The energies of John II. were so wholly absorbed in these expeditions to the East, and he felt so certain that he was in the right direction in trying to reach India by eastern routes, that he made the great mistake in 1493 of dismissing Christopher Columbus from his court as a visionary. He listened to all the arguments of the great discoverer with patience, but he did not agree with his conclusions that it was possible to reach India by sailing westwards across the Atlantic, and he therefore lost the opportunity of immortalizing his name and reign by a greater discovery than that of Vasco da Gama, the discovery of the vast continent of America. In other departments his energies found full scope. He greatly improved the art of ship-building, and encouraged the immigration of skilled shipwrights from England and Denmark; he did much to promote the improvement of fire-arms, and established a cannon foundry and a corps of artillery, of which he made Diogo de Azambuja the first Inspector-General; and, above all, he patronized literature, and encouraged Ruy de Pina, the greatest of all the Portuguese chroniclers. His court abounded in great men, the founders of great families and the fathers of the coming generation of heroes, among whom may be noted, besides his navigators, Diogo Cam, Bartholomeu Diaz, and Lopo Infante, and his famous travellers just mentioned, his Lord High Admirals, Pedro de Alboquerque and Lopo Vaz de Azevedo; his Lord Stewards, Diogo Soares de Albergaria, Pedro de Noronha, and João de Menezes; his Master of the Horse, Affonso de Alboquerque; his Secretary-General Ruy Galvão; and his Chancellor, the acute lawyer and most strenuous supporter of the despotic power of the king, Ruy de Graa. Yet the reign of John “the Perfect,” full as it was of great events, and great as is its importance in the history of Portugal, was but comparatively short. His happiness was clouded by the sad death of his only son, Dom Affonso, in 1491, the year after he had married the Infanta Isabella, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who then ruled in Spain, and he felt with repugnance that his successor on the throne must be Manoel, or Emmanuel, Duke of Beja, the brother of the murdered Duke of Viseu, a man in whom he could see no fit qualities for carrying on his own great schemes and projects. To oust him John II. thought of legitimatizing his illegitimate son by Anna de Mendonça, Dom Jorge, or George, whom he had made Grand Master of the Orders of Santiago and Aviz, but the reflection that on his death the country he loved so well would then be torn by civil war restrained him, and he did not interfere with the law of succession. During the last days of his life the “Perfect King” was busily engaged in fitting out the fleet which, under Vasco da Gama, was to realize his most cherished dream, and he was still in the ripe strength of manhood when he died at Alvor, in the province of the Algarves, on October 25, 1495.