The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1874-11-14

fellow men.
TIE FIRST EAST INDIA COMPANY.
But the best result of Henry's success
wes the stimulation of private enterprise.
The first gold fever of modern times then
set in, and affected all the noble and daring
youth of Portugal. Lagos became a great
expeditionary port. in which private compa-
mics were formed, and from which private
expeditions set out. Gilianez, the bold navi-
gator who had doubled Cape Bojador, form
ed a company along with three of his friends,
Alonzo, Alvarez and Diaz, who had some
property, and who owned ten caravels ready
for sea ; and they obtained a charter from
Prince Henry in 1914, which authorized
them TO prosecute discovery, colonization,
and the quest of gold on the coast of Guinea.
This was the first company of adventuring
traders and colOnizefs, upon the model OF
which the Spanish, English, Dutch and all
subsequent East or West India companies
were formed-is
ITALIANS PATRoNIZEp BY HENRY.
Adventures of every nation, class and
profession warriors and geographers, as
we'll as traders, locked TO Portugal mot to
the royal court at Lisbon, but to the court
of genius and of enterprise, situated upon
the bold promontory of Sagres, and in the
ocean port of Lagos. 1t was mostly Italians
of ability and enterprise Especially those
Of Genoa, Venice and Florence, who eagerly
sought the new Portuguese field of adyen-
ture. Their governments were so deeply
interested in the lucrative overland trade
with India, which they had controlled as a
source of commercial pre-eminence in Eu-
rope for ages, that they would not offer the
slightest encouragement to the new African
and ocean enterprise of Portugal, which
threatened an interference with their mon
opoly. Therefore their sons of genius, who
had no employment in this monopoly and
who thirsted for noble maritime adventure
outside of the Mediterranean, FASTENED to
the generous court of enterprise of our Illus
trious Henry, who promised glory and re-
ward in unknown seas. There came Anto-
Mo de Noli and Cadamosto the Venetian,
who discovered the Cape de Verde Islands /;
and there we have seen Perestrello, the
Florentine, executing the Princes marine
charts and revising the logs of the voyages
of his lieutenants and what a pity that
Columbus the Genoese had not arrived in
Portugal a little earlier, say in 1850 or go,
instead of 1470, seven years after the death
of Henry. He would not in such a case
have wasted time with selfish, conceited and
jealous ruling princes at Lisbon or Madrid
but being received at once by the enlighten-
ed and enterprising Prince at Lagos, he
would have had his purpose and genius not
only appreciated, but furthermore inspired
and stimulated. All, indeed he would have
found the very conception and enterprise
that have given his name to everlasting
fame, then and there in the soul of Henry,
as he did afterwards in the records of the
great Prince.
WHAT HENRY DID FOR THE WORLD.
Thus was public spirit aroused in Portu-
gal, and all Europe awakened to a new de-
parture of benefcent enterprise and progress
by the genius of a Prince. A devotee of the
Church of Christ, the monk and hermit Peter
had once inspired Europe to waste its blood
and treasure to rescue and guard a doubtful
tomb of Christ but here was the son of a
king and a knight of Christ, who sought to
inspire the old world to forget its crusading
cliInera about a vacant sepulchre, and TO
expend its enterprise and means in seeking
to enlarge the Kingdom of the Redeemer on
this earth by the discovery of vast unknown
lands and peoples-by the discovery even of
a new world. He directed the enterprise of
the chivalry of Europe in q channel that has
originated all the modern progress of civil
ization. He proved the navigability of the
seas along the African coast. He tested the
feasibility of ocean voyages. He had through
his lieutenants discovered the Madeira isles,
the Cape de Verde group, and other ocean
islands unknown before to Europe. He had
awakened a new era for his country and the
world. And yet whatever Henry won and
saw in his day, was far from commensurate
with his great labors and his greater hopes.
HENRY DOES NOT BEHOLD HIS PROMISED LAND.
n,r ,osoiroI Dr;ooa ,-,e Al No. IS
modern discovery, that led Europe out of
the dark Egypt of geographical ignorance,
after passing the red sea of Ceuta, through
the desert of an unknown navigation unto
the hope of a new land of promise; but
Henry like his Israelitish prototype was only
permitted to get a glimpse of the Canaan of
his hopes. After spending all his resources
and the efforts of his life, on more than a
score of maritime expeditions for discoyery,2o
the least Of which was equal to the little
naval venture that was eked out of the gen.
crosby and sympathy of q woman, and
which sailed from Palos to discover a new
hemisphere,-after spending a p%rincely for
tune and the fire of a great soul, in trying
to inspire all the noble and adventurous
spirits of the world who came to him, to go
and discover new lands and new people yet
with all this effort he had not run down
more than fifteen hundred miles of African
coast, and had not sailed but a few hundred
miles out into the ocean beyond the shores
of the old world, when he died. Perhaps
If he had not been a Prince he would have
gone with his own expeditions, and have won
the signal glory of a great discoverer in
person.
THE PRINcELY sowER THAT DID NOT REAP.
In reading the history of this hero we feel
sorrowful, that he who planned so greatly
and labored so much, should have obtained
so little visible success in his day. He laid
the foundation and drew the designs of a
buIlding,-but others have won all the glory
of the superstructure. Thus does one man