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"If we settle into the sea, do you think that with our damaged floats we can drive ashore without breaking up?" "I do not, my Captain. There is a heavy sea running, and the surf is bad on the beach. This Rio de Oro coast is cruel. Have you our exact position?" "Almost exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, half-way between Cape Bojador to north of us, and Cape Blanco, to south." "Yes, I understand.
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 labor of Hercules.
A former pope had granted to Portugal all the lands it might discover in Africa, south of Cape Bojador, and the Spanish crown had assented by treaty to this arrangement. Ferdinand and Isabella could now refer to this precedent, in asking for a grant to them of their discoveries on the western side of the Atlantic. The pope now reigning was Alexander II. He had not long filled the papal chair.
On the south of that island, we may follow the current, in its direction south-east and south-south-east towards the coast of Africa, between Cape Cantin and Cape Bojador. In those latitudes a vessel becalmed is running on the coast, while, according to the uncorrected reckoning, it was supposed to be a good distance out at sea.
Arabs here are in a minority: the spare Saharowi type, the shaved lip and cheeks and pointed chin-tuft of the Berber race, men from the mysterious sandy steppes below Cape Bojador, Soudanese blacks, men from Wadnoon one and all congregate in this city.
In two years he re-discovered Madeira and Porto Santo, of which latter he afterward made Perestrello, the father of Columbus's wife, the governor. By 1433 his ships had reached Cape Bojador; eight years afterward they passed Cape Blanco; in 1445 they were at the mouth of the Senegal.
This title was, however, not completed until it was confirmed by a special grant obtained from the pope, and accordingly the reigning monarch of Portugal, John II., obtained the grant of all the lands from Cape Bojador to the Indies inclusive.
"Ireland's nothing at all to it!" answered the angry man, whose name was Pedro. "I've heard men that know talk! The Portuguese going down Africa coast got to Cape Bojador, but they've never truly gotten any further, though I hear them say they have! They sent a little carrack further down, and it had to come back because the water fell to boiling!
The visual ray of the horizon from the Peak being 1 degree 57 minutes, cape Bojador can be seen only on the supposition of its height being 200 toises above the level of the ocean. We are ignorant of the height of the Black Mountains near cape Bojador, as well as of that peak, called by navigators the Penon Grande, farther to the south of this promontory.
Though attended with much trouble and expence, Don Henry was unwearied in prosecuting his plan of discoveries. At length Gilianes, one of his servants, passed Cape Bojador, a place terrible to all former navigators, and brought word that it was by no means so dangerous as had been represented, he having landed on its farther side, where he set up a wooden cross in memorial of his discovery.
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