rts,
the entreaties of the Queen, at last brought Affonso to something like
repentance and amendment. He buried the Regent at Batalha and pardoned
his friends, those who were left from the butchery of Alfarrobeira.

CHAPTER XVII.

CADAMOSTO.

1455-6.

We have now come to the voyages of the Venetian Cadamosto, in the
service of Prince Henry. And though these were far from being the most
striking in their general effect, they are certainly the most famous,
the best known, of all the enterprises of these fifty years (1415-1460).
It is true that Cadamosto fairly reached Sierra Leone and, passing the
farthest mark of the earlier Portuguese caravels, coasted along many
miles of that great eastern bend of the West African coast which we call
the Gulf of Guinea. But it is to his general fame as a seaman, his
position in Italy, and the interest he aroused by his written and
published story that he owed his greater share of attention.

When I first set my mind, begins his narrative, on sailing the ocean
between the Strait of Cadiz and the Fortunate Islands, the one man who
had tried to enter the aforesaid ocean, since the days of our Father
Adam, was the Infant Don Henry of Portugal, whose illustrious and
almost countless deeds I pass over, excepting only his zeal for the
Christian faith and his freedom from the bonds of matrimony. For his
father, King John, had not given up the ghost before he had warned his
son Henry with saving precepts, that the aforesaid Holy Faith he should
foster with a dauntless mind and not fail in his vows of warring down
the foes of Christ.

Therefore every year did Don Henry, as it were, challenging and hurling
defiance at the Moors, persist in sending out his caravels as far as the
headland called the Cape of Non (Not), from the belief that beyond the
said Cape there is "_No_" return possible. And as for a long time the
ships of the Prince did not dare to pass that point, Henry roused
himself to accomplish this feat, seeing that his caravels did much excel
all other sailing ships afloat, and strictly enjoined his captains not
to return before they had passed the said Cape. Who steadily pressing
on, and never leaving sight of the shore, did in truth pass near one
hundred miles beyond, finding nothing but desert land.

Beyond this again, for the space of one hundred and fifty miles, the
Prince then sent another fleet, which fared no better, and finding no
trace of men or of tillage, re