ient inquiry, he sent his companion homewards, with
the caravans that were going to Aleppo, and embarking once more on the
Red sea, arrived in time at Abyssinia, and found the prince whom he had
sought so long, and with such danger.

Two ships were sent out upon the same search, of which Bartholomew Diaz
had the chief command; they were attended by a smaller vessel laden with
provisions, that they might not return, upon pretence of want either
felt or feared.

Navigation was now brought nearer to perfection. The Portuguese claim
the honour of many inventions by which the sailor is assisted, and which
enable him to leave sight of land, and commit himself to the boundless
ocean. Diaz had orders to proceed beyond the river Zaire, where Diego
Can had stopped, to build monuments of his discoveries, and to leave
upon the coasts negro men and women well instructed, who might inquire
after Prester John, and fill the natives with reverence for the
Portuguese.

Diaz, with much opposition from his crew, whose mutinies he repressed,
partly by softness, and partly by steadiness, sailed on till he reached
the utmost point of Africa, which from the bad weather that he met
there, he called cabo Tormentoso, or the cape of Storms. He would have
gone forward, but his crew forced him to return. In his way back he met
the victualler, from which he had been parted nine months before; of the
nine men, which were in it at the separation, six had been killed by the
negroes, and of the three remaining, one died for joy at the sight of
his friends. Diaz returned to Lisbon in December, 1487, and gave an
account of his voyage to the king, who ordered the cape of Storms to be
called thenceforward cabo de Buena Esperanza, or the cape of Good Hope.

Some time before the expedition of Diaz, the river Zaire and the kingdom
of Congo had been discovered by Diego Can, who found a nation of negroes
who spoke a language which those that were in his ships could not
understand. He landed, and the natives, whom he expected to fly, like
the other inhabitants of the coast, met them with confidence, and
treated them with kindness; but Diego, finding that they could not
understand each other, seized some of their chiefs, and carried them to
Portugal, leaving some of his own people in their room to learn the
language of Congo.

The negroes were soon pacified, and the Portuguese left to their mercy
were well treated; and, as they by degrees grew able to make the