tains, hinking it would well apply to many other lands about to be found out by his captains and by other discoverers. Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz returned. Their master was delighted with the news they brought him, more on account of its promise than its substance. In the same year he sent them out again, together with a third captain, named Bartholomew Perestrelo, assigning a ship to each captain. His object was not only to discover more lands, but also to improve those which had been discovered. He sent, therefore, various seeds and animals to Porto Santo. This seems to have been a man worthy to direct discovery. Unfortunately, however, among the animals some rabbits were introduced into the new island, and they conquered it, not for the prince, but for themselves. Hereafter we shall find that they gave his people much trouble, and caused no little reproach to him.

We come now to the year 1419. Perestrelo, for some cause not known, returned to Portugal at that time. After his departure, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, seeing from Porto Santo something that seemed like a cloud, but yet different (the origin of so much discovery, noting the difference in the likeness), built two boats, and, making for this cloud, soon found themselves alongside a beautiful island, abounding in many things, but most of all in trees, on which account they gave it the name of Madeira (wood). The two discoverers, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, entered the island at different parts. The prince their master afterward rewarded them with the captaincies of those parts. To Perestrelo he gave the island of Porto Santo to colonize it. Perestrelo, however, did not make much of his captaincy,

but after a strenuous contest with the rabbits, having killed an army of them, died himself. This captain has a place in history as being the father-in-law of Columbus, who, indeed, lived at Porto Santo for some time, and here, on new-found land, meditated far bolder discoveries.

Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz began the cultivation of their island of Madeira, but met with an untoward event at first. In clearing the wood, they kindled a fire among it, which burned for seven years, we are told; and in the end, that which had given its name to the whole island, and which, in the words of the historian, overshadowed the whole land, became the most deficient commodity. The captains founded churches in the island; and the King of Portugal, Don Duarte, gave the temporalities to Prince Henry, and all the spiritualities to the knights of Christ.

While these things were occurring at Madeira and Porto Santo, Prince Henry had been prosecuting his general scheme of discovery, sending out two or three vessels a year, with orders to go down the coast from Cape Nam, and make what discoveries they could; but these did not amount to much, for the captains never advanced beyond Cape Bojador, which is situated seventy leagues to the south of Cape Nam. This Cape Bojador was formidable in itself, being terminated by a ridge of rocks with fierce currents running round them; but was much more formidable from the fancies which the mariners had formed of the sea and land beyond it. "It is clear," they were wont to say, "that beyond this cape there is no people whatever; the land is as bare as Libya-no water, no trees, no grass in it; the sea so shallow that at a league from

the land it is only a fathom deep; the currents so fierce that the ship which passes that cape will never

return ;"* and thus their theories were brought in to justify their fears.

This outstretcher (for such is the meaning of the

✦ AZURARA, Paris, 1841, cap. 8.

word Bojador) was therefore as a bar drawn across that advance in maritime discovery which had for so long a time been the first object of Prince Henry's life.

The prince had now been working at his discoveries for twelve years, with little approbation from the generality of persons (con poca aprovacion de muchos), the discovery of these islands, Porto Santo and Madeira, serving to whet his appetite for farther enterprise, but not winning the common voice in favor of prosecuting discoveries on the coast of Africa. The people at home, improving upon the reports of the sailors, said that "the land which the prince sought after was merely some sandy place like the deserts of Libya; that princes had possessed the empire of the world, and yet had not undertaken such designs as his, nor shown such anxiety to find new kingdoms; that the men who arrived in these foreign parts (if they did arrive) turned from white into black men; that the king, Don John, the prince's father, had endowed foreigners with land in his kingdom, to break up and cultivate it—a thing very different from taking people out of Portugal, which had need of them, to bring them among savages to be eaten, and to place them upon lands of which the mother-country had no need; that the Author of the world had provided these islands solely for the habitation of wild beasts, of which an additional proof was, that those rabbits the discoverers themselves had introduced were now dispossessing them of the island.”*

There is much here of the usual captiousness to be found in the criticism of by-standers upon action, mixed with a great deal of false assertion and premature knowledge of the ways of Providence. Still it were * FARIA Y SOUSA, tom. i., part i.,

cap. 1.

to be wished that most criticism upon action was as wise; for that part of the common talk which spoke of keeping their own population to bring out their own resources had a wisdom in it, which the men of future centuries were yet to discover throughout the Peninsula.

Prince Henry, as may be seen by his perseverance up to this time, was not a man to have his purposes diverted by such criticism, much of which must have been in his eyes worthless and inconsequent in the extreme. Nevertheless, he had his own misgivings. His captains came back one after another with no good tidings of discovery, but with petty plunder gained, as they returned, from incursions on the Moorish coast. The prince concealed from them his chagrin at the fruitless nature of their attempts, but probably did not feel it less on that account. He began to think, Was it for him to hope to discover that land which had been hidden from so many princes? Still he felt within himself the incitement of "a virtuous obstinacy," which would not let him rest. Would it not, he thought, be ingratitude to God, who thus moved his mind to these attempts, if he were to desist from his work, or be negligent in it?* He re

* Porém quando os capitaes tornavam, faziam algumas entradas na costa de Berberia (como atrás dissemos), com que elles refaziam parte da despeza, o que o Infante passava com soffrimento, sem por isso mostrar aos homens descontentamento de seu serviço, dado que não cumprissem o principal ́a que eram enviados. Porque como era Principe Catholico, e todalas suas cousas punha em as mãos de Deos, par recia-lhe que não era merecedor que per elle fosse descuberto, o que tanto tempo havia que estava escondido aos Principes passados de Hespanha. Com tudo, porque sentia em si hum estimulo de virtuosa perfia, que o não leixava descançar em outra cousa, parecia-lhe que era ingratidão a Deos dar-lhe estes movimentos, que não desistisse da obra, e elle ser a isso negligente."-BARROS, Lisbon, 1778, dec. i., lib. i., cap. 4.