In the same year, ten caravels sailed from Lagos for Madeira, the Canaries, and the coast of Africa, but returned without making any progress in discovering the coast. Under this year likewise, 1447, the Antilles, or Caribbee islands, are pretended to have been discovered by a Portuguese ship driven, thither by a storm. But the fact rests only on the authority, of Galvano, a Portuguese historian, and is not at all credible. Indeed the story is an absolute fable; as the inhabitants are said to have spoken the Portuguese language, and to have had seven cities in their island. In the same year, Gomez Perez went with two caravels to Rio del Ouro, whence he carried eighty Moors to Lagos as prisoners.

About this period the progress of discovery was arrested by political disputes in Portugal, which ended in a civil war between Don Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, and King Alphonso V. his nephew and son-in-law, in the course of which Don Pedro was slain. Don Henry appears to have taken no share in these disputes, except by endeavouring to mediate between his nephew and brother; and, after the unhappy catastrophe of Don Pedro, Don Henry returned to Sagres, where he resumed the superintendence of his maritime discoveries.

These nine islands, called the Açores, Terceras, or Western islands, are situated in the Atlantic, 900 miles west from Portugal, at an almost equal distance from Europe, Africa, and America. The Flemings pretend that they were discovered by a navigator of their nation, John Vanderberg, who sailed from Lisbon in 1445 or 1449. Santa Maria, one of these islands, 250 leagues west from Cape St Vincent, was first seen on the 15th August 1432, by Cabral, who sailed under the orders of Don Henry. San Miguel was taken possession of by the same navigator on the 8th May 1444; and Ponta Delgada its capital, received its charter from Emanuel in 1449. Tercera was given to Jacome de Brujes in 1450, by Don Henry, in which year St George was discovered. Pico and Gracioso were discovered about the same time. Perhaps Fayal may actually have been first explored, as many of the inhabitants are of Flemish descent, under the command and protection of the Portuguese. Flores and Corvo, which lie seventy leagues west from Tercera, are not reckoned among the Açores by some writers. In this latter island, the Portuguese pretend that there was discovered an equestrian statue made from one block of stone. The head of the man was bare, his left hand rested on the mane of his horse, and his right pointed towards the west, as if indicating the situation of another continent. In addition to all this, an inscription appeared to have been traced on a rock beneath the statue, but in a language which the Portuguese did not understand.

In the slow progress of discovery, the perils endured by the officers and men employed by Don Henry, from the Moors and Negroes, frequently occasioned murmurs against his plans of discovery; but the several clusters of islands, the Madeiras, Cape Verd, and Açores, formed a succession of maritime and commercial colonies, and nurseries for seamen, which took off from the general obloquy attending the tedious and hitherto unsuccessful attempts to penetrate farther into the southern hemisphere, and afforded a perpetual supply of navigators, and a stimulus to enterprize. The original prejudices against the possibility of navigating or existing in the torrid zone still subsisted, and although the navigators of Don Henry had gradually penetrated to within ten degrees of the equator, yet the last successive discovery was always held forth by the supporters of ignorant prejudice, as that which had been placed by nature as an insurmountable barrier to farther progress in the Atlantic. In this situation, the settlement of the Açores was of considerable importance. In 1457, Don Henry procured the grant of many valuable privileges to this favourite colony, the principal of which was the exemption of the inhabitants from any duties on their commerce to the ports of Portugal and even of Spain.

In 1461, a fort was erected in the isle of Arguin on the African coast of the Moors, to protect the trade carried on there for gold and negro slaves. Next year, 1462, Antonio de Noli, a Genoese, sent by the republic to Portugal, entered into the service of Don Henry, and in a voyage to the coast of Africa, discovered the islands which are known by the name of the Cape de Verd Islands, though they lie 100 leagues to the westward of that Cape. In the same year Pedro de Cintra, and Suera de Costa, penetrated a little farther along the coast of Africa, and discovered the river or Bay of Sierra Liona or Mitomba, in lat. 8° 30' N. This constituted the last of the Portuguese discoveries, carried on under the direct influence and authority of Don Henry, the founder and father of modern maritime discovery, as he died next year, 1463, at Sagres, in the sixty-seventh year of his age; and, for a time, the maritime enterprise of the Portuguese nation was palsied by his death.

Thus, during a long period of fifty-two years, this patriotic prince devoted almost his whole attention, and the ample revenues which he enjoyed as Duke of Viseo end grand master of the military order of Christ, in extending the maritime knowledge, and consequently the commercial prosperity of his country. The incidents of the last seven years of the life of this distinguished prince, are involved in uncertainty, and we know very little with regard to the progress of his maritime discoveries from 1456, the date of the second of the voyages of Cada Mosto, of which we propose to give a separate account, till the year of his death, 1463. From the year 1412, when he began his operations, at which time he could scarcely exceed fifteen years of age, the navigators who had been formed under his auspices and direction, and often instructed by himself in the theory of navigation and cosmography, gradually explored the western coast of Africa, from Cape Nam or Non, in lat. 28° 15', certainly to Rio Grande, in lat. 11° N. or rather to Rio de Nuno, not quite a degree farther south; but it is highly probable that the southern limit of discovery in his time extended to Cabo Verga, in lat. 10° N. the northern boundary of the country usually called the Sierra Liona, or the Ridge of Lions, perhaps to the gulf of Mitomba, or bay of Sierra Liona, in lat. 8° 30' N. an extent of 29° 15' of latitude, or 1185 nautical miles; a mere nothing certainly when compared with modern navigation, but a wonderful effort in the infancy of the science, when even coasting voyages of any extent along well known shores, and in frequented seas, were looked upon as considerable efforts. No brilliant discovery, indeed, rewarded the perseverance of Don Henry, and the courage of his servants; but an indestructible foundation of useful knowledge was laid, for overthrowing the ignorant prejudices of the age, and by which, not long afterwards, his plans were perfected by completing the circumnavigation of Africa, and by the discovery of the New World. Dr Vincent, the learned editor and commentator of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, is disposed to limit the discoveries of Don Henry to Cape Verd268, but Ramusio believed that the Island of St Thomas was settled in his time; and the ingenious translator of the Lusiad of Camoens is of opinion that some of his commanders passed beyond the equator269. According to Mickle, it was the custom of his navigators to leave his motto, Talent de bien faire, wherever they came; and in 1525 Loaya, a Spanish captain, found that device carved on the bark of a tree in the island of St Matthew, or Anabon, in the second degree of southern latitude. But this proof is quite inconclusive, as the navigators long reared in the school of this great prince might naturally enough continue his impress upon the countries they visited, even after his lamented death.