of Castilians, were led by the Norman Bethencourt to the famous expedition of the Canaries. Our kings conferred privileges on the _Castilians_ settled at Honfleur and Dieppe; and, on the other hand, the men of Dieppe had trading establishments at Seville. It is not certain that a Dieppois found America four years before Columbus, but it is about certain that these Pinçons of Andalusia were Norman privateers.

Neither Basques nor Normans could obtain authority to act under the commission of Castile. It was an able and eloquent Italian, a persistent Genoese, who seized upon the fitting moment, and used it, and set all scruple aside,--that moment when the ruin of the Moors had cost so dear to Castile, and when the cry of Gold, Gold, or we perish, became louder, more piteous, and more unanimous, than ever. That moment was when victorious Spain shuddered as she counted the cost, paid and unpaid, of her wars of the crusade and the Inquisition. The Italian seized upon that lever and used it most unscrupulously; becoming most devout among the devout. More apparently bigoted than the Bigots themselves, he pressed the very Church into his service. Isabella was reminded of the great sin and scandal of leaving whole nations of Pagans still in the valley of the shadow of death; and it was particularly pressed upon her observation, that to discover the golden land, was the one thing needful to acquiring the ability to exterminate the Turk and to recover Jerusalem.

It is well known that of three ships the Pinçons shipped two, and commanded them, and they led the way. One of them, indeed, mistook his course, but the others, Francis Pinçon and his younger brother Vincent, pilot of the vessel _Nina_, signalled to Columbus, on the 12th of October, 1492, to steer to the south-west. Columbus, who was on a westerly course, would have encountered the gulf stream in its fullest force, and directly thwart hawse, and he would have crossed that liquid wall only with the greatest difficulty. He would have perished, or would have made such little way that his discouraged crew would have mutinied. On the contrary, the Pinçons, who probably had collected some traditions on the subject, steered as though they were well acquainted with the current; they did not attempt to cross it in its force, but keeping well to the southward, crossed without difficulty and made the exact spot where the trades blow directly from Africa to America in the latitude of Haiti. This is proved from the journal of Columbus himself, who candidly avows that he was guided by the Pinçons.

Who first saw America? One of Pinçon's sailors, if we may put any confidence in the report of the royal enquiry of 1513.

From all this it would seem pretty plain that a good share of both the glory and the gain ought to have been awarded to the Pinçons. They thought the same, and commenced legal proceedings, but the king decided in favor of Columbus. Why? Apparently because the Pinçons were Normans, and Spain preferred to recognize the right of a Genoese, without national feeling, than that of French subjects of Louis XII, and of Francis I, to whom, as French subjects, they might some day, from fear or favor, transfer their rights. One of the Pinçons died of despair, caused by this very manifestly unjust decision.

But still, who had overcome the great obstacle of religious repugnance? Whose eloquence, tact, and perseverance, in fact set the expedition fairly afloat? Columbus, and Columbus alone. He was the real author of the enterprise and he was also its heroic conductor, and he merits the glory which his posterity preserves and ever will preserve for him.

I think with M. Jules de Blosseville (a noble heart and a good judge of great and heroic things) that in all these discoveries the only real difficulty was the circumnavigation of the globe, the enterprise of Magellan and his pilot, the Basque, Sebastian del Cano. The most brilliant, but at the same time the easiest, was the crossing the Atlantic, catching the trade wind, and thus getting to America far south of the point at which it had long before been discovered at the North.

The Portuguese did a far less extraordinary thing in taking an entire century to discover the Western coast of Africa. Our Normans, in a very brief space had discovered the half of it. In spite of all that is said about the laudable perseverance of Prince Henry, in establishing the Lisbon school, the Venetian Cadamosto clearly proves the want of ability of the Portuguese pilots. They no sooner had one at once bold and highly gifted, in the person of Bartholomew Diaz, who doubled the Cape, than they replaced him by Gama, a noble of the king's household, and, above all, a soldier. The truth is, that the Portuguese cared more about conquests to make, and treasure to gain, than about discoveries, properly so called. Gama was brave as brave could be, but he was only too faithful to his orders to suffer no other flag in the same seas. A ship load of Pilgrims from Mecca, whom he barbarously murdered, exasperated all the hates, and augmented, throughout the East, that horror of the very name of Christian, which more and more closed Asia, alike against discoverers, for the sake of discovery, and adventurers for the sake of plunder.

Is it true that Magellan, before his great enterprise, had seen the Pacific laid down upon a globe by the German, Behaim? No; that globe has never been produced. Had he seen, in the possession of his master, the king of Portugal, a chart which had it so laid down? It has been said, but never proved. It is far more probable that some of the adventurers who, already, for twenty years, had been traversing the American continent, had seen the Pacific, not on globes or charts, but with their own eyes. That report, which was circulated, spread admirably well with the theoretical calculation of such a counterpoise, necessary to our hemisphere, and to the equilibrium of the globe.

There is not a more terrible biography than that of Magellan. Throughout, we have nothing but combat, far voyages, flights, trials, attempted assassination, and at length, death, among the scourges. He fought in Africa, he fought in the Indies, and he married among the brave but ferocious Malays;--whom, by the way, he seems not a little to have resembled.

During his long residence in Asia, he collected all possible information, preparatory to his great expedition, to find the way by America, to the Spice Islands, the Moluccas; thus getting spices so much cheaper than by the old course. His original idea of the enterprise, was, thus, an altogether commercial one. To lower the price of pepper, was the primitive inspiration of the most heroic voyage ever made on this globe!

The true court spirit of intrigue, reigned in Portugal in full power over everything. Magellan finding himself ill treated there, went over to Spain, where Charles V. magnificently furnished him with five ships, but not choosing to put full confidence in a Portuguese malcontent, the king associated with Magellan a Castilian. Magellan sailed between two dangers, the jealousy of the Castilian, and the vengeance of the Portuguese, who sought to assassinate him. He soon had a mutiny in the fleet, and displayed, in crushing it an indomitable heroism, and no less barbarity. The mutineers he savagely put to death, and his Castilian colleague he put into irons. To increase his troubles, some of his vessels were wrecked. His people were unwilling to proceed with him, when they saw the desolate aspect of Cape Horn, the truly discouraging aspect of Terra-del-Fuego, and Cape Forward. The islands, which form, under the name of Cape Horn, the southern point of America, seem to have been violently rent from the continent by the fury of many volcanoes, and suddenly cooled. As the result, they present a frightfully heterogeneous mass of sharp peaks, huge blocks of granite, of lava, and of basalt, all these, grotesquely, yet frightfully, arranged, in frowning confusion, and clothed in ice and snow.

All had quite enough of this at a single glance, and bold Magellan's word was--"Onward!" He filled away his sails, steered now to starboard, now to larboard, then to starboard again, and at length found himself in that boundless sea which was then so _Pacific_ that it then received the name which it has ever since borne; though all who have sailed upon it, well know that at times, it can comport itself in an anything rather than pacific style.

Magellan at length perished in the Philippines. Four vessels were lost. The only one which survived, was the Victory, whose crew was reduced to thirteen men. But among them was the great and intrepid Pilot, the Basque, Sebastian, who, in 1521, returned to Spain, the first of mortal men who had been completely round the globe.

Nothing could be grander. The sphericity of the globe was thus made matter of certainty. That physical marvel of water uniformly extended over a globe, and constantly adhering to it, that strange mechanical postulate, was fully demonstrated. The Pacific was at length known, that grand, and till then mysterious laboratory, in which, far from our ken, Nature so profoundly labors in life-creating and life-nurturing, making new rocks, new islands, new continents.

A revelation, that, of immense significance; and not only of material, but also of moral significance, which gave a hundred fold increase to man's daring, and sent him forth on another daring voyage, on the boundless Ocean of the Sciences, to circumnavigate,--with more or less of success, as it may chance,--the INFINITE!