whatever; the land is as bare as Libya--no water, no trees, no grass in
it; the sea so shallow, that at a league from the land it is only a fathom
deep; the currents so fierce, that the ship which passes that cape will
never return;" and thus their theories were brought in to justify their
fears.

This outstretcher (for such is the meaning of the word Bojador) was
therefore as a bar drawn across that advance in maritime discovery, which
had for so long a time been the first object of Prince Henry's life.


POPULAR OBJECTIONS.

For twelve years the prince had been sending forth ships and men, with
little approbation from the public--the discovery of Madeira and Porto
Santo serving to whet his appetite for further enterprise, but not winning
the common voice in favour of his projects. The people at home, improving
upon the reports of the sailors, said that "the land which the prince
sought after was merely some sandy place like the deserts of Libya; that
princes had possessed the empire of the world, and yet had not undertaken
such designs as his, nor shown such anxiety to find new kingdoms; that the
men who arrived in those foreign parts (if they did arrive) turned from
white into black men; that the king, Don John, the prince's father, had
endowed foreigners with land in his kingdom, to break it up and cultivate
it, a thing very different from taking the people out of Portugal, which
had need of them, to bring them amongst savages to be eaten and to place
them upon lands of which the mother country had no need; that the Author
of the world had provided these islands solely for the habitation of wild
beasts, of which an additional proof was that those rabbits which the
discoverers themselves had introduced were now dispossessing them of the