of its promise than its substance. In the same year he sent them out again
with a third captain, Bartholomew Perestrelo, to convey a supply of seeds
and animals for the newly-found island. Unfortunately, however, among the
animals were some rabbits, which multiplied so rapidly that they
overspread the whole island, and, by devouring every plant and blade of
grass which grew there, soon changed a fruitful land into a bare
wilderness.


MADEIRA DISCOVERED.

In the following year, Zarco and Vaz, seeing from Porto Santo something
that seemed like a cloud, but yet different (the origin of so much
discovery, noting the difference in the likeness), built two boats, and,
making for this cloud, soon found themselves alongside a beautiful island
abounding in many things, but most of all in trees, on which account they
gave it the name of Madeira (wood). The two discoverers landed upon the
island in different places. The prince, their master, afterwards rewarded
them with the captaincies of the districts adjacent to those places. To
Perestrelo he gave the island of Porto Santo, to colonize it. Perestrelo,
however, did not make much of his captaincy; and spent his life in
endeavouring to make head against the rabbits, which were as destructive
as a plague of locusts, and which by their fecundity resisted all his
efforts to exterminate them. This captain has a place in history, as being
the father-in-law of Columbus, who, indeed, lived at Porto Santo for some
time, and here, on new found land, studied the cosmographical works which
Perestrelo had been at pains to accumulate; meditating far bolder
discoveries.