to raise the little
kingdom his father had so gallantly held against jealous and powerful
neighbors, to the rank of a first-class power. To seek to enlarge a
realm shut in by mountains on one side and the sea upon the other, by
constant strife with embittered enemies, he saw at once was to invite
annihilation. The sea afforded the only avenue of hope, the continent of
Africa, where his father had already gained something from the Moor, in
battling with whom he had himself won renown, the only visible
opportunity. So he determined to explore, and finally, to circumnavigate
Africa, and give to Portugal whatever of power or wealth the ocean or
the dark continent might hide. He believed that India might be reached
by sailing round its southern extremity, and he determined to pour the
wealth of the Orient into the treasury of the kingdom his father had
established.

In 1418, therefore, he turned his back on personal ambition, laid aside
the glory of military renown, and sat himself down to a hermit's life
and a scholar's labors on the promontory of Sagres, in the province of
Algarve, that point on the coast of Portugal which stretches farthest
out into the Atlantic in the direction of his hope. Here he built an
observatory whose light was the last his captains saw as they went
forth, and the first to greet them on their return. Here he opened a
school of navigation, and here were trained the discoverers who opened
the way for all who came afterward. Here was not only nourished the
impulse which fired the hearts of Columbus and his contemporaries, but
here was taught the science and here were gathered the facts which
enabled them to achieve success.

Up to that time, Cape Nun had been the boundary of the modern world to
the southward. With infinite patience, Prince Henry labored to convince
his captains that the terrors which they thought lay at the southward of
this point were wholly imaginary. Little by little his caravels crept
down the coast of Africa. Every year he sent out two or three.
Navigators and geographers flocked to his service. In two years he
re-discovered Madeira and Porto Santo, of which latter he afterward made
Perestrello, the father of Columbus's wife, the governor. By 1433 his
ships had reached Cape Bojador; eight years afterward they passed Cape
Blanco; in 1445 they were at the mouth of the Senegal. Still he urged
them on toward that "_thesaurus Arabum et divitia Indiae_," to which he
set himself the