Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/90

 50 THE QUEST FOR INDIA BY SEA Bojador, and that a chance flotsam of shipwrecked Arabs, can be admitted between the voyage of Hanno in 570 B. c. and the fifteenth century after Christ. To round Cape Bojador and open a path through the Sea of Darkness to the Indian Ocean to the the- sauris Arabum et divitiis Indiaev?a,s the purpose of Prince Henry's life. It mattered not that unsuc- cessful voyages brought on him the reproaches of the Portuguese nobles. The patient prince realized that Cape Bojador was not to be passed by a leap, and set himself to explore gradu- ally down the African coast. It was thus that he won his title as " The Originator of continuous modern discov- ery," and proved what one great man backed by a race of sailors can achieve, in spite of the doubts of science and the discouragement of grandees. Neither in the islands of the Atlantic nor on the coast of Africa was he first in the field. Certain of the Azores had been reached by Portuguese ships steered by Genoese pilots at the beginning of the four- teenth century and appear in the Laurentian map of 1351. Two runaway lovers from England are said to have been blown south by a storm to Madeira in 1344 A MODERN PORT OF INDIA.