the systematic study of applied science in Christendom; it
was better than the work of the old Greek "University" at Alexandria
with which it has been compared, because it was essentially practical.
From it "our sailors," says Pedro Nunes, "went out well taught and
provided with instruments and rules which all map-makers should know."
We would gladly know more of Henry's scientific work; a good many
legends have grown up about it, and even his foundation of the Chair of
Mathematics in the University of Lisbon or Coimbra, our best evidence of
the unrecorded work of his school, has been doubted by some modern
critics, even by the national historian, Alexander Herculano. But to
Prince Henry's study and science two great improvements on this side may
be traced: first in the art of map-making, secondly in the building of
caravels and ocean craft.

The great Venetian map of Fra Mauro of the Camaldolese convent of
Murano, finished in 1459, one year before the Navigator's death, is
evidence for the one; Cadamosto's words, as a practical seaman, of
Italian birth, in Henry's service, that the "caravels of Portugal were
the best sailing ships afloat," may be proof sufficient of the other.

On both these lines, Henry took up the results of Italians and worked
towards success with their aid. As Columbus and the Cabots and Verazzano
in later times represented the intellectual leadership of Italy to other
nations--Spain, England, and France; but had to find their career and
resources not in their own commercial republics, but at the Courts of
the new centralised kingdoms of the West, where a paternal despotism
gave the best hope of guiding any popular movement, social or religious
or political or scientific,--so in the earlier fifteenth century,
mariners like Cadamosto and De Nolli, scientific draughtsmen like Fra
Mauro and Andrea Bianco, looked from Venice and Genoa to the Court of
Sagres and to the service of Prince Henry as their proper sphere, where
they would find the encouragement and reward they sought for at home and
often sought in vain.

Henry's settlement on Cape St. Vincent was not long without results. The
voyage of his captain, John de Trasto, to the "fruitful" district of
Grand Canary in 1415 was not in any sense a discovery, as the conquest
of John de Bethencourt in 1402 had made these "Fortunate" islands
perfectly well known, but the finding of Porto Santo and Madeira in
1418-20 was a real gain. For the Machin story