f •» 



A. D. 1487. 709 



^ Arabic language rendered their further progrefs impradicable. This 

 year he fent Pero de Covillan and Alfonfo de Paiva, who were both 

 maftersof the Arabic, with inftrudions to travel to the country of Prefte 

 laani (or Prefter John), to learn whether his dominions extended to the 

 fea, and where the pepper, cinnamon, and other fpices, which were 

 brought to Venice, were produced. Along with their inftruclions, and 

 . ,^ money and bills for their fubfiflence, they received a chart drawn by the 

 ^ king's bcft geographers, who laid, they had found fome memorial of a 

 '^ paflage between the eaftern and the weftern feas. Having bought a cargo 



of honey at Rhodes, they proceeded in the charafter of merchants to 

 Alexandria, and thence by Cairo, the defert, and the Red fea, to Aden 

 in Arabia, where they feparated : Paiva crofTed over to Ethiopia, and 

 Covillan failed for Cananor, and thence to Calicut, where he faw ginger 

 and pepper growing, and learned that cloves and cinnamon were brought 

 from countries flill more remote. He then returned by Goa and Ormuz 

 to the Red fea, and thence foiled in company with fome Moorifli merch- 

 ants on the Ethiopian fea, which he found reprefented in his chart, as 

 far as Sofala, where he learned, ' that the coaft might be failed ail-along 

 • toward the weft,' and heard of the Ifland of the Moon, 900 miles m 

 length. Having now acquired more knowlege of India and the eaftern 

 feas than any European of that age, he returned to Cairo, where he 

 heard that Paiva was dead, and found two Jews, fent to him v/ith letters 

 from the king. One of them he fent back to the king with an account 

 of what he had difcovered, and his opinion, that the iliips, which trad- 

 ed to Guinea, by keeping along the coaft might get to Sofala and thence 

 to Calicut, for there was a clear fea. With the other Jew he returned to 

 Ormuz, and thence back to Aden, which was ftill, us in ancient times, 

 the center of commercial intercourfe. There he difpatched the Jew 

 home to Portugal, and bent his own courfe to the court of Prefte lanni, 

 where he was well treated and enriched, but never permitted to leave 



the country till the year 1520. [Barros, Dec. i, L. iii, c. 5 Purchas, 



B. vii, />. 1 091 ; B. X, p. 1675.] 



In the meantime, before the arrival of Covillan's very encouraging 

 information, Bartholomew Diaz, one of the many Portuguefe com- 

 manders, who, during almoft a century, had been endeavouring to reach 

 the fouthern extremity of Africa in the hope of finding an open naviga- 

 tion to the Oriental regions, returned (December 1487) from a voyage 

 in which he had made a ftretch along 1050 miles of the coaft, and act- 

 ually paffed the fouthern extremity of the continent, to which, from 

 the ftormy weather he met with when off it, he gave the name of Cal'2 

 Tonnentofo (or Stormy cape) : but the king, underftanding that the land 

 beyond it trended to the eaftward, and full of hope that the greateft dif- 

 ficulty in the route to India was now furmounted, changed the name to 

 the more aufpicious one of Caho de Boa E/p:ranfa (Cape of Good Hope), 



