instead of a country
unapproachable from the heat, where the very seas were perpetually
boiling as if in a cauldron, there was a land richer than any northern
climate, through which men could pass to the south.

Still further was this proved by the next voyage, which reached the end
of the great western trend of the African coast, and found that instead
of the continent stretching out farther and farther to an infinite
breadth, there was an immense contraction of the coast.

Diniz Diaz, the eldest of that family which gave to Portugal some of her
greatest men and makers, now begged a caravel from the Prince with the
promise of "doing more with it than any had done before." He had done
well under old King John, and now he kept his word.

Passing Arguin and Cape Blanco and Cape Palmar, he entered the mouth of
the Senegal, the western Nile, which was now fixed as the northern limit
of Guinea, or Blackman's Land. "Nor was this a little honour for our
Prince, whose mighty power was thus brought to bear upon the peoples so
far distant from our land and so near to that of Egypt." For Azurara
like Diaz, like Henry himself, thought not only that the Senegal was the
Niger, the western Nile of the Blacks, but that the caravels of
Portugal were far nearer to India than was the fact,--were getting close
to the Mountains of the Moon and the sources of the Nile.

But Diaz was not content with this. He had reached and passed, as he
thought, the great western stream up which men might sail, in the belief
of the time, to the mysterious sources of the world's greatest river,
and so down by the eastern and northern course of the same to Cairo and
the Christian seas. He now sailed on "to a great cape, which he named
Cape Verde," a green and beautiful headland covered with grass and trees
and dotted with native villages, running out into the Western Ocean far
beyond any other land, and beyond which, in turn, there was no more
western coast, but only southern and eastern. From this point Diaz
returned to Portugal.

"But great was the wonder of the people of the coast in seeing his
caravel, for never had they seen or heard tell of the like, but some
thought it was a fish, others were sure it was a phantom, others again
said it might be a bird that had that way of skimming along the surface
of the sea." Four of them picked up courage to venture out in a canoe
and try to settle this doubt. Out they went in their little boat, all
made from