PORTUGUESE ENTERPRISE. 



129 



a passage by sea to the famous commercial region of the Indies, 

 some general knowledge of which had been preserved since the 

 Persian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires. The achievements 

 which we are about to narrate were so surprising, so significant, 

 and so complete, that, as has been aptly remarked, they can 

 never happen again in history, unless, indeed, Providence wer« 

 to create new and accessible worlds for discovery and conquest, 

 or to replunge mankind for ages into ignorance and superstition. 

 But, before proceeding with the discoveries of the Portuguese, 

 we must mention a previous discovery made by accident in the 

 same region by the French and Spanish. 



About the year 1330, a French ship was driven among a 

 number of islands which lay off the coast of the Desert of Sa- 

 hara. These had been known to the ancients as the Fortunate 

 Islands, and Juba of Mauritania, who is quoted by Pliny, calls 

 two of them by name, — Trivaria, or Snow Island, and Canaria, 

 or Island of Dogs. They had been lost to the knowledge of the 

 Europeans for a thousand years, and it was a storm which re- 

 vealed their existence, as we have said, to a vessel forced by 

 stress of weather to escape from the coast into the open sea. 

 The Spaniards profited by the vicinity of the group to make 

 discoveries and settlements among them. Trivaria became 

 TenerhTe, and Canaria the Grand Canary. It was here that 

 superstition now placed the limits of navigation, and expressed 

 the idea upon maps, by representing a giant armed with a 

 formidable club, and dwelling in a tower, as threatening ships 

 with destruction if they ventured farther out to sea. It is in this 

 immediate neighborhood that we are now about to follow the 

 laring and patient enterprises of the Portuguese. 



Don Henry, the fifth son of John I. of Portugal, was placed 



by his father, in 1415, in command of the city of Ceuta, in 



Africa, which he had just conquered from the Moors. During 



his stay here, the young prince acquired much information 



relative to the seas and coasts of Western Africa, and this first 

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