esome
of Moorish strongholds. The Mediterranean itself was not fully secured
for Christian trade and intercourse while the European Pillar of the
Western straits was a Saracen fort. If Portugal was to conquer or
explore in northern Africa, Gibraltar was as much to be aimed at as
Ceuta. Both sides of the straits, Calpe and Abyla, must be in her hands
before Christendom could expand safely along the Atlantic coasts.

So Henry, in the face of all his council, determined to make the trial
on his voyage back to Lisbon. But a storm broke up the fleet, and when
it could be refitted and re-formed, the time had gone by, and the Prince
obeyed his father's repeated orders and returned at once to Court. For
his gallantry and skill in the storm of Ceuta, he had been made Duke of
Viseu and Lord of Covilham, when King John first touched his own
kingdom--after the African campaign--at Tavira, on the Algarve coast.
With his brother Pedro, who shared his honours as Duke of Coimbra and
Lord of the lands henceforward known as the Infantado or Principality,
Henry thus begins the line of Dukes in Portugal, and among the other
details of the war, his name is specially joined with that of an English
fleet which he had enrolled as a contingent of his armada while
recruiting for ships and men in the spring of 1415. In the same way as
English crusaders had passed Lisbon just in time to aid in its conquest
by Affonso Henriquez, the "great first King" of Portugal in 1147, so now
twenty-seven English ships on their way to Syria were just in time to
help the Portuguese make their first conquest abroad.

Lastly, the results of the Ceuta campaign in giving positive knowledge
of western and inland Africa to a mind like Henry's already set on the
finding of a sea-route to India, have been noticed by all contemporaries
and followers, who took any interest in his plans, but it was not merely
caravan news that he gained in these two visits of 1415 and 1418. Both
Azurara, the chronicler of his voyages and Diego Gomez, his lieutenant,
the explorer of the Cape Verde Islands and of the Upper Gambia, are
quite clear about the new knowledge of the coast now gained from Moorish
prisoners.

Not only did the Prince get "news of the passage of merchants from the
coasts of Tunis to Timbuctoo and to Cantor on the Gambia, which
inspired him to seek the lands by the way of the sea," but also "the
Tawny Moors (or Azanegues) his prisoners told him of certain tall palms