66 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



They reached the River Senegal, which ' ' men say comes from 

 the Nile, being one of the four most glorious Rivers of Earth, 

 flowing from the Garden of Eden and the earthly paradise." 

 They took back from it a pipe of water to Lisbon, and 

 boasted that " not even Alexander, though he was one of 

 the monarchs of the world, ever drank of water that had 

 been brought from so far as this." Still they passed on, 

 carving on the trees of desert islands " the arms of the 

 Infante and the words of his motto," dreaming, as the 

 African coast took its easterly bend, that they had already 

 rounded the continent, and that India was no great distance 

 away. 



The Portu- Henry died in 1460. The result of forty-two years of 

 India ^oS enthusiastic work looks slight enough when put in terms 

 of modern geography. His captains had sailed from Cape 

 Bojador to Sierra Leone, eighteen degrees of latitude, 

 " not four days' course in a steam ship." x But he had done 

 enough to touch Portuguese imagination, to stir Portuguese 

 ambition, to make sure that the work which had made 

 Portugal the most famous nation of the new age would be 

 continued. There was disappointment and discontent 

 when the African coast again turned South. After all, 

 had Ptolemy been right when he thought there was no way 

 round Africa at all ? But the Portuguese monarchs 

 persisted ; and the Portuguese seamen sailed on. In 1486 

 Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape. On Christmas Day 

 1497, Vasco da Gama came to the land to which, by reason 

 of the day, he gave the name of Natal. He reached the 

 Arabian colonies on the East coast of Africa, and, obtaining 

 pilots, came to Calicut on the Western coast of India in 

 May 1498. " We come," said a Portuguese sailor, " in 

 search of Christians and spices." 



The Portu- Now follows the story of the foundation of the Portuguese 

 Empire. Empire of the East. It was essentially a maritime empire. 

 The Arab supremacy, which had made the whole Indian 

 Ocean the Domain of Islam, was challenged and was com- 

 pletely overthrown. " History, ancient and modern, 

 records no achievement of armed commerce so brilliant, 

 1 Hunter's History of British India, vol. i. p. 69. 



