s performed singular feats on horseback.

Bemoin maintained his favour at the Portuguese court, and succeeded in his
object of obtaining military assistance. He was sent back to his own
country with a Portuguese squadron of twenty caravels, which had for its
instructions, besides his restitution, to found a fort on the banks of the
river Senegal.

The Portuguese arrived at the river, and began building the fort, but are
said to have chosen an unhealthy spot to build on. Whether they could have
chosen a healthy one is doubtful. The commander, however, Pedro Vaz,
thought that there was treachery on Bemoin's part, and killed him with the
blow of a dagger on board his vessel. The building was discontinued, and
Pedro Vaz returned to Portugal, where he found the king excessively vexed
and displeased at the fate of Bemoin.

PRINCE HENRY'S PERSEVERANCE.

The historian may now stop in his task of tracing Portuguese discovery
along the coast of Africa. We have seen it making its way with quiet
perseverance, for seventy years, from Cape Nam to the Cape of Good Hope, a
distance of some six thousand miles. This long course of discovery has
been almost entirely thrown into shade by the more daring and brilliant
discovery of America, which we have now to enter upon. Yet these
proceedings on the African coast had in them all the energy, perseverance,
and courage which distinguished American discovery. Prince Henry himself
was hardly a less personage than Columbus. They had different elements to
contend in. But the man whom princely wealth and position, and the
temptation to intrigue which there must have been in the then state of the
Portuguese court, never induced to swerve from the one purpose which he
maintained for forty years, unshaken by popular clamour, however sorely
vexed he might be with inward doubts and misgivings; who passed laborious
days and watchful nights in devotion to this one purpose, enduring the
occasional short-comings of his agents with that forbearance which springs
from a care for the enterprise in hand, so deep as to control private
vexation (the very same motive which made Columbus bear so mildly with
insult and contumely from his followers),--such a man is worthy to be put
in comparison with the other great discoverer who worked out his
enterprise through poverty, neglect, sore travail, and the vicissitudes of
courts. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that Prince Henry was
undoubtedly the father of