trace out very shortly the evidence for such a
claim as this and to see, how the Prince's work was followed up, first
on his own lines to south and east; second, on other lines, which his
own suggested, to west and north.

1. King Affonso V., Henry's nephew, though rather more of a hard fighter
and tournament king than a man who could fully take up his uncle's
plans, had yet caught enough of his inspiration to push on steadily,
though slowly, the advance round Africa. He had already done his best to
get the great map of Fra Mauro finished: this, which embodied all the
achievements of the Navigator and gave the most complete and perfect
view of the world that had ever yet appeared, had come out in 1459, just
before Henry's death, the last tribute of science to the Prince's work.

Now, in 1461, left alone to deal with the discovery and conquest of
Guinea, Affonso repaired Henry's fort in the Bay of Arguin and sent one
Pedro de Cintra to survey the coast beyond the Rio Grande, the farthest
point of Cadamosto in his first voyage, as generally known. Pedro went
six hundred miles into the Bight of Benin, passed a mountain range
called Sierra Leone from the lion-like growl of the thunder on its
summits, and turned back near the point afterwards known as Fort La Mina
(1461). Some time in the next few years, another courtier, one Sueiro da
Costa followed Pedro de Cintra to Guinea, but without any new results;
when Cadamosto left Portugal (Feb. 1, 1463), he tells us "there were no
more voyages to the new-found parts."

The slave-trade nearer home was now, indeed, absorbing all energies and
Affonso's main relation with African voyaging is to be found in his
regulations for the security of this trade.

But in 1471 there was another move in the line of further discovery. For
exploring energy was not dead or worn out, but only waiting a leader.
Fernando Po now reached the island in the farthest inlet of the Gulf of
Guinea, which is still called after him, finding as he went on that the
eastern bend of Africa, which men had followed so confidently since
1445, the year of the rounding of Cape Verde, now ended with a sharp
turn to the south. It was a great disappointment. But in spite of this
discouragement, at the very same time two of the foremost of the
Portuguese pilots, Martin Fernandez and Alvaro Esteeves, passed the
whole of the Guinea Coast, the Bights of Benin and of Biafra, and
crossed the Equator, into a new Heaven and a