one hollow tree, but when they saw that there were men on
board the caravel they fled to the shore and "the wind falling our men
could not overtake.

"And though the booty of Diniz Diaz was far less than what others had
brought home before him, the Prince made very much of his getting to
that land of Negroes and Cape Verde and the Senegal," and with reason,
for these discoveries assured the success of his work, and from this
time all trouble and opposition were at an end. Mariners now went out to
sail to the golden country that had been found or to the spice land that
was now so near; men passed at once from extreme apathy or extreme
terror to an equally extreme confidence. They seemed to think the fruit
was within reach for them to gather, before the tree had been half
climbed. Long before Fernando Po had been reached, while the caravels
were still off the coasts of Sierra Leone, men at home, from King
Affonso to the common seamen of the ports, "thought the line of Tunis
and even of Alexandria had been long passed." The difficult first steps
seemed all.

Now three volunteers, Antam Gonsalvez, and two others who had already
sailed in the Prince's service, applied for the command of ships for the
discovery and conquest of the lands of Guinea, and to bring back Joan
Fernandez from his exile. Sailing past Cape Blanco they set up there a
great wooden cross and "much would it have amazed any one of another
nation that should have chanced to pass that way, not knowing of our
voyages along that coast," says Azurara gleefully, giving us proof
enough in every casual expression of this sort, often dropped with
perfect simplicity and natural truthfulness, that to his knowledge and
that of his countrymen, to the Europe of 1450, the Portuguese had had no
forerunners along the Guinea Coast.

A little south of the Bight of Arguin the caravels sighted a man on the
shore making signals to the ships, and coming closer they saw Fernandez
who had much to tell. He had completely won over the natives of that
part during his seven months' stay, and now he was able to bring the
caravels to a market where trinkets were exchanged for slaves and gold
with a Moorish chief--"a cavalier called Ahude Meymam." Then he was
taken home to tell his story to the Prince, the fleet wasting some time
in descents on the tribes of the bay of Arguin.

When he was first put on shore, Joan Fernandez told Don Henry, the
natives came up to him, took his clothes