here is no evidence of Prince Henry's putting a check to any
of these proceedings; but, on the contrary, it appears that he rewarded
with large honors Lancarote, one of the principal men of this
expedition, and received his own fifth of the slaves. Yet I have
scarcely a doubt that the words of the historian are substantially
true--that discovery, not gain, was still the Prince's leading idea. We
have an account from an eye-witness of the partition of the slaves
brought back by Lancarote, which, as it is the first transaction of the
kind on record, is worthy of notice, more especially as it may enable
the reader to understand the motives of the Prince and of other men of
those times. It is to be found in the _Chronicle_, before referred to,
of Azurara. The merciful chronicler is smitten to the heart at the
sorrow he witnesses, but still believes it to be for good, and that he
must not let his mere earthly commiseration get the better of his piety.

"O thou heavenly Father," he exclaims, "who, with thy powerful hand,
without movement of thy divine essence, governest all the infinite
company of thy holy city, and who drawest together all the axles of the
upper worlds, divided into nine spheres, moving the times of their long
and short periods as it pleases thee! I implore thee that my tears may
not condemn my conscience, for not its law, but our common humanity,
constrains my humanity to lament piteously the sufferings of these
people (slaves). And if the brute animals, with their mere bestial
sentiments, by a natural instinct, recognize the misfortunes of their
like, what must this by human nature do, seeing thus before my eyes this
wretched company, remembering that I myself am of the generation of the
sons of Adam! The other day, which was the eighth of August, very early
in the morning, by reason of the heat, the mariners began to bring to
their vessels, and, as they had been commanded, to draw forth those
captives to take them out of the vessel: whom, placed together on that
plain, it was a marvellous sight to behold; for among them there were
some of a reasonable degree of whiteness, handsome and well made; others
less white, resembling leopards in their color; others as black as
Ethiopians, and so ill-formed, as well in their faces as their bodies,
that it seemed to the beholders as if they saw the forms of a lower
hemisphere.

"But what heart was that, how hard soever, which was not pierced with
sorrow, seeing tha