MADEIRA DISCOVERED.
In the following year, Zarco and Vaz, seeing from Porto Santo something that seemed like a cloud, but yet different (the origin of so much discovery, noting the difference in the likeness), built two boats, and, making for this cloud, soon found themselves alongside a beautiful island abounding in many things, but most of all in trees, on which account they gave it the name of Madeira (wood). The two discoverers landed upon the island in different places. The prince, their master, afterwards rewarded them with the captaincies of the districts adjacent to those places. To Perestrelo he gave the island of Porto Santo, to colonize it. Perestrelo, however, did not make much of his captaincy; and spent his life in endeavouring to make head against the rabbits, which were as destructive as a plague of locusts, and which by their fecundity resisted all his efforts to exterminate them. This captain has a place in history, as being the father-in-law of Columbus, who, indeed, lived at Porto Santo for some time, and here, on new found land, studied the cosmographical works which Perestrelo had been at pains to accumulate; meditating far bolder discoveries.