e Vincent, a native of
Lagos, as captain, and caused to be armed to the teeth, as was required,
and on the 21st of March, 1455, Cadamosto sailed for Madeira. On the
25th they were off Porto Santo, and the Venetian stops to give us a
description of the island, which, he says in passing, had been found and
colonised by the Prince's seamen twenty-seven years before. It was worth
the settling. Every kind of grain and fruit was easily raised, and there
was a great trade in dragon's blood, "which is made from the tears of a
tree."

On March 27th, Cadamosto sailed from Porto Santo to Madeira, forty miles
distant, and easily seen from the first island when the weather was
cloudy, and here the narrative stops some time to describe and admire
sufficiently. Madeira had been colonised under the lead and action of
the Prince four and twenty years before, and was now thickly peopled by
the Portuguese settlers. Beyond Portugal its existence was hardly known.
Its name was "from its woodland,"--here Cadamosto repeats the
traditional falsehood about the place,--but the first settlers had
destroyed most of this in trying to clear an open space by fire. The
whole island had once been in flames, the colonists only saved their
lives by plunging into the rivers, and even Zarco, the chief discoverer,
with his wife and children had to stand in a torrent bed for two whole
days and nights before they could venture on dry land again.

The island was forty miles round; like Porto Santo, it was without a
harbour, but not without convenient roads for ships to lie in; the soil
was fertile, well watered by eight rivers that flowed through the
island. "Various kinds of carved wood are exported, so that almost all
Portugal is now adorned with tables and other furniture made from these
woods."

"Hearing of the great plenty of water in the island, the Prince ordered
all the open country to be planted with sugar-cane and with vines
imported from Crete, which do excellent well in a climate so well suited
to the grape; the vine staves make good bows, and are exported to Europe
like the wine, red and white alike, but especially the red. The grapes
are ripe about Easter in each year," and this vintage, as early as
Cadamosto's day, was evidently the main interest of the islanders, who
had all the enthusiasm of a new venture in their experiment, "for no one
had ever tried his hand upon the soil before."

From Madeira the caravel sailed on 320 miles to the Can