62 BALCH— EVOLUTION AND MYSTERY 



tion. For if it is true that Phoenician coins have been found on 

 one of the Azores, it is possible that some knowledge of the Sargasso 

 Sea may have filtered into Egypt and become mixed up with the 

 destruction of Minoan Crete. But although the story of Atlantis is 

 so confused and so jumbled out of discordant elements that we may 

 never feel quite sure of them all, yet as far as the discovery of 

 America is concerned, we must remember that the belief that there 

 had been such an island in the Atlantic and that it was close to other 

 lands, may well have urged on some of the early Atlantic navigators. 

 Among the impelling causes of Portuguese discovery also, must 

 be reckoned one man. This was the Portuguese Prince, known as 

 Henry the Navigator. He w'as the son of John I., King of Por- 

 tugal, and his wife Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of 

 Lancaster, and was thus half English. Born in 1394, he died in 

 1460, and devoted most of his life to fathering voyages of discovery. 

 Some English writers laud him to the skies as the finest flower of 

 chivalry, but one Portuguese wn'iter at least claims that he was a 

 brutal bigot and slave driver. Leaving his moral character to the 

 tender mercies of others, history records that in June, 141 5, Henry 

 the Navigator took part in a predatory attack on the town of Ceuta, 

 Morocco, which was wrested vi ct arniis from the Moors. Appar- 

 ently his sojourn with the Moors inspired him with a desire to ex- 

 plore the African coast of the Atlantic Ocean and after his return 

 to Portugal in 1418, he settled on the promontory of Sagres, Por- 

 tugal, a name corrupted from its name Sacrum of Roman days, and 

 built an observatory and some houses there. Here he spent most 

 of his life, studying geography, interviewing seamen and preparing 

 expeditions of discovery. In certain respects, the settlement of 

 Sagres might be considered the first geographical society of the 

 world. And although Henry the Navigator did not himself make 

 any voyages of discovery and although none of the voyages which 

 he fathered made known to the world the existence of the Ameri- 

 can continent, still his work aroused the interest and opened the 

 way which eventually led to the successful voyage of Columbus. 

 Indeed there is probably no individual who did as nuich to bring 

 about the European invasion of America as Henry the Navigator. 



