The Açores, or Azores, were now discovered, about nine hundred miles to the west of Portugal; but some doubts exist both as to the discoverer and the date. They doubtless received their name from the number of hawks which were seen there, Açor signifying hawk in Portuguese. Santa Maria and San Miguel were named from the saints upon whose days they were first seen. Terceira obtained its name from the circumstance that it was the third that was discovered. Fayal was so called from the beech-trees it produced; Graciosa, from its agreeable climate and fertile soil; Flores, from its flowers; and Corvo, from its crows. The various clusters of islands which thus arose in the Atlantic, from the Azores to Cape Verd, now formed a succession of maritime colonies and nurseries for seamen, and thus enabled navigators to avoid the coast, where the outrages they endured from Moors and negroes threatened to exhaust their patience. The ships of Don Henry had now penetrated within ten degrees of the equator, and the outcry against venturing into a region where the very air was fatal broke out afresh. In this point of view, therefore, the settlement of the Azores was a matter of no little importance. In 1449, King Alphonso gave his uncle, Don Henry, permission to colonize these islands. In 1457, Henry obtained for them several important privileges, the principal of which was the exemption of their inhabitants from any duties upon their commerce in Portuguese and Spanish ports. In the years 1455-56-57, a Venetian, by the name of Cada-Mosto, undertook, under the patronage of Don Henry, two voyages of discovery along the African coast. The narrative of his adventures, being in the first person, is the oldest nautical journal extant, with the single exception of one of Alfred the Great, still in existence. But, as it is principally occupied with descriptions of the manners and customs of the Africans, and as he did not proceed beyond the Rio Grande, thus adding little or nothing to maritime discovery, an account of his voyage would be out of place here. Don Henry died shortly after the return of Cada-Mosto from his second voyage, and for a season this calamity palsied the naval enterprise of his countrymen. They had been accustomed to derive from him, not only the encouragement necessary for the prosecution of such attempts, but even sailing directions and instructions upon all matters of detail. It can easily be conceived that the demise of this illustrious prince should temporarily dishearten navigators and paralyze discovery. Under his auspices the Portuguese had pushed their discoveries from Cape Non to Sierra Leone,--from the twenty-ninth to the eighth degree of north latitude. He died at Sagres--the city, half ship-yard, half arsenal, which he had founded upon the Sacrum Promontorium. [Illustration: SEA SWALLOW.] CHAPTER XIII.