Gomez made a voyage to the Cape Verde Islands in 1462; but he is most notable as chronicler of the life-work of Prince Henry. King John II built on the prince’s foundations. In 1482 he sent out Diogo Cão, who discovered the Congo and ascended it for a short distance, and subsequently saw the coast of Angola as far as 13° 26´ S. at Cape Santa Maria. On a second voyage (1485–1486) he penetrated still further south, to Cape Cross. He erected pillars at various points on the coast--a practice followed by some of his successors; and some of these monuments have been found and preserved. In a voyage in 1486 or 1487–88 Bartolomeu Diaz extended the knowledge of the west coast nearly five degrees beyond Cão’s furthest, reaching 26° 38´ S. He was then driven south by high winds and storms, turned east, and found no land; he therefore steered north again, and struck the coast of what is now the Cape Province at Mossel Bay. Continuing eastward, he reached the Great Fish River, and was able to realize that the coast was now trending north-easterly, and that the southernmost point of the continent had been turned; but his crew were surfeited with their dangers, and insisted on returning. The important cape which he had discovered he is generally stated to have named Cabo Tormentoso, the Cape of Storms; and the story goes that King John, recognizing the importance of the discovery to the future object of a sea-route to the East, changed the name to the Cape of Good Hope. But there is good reason to believe that the happier name was given by Diaz himself. It had been one of the wishes of Prince Henry, and was one of the objects of the voyage of Diaz, to establish communication with a Christian king of whose powers rumours reached the west coast of Africa from the interior, and who was known under the name of Prester John. In 1487 Pedro or Pero de Covilhão and Alphonso Payva were sent, partly with the same object, by way of the Mediterranean. They visited Egypt, and after many wanderings came to Aden, whence Covilhão proceeded to Calicut and Goa in India, and, returning thence, travelled south along the East African coast as far as Sofala. He then journeyed in the coast lands of Arabia, and visited Mecca and Medina, and finally, entering Africa, proceeded to the court of Prester John in Abyssinia, where he was well treated, but from which he was never allowed to return home. Payva, meanwhile, had travelled into Ethiopia, and had died there. The journey to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope was completed in due course in the last decade of the century; but earlier in that same decade the New World had been discovered by Columbus, and the era opened by these two tremendous incidents may be more fittingly considered in the following chapter; while for the moment some consideration may be given to the state of cartography and theory at the time when Columbus was planning his voyage.