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The voyage by land in search of Prester John had thus been completely successful, while, at the same time, information had been obtained giving certain hopes of the voyage by sea. This had, in its way, been almost as successful, for Diaz had rounded the cape now known as the Cape of Good Hope, but to which he proposed giving the title of Cabo Tormentoso, or "Stormy Cape."
"Alvaro Nunes had still five charges for his arquebus, and I as many for my hand petronel. . . . When they heard the thunder of the powder they cast aside their weapons and crawled to us on their knees, taking us for gods. . . . And bearing in mind all that the shipwrecked Castilian we had found at Cabo Tormentoso had told us of the mine of precious stones, we hastened to propitiate them in every way. . . . The gauds we had brought, gay beads, bright kerchiefs, and the like with these we won our way to their goodwill.
Diaz was himself brave enough to be willing to go on to the Red Sea, after he made the great discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, but his crews mutinied, after he had gone much farther than his predecessors, and compelled him to return. He passed the southern cape of Africa and went forty miles farther. He called it the Cape of Torments, "Cabo Tormentoso," so terrible were the storms he met there.
Much had already been done, for in 1471 Fernando Po had reached the mouth of the Niger, and all the coast southward from Morocco was well known and visited annually, for slaves used to cultivate the vast estates in the Alemtejo; but it was not till 1484 that Diogo Cão, sent out by the king, discovered the mouth of the Congo, or till 1486 that Bartholomeu Diaz doubled the Cabo Tormentoso, an ill-omened name which Dom João changed to Good Hope.
Touching at several places on the coast, he at length reached an until then unknown cape, to which he gave the name of Il Cabo Tormentoso, or the Cape of Storms, on account of the furious gales and heavy seas he there encountered.
Have been prevented from making entries in diary by rough weather, and heartily joined the schoolmaster in his wish, that "if Britannia ruled the waves, she would bring them more parallel to the 'Line!" Sunday, April 25th, 1852. Are now off the Cape of Good Hope, called by its discoverer, Diaz, Cabo Tormentoso, or the Tormenting Cape, from the storms he encountered in its latitude.
He then resolved to return, for what reason is not known; and on his return, he saw the Cape of Good Hope, to which, on account of the storms he encountered on his passage round it, he gave the appellation of Cabo Tormentoso. John II., however, augured so well from the doubling of the extremity of Africa having been accomplished, that he changed its name into that of the Cape of Good Hope.
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