A Considerable Advance, Therefore,
Had Been Made Since The Lamented Death Of The Illustrious Don Henry;
Which Comprehended The Whole
Coast of Guinea, with its two gulfs, usually
named the _Bights_ of Benin and Biafra, with the adjacent islands, and
Extending to the northern frontier of the kingdom of Congo[4]. If the
following assertion of de Barros could be relied on, we might conclude
that some nameless Portuguese navigators had crossed the line even before
the death of Don Henry; but the high probability is, that the naval
pupils of that illustrious prince continued to use his impress upon their
discoveries, long after his decease, and that the limits of discovery in
his time was confined to Cape Vergas. Some Castilians, sailing under the
command of Garcia de Loaysa, a knight of Malta, landed in 1525 on the
island of St Matthew, in two degrees of southern latitude[5]. They here
observed that it had been formerly visited by the Portuguese, as they
found an inscription on the bark of a tree, implying that they had been
there eighty-seven years before[6]. It also bore the usual motto of
that prince, _talent de bien faire_.
In the paucity of authentic information respecting these discoveries, it
seems proper to insert the following abstract of the journal of a
Portuguese pilot to the island of St Thomas, as inserted by Ramusio,
previous to the voyage of Vasco de Gama, but of uncertain date; although,
in the opinion of the ingenious author of the Progress of Maritime
Discover, this voyage seems to have been performed between the years 1520
and 1540.
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