fail him. Lancarote for himself said the same, and another,
one Alvaro de Freitas, capped the offers of all the rest. He would go on
beyond the Negro-Nile to the Earthly Paradise, to the farthest East,
where the four sacred rivers flowed from the tree of life. "Well do you
all know how our Lord the Infant sets great store by us, that we should
make him know clearly about the land of the Negroes, and especially the
River of Nile. It will not be a small guerdon that he will give for such
service."

Six caravels in all formed the main body of the Perseverants, and these
coasted steadily along till they came to Diaz's Cape of Palms, which
they knew was near the Senegal and the land of the Negroes, "and so
beautiful did the land now become, and so delicious was the scent from
the shore, that it was as if they were by some gracious fruit garden,
ordained to the sole end of their delights. And when the men in the
caravels saw the first palms and towering woodland, they knew right well
that they were close upon the River of Nile, which the men there call
the Sanaga." For the Infant had told them how little more than twenty
leagues beyond the sight of those trees they would see the river, as his
prisoners of the Azanegue tribes had told him. And as they looked
carefully for the signs of this, they saw at last, two leagues from
land, "a colour of the water that was different from the rest, for that
was of the colour of mud."

And understanding this to mean that there were shoals, they put farther
out to sea for safety, when one took some of the water in his hand and
put it to his mouth, and found that it was sweet. And crying out to the
others, "Of a surety," said they, "we are now at the River of Nile, for
the water of the river comes with such force into the sea as to sweeten
it." So they dropped their anchors in the river's mouth, and they of the
caravel of Vincent Diaz (another brother of Diniz and Lawrence) let down
a boat, into which jumped eight men who pulled ashore.

Here they found some ivory and elephant hide, and had a fierce battle
with a huge negro whose two little naked children they carried off,--but
though the chronicle of the voyages stops here for several chapters of
rapturous reflection on the greatness of the Nile, and the valour and
spirit of the Prince who had thus found a way to its western mouth, we
must follow the captains as they coast slowly along to Cape Verde, "for
that the wind was fair for saili