CHAPTER XIX.
WHAT PORTUGAL HAS DONE IN THE WORLD.
Mr. Lowington and the two vice–principalshad a hearty laugh over the misadventure ofpoor Bill Stout, and then discussed their plans for thefuture. The Prince had been in the river five days;and the Josephines and Tritonias were all ready tostart for Badajos the next morning. It was Fridaynight; and if the party left the next morning they wouldbe obliged to remain over Sunday at Badajos; or, ifthey travelled all the next night, they would arrive atToledo on Sunday morning, and this was no place forthem to be on that day. It was decided that theyshould remain on board of the Prince till Mondaymorning, and that the Princes should go on board thenext morning to hear Professor’s Mapps’s lecture onPortugal.
“Have you heard any thing of Raimundo or Lingall?”asked the principal.
“Only what we got out of Stout,” replied Mr.Pelham. “But he was too tipsy to tell a very straightstory.”
“I don’t see how he got tipsy so quick; for he musthave reached the Prince within fifteen or twenty minutesafter he left this hotel,” added Mr. Lowington. “However,he told me all he knew—at least, I suppose hedid—about the others who ran away with him. Itseems that Raimundo did not leave the Tritonia, andmust have stowed himself away in the hold.”
“But we searched the hold very thoroughly,” saidMr. Pelham.
“Did you look under the dunnage?”
“No, sir: he could not have got under that.”
“Probably he did,—made a hole in the ballast. Hemust have had some one to help him,” suggested theprincipal.
“If any one assisted him it must have been Hugo;for, as he is a Spaniard, they were always very thicktogether.”
“I have informed Don Francisco, the lawyer, thatRaimundo had gone to Oran; and I suppose he willbe on the lookout for him. I have also written toManuel Raimundo in New York. He must get myletter in a day or two,” continued the principal. “Itis a very singular case; and I should as soon havethought of Sheridan running away as Raimundo.”
“He must have had a strong reason for doing so,”added the vice–principal of the Tritonia.
The next morning Mr. Pelham directed Peaks tobring his prisoner into the cabin. Bill Stout did notremember what he had said the night before; but hehad prepared a story for the present occasion.
“Good–morning, Stout,” the vice–principal began.“How do you feel after your spree?”
“Pretty well, sir; I did not drink but once, and Icouldn’t help it then,” replied the culprit, beginningto reel off the explanation he had got up for the occasion.
“You couldn’t help it? That’s very odd.”
“No, sir. I met a couple of sailors on shore, andasked them if they could tell me where the AmericanPrince lay. They pointed the steamer out to me, andthey insisted that I should take a drink with them.They wouldn’t take No for an answer, and I couldn’tget off,” whined Bill; and he always whined when hewas in a scrape.
“Doubtless you gave them No for an answer,”laughed Mr. Pelham.
“I certainly did; for I never take any thing. Theymade me drink brandy; but I put very little into theglass, and, as I am not used to liquor, it made me verydrunk.”
“One horn would not have made you as tipsy as youwere, Stout. I think you had better tell that story tothe other marines.”
“I am telling the truth, sir: I wouldn’t lie about it.”
“I think it is a bad plan to do so,” added the vice–principal.“Then you were coming on board, were you?”
“Yes, sir: I wanted to see you, and own up.”
“Oh! that was your plan, was it?” laughed Mr. Pelham,amused at the pickle into which the rascal wasputting himself.
“Yes, sir: I came from Valencia on purpose to givemyself up to you. I’m sorry I ran away. I got sick ofit in a day or two.”
“This was after Lingall left you, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir; but I was sorry for it before he left. Wewere almost murdered in the felucca; and I had a hardtime of it.”
“And this made you penitent.”
“Yes, sir. I shall never run away again as long as Ilive.”
“I hope you will not. And you came all the wayacross Spain and Portugal to give yourself up to me,”added Mr. Pelham. “You were so very anxious tosurrender to me, that you were not content to stay asingle night at the hotel with Mr. Lowington, who ismy superior.”
“I wanted to see you; and that’s the reason I leftthe hotel, and came on board last night,” protested theculprit.
“That’s a very good story, Stout; but for your sakeI am sorry it is only a story,” said the vice–principal.
“It is the truth, sir. I hope to”—
“No, no; stop!” interposed Mr. Pelham. “Don’thope any thing, except to be a better fellow. Yourstory won’t hold water. I was at the gangway whenyou came on board, and you told me that you wantedto go to England.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying,” pleaded Bill,taken aback by this answer.
“Yes, you did: you were not as tipsy as you mighthave been; for, when I told you the steamer was notgoing to England, you called your boatman back. It isa plain case; and you can stay in the brig till the shipreturns to Barcelona.”
The lies did not help the case a particle; and somehowevery thing seemed to go wrong with Bill Stout,but that was because he went wrong himself.
The boats were sent on ashore for the Princes; andwhen they arrived all hands were called to attend thelecture in the grand saloon.
“Young gentlemen, I am glad to meet you again,”the professor began. “I have said all I need say aboutthe geography of the peninsula. Some of you havebeen through Spain and Portugal, and have seen thatthe natural features of the two countries are about thesame. The lack of industry and enterprise has hadthe same result in both. The people are alike in onerespect, at least: each hates the other intensely. ‘Stripa Spaniard of his virtues, and you have a Portuguese,’says the Spanish proverb; but I fancy one is as good asthe other. There are plenty of minerals in the ground,plenty of excellent soil, and plenty of fish in the watersof Portugal; but none of the sources of wealth andprosperity are used as in England, France, and theUnited States. The principal productions are wheat,wine, olive–oil, cork, wool, and fruit. Of the forty milliondollars’ worth of agricultural products, twelve arein wine, ten in grain, and seven in wool. More thantwo–thirds of the exports are to England.
“The population of Portugal is about four millions.It has few large towns, only two having over fiftythousand inhabitants. Lisbon has two hundred andseventy–five thousand, and Oporto about ninety thousand.Coimbra,—which has the only university inthe country,—Elvas, Evora, Braga, and Setubal, areimportant towns. The kingdom has six provinces;and we are now in Estremadura, as we were yesterdaymorning, though it is not the same one.
“The government is a constitutional monarchy, notvery different from that of Spain. The present kingis Luis II. The army consists of about eighteenthousand men; and the navy, of twenty–two steamersand twenty–five sailing vessels. The colonial possessionsof Portugal have a population equal to the kingdomitself.
“The money of Portugal will bother you.”
At this statement Sheridan and Murray looked ateach other, and laughed.
“You seem to be pleased, Captain Sheridan,” saidthe professor. “Perhaps you have had some experiencewith Portuguese money.”
“Yes, sir: I went into a store to buy some photographs;and, when I asked the price of them, the mantold me it was one thousand six hundred and forty_reis_. I concluded that I should be busted if I boughtthat dozen pictures.”
“It takes about a million of those _reis_ to make adollar,” added Murray.
“But, when I came to figure up the price, I found itwas only a dollar and sixty–four cents,” continuedSheridan.
“A naval officer who dined a party of his friendsin this very city, when he found the bill was twenty–seventhousand five hundred _reis_, exclaimed that hewas utterly r
uined, for he should never be able to paysuch a bill; but it was only twenty–seven dollars and ahalf. You count the _reis_ at the rate of ten to a centof our money,—a thousand to a dollar. About all thecopper and silver money has a number on the coin thatindicates its value in _reis_. For large sums, the countis given in _milreis_, which means a thousand _reis_. Thegold most in use is the English sovereign, whichpasses for forty–five hundred _reis_. We will now givesome attention to the history of the country.
“Portugal makes no great figure on the map ofEurope. Looking at this narrow strip of territory,one would naturally suppose that its history would notfill a very large volume. But small states have hadtheir history told in voluminous works; and Portugalhappens to belong to this class. There are historiesand chronicles of this country in the Portuguese, Spanish,Italian, French, English, and Latin languages, notto mention some Arabic works which I have not hadtime to examine,” continued the professor, with asmile. “Some of these works consist of from ten tothirty volumes. Even the discoveries and conquestsof this people in the East and West require quite anumber of large volumes; for there was a time whenPortugal filled a large place in the eye of the world,though that time was short, hardly reaching throughthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
“But the history of this country does not begin atall till the eleventh century. There was, indeed, theold Roman province of Lusitania, which correspondedvery nearly in size with modern Portugal, except thatthe latter extends farther north and not so far east.The ancient Lusitanians were a warlike people; anda hundred and fifty years before our era they gavethe Romans a great deal of trouble to conquer them.Under Viriathus, the most famous of all the Lusitanians,they routed several Roman armies; and mighthave held their ground for many years longer, if theirhero had not been treacherously murdered by his owncountrymen.
“The lines of the old Roman provinces were notpreserved after the barbarians, of whom I have spokento you before, entered the peninsula in the fifth century.The Arabs occupied this province with the restof the peninsula, after the defeat and death of KingRoderick, or Don Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic kingsof Spain; and held it till near the close of the eleventhcentury, a part of it somewhat later. In 1095 AlfonsoVI., of Castile and Leon, bestowed a part of what isnow Portugal upon his son–in–law, Henri of Burgundy,who had fought with Alfonso against the Moors, andseemed to have the ability to protect the country givenhim from the inroad of the Moslems. The regiongranted to Henri extended only from the Minho tothe Tagus; and its capital was Coimbra, for Lisbonwas then a Moorish city. The new ruler was called acount; and he had the privilege of conquering thecountry as far south as the Guadiana. His son DomAlfonso defeated the Moors in a great battle near theTagus, and was proclaimed king of Portugal on thebattle–field. This was in the time of the crusades;but Spain and Portugal had infidels enough to fight athome, without going to the Holy Land, where hundredsof thousands were sent to die by other countriesof Europe. Other additions were made to thecountry during the next century; but since the middleof the thirteenth century, when Sancho II. died, noincrease has been made in the peninsula. The wealthand power of Portugal at a later period were derivedfrom her colonies in America, Asia, and Africa.
“John I.—Dom João, in Portuguese—led an expeditionagainst Ceuta, a Moorish stronghold just acrossthe Strait of Gibraltar, and captured the place. Afterthis began their wonderful series of discoveries, whichbrought the whole world to the knowledge of Europe.But the Portuguese were not the first to carry on commerceby sea. Though merchandise had been mainlytransported by land in the East, there was some tradeon the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and on theIndian Ocean. It does not appear that the Phœnicians,the Carthaginians, or the Greeks, ever sailed on theBaltic Sea; and, though the Romans explored someparts of it, they never went far enough to ascertain thatit was bounded on all sides by land.
“The Eastern Empire of the middle ages, with itscapital at Constantinople, carried on a much more extensivecommerce than was ever known to the Romansin the days of their universal dominion. At first thegoods brought from the East Indies were imported intoEurope from Alexandria; but, when Egypt was conqueredby the Arabs, a new route had to be found.Merchandise was conveyed up the Indus as far as thatgreat river was navigable, then across the land to theOxus, now the Amoo, flowing into the Sea of Aral, butthen having a channel to the Caspian. From themouth of this river it was carried over the Caspian Sea,and up the Volga, to about the point where there is nowa railroad connecting this river with the Don. Thenit was transported by land again to the Don, and takenin vessels by the Black Sea to Constantinople. TheSuez Canal, opened this present year, makes an easyand expeditious route by water for steamers, connectingall the ports of Europe with those of India.
“During this period another commercial state wasgrowing up. After the fall of the Roman empire, whenthe Huns under Attila were ravaging Italy, the inhabitantsof Venetia fled for safety to the group of islandsnear the northern shore of the Adriatic, and laid thefoundation of the illustrious city and state of Venice.The people of the city soon began to fit out small merchantfleets, which they sent to all parts of the Mediterranean,and particularly to Syria and Egypt, afterspices and other products of Arabia and India. Soonafter, the city of Genoa, on the other side of Italy,became a rival of Venice in this trade, and Florenceand Pisa followed their example; but the Venetians,having some natural advantages, outstripped their rivalsin the end, and became a great military and commercialpower. The crusades, in which others wasted life andtreasure, were a source of wealth to these Italian cities.During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the commerceof Europe was almost wholly confined to theItalians. The merchants of Italy scattered themselvesin every kingdom; and the Lombards (for this was thename by which they were known) became the merchantsand bankers everywhere. After a time, however, thecommercial spirit began to develop itself, and to makeprogress in other parts of Europe; but, up to thefifteenth century, vessels were accustomed, in theirvoyages, to creep along the coast; and, though it wasknown that the magnetic needle points constantly tothe North Pole, no use was made of this knowledge forpurposes of navigation.
“In 1415 the commercial spirit had reached Portugal;and the Ceuta expedition was undertaken quiteas much in the interest of trade as of religion, for theplace was held by pirates who were daily disturbingPortuguese commerce. Immense treasures fell to thevictors as the reward of their enterprise.
“Dom Henrique, or Henry, the son of King John,afterwards so famous in the history of his country, hada decided taste for study. He was an able mathematician,and made himself master of all the astronomyknown to the Arabians, who were then the best mathematiciansof Europe. Henry also studied the worksof the ancients. At this period Ptolemy was the highestauthority in geography; and he taught that the AfricanContinent reached to the South Pole. But Henry hadread the ancient accounts of the circumnavigation ofAfrica by the Phœnicians and others; and he believed,that, whether these voyages had or had not been made,good ships might sail around the southern point of thecontinent. If this could be done, the Portuguese wouldfind a way to India by sea, and thus control the entiretrade of the East.
“The prince had many obstacles to overcome. Vesselsin that day were not built for the open sea; andevery headland and far–stretching cape seemed to be animpossible barrier. There was a notion that near theequator was a burning zone, where the very waters ofthe ocean actually boiled under the intolerable heat ofthe sun. A superstition also prevailed, that whoeverdoubled Cape Bojador—on the coast of Africa, abouta thousand miles south of Lisbon—would never return;and it was feared that the burning zone would changethose who entered it into negroes, thus dooming themto wear the black marks of their temerity to the grave.
“The first voyage undertaken under the direction ofPrince Henry was in 1419, and covered only fivedegrees of latitude. The expedition was driven out tosea and landed at a small island north–east of Madeira,which they named Porto Santo. The next year threevessels were sent for a longer voyage.
This fleetreached the dreaded cape, and discovered Madeira.On the next voyage they doubled Cape Bojador; and,having exploded the superstition, in the course of afew years they advanced four hundred leagues farther,and discovered the Senegal River. Here they foundmen with woolly hair and skins as black as ebony;and they began to dread a nearer approach to theequator.
“When they returned, their countrymen with onevoice attempted to dissuade Prince Henry from anyfurther attempts; but he would hear of no delay. Heapplied to Pope Eugene IV.; and, representing that hischief object was the pious wish to spread a knowledgeof the Christian faith among the idolatrous people ofAfrica, he obtained a bull conferring on the people ofPortugal the exclusive right to all the countries theyhad discovered, or might discover, between Cape Nun—aboutthree hundred miles north of Cape Bojador—andIndia. Such a donation may appear ridiculousenough to us; but it was never doubted then that thepope had ample right to bestow such a gift; and fora long time all the powers of Europe considered theright of the Portuguese to be good, and acknowledgedtheir title to almost the whole of Africa. About thistime Prince Henry died, and little progress was madein discovery for some years. But the Portuguese hadbegun to push boldly out to sea, and had lost all dreadof the burning zone.
“In the reign of John II., from 1481 to 1495, discoverieswere pushed with greater vigor than ever before.The Cape de Verde Islands were colonized; andthe Portuguese ships, which had advanced to the coastof Guinea, began to return with cargoes of gold–dust,ivory, gums, and other valuable products. It was duringthe reign of this monarch that Columbus visitedLisbon, and offered his services to Portugal; and itappears that the king was inclined to listen to the plansof the great navigator, but he was dissuaded fromdoing so by his own courtiers.
“The revenue derived at this time from the Africancoast became so important that John feared the vesselsof other nations might be attracted to it. To preventthis, the voyages there were represented as being in thehighest degree dangerous, and even impossible exceptin the peculiar vessels used by the Portuguese. Themonarchs of Castile had some idea of what was goingon, and were very eager to learn more; and in onecase came very near succeeding. A Portuguese captainand two pilots, in the hope of a rich reward, setout for Castile to dispose of the desired information;but they were pursued by the king’s agents. Whenovertaken, they refused to return; but two of themwere killed on the spot, and the other brought back toEvora and quartered. The attempt of a rich Spaniard,the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to build vessels in Englishports for the African trade, turned out no better.King John reminded the English king, Edward IV., ofthe ancient alliance between the two crowns; and sothese preparations were prohibited.
“In 1497 a Portuguese fleet under Vasco de Gamadoubled the Cape of Good Hope, or the Cape ofStorms as they called it then; and soon the voyagersbegan to hear the Arabian tongue spoken on the othershore of the continent, and found that they had nearlycircumnavigated Africa. At length, with the aid ofMohammedan pilots, they passed the mouths of theArabian and Persian Gulfs, and, stretching along thewestern coast of India, arrived, after a cruise of thirteenmonths, at Calicut, on the shore of Malabar, lessthan three hundred miles from the southern point ofthe peninsula.
“The Court of Lisbon now appointed a viceroy torule over new countries discovered. Expeditions followedeach other in rapid succession; and, in less thanhalf a century more, the Portuguese were masters ofthe entire trade of the Indian Ocean. Their flag floatedtriumphantly along the shores of Africa from Moroccoto Abyssinia, and on the Asiatic coast from Arabiato Siam; not to mention the vast regions of Brazil,which this nation began to colonize about the sametime. These conquests were not made without opposition;but the Portuguese were as remarkable fortheir valor as for their enterprise, in those days; and,for a time, their prowess was too much for their enemiesin Africa, in India, and even in Europe. TheVenetians, who had lost the trade between India andEurope, were of course their enemies; and the Sultanof Egypt was hostile when he found that he was aboutto lose the profitable trade that passed through Alexandria.These two powers joined hands; and theVenetians sent from Italy to the head of the Red Sea,at an immense expense, the materials for building afleet to meet and destroy the Portuguese vessels ontheir passage to India. But, as soon as this fleet wasready for active operations, it was attacked and destroyedby the Portuguese navy.
“Thus the Portuguese were masters of an empire onwhich the sun never set. It reached the height of itsglory in the reign of John III., from 1521 to 1557. Hewas succeeded by his son Dom Sebastian, who madeseveral expeditions against the Moors in Africa. Inthe last of these, he was utterly routed, his army destroyed,and he perished on the battle–field. Thisdisaster seemed to initiate the decline of Portugal;and it continued to run down till it was only the shadowof its former greatness.
“Concerning Dom Sebastian, a very remarkablesuperstition prevails, even at the present time, inPortugal, to the effect that he will return, resume thecrown, and restore the realm to its former greatness.For nearly two hundred years this belief has existed,and was almost universal at one time, not among theignorant only, but in all classes of society. It wasclaimed that he was not killed in the battle, though hisbody was recognized by his page, and that he will comeback as the temporal Messiah of Portugal. Severalpersons have appeared who have claimed to be theprince, the most remarkable of whom turned up atVenice twenty years after the prince’s presumed death.He told a very straight story; but the Senate of Venicebanished him, and he was afterwards imprisoned inNaples and Florence for insisting upon the truth of hisstatements. He finally died in Castile; and many believedthat he was not an impostor. Several times havebeen fixed for his coming; but it is not likely that hewill be able to put in an appearance, on account of thetwo hundred years that have elapsed since he was inthe flesh.
“As Sebastian did not come back from Africa, hisuncle Henry assumed the crown; and at his death, ashe had no direct heirs, Philip II., the Prince of Parma,and the Duchess of Braganza, claimed the throne, asdid several others; but Philip settled the question bysending the Duke of Alva into Portugal, and takingforcible possession of the kingdom. In 1580, therefore,the whole of the vast dominions I have describedwere annexed to the Spanish empire. This connectionlasted for sixty years; and the Portuguese call it ‘thesixty years’ captivity.’ During this time the peoplewere never satisfied with their government, and in 1640got up a revolution, and placed the Duke of Braganzaon the throne, under the title of John IV. This wasthe beginning of the house of Braganza, which has heldthe throne up to the present time.
“Even in the seventeenth century Portugal had fallenfrom her high estate. She had lost part of her possessionsand all her prestige; and from that time tillthe present she has had no great weight in Europeanpolitics. Some of her colonial territories returned tothe original owners, while others were taken by theDutch, the English, and the Spaniards. For two centuriesthe most remarkable events in her history havebeen misfortunes. In 1755 an earthquake destroyedhalf the city of Lisbon, and buried thirty thousandpeople under its ruins. It came in two shocks, thesecond of which left the city a pile of ruins. Thousandsof men and women fled from the falling walls to thequays on the river. Suddenly the ground under themsank with all the crowd upon it; and not one of thebodies ever came up. At the same time all the boatsand vessels, loaded down with fugitives from the ruin,were sucked in by a fearful whirlpool; and not a vestigeof them returned to the surface.
“Fifty–five years later came the French Revolution;in the results of which Portugal was involved. In1807 she entered into an alliance with Great Britain;and Napoleon decided to wipe off the kingdom fromthe map of Europe. A French army was sent toLisbon; and at its approach the Court left for Brazil,where it remained for several years. An English armyarrived at Oporto the next year; and with these eventsbegan the peninsular war. The struggle lasted till1812, and many great battles were fought in this kingdom.The country was desolated by the strife, and thesufferings of the people were extremely severe. Subscriptionswere ra
ised for them in England and elsewhere;and Sir Walter Scott wrote ‘The Vision of DonRoderick’ in aid of the sufferers.
“In 1821 Brazil declared her independence; but itwas not acknowledged by Portugal till 1825. Afterfourteen years of absence, the Court—John VI. wasking, having succeeded to the throne while in Brazil—returnedto Portugal. During this period the homekingdom was practically a colony of Brazil; and thepeople were dissatisfied with the arrangement. A constitutionwas made, and the king accepted it. He hadleft his son as regent of Brazil, and he was proclaimedemperor of that country as Pedro I. He was the fatherof the present emperor, Pedro II.
“John VI. died in 1826. His legitimate successorwas Pedro of Brazil; but he gave the crown to hisdaughter Maria. Before she could get possession of it,Dom Miguel, a younger son of John VI., usurped thethrone. As he did not pay much deference to the constitution,the people revolted; and civil war raged forseveral years. Pedro, having abdicated the crown ofBrazil in favor of his son, came to Portugal in 1832,to look after the interests of his daughter. He wasmade regent,—Maria da Gloria was only thirteen yearsold,—and with the help of England, cleaned out theMiguelists two years later. The little queen was declaredof age at fifteen, and took the oath to supportthe constitution. She died in 1853; and her son,Pedro V., became king when he was fifteen. But helived only eight years after his accession, and wasfollowed by his brother, Luis I., the present king.There have been several insurrections since the Miguelistswere disposed of, but none since 1851. Theroyal family have secured the affections of the people;for the sons of Maria have proved to be wise and sensiblemen. The finances are in bad condition; for theexpense of the government exceeds the income everyyear. Now you have heard, and you may go and seefor yourselves.”