Prince Henry, that was conveying horses; the
other was under Antonio de Noli, of Genoa. These merchants injured our
trade very much, for the natives used to give twelve negroes for one
horse, and now gave only six.

"And while we were there, a caravel came from Gambia, which brought us
news that a captain called De Prado was coming with a richly laden ship,
and I ordered Ferreira to go to Cape Verde and look for that ship and
seize it, on pain of death and loss of all his goods. And he did so, and
we found a great prize, which I sent home with Ferreira to the King. And
then I and Antonio de Noli left that coast, and sailed two days and one
night towards Portugal, and we sighted islands in the ocean, and as my
ship was lighter and faster than the rest, I came first to one of those
islands, to a good harbour, with a beach of white sand, where I
anchored. I told all my men and the other captains that I wished to be
first to land, and so I did.

"We saw no trace of natives, and called the island Santiago, as it is
still known. There were plenty of fish there and many strange birds, so
tame that we killed them with sticks. And I had a quadrant with me, and
wrote on the table of it the altitude of the Arctic Pole, and I found it
better than the chart, for though you see your course of sailing on the
chart well enough, yet if once you get wrong, it is hard by map alone to
work back into the right course.

"After this we saw one of the Canary islands, called Palma, and so came
to the island of Madeira; and then adverse winds drove me to the Azores,
but Antonio de Noli stayed at Madeira, and, catching the right breeze,
he got to Portugal before me, and begged of the King the captaincy of
the island of Santiago, which I had found, and the King gave it him, and
he kept it till his death.

"But De Prado, who had carried arms to the Moors, lay in irons and the
King ordered him to be brought out. And then they martyrised him in a
cart, and threw him into the fire alive with his sword and gold."

[Illustration: COIMBRA UNIVERSITY OF WHICH HENRY WAS THE OFFICIAL
PATRON.]

CHAPTER XIX.

HENRY'S LAST YEARS AND DEATH.

1458-60.

While Cadamosto and Diego Gomez were carrying the Prince's flag farther
from the shores of Europe "than Alexander or Caesar had ever ventured,"
the Prince himself was getting more and more absorbed in the project of
a new Holy War against the Infidel.

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 into t