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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



inhabitants of Portugal — a struggle that 

 ended in the constitution of the nation 

 which is now modern Portugal. 



THK IvIBKRATOR OF PORTUGAL 



It might have seemed at first a hope- 

 less struggle against overwhelming and 

 impossible odds, and that the issue of 

 independence could only be reached by 

 a miracle. When seeming miracles come 

 to pass in human afifairs they generally 

 happen by the action of some heroic per- 

 sonage who is also a man of genius. So 

 it was with Portugal, and her hero, a 

 greater one by far than the nearly con- 

 temporary Cid, El Campeador, in Spain, 

 was the conqueror AfTonzo Henriquez. 

 The deeds of this Portuguese warrior 

 king are authentically recorded in the 

 dry chronicles of three nationalities, and 

 in geographical and historic events whose 

 effects and consequences subsist to our 

 day. The actions of the Spanish cham- 

 pion, a condottiere captain who fought 

 for his own hand mainly, now with, now 

 against the infidels, were internationally 

 as fruitless as the victories in the Trojan 

 war. They have left no trace in history ; 

 they are suspected, indeed, to be partly 

 mythical ; but the memory of them lives, 

 and will live always, for they are re- 

 corded in one of the great epics of the 

 world. 



Portugal has had two great epochs 

 during which the doings of its people 

 were of international importance and 

 have left their mark enduringly on the 

 history of the world. The first, the long 

 fight for freedom under King Affonzo 

 Henriquez, nearly synchronized with the 

 second and unsuccessful crusade and was 

 indeed itself a crusade, for the Portu- 

 guese king and his people were fighting 

 the battle of Christian Europe for the 

 Cross as strenuously and as effectively, 

 in Eusitania, as Godfrey de Bouillon and 

 Richard Cneur de Lion fought for it in 

 Syria. The news had come to northern 

 Europe that a champion of the Faith 

 was holding his own against the Crescent 

 in Portugal, and when the king resolved 

 to attack and besiege the central Moorish 

 stronghold at Lisbon, he obtained the 

 help of a large body of crusaders from 



North Germany and the low countries, 

 who sailed for the East from the mouths 

 of the Rhine and put in at Dartmouth. 



The Cross prevailed ill the end and 

 Islam fell, and with it the Moslem power 

 in Portugal. The conqueror spared the 

 citizens of Lisbon. The religious fanati- 

 cism and intolerance that have marked 

 later periods of Iberian history were 

 then unknown, and the great Moorish 

 city continued its ])rosperous existence 

 under equal laws imposed by its Chris- 

 tian conqueror. Evidence of the humane 

 tolerance of the Portuguese is clear to 

 this day to any one who passes from 

 any northern city of the kingdom to 

 Lisbon. The type of the Lisbon crowds 

 is still that of the dark Moorish race 

 who dwell in Tangiers and Fez. 



Affonzo Henriquez, king, patriot, con- 

 queror, and legislator, the real maker of 

 Portugal, was succeeded during the first 

 century of Portuguese history by mon- 

 archs who followed in his footsteps and 

 maintained his great traditions. This is 

 the first and most glorious period in the 

 history of Portugal, but there has been 

 a second memorable epoch in which 

 Portugal has stood forth prominent 

 among the nations and done more than 

 her share to advance the civilization of 

 the world. 



HKR INTRKPID EXPI,ORE:rS 



This second great epoch was inaugu- 

 rated by Prince Henry the Navigator, at 

 Sagres, at the extreme southern end of 

 Portugal. Prince Henry built an astro- 

 nomical observatory, studied the then 

 almost unknown art and science of navi- 

 gation, and despatched exploring expedi- 

 tions at his own cost into the unknown 

 ocean to the south and to the west. He 

 discovered Madeira and the Azores and 

 explored the eastern coast of Africa as 

 far south as Cape P)oiador, in the tropics 

 Prince Henry's fame presently drew to 

 Sagres, as to a college of the science of 

 navigation, the sons of Portuguese no- 

 bles, who caught from him that spirit 

 of maritime enterprise which during the 

 succeeding centuries made Portugal one 

 of the great colonizing nations of the 

 world. The rare and difficult art of 



