ng." Landing on a couple of uninhabited
islands off the Cape, they found first of all "fresh goat-skins and
other things," and then the arms of the Infant and the words of his
motto, _Talan de bien faire_, carved upon trees, and they doubted, like
Azurara when writing down his history from their lips; "whether the
great power of Alexander or of Caesar could have planted traces of itself
so far from home," as these islands were from Sagres. For though the
distance looks small enough on a full map of all the world, on the chart
of the Then Known it was indeed a lengthy stretch--some two thousand
miles, fully as great a distance as the whole range of the Mediterranean
from the coast of Palestine to the Straits of Gibraltar.

Now by these signs, adds the chronicler, they understood right well that
other caravels had been there already--and it was so; for it was the
ship of John Gonsalvez Zarco, Captain of Madeira, which had passed this
way, as they found for a fact on the day after. And wishing to land, but
finding the number of the natives to be such that they could not land by
day or night, they put on shore a ball and a mirror and a paper on which
was drawn a cross.

And when the natives came and found them in the morning, they broke the
ball and threw away the pieces, and with their assegais broke up the
mirror into little bits, and tore the paper, showing that they cared for
none of these things.

Since this is so, said Captain Gomes Pires to the archers, draw your
bows upon these rascals, that they may know we are people who can do
them a damage.

But the negroes returned the fire with arrows and assegais--deadly
weapons, the arrows unfeathered and without a string-notch, but tipped
with deadly poison of herbs, made of reed or cane or charred wood with
long iron heads, and the assegais poisoned in like manner and pricked
with seven or eight harpoons of iron, so that it was no easy matter to
draw it out of the flesh.

So they lost heart for going farther, with all the coast-land up in arms
against them, and turned back to Lagos, but before they left the Cape
they noticed in the desert island, where they had found the Prince's
arms, trees so large that they had never seen the like, for among them
was one which was 108 palms round at the foot. Yet this tree, the famous
baobab, was not much higher than a walnut; "of its fibre they make good
thread for sewing, which burns like flax; its fruit is like a gourd and
its