[45] E.g., the rivers Barbasini, Casamansa, Santa Anna, St. Domingo, and Cape Roxo.
[46] An allusion of high importance. See the section of this Introduction, "Preliminary African Exploration," especially pp. xlv, etc.
Voyages of the Portuguese completing Prince Henry's Work.
A word must be added on the completion of Prince Henry's work after his death, and by agents whom in many cases he had trained. King Affonso V, though rather more of a tournament king than a true successor of the great Infant, such as John II, had yet caught enough of his uncle's spirit to push on steadily, though slowly, the advance round Africa. In 1461 he repaired the fort in the Bight of Arguim and sent out Pedro de Sintra[[47]] to survey the coast beyond Cadamosto's furthest point. De Sintra proceeded 600 miles along the "southern coast of Guinea," passed a mountain which was called Sierra Leone (according to one account) from the lion-like growl of the thunder on its summits, and turned back at the point afterwards known as St. George La Mina.[[48]] Soon after (probably in 1462), Sueiro da Costa followed De Sintra,[[49]] but without any new results, and it was not till 1470 that a fresh advance was made.[[50]] In 1469 King Affonso leased the West African trade to Fernam Gomez, a citizen of Lisbon, for five years, Gomez paying 1,000 ducats a year. To this lease was annexed the condition that Gomez should make annual explorations along the unknown West coast of Africa for 300 miglia, counted from Sierra Leone, "where Pedro de Sintra and Sueiro da Costa turned back."[[51]]
Accordingly, in 1470, Gomez sent out João de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar, accompanied by the two leading Portuguese pilots, Martin Fernandez and Alvaro Esteves, as "directors of the navigation." On the 29th December, they discovered St. Thomas island, and on 17th January, 1471, the Isle of St. Anne, afterwards Ilha do Principe, both close to the Equator on the open side of the Bight of Biafra.
Another voyage seems to have been made, under Gomez' auspices, in 1471. Fernando Po now reached the island in the angle of the Central African coast which is still called after him; and men began to find that the Eastern bend of the continent, which had been followed since 1445-6 with some hope of a direct approach to Asia, now took a sharp turn to the South.
In spite of this disappointment, Fernandez and Esteves in 1472-3 passed beyond the furthest of earlier travellers, and crossed the Equator[[52]] into that Southern Hemisphere on the edge of which the caravels had long been hovering, as mariners like Cadamosto saw ever more clearly stars unknown in the Northern Hemisphere, and ever more nearly lost sight of the Arctic pole. In 1474-5 Cape Catherine, two degrees South of the Line, was reached, and here the advance of exploration stopped for a time till the accession of John II in 1481.
Now, in six years, the slow advance of the past sixty was exceeded.[[53]] Less than four months after his father's death, John, who as heir apparent had drawn part of his income from the African trade and its fisheries, sent out Diego de Azambuga, who in 1482 built under the King's orders the celebrated fort at St. George La Mina. He trafficked with success, but made no great advance along unknown Africa, even if he commenced a new era in the permanent colonisation of the Continent. King John was not disposed to be satisfied with this. In 1484, Diego Cão was ordered to go as far to the South as he could, and not to "wait anywhere for other matters." He penetrated to the mouth of the Zaire or Congo, where he erected (at Cape Padron?) a stone pillar in sign of possession,[[54]] and brought back four natives to Portugal. These he took out with him in his second voyage (1485); on this expedition Martin Behaim was (wrongly) said to have accompanied him. Cão claimed in this year to have reached 22° S. lat., half way between the Congo and the Cape of Good Hope; but this is probably an exaggeration;—18° S. lat.[[55]] perhaps marks his furthest point, rather than Walvisch Bay, as in the old tradition.
After Cão's return, King John renewed his efforts with fresh energy. Already, in 1484, a negro embassy to Portugal had brought such an account of an inland prince, one "Ogane, a Christian at heart," that all the Court of Lisbon thought he must be the long lost Prester John, and men were sent out to seek this "great Catholic Lord" by sea and land.
Bartholemew Diaz sailed in August 1486, with two ships, to try his fortune by the sea-route, and even if he could not reach the Prester's country, to discover as far as possible on the "way round Africa." Two other envoys, Covilham and Payva, were sent out by way of "Jerusalem, Arabia, and Egypt," to find the Priest-King and the Indies; yet another expedition was to ascend the Negro Nile, or Senegal, to its supposed junction with the Nile of Egypt; a fourth party started to explore a road to Cathay by the North-East Passage.