scovery. Would that such men
remained to govern the lands they have the courageous foresight to
discover! Then, indeed, they might take to themselves the motto talant de
bien jaire, which this prince, their great leader, caused to be inscribed
by his captains in many a land, that as yet, at least, has not found much
good from its introduction, under his auspices, to the civilization of an
older world.

PRESTER JOHN

Hurrying over this preliminary sketch, we may briefly note that about six
years after Prince Henry's death, the Gold Coast was explored by Fernando
Gomez, and the Portuguese fort was built there which Columbus afterwards
visited; that Fernando Po discovered an island which was then called
Formosa, but which is now known by the name of its discoverer; and that
Diego Cam, accompanied, it is said, by Martin Behaim (Martin of Bohemia),
the most celebrated geographer of those times--to whom, by the way, some
of the credit exclusively due to Columbus has been rather unfairly
given--discovered the kingdom of Congo. About this time an ambassador sent
to the King of Portugal by the sovereign of Benin, a territory between the
Gold Coast and Congo, happened to speak about a greater power in Africa
than his master, to whom indeed his master was but the vassal. This
instantly set the Portuguese king thinking about Prester John, of whom
legends spoke as a Christian king ruling over a Christian nation somewhere
in what was vaguely called the Indies; and the search after whom is, in
maritime discovery, what the alchemist's pursuit after the philosopher's
stone was in chemistry. The king concluded that this "greater power" must
be Prester John; and accordingly Bartholomew Diaz and two other captains
were sent out on further discovery. They did not find Prester John, but
made their way southwards along a thousand and fifty miles of new coast,
as far as a cape which, from experience, they called Cape Stormy, but
which their master, seeing in its discovery an omen of better things,
renamed as the Cape of Good Hope.

BARTHOLOMEW COLUMBUS.

It is a fact of great historical interest, and a singular link between
African and American discovery, that Bartholomew Columbus, brother of
Christopher, was engaged in this voyage. The authority for this important
statement is Las Casas, who says that he found, in a book belonging to
Christopher Columbus, being one of the works of Cardinal Aliaco, a note
"in Bartholomew Colon's ha