The idea in Prince Henry’s mind was that it was possible to sail round Africa to India, and thus trade directly with the East, and he died after more than forty years of endeavour without having fulfilled his dreams. There were legends of old time, which he knew well, that the southern continent could be sailed round, legends probably founded on the tales of Carthaginian sailors, but no geographer of that period could assert that these legends were founded upon fact. If it were true, and ships could sail direct from Lisbon to India, it was easy to see what enormous profits must accrue to the people who found and followed this route. At that time the products of the East came by a long and dangerous journey to Venice, whence they were distributed over Europe. They had either to be conveyed by land all the way to the Levant, or else to be borne up the Red Sea and carried across Egypt. By either way the expenses and risk were enormous, and the prices of the commodities of the East were proportionately great. Could a direct sea route be discovered, it was obvious that these risks and expenses would be avoided, and that Lisbon would take the place of Venice as the distributor of the treasures of the East to Europe. Dom Henry understood this, and, urged by patriotism, as well as by an ardent zeal for the cause of exploration, he devoted his wealth and time to discovering this direct sea route. As has been said, he did not himself succeed in attaining this great end, but he did much towards it, and the navigators who were successful, Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral, were men imbued with his ideas and in a way his disciples. In speaking of the explorers of Prince Henry’s time, the word “ship” must not be taken to mean the comparatively well-built and well-appointed vessels of the end of the sixteenth century. Modern sailors would think but little of Drake’s famous ship the _Pelican_, yet it was far superior in size and equipments to the wretched sailing boats of the first explorers of the fifteenth century. The enterprise of Dom Henry did much to improve the ship-building of the Portuguese, and towards the end of his life their vessels could carry as many as sixty men, but at the beginning of his career his ships were little better than half-decked sailing boats, with a crew of at most thirty-six sailors.