In 1433 Cape Bojador was reached by Gilianez, and the Island of Arguin by Nuno Tristan ten years later. So far deserts and burning suns, a repellent coast-line and a meagre population of wild nomads, were what they found--no news of Prester John, no evidence of the vast riches they had taught themselves to expect. But nothing was allowed to damp their eager spirit or quash their sanguine expectations. In 1446 Fernandez passed Cape Verd, and in the following year the fertile region of Senegambia was reached by Lancelot. It now seemed as if the bold adventurers were to have their reward. They had at last arrived at a fertile region abounding in gold and ivory, and, better still, they began to hear of a great kingdom named Melli, not then absorbed in the rapidly rising empire of Songhay. This, they thought, must be the country of Prester John. These important discoveries, and all the glowing hopes they developed, gave a new impetus to the course of Portuguese discovery. With renewed enterprise and persistence adventurous navigators pursued the path of exploration. By 1471 they had reached the Gold Coast, and before the close of the century the Cape had been rounded, and, under the leadership of Almeida and Albuquerque, some of their magnificent dreams of wealth and power realised in the foundation of their Indian Empire. But though the Portuguese had thus revealed to the world the Senegal and the Gambia, and apparently thrown open a door to the kingdom of the Niger basin, nothing came of it. From the writings of De Barros we gather that embassies from the King of Portugal were despatched to the rulers of Melli and Mosi, and even, it is said, to that of Songhay. Of these missions, however, nothing more has come down to us. They added seemingly nothing to our knowledge of the interior. Factories were established along the coast, and even some distance up the rivers Senegal and Gambia, but the thirst for gold and slaves evidently swamped all other considerations with the agents in charge, for not an iota of information do we gather from them--or at least none is now on record--of the geography of the far interior. The magnificent enterprise of Portugal in the fields of maritime discovery was destined to be of the most transient character. Evil days speedily came upon it, and between Philip II. of Spain on land and the Dutch at sea, it seemed for a time as if it would lose its place among the independent nations of Europe. From the time of its conquest by Spain its course was backward, and its history became a record of shrinking empire and gradual loss of all spirit that tends to national greatness and progress. As far as we are concerned the work of the Portuguese ended with the exploration of the Senegambian Coast, the discovery of the rivers Senegal and Gambia--then thought to be branches of the Niger--and the revelation to Europe of the future route to the Niger and Timbuktu.