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Updated: June 14, 2025
And so the whole island burned for seven years, at times with a heat which drove the settlers to their boats. For seven years as surely as night fell could we in Porto Santo count on the glare of it across the sea to the south-west, and for seven years the caravels of our prince and master, Dom Henry, sighted the flame of it on their way southward to Cape Bojador.
While these things were occurring at Madeira and at Porto Santo, Prince Henry had been prosecuting his general scheme of discovery, sending out two or three vessels each year, with orders to go down the coast from Cape Nam, and make what discoveries they could; but these did not amount to much, for the captains never advanced beyond Cape Bojador, which is situated seventy leagues to the south of Cape Nam.
It is not impossible that they might contemplate the imaginary terrors of the torrid zone, as handed down from some of the ancients, with all its burning soil and scorching vapours; and they might consider the difficulties of Cape Bojador as a providential bar or omen, to warn and oppose them against proceeding to their inevitable destruction.
Consequently the problems that Prince Henry had to solve were whether the coast of Africa trended sharply to the east after Cape Bojador, and whether the ideas of the ancients about the uninhabitability of the torrid zone were justified by fact.
While I am writing, some stranded brig, barque, or ship may be going to pieces between Bojador and Blanco; her crew making shorewards in boats to be swamped among the foaming breakers; or, riding three or four together upon some severed spar, to be tossed upon a desert strand, that each may wish, from the bottom of his soul, should prove uninhabited!
In that year Antonio Goncalvez, master of the robes to Prince Henry, was sent out with a vessel to load it with skins of "sea-wolves," a number of them having been seen, during a former voyage, at the mouth of a river about a hundred and fifty miles beyond Cape Bojador.
In the following year Gilianez again sailed for the coast of Africa, accompanied by Alphonzo Gonzales Baldaya , cupbearer to the prince. The weather continued favourable during the voyage, and they were able to penetrate ninety miles to the south of Cape Bojador.
As soon as taken, the fish are opened and salted, and serve as an excellent supply of provisions to navigators. All the coast of Africa, from Cape Bojador, otherwise called Cabo della Volta, as far as Cape Branco and even to Arguin, is low and sandy.
After passing the Cape of Bojador there was a lull in Portuguese discovery, the period from 1434 to 1441 being spent in enterprises of very little distinctness or importance. Indeed, during the latter part of this period, the Prince was fully occupied with the affairs of Portugal.
According to M. Gosselin, the itineraries of Hanno, of Scylax, Polybius, Statius, Sebosus, and Juba; the recitals of Plato, of Aristotle, of Pliny, of Plutarch, and the tables of Ptolemy, all bring us to the same results, and, notwithstanding their apparent contradictions, fix the limit of southern navigation about the neighborhood of Cape Non, or Cape Bojador.
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