We are now to consider at some length a series of voyages, tedious and fruitless at first, successful in the end, undertaken by the Portuguese, in their age of maritime heroism, to discover a passage by sea to the famous commercial region of the Indies, some general knowledge of which had been preserved since the Persian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires. The achievements which we are about to narrate were so surprising, so significant, and so complete, that, as has been aptly remarked, they can never happen again in history, unless, indeed, Providence were to create new and accessible worlds for discovery and conquest, or to replunge mankind for ages into ignorance and superstition. But, before proceeding with the discoveries of the Portuguese, we must mention a previous discovery made by accident in the same region by the French and Spanish. About the year 1330, a French ship was driven among a number of islands which lay off the coast of the Desert of Sahara. These had been known to the ancients as the Fortunate Islands, and Juba of Mauritania, who is quoted by Pliny, calls two of them by name,--Trivaria, or Snow Island, and Canaria, or Island of Dogs. They had been lost to the knowledge of the Europeans for a thousand years, and it was a storm which revealed their existence, as we have said, to a vessel forced by stress of weather to escape from the coast into the open sea. The Spaniards profited by the vicinity of the group to make discoveries and settlements among them. Trivaria became Teneriffe, and Canaria the Grand Canary. It was here that superstition now placed the limits of navigation, and expressed the idea upon maps, by representing a giant armed with a formidable club, and dwelling in a tower, as threatening ships with destruction if they ventured farther out to sea. It is in this immediate neighborhood that we are now about to follow the flaring and patient enterprises of the Portuguese. [Illustration: CAPE BOJADOR.] Don Henry, the fifth son of John I. of Portugal, was placed by his father, in 1415, in command of the city of Ceuta, in Africa, which he had just conquered from the Moors. During his stay here, the young prince acquired much information relative to the seas and coasts of Western Africa, and this first suggested in his mind a plan for maritime discovery, which afterwards became his favorite and almost exclusive pursuit. He sent a vessel upon the first voyage of exploration undertaken by any nation in modern times. The commander was instructed to follow the western coast of Africa, and, if possible, to pass the cape called by the Portuguese Cape Non, Nun, or Noun. This had hitherto been considered the utmost southern limit of navigation by the Europeans, and had obtained its name from the negative term in the Portuguese language--implying that there was _nothing_ beyond. A current proverb expressed the idea thus: Whoe'er would pass the Cape of Non Shall turn again, or else begone.