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Madeira is situated between the thirty-second and thirty-third parallels of north latitude. Its extreme length is about 33 miles, and its greatest breadth 14, and it contains about 115,000 inhabitants. It was well known to the ancients, and re-discovered by the Portuguese captain, Zarco, sent out by the great Don Henry.
One night, in the year 1418, he is thought to have had a dream of promise, for on the ensuing morning he suddenly ordered two vessels to be got ready forthwith, and placed them under the command of two gentlemen of his household, Zarco and Vaz, whom he directed to proceed down the Barbary coast on a voyage of discovery.
He had run into a fog off Cape Blanco in Africa, and had been pushing through it for two days when the weather lifted and the look-out spied a boat, empty but for one man, drifting a mile and more to leeward. Zarco ran down for the boat, and the man, being brought aboard, was found to be an escaped Moorish prisoner on his way back to Spain.
When at length the lamp arrived, Zarco trimmed it carefully, unfolded his parchment, spread it on the table, and began to read very deliberately in his rolling voice, pausing and looking up between the sentences while the man Martin translated "This is the statement made to me by Roger Prance, the Englishman, Anno MCCCCIX., at various times in the month before he died.
"Now this much he told them painfully, being faint with fasting and light-headed: but afterwards falling into a delirium, he let slip certain words that caused Captain Zarco to bestow him in a cabin apart and keep watch over him until the ship reached Lagos, whence he conveyed him secretly and by night to Prince Henry, who dwelt at that time in an arsenal of his own building, on the headland of Sagres.
Two gentlemen belonging to Don Henry's court, Juan Gonzales Zarco, and Tristram Vaz Teixeira had passed Cape Nun, the terror of ancient navigators, when they were carried out to sea and passed near an island to which they gave the name of Porto-Santo.
At the same time with the grant of Madeira to Zarco and Vaz, Perestrello received a donation of the island of Puerto Santo, on condition of colonizing it and bringing it into culture.
Those thus disinterred are thrown in a heap in a corner of the cemetery, where skulls and bones are piled up like a haystack. As we were passing, Zarco and I looked at the skulls, wondering to whom they could have belonged, to rich or poor, noble or plebeian. Suddenly the judge bent down, and picking up a skull, exclaimed in astonishment: "Look here, my friend, what is this? It is surely a nail!"
He attempted to solve these problems by sending out, year after year, expeditions down the north-west coast of Africa, each of which penetrated farther than its predecessor. Almost at the beginning he was rewarded by the discovery, or re-discovery, of Madeira in 1420, by João Gonsalvez Zarco, one of the squires of his household.
"Ah, my poor friend," I exclaimed, "I see that you are striving to convince yourself. Well, so much the better. Now, when does the marriage take place? I suppose that after so long and dark a night the sun of matrimony will rise radiant." "Don't laugh," exclaimed Zarco; "you shall be my best man." "With much pleasure." Man proposes, but God disposes.
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