[Footnote 35: Barros, Dec. I., lib. iii., cap. iv., p. 190, says distinctly, "Bartholomeu Diaz, e os de sua compantica per causa dos perigos, e tormentas, que em o dobrar delle passaram che puyeram nome Tormentoso." The merit of the first circumnavigation, therefore, does not belong to Vasco de Gama, as is generally supposed. Diaz was at the Cape in May, 1487, and, therefore, almost at the same time that Pedro de Covilham and Alonzo de Payva of Barcelona commenced their expedition. As early as December, 1487, Diaz himself brought to Portugal the account of his important discovery. The mission of Pedro Covilham and Alonzo de Payva, in 1487, was set on foot by King John II., in order to search for "the African priest Johannes." Believing the accounts which he had obtained from Indian and Arabian pilots in Calicut, Goa, Aden, as well as in Sofala, on the eastern coast of Africa, Covilham informed King John II., by means of two Jews from Cairo, that if the Portuguese were to continue their voyages of discovery upon the western coast in a southerly direction, they would come to the end of Africa, whence a voyage to the _Island of the Moon_, to Zanzibar, and the gold country of Sofala, would be very easy. Accounts of the Indian and Arabian trading stations upon the east coast of Africa, and of the form of the southern extremity of the Continent, may have extended to Venice, through Egypt, Abyssinia, and Arabia. The triangular form of Africa was actually delineated upon the map of Sanuto, made in 1306, and discovered in the "Portulano della Mediceo-Laurenziana," by Count Baldelli in 1351, and also in the chart of the world by Fra Mauro.--Humboldt's _Cosmos_, vol. ii., p. 290, 461.] [Footnote 36: Faria y Sousa complains that "the admiral entered Lisbon with a vain-glorious exultation, in order to make Portugal feel, by displaying the tokens of his discovery, how much she had erred in not acceding to his propositions."--_Europa Portuguesa_, t. ii., p. 402, 403. Ruy de Pina asserts that King John was much importuned to kill Columbus on the spot, since, with his death, the prosecution of the undertaking, as far as the sovereigns of Castile were concerned, would cease, from want of a suitable person to take charge of it; but the king had too much magnanimity to adopt the iniquitous measure proposed.--Vasconcellos, _Vida del Rie Don Juan II._, lib. vi,; Garcia de Resende, _Vide da Dom Joam II._; Las Casas, _Hist. Ind._, lib. i., cap. lxxiv.; MS. quoted by Prescott.] [Footnote 37: See Appendix, No. XI. (see Vol II)] [Footnote 38: "A Castilla y a Leon Nuevo Mumto dio Colon," was the inscription on the costly monument that was raised over the remains of Columbus in the Carthusian Monastery of La Cuevas at Seville. "The like of which," says his son Ferdinand, with as much truth as simplicity, "was never recorded of any man in ancient or modern times."--_Hist. del Almirante_, cap. cviii.