Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tugal's hold on the Orient trade. There could be no mercy for such a
man if he fell in with ships commanded by any of his erstwhile coun-
trymen.
Ferdinand Magellan was one of those rare men who lived in a
remarkable age, and knew it and wanted to be part of it. The tiny vil-
lage of Sabrosa in the vine-covered hills of Portugal's Douro Littoral
claims the explorer as its son. Within that village a plaque on a sub-
stantial stone house announces that Ferdinand Magellan was born
there '
circa
1480'. The claim has not gone undisputed but, in this
case, the geographical accident of a man's birthplace is of no import-
ance. What matters is that Ferdinand's father belonged to the fourth
order of Portuguese nobility and that he died while his son and heir
was still a minor. Ferdinand thus became a royal ward and, at the age
of ten or eleven was taken to Lisbon to be a page in the household of
Queen Leonor, consort to John II, the 'perfect prince'.
King John, who earned his nickname by being shrewd, intelli-
gent and forceful, showed remarkable similarities to his English con-
temporary and ally, Henry VII. It was John who finally broke the
power of the feudal nobility, established the authority of the crown
and gave royal power a sound financial base. He took a keen interest
in overseas trade and the expansion of empire and was frequently
to be found in the
casa da mina,
the office and warehouse complex
on the ground floor of the palace. From its waterfront windows he
could watch the ships coming to their moorings in the Tagus to off-
load their cargoes of gold, slaves and ivory, brought from his Afric-
an dominions. The palace, like many other buildings in the Alfama,
Lisbon's ancient quarter, did not survive the 1755 earthquake but it
takes little imagination to picture an impressionable boy standing at
one of its arched casements and observing as excitedly as his sov-
ereign the comings and goings in the harbour and determining that
one day he too would sail to the lands of the East, rich in spices, pre-
cious metals, silk, monkeys and multi-coloured parrots.
