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Updated: June 24, 2025
Secondly, he took it for granted upon the authority of approved authors that a great portion of our globe had been already travelled over and explored; and that it now only remained to discover the whole, so as to make known what was contained in the vacant space which remained, between the eastern boundaries of India which were known to Ptolemy and Marinus, and those our newly discovered western parts of the coast of Africa and the Azores and Cape Verd islands, the most westerly which were yet known.
There is a small town called Rosario upon this island, where, if we can but reach it, I have no doubt we can obtain succour; and I therefore intend to steer for Corvo, not only for the reason that I have mentioned, but also because most homeward-bound ships endeavour to make the Azores, and we therefore stand a very good chance of being picked up at any moment.
Some legends pertaining to them appear to do with places no farther from the homes of the simple, if imaginative, tellers than the Azores, Canaries, and Cape Verdes; but others indicate a former knowledge of our own America, and a few may relate to that score or so of rocks lying between New England and the Latin shores; bare, dangerous domes and ledges where sea fowl nest, and where a crumbling skeleton tells of a sailor who outlived a wreck to endure a more dreadful death from cold and thirst and hunger.
"King Otho," continued the prince, "ruled wisely and well for seven months, and it was at the beginning of that time that the imperial submarine was sent to the Azores with letters and a packet to you. The enterprise, however, was attended by so great danger of discovery that it was never repeated. This is why, for so long, you have had no word from the king.
In his first voyage, at nightfall on September 13, 1492, being then two and a half degrees east of Corvo, one of the Azores, Columbus observed that the compass needles of the ships no longer pointed a little to the east of north, but were varying to the west. The deviation became more and more marked as the expedition advanced.
Last year we were buffeting the storms of the North Atlantic, near the Azores; now we are snugly anchored, in the Arcas: and how many eventful periods have passed in the interval! Our poor people have been terribly pressed in this wicked and ruthless war, and they have borne privations and sufferings which nothing but an intense patriotism could have sustained.
In 1583 Santa Cruz, the best Spanish admiral since the death of Menendez, proposed to form the nucleus of the Great Armada out of the fleet with which he had just broken down the last vestige of Portuguese resistance in the Azores. From that day on, the idea was never dropped.
Columbus also remembered that the inhabitants of the Azores had more than once found upon their coasts the trunks of huge pine-trees, and strangely shaped canoes carved out of single logs; and, most significant of all, the people of Flares had taken from the water the bodies of two dead men, whose faces were of a strange broad shape, and whose features differed from those of any known race of mankind.
In addition to his great fragment the History of the World, he wrote A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Azores, and The Discoverie of the Empire of Guiana, besides various poems chiefly of a philosophic cast, of which perhaps the best known are The Pilgrimage, and that beginning "Go, Soul, the Body's Guest."
Storms also scattered Philip's fleet in the next year; in 1598, Spanish transports landed 5,000 men at Calais; and England's fears were renewed in the year after that by news of over 100 vessels fitting out for the Channel, which, however, merely protected the plate fleet by a cruise to the Azores. As late as 1601, Spain landed 3500 troops in Ireland.
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