in the joy of their deliverance, they named Puerto Santo,
or the Holy Haven. Nor was Prince Henry less joyful of their discovery
than they had been of their escape: sufficient proof of the miserable
state of navigation in those days; for this island is only a few days'
voyage from Sagrez.

The discoverers of Puerto Santo, accompanied by Bartholomew Perestrello,
were, with three ships, sent out on farther trial. Perestrello, having
sown some seeds and left some cattle at Puerto Santo, returned to
Portugal.[47] Zarco and Vaz directing their course southward, in 1419,
perceived something like a cloud on the water, and sailing towards it,
discovered an island covered with woods, which from this circumstance
they named Madeira.[48] And this rich and beautiful island was the first
reward of the enterprises of Prince Henry.

Nature calls upon Portugal to be a maritime power, and her naval
superiority over the Moors, was, in the time of Henry, the surest
defence of her existence as a kingdom. Yet, though all his labours
tended to establish that naval superiority on the surest basis, though
even the religion of the age added its authority to the clearest
political principles in favour of Henry, yet were his enterprises and
his expected discoveries derided with all the insolence of ignorance,
and the bitterness of popular clamour. Barren deserts like Lybia, it was
said, were all that could be found, and a thousand disadvantages, drawn
from these data, were foreseen and foretold. The great mind and better
knowledge of Henry, however, were not thus to be shaken. Twelve years
had elapsed since the discovery of Madeira in unsuccessful endeavours to
carry navigation farther. At length, one of his captains, named
Galianez, in 1434 passed the Cape of Bojador, till then invincible; an
action, says Faria, not inferior to the labours of Hercules.

Galianez, the next year, accompanied by Gonsalez Baldaya, carried his
discoveries many leagues farther. Having put two horsemen on shore to
discover the face of the country, the adventurers, after riding several
hours, saw nineteen men armed with javelins. The natives fled, and the
two horsemen pursued, till one of the Portuguese, being wounded, lost
the first blood that was sacrificed to the new system of commerce. A
small beginning, it soon swelled into oceans, and deluged the eastern
and western worlds. The cruelties of Hernando Cortez, and that more
horrid barbarian, Pizarro,[49] are no mor