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 plomatique.

Africa.^ From this time the hope of reaching the kingdom of Prester John was a powerful incentive with the Portu- guese discoverers. Both Diaz and da Gama were on the lookout for him and King John tried to reach him by an overland expedition.

That Henry was confident of reaching a region that he thought of as India, whether it may have been in Eastern Africa or India proper, appears with equal clearness from Diogo Gomez's narrative of his voyage in 1456 (?). When he was in the territory of a certain chief Batimasa, south of the Gambia, he wanted, as he says, "to make an experiment by sending James, a certain Indian whom the Lord Infant sent with us so that if we should enter India, we might have an interpreter. " 2

The other passages from Gomez upon Prince Henry's plans naturally fall in here. The first two relate to the earliest periods of the explorations, and perhaps cannot be entirely trusted. A voyage in 1415 is mentioned, and the Infant is said to have always taken pains to send, at his own expense, to explore foreign parts. ^ The next year he sent out another expedition to investigate the ocean currents.*

When Tristan and Gongalvez brought the first captives in 1442, Prince Henry carefully examined them as to their

1 See Yule's art. "Prester John," Encydopcedia Brit., XIX, 717. Santarem, Recherches sur la Priority, etc., 323, gives the following, " Texte ecrit au verso des cartes de la Cosmographie de Ptolemee par le Cardinal Franfois-Guillaume nilastre," with the date 1427 : "Quarta Africe tabula, tota pene ad austrum et ultra Egiptum, continet Getuliam, Libiam interiorem, Ethiopian! junctam Egipto, Nubiam, Indiana inferioremque (sic) ad Ethiopian! vergit et ipsam Ethiopiam. . . . Et in istis India et Ethiopia est terra Presbyteri Johannis Christiani, qui dici- turregnare super 72 reges, quorum 12 sunt infideles, reliqui Christiani, sed diver- sorum rituum et sectarum."

2 Gomez, De Prima Inventione Guineae. Schmeller, Ueber Volenti Fernandez Alema, Ahhandlungen der Milnchner Akademie, 1845, Iste Classe, 29. Beazley, Prince Henry, 293. Beazley gives a translation of Gomez's accounts of his own voyages, pp. 289-98. A translation of the same portion of Gomez will also be found in Major, Prince Henry, 288-98. Gomez is supposed to have written not later than 1483. Schmeller, 17.

8 Ad inquirendum extremas partes, Gomez, 19.


 * Desiderans scire causam tarn magni maris currentis, Ibid., 19.