GIL EANNES' SUCCESSFUL VOYAGE.
We may well imagine that these stirring words of the prince must have confirmed Gil Eannes in his resolve to efface the stain of his former misadventure. And he succeeded in doing so; for he passed the dreaded Cape Bojador—a great event in the history of African discovery, and one that in that day was considered equal to a labour of Hercules. Gil Eannes returned to a grateful and most delighted master. He informed the prince that he had landed, and that the soil appeared to him unworked and fruitful; and, like a prudent man, he could not only tell of foreign plants, but had brought some of them home with him in a barrel of the new-found earth, plants much like those which bear, in Portugal, the roses of Santa Maria. The prince rejoiced to see them, and gave thanks to God, "as if they had been the fruit and sign of the promised land; and besought our Lady, whose name the plants bore, that she would guide and set forth the doings in this discovery to the praise and glory of God, and to the increase of His holy faith."