My chief authorities for the achievements of
Prince Henry and his successors are the Portuguese historians,
Barros and Azurara. The best edition of the former is a modern
one, Barros y Couto, _Decadas da Asia, nova edicao con Indice
geral_, Lisbon, 1778-88, 24 vols. 12mo. I also refer sometimes
to the Lisbon, 1752, edition of the _Decada primeira_, in
folio. The priceless contemporary work of Azurara, written in
1453 under Prince Henry's direction, was not printed until the
present century; Azurara, _Chronica do Descobrimento e
Conquista de Guine_, Paris, 1841, a superb edition in royal
quarto, edited by the Viscount da Carreira, with introduction
and notes by the Viscount de Santarem.]

[Footnote 379: Partly, perhaps, because Mela was himself a
Spaniard, and partly because his opinions had been shared and
supported by St. Isidore, of Seville (A. D. 570-636), whose
learned works exercised immense authority throughout the Middle
Ages. It is in one of St. Isidore's books (_Etymologiarum_,
xiii. 16, apud Migne, _Patrologia_, tom. lxxxii. col. 484) that
we first find the word "Mediterranean" used as a proper name
for that great land-locked sea.]

[Sidenote: The Sacred Promontory.]

Filled with such lofty and generous thoughts, Prince Henry, on his
return from Morocco, in 1418, chose for himself a secluded place of
abode where he could devote himself to his purposes undisturbed by the
court life at Lisbon or by political solicitations of whatever sort. In
the Morocco campaign he had won such military renown that he was now
invited by Pope Martin V. to take chief command of the papal army; and
presently he received similar flattering offers from his own cousin,
Henry V. of England, from John II. of Castile, and from the Emperor
Sigismund, who, for shamefully violating his imperial word and
permitting the burning of John Huss, was now sorely pressed by the
enraged and rebellious Bohemians. Such invitations had no charm for
Henry. Refusing them one and all, he retired to the promontory of
Sagres, in the southernmost province of Portugal, the ancient kingdom of
Algarve, of which his father now appointed him governor. That lonely and
barren rock, protruding into the ocean, had long ago impressed the
imagination of Greek and Roman writers; they called it the S