In 1441, twenty-six years after the capture of Ceuta, and the year after Terceira, the first among the Azores to be discovered, had been reached, a sudden impetus was given to the Iffante’s project. Antam Goncalvez had sailed to the Rio do Ouro for sealskins and oil. Having secured his cargo, he landed with nine armed men on the shore of the inlet, and after a desperate struggle with a solitary naked African succeeded in wounding and capturing him. To this feat he added that of cutting off a female slave from her party, and securing her also. Shortly afterwards Nuno Tristam, a knight highly esteemed by Dom Henrique, arrived at the Rio do Ouro with a caravel, intending to explore the coast beyond Angra de Cintra in search of captives. Fired by the exploit of Goncalvez, Tristam landed, marked down a party of natives, and after killing several captured ten men, women, and children, including a personage who ranked as a chief. After exploring the coast, with no further success, as far as Cape Branco, Tristam followed Goncalvez to Portugal, where they joyfully presented to the Iffante the long-desired first-fruit of his projects. Chroniclers dwell complacently on the joy experienced by the Iffante, commensurate not to the value of the slaves actually taken but to the hope of future captures, and on his pious rapture at the prospect of saving the souls of so many African heathen. Dom Henrique now sought and obtained from the Pope a special indulgence for all who should fight under the banner of the Order of Christ for the destruction and confusion of the Moors and other enemies of Christ, and for the exaltation of the Catholic faith. He further procured from his brother Dom Pedro, regent of the kingdom, an exclusive right of navigation on the West African coast, and a surrender of the whole of the royalties due to the Crown on the profits of these voyages. A new stimulus was given to the enterprise by the discovery that captives of rank could be held to ransom, and exchanged for several slaves. In the following year (1442) Goncalvez obtained ten slaves in exchange for two captured chiefs, and brought back a little gold dust and some ostrich eggs. In the next year Tristam passed in his caravel beyond Cape Branco, and reached the island of Arguin. Fortune favoured him in an unusual degree, for he returned with his caravel laden with captives to its full capacity. The success of the enterprise was now assured, and in the next year it was prosecuted on a more extensive scale. The people of Lagos, the port where the captured slaves were landed, roused by the prospect of still greater gains, made preparations for seeking them, by way of joint-stock enterprise, on a larger scale than heretofore. The Iffante licensed an expedition consisting of six caravels, the command being given to Lanzarote, receiver of the royal customs at Lagos, and presented each with a banner emblazoned with the cross of the Order of Christ, to be hoisted as its flag. Lanzarote and his companions raided the coast as far as Cape Branco, shouting “Santiago! San Jorge! Portugal!” as their war-cry, and ruthlessly slaying all who resisted, whether men, women, or children. They brought back to Lagos no less than 235 captives; the receiver of customs was raised by the Iffante to the rank of knight, and the wretched captives were sold and dispersed throughout the kingdom. Large tracts, both of Portugal and Spain, remained waste or half cultivated as a result of the Moorish wars: and the grantees of these lands eagerly purchased the human chattels now imported in increasing numbers.
The project of Dom Henrique had now made an important advance. Its ultimate success appeared certain; and the Iffante resolved that a direct effort should be made to reach Bilad Ghana itself, through which the “ Western Nile” rolled its waters from the highlands of Abyssinia and the Christian realm of “ Prester John.” A certain equerry was commanded to go with a caravel straight for Guinea, and to reach it without fail. He passed Cape Branco, but was unable to resist the temptation of a profitable capture on his route. Landing on one of the islands near the Bank of Arguin, he and his men were surprised by a large party of natives, who put off from the mainland in canoes, and killed most of the raiders, including their commander. Five only returned to Portugal. Diniz Diaz, an adventurer of Lisbon, claimed about the same time to have passed the Senegal river, to have sailed along the thirty-four leagues of coast which separate it from Cape Verde, and on the strength of having on his way picked up a few natives in canoes, to haye been the first to bring back real “ Guinea negroes “ for the Portuguese slave-market. How far his claim to this distinction is sustainable, is left an open question by the authorities. The wave of African enterprise was now steadily gaining strength. The Iffante readily licensed all intending adventurers, and the coast, long unfrequented by the European sailor, swarmed with caravels. In 1445 twenty-six vessels, fourteen of which belonged to Lagos, left that port under the command of the experienced Lanzarote, specially commissioned to avenge the IfFante’s unfortunate equerry who had fallen as a protomartyr on the African shore, carrying the Cross-emblazoned banner of the Order of Christ. Six of these fulfilled the Iffante’s direction to push on to the “River of Nile,” and land in Bilad Ghana. The palm-trees and other rich vegetation, the beautiful tropical birds which flitted round their caravels, the strange kinds of fish observed in the waters, gave promise of the approaching goal; and at length the voyagers beheld the sea discoloured by the muddy waters of the Senegal to a distance of two leagues from land. Scooping these up in their hands, and finding them fresh, they knew that their object was attained, sought the river’s mouth, anchored outside the bar, launched their boats, captured a few hapless negroes, and returned to Dom Henrique, picking up more captives on the way, with the welcome intelligence that his desires were at length accomplished, that the “ River of Nile” had been reached, and the way opened to the kingdom of Prester John.
In the nineteenth year of his efforts to reach Bilad Ghana the Iffante thus saw them at length crowned with success; and his licensees pursued the trade thus opened up so vigorously that in 1448, seven years after the capture of the first natives, and three years after the Senegal had been reached, not less than 927 African slaves had been brought to the Portuguese markets, the greater part of whom, it is unctuously observed by Zurara, were converted to the true way of salvation. The rich field of commerce thus entered upon was rapidly developed by the continued exploration of the coast. We have seen that even before the Iffante’s emissaries anchored at the mouth of the Senegal a navigator standing further out to sea claimed to have passed it, and reached Cape Verde. The year in which the Senegal river was actually reached (1445) was marked by another important advance. The Venetian captain Ca da Mosto and the Genoese Antonio de Nola, both in the Iffante’s employ, passed beyond Cape Verde, and reached the Gambia river; the Iffante began also in this year the colonisation of San Miguel, which had been reached in the previous year, and was the second among the Azores Islands in order of discovery. In 1446 Ca da Mosto and Antonio de Nola not only discovered the four Cape Verde Islands, Boavista, Santiago, San Filippe, and San Cristovao, but passed Capo Roxo, far beyond the Gambia River, and coasted the shore to an equal distance beyond Capo Roxo, discovering the rivers Sant’ Anna, San Domingos, and Rio Grande. From the coast south of Cape Verde new wonders were brought back to Portugal. The Iffante’s eyes were gladdened by beholding tusks of the African elephant, and a living African lion.
How far southward along the coast the Iffante’s licensees had actually sailed at the time of his death (1460), is uncertain. Could the distances reported by them as expressed in nautical leagues be accepted as trustworthy evidence, they must have passed the Bissagos and De Los Islands, and here reached the latitude of Sierra Leone, only eight degrees north of the equator. But the estimates given in the chronicle, founded only on dead reckoning, are in excess of actual geographical distances. We doubt whether before Dom Henrique’s death Portuguese seamen had passed the tenth parallel of north latitude; and it is known that in his last years the complete discovery and colonisation of the Azores group chiefly occupied his attention. Dom Henrique’s will, which specifies churches founded by him in each of the Azores, in Madeira, Porto Santo, and Deserta, as well as in various towns of Portugal and on the opposite coast of Morocco, speaks of the great dependency of Guinea, which he had secured for the Portuguese Crown, in general terms only. He looked on it as a certain source, in the future, of large ecclesiastical revenues. These, following a common practice of the age, were settled by him, with the Pope’s assent, on the military and religious Order of which