St. Lawrence Head. Then, creeping round the south coast, he came
to the high lands and the forests of Madeira,--so named here and now,
either as De Barros says, "from the thick woods they found there," or,
in the form of Machico, from the first discoverer, luckless Robert
Machin. For on landing the Portuguese, guided by Morales, soon found the
wooden cross and grave of the Englishman and his mistress, and it was
there that Zarco, with no human being to dispute his title, "took
seizin" of the island in the name of King John, Prince Henry, and the
Order of Christ.

Embarking once more, he then coasted slowly round from the "River of the
Flint" to "Jackdaw Point," and the "Chamber of the Wolves," where his
men started a herd of sea-calves. So he came to the vast plain overgrown
with fennel or "Funchal," where the chief town of after days grew up. A
party sent inland to explore, reported that on every side the ocean
could be seen from the hills; and Zarco, after taking in some specimens
of the native wood and plants and birds at Funchal, put back in the last
days of August to Portugal.

He was splendidly received at Court, made a count--"Count of the Chamber
of the Wolves,"--and granted the command of the island for his own
life. A little later, the commandership was made hereditary in his
family. Tristam Vaz, the second in the Prince's commission, was rewarded
too: the northern half of Madeira was given him as a captaincy, and in
1425 Henry began to colonise in form. Zarco, as early as May, 1421, had
returned with wife and children and attendants, and begun to build the
"port of Machico," and the "city of Funchal," but this did not become a
state affair until four years more had gone by.

But from the first, the island, by its export of wood and dragon's blood
and wheat, began to reward the trouble of discovery and settlement.
Sugar and wine were brought to perfection in later years, after the
great "Seven years' fire" had burnt down the forests and enriched the
soil of Madeira. It was soon after Zarco's return to Funchal that he
first set fire to the woods behind the fennel fields of the coast, to
clear himself a way through the undergrowth into the heart of the
island; the fire blazed and smouldered till it had taken well hold of
the entire mass of timber that covered the upper country, nothing in the
feeble resources of the first settlers could stop it, and Madeira
lighted the ships of Henry on their way to the south,