or fresh food, terrified at the heavy
seas that broke on these southern shores. With one voice they protested
against proceeding any farther. But the explorer could not bear to
turn back; he must sail onwards now, just three days more, and then
if they found nothing he would turn back. They sailed on and came to
the mouth of a large river--the Great Fish River. Again the keen
explorer would sail on and add to his already momentous discoveries.
But the crews again began their complaints and, deeply disappointed,
Diaz had to turn. "When he reached the little island of Santa Cruz
and bade farewell to the cross which he had there erected, it was with
grief as intense as if he were leaving his child in the wilderness
with no hope of ever seeing him again." To him it seemed as though
he had endured all his hardships in vain. He knew not what he had really
accomplished as yet. But his eyes were soon to be opened. Sailing
westward, Diaz at last came in sight of "that remarkable Cape which
had been hidden from the eyes of man for so many centuries."

[Illustration: THE WEST COAST OF AFRICA. From Martin Behaim's map,
1492.]

Remembering their perils past, he called it "the Stormy Cape" and
hastened home to the King of Portugal with his great news. The King
was overjoyed, but he refused to name it the Cape of Storms. Would
not such a name deter the seamen of the future? Was not this the
long-sought passage to India? Rather it should be called the Cape of
Good Hope, the name which it has held throughout the centuries. In
the course of one voyage, Diaz had accomplished the great task which
for the past seventy years Prince Henry had set before his people.
He had lifted for the first time in the history of the world the veil
that had hung over the mysterious extremity of the great African
continent. The Phoenicians may have discovered it some seventeen
hundred years before Diaz, but the record of tradition alone exists.

Now with the new art of printing, which was transforming the whole
aspect of life, the brilliant achievement of Bartholomew Diaz was made
known far and wide.

It was shortly to be followed by a yet more brilliant feat by a yet
more brilliant navigator, "the most illustrious that the world has
seen." The very name of Christopher Columbus calls up the vision of
a resolute man beating right out into the westward unknown seas and
finding as his great reward a whole new continent--a New World of whose
existence manki