Eastward Ho!
Of all the great Events that have happened in the World of late Ages, those
which concern the Voyages and Discoveries, made by the Europeans in the
fifteenth and sixteenth Centuries, do jusdy challenge the Preference. ... In
the Merit and Glory of these Achievements, the Portugueze, without all Con
troversy are intitled to the first and principal Share ... it must be confessed,
that they first set on Foot the Navigation of the Ocean, and put it into the
Heads of other Nations, to go on the Discovery of distant Regions.
Other Nations were so far from being as early as the Portugueze in At
tempts of this Kind, that these latter had been carrying on their Enterprizes,
near fourscore Years, before any of their Neighbours seem to have thought
of foreign Discoveries... the several Events showed, that the Designs were
the Results of solid Reasoning, and formed on the most rational Grounds.ike the Spanish, the Portuguese began by island-hopping. Down
1 J the western coast of Africa, aiming at an end run around the
Muslims into the Indian Ocean. The first reaches were easy. Southing,
their sails swelled with the trade winds. But that meant trouble getting
back to Lisbon. It was a stroke of genius not to beat their way upwind
but rather to swing out west and north and return via the Azores.
The same but different beyond the Canaries. Now southing proved
difficult, as winds and currents turned contrary. The trouble began
around Cape Bojador (27° N.), symbolic boundary between creation
and chaos, where struggling waters made the sea seem to boil. A
decade of probes (1424-34) turned back at this invisible barrier.^1
But still the Portuguese pressed on, voyage after voyage, league after
league. At first they thought that no one lived along that arid coast; but
then they encountered a few natives, took some prisoners, learned of
slavery, saw new opportunities for profit. For profit was the heart of
the matter: as Prince Henry's biographer-hagiographer Zurara put it,
" ... it is evident that [no sailor or merchant] would want to go to a
place where he did not stand to make money."^2
The South Adantic is like no other ocean. On the African side it is
not bordered by a convenient continental shelf; currents and winds run
—THOMAS ASTLEY, Voyages and Travels