s. In five years, 927 blacks from Senegambia
reached the Lisbon market; and, later on, the Guinea coast supplied
about a thousand every year. That domestic institution was fast
disappearing from Europe when it was thus revived; and there was some
feeling against the Infante, and some temporary sympathy for his
victims. On the other side, there were eminent divines who thought
that the people of hot countries may properly be enslaved. Henry the
Navigator applied to Rome, and Nicholas V issued Bulls authorising him
and his Portuguese to make war on Moors and pagans, seize their
possessions, and reduce them to perpetual slavery, and prohibiting all
Christian nations, under eternal penalties, from trespassing on the
privilege. He applauded the trade in negroes, and hoped that it would
end in their conversion. Negro slavery struck no deep root in Europe.
But the delusion, says Las Casas, lasted to his own time, when, half a
century after the death of its founder, it began to control the
destinies of America.

Henry's brother, the Regent Dom Pedro, had visited the courts of
Europe, and brought Marco Polo's glowing narrative of his travels in
the Far East, still, in Yule's edition, one of the most fascinating
books that can be found. Emmanuel the Great, in the Charter rewarding
Vasco da Gama, affirms that, from 1433, the Infante pursued his
operations with a view to India. After his death, in 1460, they were
carried on by the State, and became a secondary purpose, dependent on
public affairs. Africa was farmed out for some years, on condition
that a hundred leagues of coast were traced annually. There was a
moment of depression, when the Guinea coast, having run eastward for a
thousand miles and more, turned south, apparently without end.
Toscanelli of Florence was a recognised authority on the geography of
those days, and he was asked what he thought of the situation. No
oracle ever said anything so wise as the answer of the Tuscan sage.
For he told them that India was to be found not in the East, but in
the West; and we shall see what came of it twenty years later, when
his letter fell into predestined hands. The Portuguese were not
diverted from their aim. They knew quite well that Africa does not
stretch away for ever, and that it needed only a few intrepid men to
see the end of it, and to reach an open route to Eastern Asia. They
went on, marking their advance beyond the Congo, and erected crosses
along the