Part 15

The name of St. Francis Xavier suggests that of his illustrious friend, Dom João de Castro, who rivalled upon the battlefield the glories of Francisco de Almeida, Affonso de Alboquerque, and Nuno da Cunha, but who was distinguished above them all for the noble purity of his life. De Castro was the intimate friend of the king’s uncle, Dom Luis, Duke of Beja, with whom he had been educated, and had won his spurs and the admiration of the Emperor Charles V., by his conduct in the expedition to Tunis. He had served with distinction under Garcia de Noronha and Estevão da Gama in the Indian seas, and on his return home had been employed in the difficult task of evacuating the various Portuguese stations in Morocco, which it had been decided to abandon. He was renowned for the purity and even austerity of his character, and it was for this reason that he was appointed, in 1545, viceroy of India. The situation there was a difficult one, for the Sultan of Turkey had, it is said, at the request of the Venetians, who were disgusted at losing their profitable trade with the East, sent a powerful fleet down the Red Sea to exterminate the Portuguese in India. When João de Castro arrived at Goa, he heard that Diu was being again besieged by Mohammed III. of Gujarāt. The news was true, and in spite of the gallant defence of Dom João de Mascarenhas, the besieged were driven to extremities. The viceroy at once proceeded thither, and not only relieved the fortress, but defeated the King of Gujarāt in a pitched battle beneath the walls. This victory, the greatest won by the Portuguese in India, exalted the fame of the general, which was further enhanced by his annihilation of the great Turkish fleet. After these victories João de Castro turned to matters of internal reform, and, by a policy which recalls that of Lord Cornwallis in Bengal in later history, he fixed the salaries of the various civil officials and tried to put an end to the system of corruption and peculation by which they had robbed the royal treasury and the natives alike. He looked with especial disfavour upon the loose and immoral life led by the Portuguese at Goa, and sternly discouraged their luxury, which, as he declared, could only be paid for by robbing the king of his dues. Unfortunately João de Castro, though he was to inaugurate reforms, did not live long enough to see them carried out, for he died in 1548, in the third year of his viceroyalty, in the arms of his friend, St. Francis Xavier, and it is recorded to the glory of this knight of the olden type, that, in spite of his opportunities, he died poor, and bequeathed to his son only his sword, “ornamented,” in the words of his biographer, “with a few stones of no great value, but with a glory beyond price.”

The immediate successors of Dom João de Castro, Garcia de Sá, Jorge Cabral, Affonso de Noronha, and Pedro de Mascarenhas, found no great perils to meet, since the victory of Diu had terrified the Mohammedans for a time, and none of them left any important traces upon the history of the Portuguese in India. The government of Dom Constantino de Braganza, a scion of the most noble house in Portugal next to royalty, marked a return to the system of Dom João de Castro, whom he imitated not only in his internal reforms, but in his gallantry in the field. He it was who took and occupied Daman, which, with Goa and Diu, remains to this day a possession of Portugal. He was still in office when the death of John III. left the crown of Portugal to a minor, and the greatness of his country, and even its independence, was on the point of disappearing.

But the Portuguese power in Asia must not be regarded as being confined to India, though Goa remained its headquarters, and the centre from which the homeward-bound fleets sailed. It will be remembered that Affonso de Alboquerque made expeditions both to the east and west; and his successors, during the century of the Portuguese monopoly of the Asiatic trade, maintained and extended their commercial operations in both directions. But before touching on these extensions attention must be called to the care with which the greatest Portuguese governors kept up the establishments on the south-eastern coast of Africa. Mozambique, which still belongs to Portugal, Mombassa, and Melinda, were all fortified with the utmost science of the time, for the homeward-and outward-bound fleets always paused at one or other or at all of these places before facing or after meeting the perils of the Indian Ocean, in order to refit and take in provisions. The dangers of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope were also sufficiently serious to need rest or preparation, for to mention but two disasters, Francisco de Almeida, the first Viceroy of India was wrecked in Saldanha Bay, and died there on his way back from his command; and a few years after occurred the wreck, imprisonment among the savages, and death of Dom Manoel de Sousa and his wife, which Camoens has immortalized in touching words.[16] More important than these African settlements was the city of Ormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which became the headquarters of the Persian trade with Europe by means of the Portuguese fleets. It has been seen that Aden was too strong for Alboquerque to capture; one of his successors, Affonso de Noronha, was more successful in 1551, but he only held the key of the Red Sea for a single year, after which it was recaptured by the Turks.

Far more valuable was the settlement of Malacca, which was placed upon a secure footing by Alboquerque. It became the centre of a great trade with Java, Sumatra, and the Spice Islands, and from it Fernão de Magalhães and Francisco Serrão prosecuted their discoveries among the Moluccas and the Celebes. The history of this settlement is full of interest; it was repeatedly attacked by the Achinese and other natives, and some of its sieges are as famous as those of Diu, though not conducted against such civilized opponents. But Malacca was not only the headquarters of the Spice Islands trade, but the port from which explorations were directed northwards. It was from Malacca that Duarte Coelho started to explore the coasts of Cochin China, and made his adventurous journey into Siam, and from Malacca also Fernão Peres de Andrade started to open up trade with the mighty and populous empire of China. There can be little doubt, according to a most distinguished Portuguese historian,[17] that the embassy, which King Emmanuel despatched in 1517 to the emperor of China, was caused by a knowledge of Marco Polo’s travels, and by the interest inspired by his account of the far empire of Cathay. At any rate it was as an ambassador from one monarch to another, and not as a conqueror that Fernão Peres de Andrade was sent to China with letters and presents. And the very fact of this embassy suggests a doubt whether the Portuguese would have ever acted as they did in India had there been a monarch there of such power as the emperor of China was reported to possess, or would have been contented to be traders only. De Andrade safely reached Canton by way of Malacca in 1518, but in spite of his letters and presents he was long detained there and not allowed to proceed to Pekin until 1521. When the Chinese thoroughly understood that the Portuguese came only to trade and not to conquer, they permitted the new-comers to establish a factory, first at Lium-po; and in 1549 at Chin Chee; and, finally, in 1557, in the year of the death of John III., at the request of the Chinese Government, the Portuguese withdrew their other factories and established themselves in the island of Macao, at the mouth of the Canton river. Here they carried on a prosperous trade, and in 1583 they received leave to dispense justice within their island, and in 1587 were recognized as independent there.

The first communication of the Portuguese with Japan is still more curious, and is connected with the history of one of those adventurous travellers who boldly traversed the most distant lands of Asia, long before Englishmen or Dutchmen had ventured to assail the Portuguese monopoly. Fernão Mendes Pinto has for generations been regarded as a typical liar, an accusation generally believed in England from the famous line of Congreve in “Love for Love:” (act ii. scene v.) “Mendes Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.”

But modern inquiry has shown that though he doubtless exaggerated, and drew strange inferences, his curious “Peregrinação” or Travels, which was first published in 1614, and was translated during the seventeenth century into English, French, and Spanish, contains essentially a true account of his adventures. His career is typical of that of many another Portuguese adventurer in the East. He first went to Asia in 1537, and during his wanderings was five times shipwrecked, thirteen times taken captive, and seventeen times sold as a slave. On his way out he was taken prisoner between Socotra and the Persian Gulf, and sold as a slave at Mocha, where he remained until ransomed by the Portuguese governor of Ormuz. After many daring adventures, which savour of piracy, he was engaged in 1542 in a strange expedition to Calempin, near Pekin, which he had organized to plunder the tombs of seventeen Chinese emperors there. On his way back from this sacrilegious attempt he was wrecked off the Chinese coast, and set to work in repairing the Great Wall of China. While there he was made a prisoner by the Tartars during one of their invasions, and after being present at a Tartar siege of Pekin was carried away into Tartary. After various adventures he managed to get back to China, and he then paid his first visit to Japan. His account of the wealth of the Japanese islands excited the minds of the Portuguese officials on the Chinese coast, and a fleet of nine ships was placed under his command at Ning-po, with orders to open up a trade with Japan. Ill luck again pursued him; eight of his ships foundered, and the one upon which he himself sailed, was wrecked on the Loo-Choo Islands. Undiscouraged by all his reverses, he continued to represent the wealth of Japan to his superiors in China and at Malacca, and in 1548 he established a factory in the neighbourhood of Yokohama. Here he did good service, and besides opening up a trade in Japanese goods, he made a large fortune for himself. With this fortune he was on his way back to Portugal in 1553, when the ecclesiastics at Goa worked upon his religious sentiments, which, as in other Portuguese adventurers, must have been very deep, though they do not seem to have influenced him in his dealings with Asiatics, and persuaded him to devote nearly all his wealth to the establishment of a seminary at Goa for the education of missionaries to Japan.

The career of Mendes Pinto illustrates the extraordinary energy and indomitable courage of the Portuguese in Asia, and it is a subject for wonder how one little country, one of the very smallest of the European states, could produce not only great governors and conquerors, like Francisco de Almeida, Affonso de Alboquerque, Nuno da Cunha, and João de Castro, and their lieutenants; and military heroes like Duarte Pacheco, Antonio de Silveira, and João de Mascarenhas, and their soldiers; but also daring adventurers like Duarte Coelho, who boldly penetrated into the interior of Siam, and Mendes Pinto. These men, from the highest to the lowest, seem to have had unbounded confidence in themselves, and, as will be seen later, two Portuguese adventurers, with hardly any support, Sebastião Gonzales and Philip de Brito, established themselves as practically independent princes in Arakan. It has been shown that this extraordinary energy and enterprise exhausted the kingdom of Portugal. Of the thousands who left their homes in Europe, but an infinitesimal portion ever returned. Not one of the early governors of Portuguese India died in Portugal until the time of Dom Constantino de Braganza; they either died in India, like Alboquerque, Vasco da Gama, and Noronha, or on their way home, like Almeida and Nuno da Cunha. The drain upon the energies of the people was immense, and the wonder is not that Portugal was soon exhausted, but that it ever put forth such vitality at all. The greatness of the Portuguese in India was due to the courage and heroism of the Portuguese people, and these qualities they owed to a succession of great kings, who had trained the people to freedom, self-reliance, and constancy; were it not for great kings like John “the Great” and John “the Perfect,” and great princes like Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, and Prince Henry “the Navigator,” the Portuguese nation would never have done what it did, and the Story of Portugal teaches the useful lesson that a people, trained to lofty thoughts and a high conception of duty, will be sure to find scope for its energies, and exhibit the result of its training in noble deeds.

X.

THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL.

The history of the Portuguese in South America differs greatly from the story of the growth of their power in Asia; in America they found no wealthy cities and civilized peoples, only poor natives, and it was no wonder that their chief efforts in the sixteenth century were devoted to the development of the lucrative Eastern trade and to Asiatic exploration. Had any one told King Emmanuel that the country which Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered by a mere chance on his way to Asia, would prove of more enduring value to Portugal than the settlements in India, that monarch would not have believed him. Yet such has been the case. Whereas at the present time the Portuguese possessions in Asia have dwindled down to the settlements of Goa, Daman, and Diu in India, and the island of Macao, which are of very little value to the mother country, the great republic of Brazil has expanded into an independent state containing fourteen millions of inhabitants, or more than three times the population of Portugal.[18] It is true that the governments of Portugal and her flourishing daughter across the Atlantic are separated, and that they are politically independent of each other, yet Brazil still continues in close alliance with Portugal, and receives from the mother country the crowds of sturdy immigrants, who are steadily expanding the resources of the greatest country in South America. Brazilians are as proud of the great deeds of their European ancestors as the Portuguese themselves, and even surpass the inhabitants of the mother country in their admiration for Camoens, and the assiduous study of his works. The story of the settlement and gradual colonization of Brazil cannot rival in romantic interest that of the Portuguese exploits in Asia, but it is nevertheless instructive to study the slow growth of the colony which has now become a mighty empire.

It was upon April 24, 1500, that Pedro Alvares Cabral, the admiral commanding the fleet which King Emmanuel had ordered to India, on receiving the news of the successful voyage of Vasco da Gama, caught sight of an unknown country towards the west He had stood out to sea after passing the Cape Verde Islands, or, according to some authorities, had been driven out to sea by a storm and had not expected to see land at all, so that the discovery, which proved of the greatest value to Portugal, was the result of chance, and not of deliberate exploration. He was unable to land at first on account of the surf, and it was not until he reached 15° north latitude, that he was able to find a harbour, to which he gave the name of Porto Seguro or Safe Port. He landed and took possession of the new country in the name of the King of Portugal, and after erecting a cross gave it the name of Santa Cruz, which remained its official name for many years, before the popular name of Brazil, which was given to it from the quantity of brazil-trees it contained, was adopted. Cabral found the country to be fertile and well watered, and inhabited by a mild and inoffensive people, who allowed him to explore a little, and to take on board fruit and water. He at once perceived the value of his discovery, and sent off one of his ships to Lisbon with information of it, and with one of the inhabitants on board to be taught the Portuguese language. He also left two of his own men in the country to learn the language of the natives and to explore, and then proceeded on his way to India.

King Emmanuel sent various expeditions to explore this new country, notably two under Amerigo Vespucci in 1501 and 1503, and the greater part of the coast line down to the River Plate was visited and mapped out by this industrious explorer. But neither Vespucci, nor the first colonists despatched from Portugal, reported the existence of more than a fertile country, and the Portuguese people being at that time in the full excitement of their first conquests in Asia, and the rich trade to be opened up there, paid but little attention to the new possession across the Atlantic. It was soon discovered that there were no wealthy cities or powerful dynasties among the inhabitants of Brazil, such as Cortez met with in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru, and there seemed to be little prospect of a lucrative trade. So little was known, indeed, of the natural wealth of Brazil, that Spain, though by the Bull of Alexander VI. it had a right to all discoveries in that quarter of the globe, consented to give up to Portugal undisputed possession of the whole coast line of Brazil from the River Maranham to the River Plate.

Of the aboriginal inhabitants of this vast country, curious accounts were written by the first Portuguese explorers. They were reported to be partly nomadic, and to live chiefly on fish and fruit, and on the game which they killed in their forests with bows and arrows. They wore little or no clothes, and generally painted their bodies, and some tribes used to smear themselves with gum, and stick beautiful feathers all over them, which made them look at a distance more like great birds than human beings. They grew no corn, but made cakes of cassava root, and used to drink either the pressed juice of fruit or an intoxicating liquor made from honey. They understood how to spin and weave, and build huts; they were great smokers of tobacco, and had some knowledge of the usefulness of the medicinal herbs and drugs which abound in Brazil. Their country, though fertile, seemed destitute of everything of value to Europeans, and it was at first thought that the discovery of Cabral would in no way contribute to the wealth or prosperity of the Portuguese people.

So firmly was this believed, and so absorbed were the king, nobles, and people of Portugal in their Asiatic explorations and conquests, that for many years no attempt was made to form settlements in South America, and no effort to explore the interior of the continent. Two royal ships only for a long time were despatched to Brazil every year to take out and land there condemned convicts and women of bad character, and to bring back parrots and different varieties of wood, notably the brazil wood which gave the new country its popular name. A few families of settlers, partly from Madeira and partly from northern Portugal, also went out on their own account, and established themselves in various chosen spots, where they introduced agriculture and tried in vain to make the natives work for them as slaves. No attempt was made by the Portuguese monarch to superintend these infant settlements, or to decree any form of government for the stray colonists and convicts, who did what seemed good in their own eyes, and in many instances treated the natives with the utmost severity. While soldiers, governors, and officials were despatched in numbers to Asia, there was no thought taken of America; and as one instance of the manner in which Brazil was treated, it may be mentioned that the importation of ginger from that country was prohibited in order not to infringe the Indian monopoly.

This neglect suddenly ceased about the year 1530, when the rumour spread throughout Portugal that Brazil abounded in gold, silver, and precious stones. The natives had made no attempt to work mines, for they attached no value to these commodities, but the knowledge that the precious metals abounded in Peru caused people to believe that they also existed in other parts of the South American continent. The discovery of gold in small quantities, and the rumours of an El Dorado in the interior, soon attracted crowds of adventurers from all parts of Europe; many families from Portugal were then encouraged to emigrate in order to counterbalance these adventurers, and the settlement of the new country was thus commenced in earnest. King John III. was as much excited by the news of the discovery of gold as his courtiers and people, and he sent over to Brazil in 1531 the first royal governor, Martim Affonso de Sousa, with instructions to assert the royal power over the rapidly increasing population of colonists and adventurers, and to arrange for the future government of the country. Martim Affonso de Sousa, who was afterwards Governor-General of Portuguese India, was a wise and prudent statesman; though unsupported by any soldiers he made a sort of royal progress through Brazil, and he strongly advised the king to let the country develop by itself without interference from home. For government, he advised that the form of administration which had sprung up in the various settled districts should be confirmed and not interfered with. This form of government was simply the combination of all the inhabitants of each settlement into a sort of little state, which elected an officer called captain, who exercised a sort of patriarchal authority, and superintended measures of defence against either natives or other colonies of settlers. These captains held no royal commission, and imposed no taxes; every man was able to do pretty much what he liked in his own house, and each settlement was ruled not by law, but by the general sentiment of the community. These captains had no authority but what they derived from the willing obedience of the settlers, and every captain exercised more or less authority according to his personal character. Martim Affonso de Sousa saw the advantages of such a system for a new colony, and he advised the king not to send out royal officials from home whose authority would probably be ignored, but to confirm these captains in their authority, and that the settlements already made should be recognized as “captainships.” This was accordingly done; the king was only too glad not to have to despatch soldiers to America as he wanted all he could raise for Asia, and he sanctioned the measures taken by his representative. But he further subdivided the country into three vast “chief captainships,” which he granted to João de Barros, the Portuguese Livy and historian of the Portuguese in Asia, Ayres da Cunha, and Fernão Alvares de Andrade, with instructions to search for gold mines and to exercise a general supervision over the government of the country.