At any rate, with the invaluable data which they brought back, each expedition made it easier for the next, so that by the year 1470 the Portuguese were able to reach as far south as almost to the Equator, and fourteen years later the Congo River was attained. But, with so much successfully accomplished, the impetus to do very much more became strong, and in 1486 the King of Portugal sent forth two expeditions, having for their object the discovery of an eastern route to India, and also to find if possible the whereabouts of a mysterious personality, Prester John. The latter was not discovered. One of these two expeditions proceeded through Egypt, then down the Red Sea, and so across the Arabian Sea. Its members encountered many a hardship, but they did succeed in making Calicut in the south-west of India. The other expedition was under the leadership of Bartholomew Diaz. It was of no great size, consisting merely of a couple of caravels and one store-ship. This little squadron did not reach India, but made a wonderful advance on all those previous voyages which had never got further south than the Equator and the Congo. Diaz sailed south beyond the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, and doubled it without knowing it. He coasted for a thousand miles along African shores which had never been seen by European sailors hitherto. And although he was not lucky enough to reach across to India, yet, when he returned, he had the great happiness of realising that he had passed at last that cape which is the southern African extremity. Probably you know the story: how that Diaz, mindful of the bad weather for which this region is famous, had called it the Cape of Torments, and how that the Portuguese king would not suffer this to be the name, but rather that it should be called the Cape of Good Hope, since the discovery was so promising. And then we come to that ever memorable year of 1497, when all these preliminary voyages sink into insignificance before that of Vasco da Gama, who doubled the cape on November 20, then sailed to the northward, discovered Mozambique, Sofala, and Melinda; and finally, with the help of an Indian pilot, crossed the ocean from Melinda to Calicut in twenty-three days, so that this Vasco da Gama had the supreme honour of being the first seaman in the world’s history, so far as any record has been preserved to us, to make the entire lengthy voyage from Western Europe to the land of the Indian treasure.