Portugal now had practically a monopoly of the traffic with the Orient, and the finding of new paths to India by her maritime rivals was essential in the struggle for commercial supremacy. A passage by way of “Cathay” had the most powerful attractions.
“Great Cathay,” the marvellous empire of the remote East, whence travellers had brought wonderful tales in the latter Middle Ages, had become the ultimate goal of adventurous voyages. The hazy region was the “extremity of the habitable world” of the ancients. Early Christian fancy had identified within it the Earthly Paradise, the seat of the old “Garden of Eden,” beyond the Ocean stream, “raised so high on a triple terrace of mountain that the deluge did not touch it.” Under the name of Cathay the strange empire had been opened to the speculation of medi?val Europe in the thirteenth century, with the vast conquest of the Mongol Genghis Khan, reckoned in history one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen.
Two Franciscan friars—John de Plano Carpini and 54William of Rubruk (Rubruquis) in French Flanders, who reached the court in Mongolia, the former in 1245 or 1246, the latter in 1247 or 1253—appear to have been the first Europeans to approach its borders. They saw the Cathayans in the bazaars of their Great Khan’s camps, and brought back to Europe the first accounts of the people and of the wonderful things seen, presented in their journals of their adventures. Both of these “rare jewels,” as he appreciatively terms them, Hakluyt found at London in manuscripts while delving in Lord Lumley’s library, and he printed them in full in the second edition of the Principal Navigations. After the friars two Venetians penetrated the empire, the first European travellers to visit Cathay itself. These were the brothers Nicolo and Maffei Polo, members of a noble trading family of Venice. They were there for a short time in or about the year 1269. Soon afterward they made a second visit, when Marco, the son of Nicolo, then a youth of seventeen, quick-witted, open-eyed, and observant, accompanied them. This visit extended through more than twenty years, the three Venetians basking in the sunshine of the Great Khan’s favour. The elders helped the Khan with suggestions for the profitable application of the knowledge of the West which they opened to him, while Marco’s cleverness was variously employed in his service; sometimes as a commissioner attached to the Imperial council, at others on distant missions, and at one period a governor of a great city. Marco’s recollections, given to the world long after the final 55return of the Polos to Venice, first made the name of Cathay familiar to Europe. These recollections were taken down from his lips by one Rusticiano of Pisa, a clever literary hack, who was shut up in prison with him for a year (the two having been among the captives taken by the Genoese in a sea-fight with the Venetians in 1298), and formed the basis of the book of marvellous adventures, subsequently published in various languages and varying texts, which came to be famous as the Voyages and Travels of Marco Polo. From this Hakluyt also gives copious extracts.
Commercial intercourse of adventuresome European traders began with the region in the early fourteenth century, and continued fairly to flourish for about fifty years. Then, with changes in dynasties and tribal wars, the ways of approach were closed and it fell again into darkness. It was long supposed to be a separate country, distinct from the Indies, lying to the north of what we now know as China, and stretching to the Arctic sea. It was not until 1603 (after the publication of the final volume of the Principal Navigations) that it was found to be identical with the then vaguely known empire of China, of which similar marvels had for some time been recited. Its identity was the discovery by a lay Jesuit, Benedict Go?s, sent out through Central Asia by his superiors in India for the specific object of determining whether Cathay and China were or were not separate empires. Go?s died upon the completion of his mission, at Suhchow, the frontier city of China.
56Cathay was the aim of Columbus. He was possessed by the conviction that the fabled riches of this wondrous region lay directly across the trackless Atlantic “over against” the coast of Spain. Believing the world to be a sphere, he conceived his design of reaching Asia by sailing west. This was the project that he carried for weary years from court to court, seeking the patronage of a favouring prince.
But for a mischance England, instead of Spain, would have had the glory and the advantage of his first discovery of 1492. Hakluyt recalls the circumstances in these two “testimonies”:
(1)
"The offer of the discovery of the West Indies by Christopher Columbus to king Henry the seventh in the yeere 1488 the 13 of February: with the kings acceptation of the offer, & the cause whereupon he was deprived of the same: recorded in the thirteenth chapter of the history of Don Fernand Columbus of the life and deeds of his father Christopher Columbus.
"Christopher Columbus fearing least if the king of Castile in like maner (as the king of Portugall had done) should not condescend unto his enterprise, he should be enforced to offer the same againe to some other prince, & so much time should be spent therein, sent into England a certaine brother of his which he 57had with him, whose name was Bartholomew Columbus, who albeit he had not the Latine tongue, yet neverthelesse was a man of experience and skilfull in Sea causes, and could very wel make sea cards & globes and other instruments belonging to that profession, as he was instructed by his brother. Wherefore after that Bartholomew Columbus was departed for England his lucke was to fall into the hands of pirats, which spoiled him with the rest of them which were in the ship which he went in. Upon which occasion, and by reason of his poverty and sicknesse which cruelly assaulted him in a countrey so farre distant from his friends, he deferred his ambassage for a long while, untill such time as he had gotten somewhat handsome about him with making of Sea cards. At length he began to deale with king Henry the seventh the father of Henry the eight which reigneth at this present: unto whom he presented a mappe of the world, wherein these verses were written, which I found among his papers: and I will here set them downe rather for their antiquity than for their goodnesse:
"‘Thou which desirest easily the coasts of lands to know,
This comely mappe right learnedly the same to thee will shew:
Which Strabo, Plinie, Ptolomew and Isodore maintaine:
Yet for all that they do not all in one accord remaine.
Here also to set downe the late discovered burning Zone
By Portingals unto the world which whilon was unknowen,
Whereof the knowledge now at length thorow all the world is blowen.’
58"And a little under he added:
"‘For the Authour or the Drawer.
"‘He, whose deare native soile bright stately Genua,
Even he whose name is Bartholomew Colon de Terra Rubra
The year of Grace a thousand and four hundred and four-score
And eight, and on the thirteenth day of February more,
In London published this worke. To Christ all laud therefore.’
“And because some peradventure may observe that he calleth himselfe Columbus de Terra Rubra, I say, that in like maner I have seene some subscriptions of my father Christopher Columbus, before he had the degree of Admirall, wherein he signed his name thus, Columbus de Terra Rubra. But to returne to the king of England, I say, that after he had seen the map, and that which my father Christopher Columbus offered unto him, he accepted the offer with joyfull countenance, and sent to call him into England. But because God had reserved the sayd offer for Castile, Columbus was gone in the meane space, and also returned with the performance of his enterprise, as hereafter in order shall be rehearsed. Now will I leave off from making any farther mention of that which Bartholomew Colon had negotiated in England, and I will return unto the Admirall, &c.”
59(2)
"Another testimony taken out of the 60 chapter of the aforesayd history of Ferdinando Columbus, concerning the offer that Bartholemew Columbus made to King Henry the seventh on the behalfe of his brother Christopher.
“Christopher Columbus the Admirall being returned from the discovery of Cuba and Jamayca, found in Hispaniola his brother Bartholomew Columbus, who before had beene sent to intreat of an agreement with the king of England for the discovery of the Indies, as we have sayd before. This Bartholomew therefore returning unto Castile, with the capitulations granted by the king of England to his brother, understood at Paris by Charles the king of France, that the Admirall his brother had already performed that discovery: whereupon the French king gave unto the sayd Bartholemew an hundred French crownes to beare his charges into Spaine. And albeit he made great haste upon this good newes to meet with the Admirall in Spaine, yet at his comming to Sevil his brother was already returned to the Indies with seventeene saile of shipps. Wherefore to fulfill that which he had left him in charge in the beginning of the yeere 1494 he repaired to the Catholike princes, taking with him Diego Colon my brother, and me also, which were to be preferred as Pages to the most excellent Prince Don John, who now is with God, according to the commandment of the Catholike Queene Lady Isabell, which was then in 60Validolid. As soone therefore as we came to the Court, the princes called for Don Bartholomew, and sent him to Hispaniola with three ships, &c.”
The news of Columbus’ achievement filled all Europe with wonder and admiration. To “sail by the West into the East where spices grow by a way that was never known before” was affirmed “a thing more divine than human.” Offering the promise of a direct route to Cathay, the feat was of tremendous import. There was especially “great-talk of it” in the English court with keen regret that England, through untoward happenings, had failed of the honour and profit of the momentous discovery, and Henry and his counsellors were eager to emulate Spain. Although the full significance of the discovery was not then realized—that the new-found islands were the barriers of a new continent—no underestimate of the value of the region was made by either nation. Ferdinand and Isabella gave it the name of the Indies, considering it, with the discoverer, to be a part of India, and no time was lost in clinching their rights. Nor were “their Catholic highnesses” idle. In May, 1493, Pope Alexander the sixth granted his bull fixing a “line of demarcation” between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions, which was nothing less than a division of the world between Spain and Portugal. This line was run from pole to pole and one hundred degrees west of the Azores, and all newly discovered and to be discovered lands on the east of the line were assigned to the absolute possession of the crown of Portugal, those on the west to the 61crown of Castile. In 1494 Columbus made his second voyage and discovered, among other islands, Porto Rico and Jamaica.
Meanwhile in the English maritime city of Bristol the Venetian merchant, John Cabot (or Zuan Caboto in the Venetian dialect), then resident there, had perfected his scheme of shortening the way to India by the Northwest Passage, and in 1496, before Columbus’s return from his second voyage, it had been proposed to King Henry, had met his hearty approbation, had been endorsed by his letters patent issued to Cabot and Cabot’s three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius, and preparations for the venture had begun.