Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/96

 56 THE QUEST FOE INDIA BY SEA heavy price of national exhaustion had to be afterwards paid for this spasm of external enterprise, but while it lasted the energy was intense. Prince Henry's third motive, proselytism, after a brilliant period of promise, crippled the Portuguese power in India and ended in the horrors of the Goa Inquisition. Although the discoveries of Prince Henry were bounded by narrow limits, the impulse which he gave to discovery was decisive. He left behind him not only an astronomical observatory, a naval arsenal, and a great school of cartography and scientific navigation, but also a system of continuous exploration. His squad- rons consisted of Portuguese ships sailed by Italian or Genoese pilots, and thus combined the nautical sci- ence of the Mediterranean with the hardy seamanship of the Atlantic. On his death his work was continued by three successive sovereigns of his house. They found that the Sea of Darkness was no black ocean after all. Prince Henry's improvements had freed long voyages from their worst dangers, and the Portuguese captains, having once rounded the exposed shoulder of north- western Africa, pushed south through less turbulent waters. In 1471 they passed the equator, and in 1484 they reached the Congo, erecting crosses wherever they landed down the African coast, and carving on trees Prince Henry's motto, Talent de Hen faire, together with the name of the saint which they gave to the newly found land. The great discoveries were taken possession of by an imposing ceremony. For example, having reached