given the king an account of the fituation and trade of Ormus: they brought orders to Covillan, that he fhould fend one of them home with the journal of his travels, and go to Ormus with the other.

Covillan obeyed the orders, fending an exact account of his adventures to Lisbon, and proceeding with the other meffenger to Ormus; where having made fufficient enquiry, he fent his companion homewards with the caravans that were going to Aleppo, and embarking once more on the Red-fea, arrived in time at Abyffinia, and found the prince whom he had fought fo long, and with fuch danger.

Two fhips were fent out upon the fame fearch, of which Bartholomew Diaz had the chief command; they were attended by a finaller veffel laden with provifions, that they might not return upon pretence of want either felt or feared.

Navigation was now brought nearer to perfection. The Portuguese claim the honour of many inventions by which the failor is affifted, and which enable him. to leave fight of land, and commit himfelf to the boundless ocean. Diaz had orders to proceed beyond the river Zaire, where Diego Can had stopped, to build monuments of his difcoveries, and to leave upon the coafts negroe men and women well inftructed, who might inquire after Prefter John, and fill the natives with reverence for the Portuguese.

Diaz, with much oppofition from his crew, whofe mutinies he repreffed, partly by foftnefs and partly by fteadiness, failed on till he reached the utmost point of Africa, which from the bad weather that he met there, he called Caba Tormentofo, or the Cape of Storms.

3

Storms. He would have gone forward, but his crew forced him to return. In his way back he met the Victualler, from which he had been parted nine months before; of the nine men which were in it at the separation, fix had been killed by the negroes, and of the three remaining, one died for joy at the fight of his friends. Diaz returned to Lisbon in December 1487, and gave an account of his voyage to the king, who ordered the Cape of Storms to be called thenceforward Cabo de Buena Esperanza, or the Cape of Good Hope.

Some time before the expedition of Diaz, the river Zaire and the kingdom of Congo had been discovered by Diego Can, who found a nation of negroes who spoke a language which thofe that were in his fhips could not understand. He landed, and the natives, whom he expected to fly like the other inhabitants of the coast, met them with confidence, and treated them with kindness; but Diego finding that they could not understand each other, feized fome of their chiefs, and carried them to Portugal, leaving fome of his own people in their room to learn the language of Congo.

The negroes were foon pacified, and the Portuguese left to their mercy were well treated; and as they by degrees grew able to make themselves understood, recommended themselves, their nation, and their religion. The king of Portugal fent Diego back in a very fhort time with the negroes whom he had forced away; and when they were fet fafe on fhore, the king of Congo conceived fo much efteem for Diego, that he fent one of those who had returned, back again in the ship to

Lisbon, with two young men difpatched as ambaffadors, to defire instructors to be fent for the converfion of his kingdom.

The ambaffadors were honourably received, and baptized with great pomp, and a fleet was immediately fitted out for Congo, under the command of Gonfalvo Sorza, who dying in his paffage, was iucceded in authority by his nephew Roderigo.

When they came to land, the king's uncle, who commanded the province, inmediately requested to be folemnly initiated into the chriftian religion, which was granted to him and his young fon, on Eafter day 1491. The father was named Manuel, and the fon Antonio. Soon afterwards the king, queen, and eldest prince, received at the font the names of John, Eleanor, and Alphonfo; and a war breaking out, the whole army was admitted to the rites of chriftianity, and then fent against the enemy. They returned victorious, but foon forgot their faith, and formed a confpiracy to reftore paganism; a powerful oppofition was railed by inficiels and apoftates, headed by one of the king's younger fons; and the miffionaries had been deftroyed had not Alphonfo pleaded for them and for chriflianity.

The enemies of religion now became the enemies of Alphonfo, whom they accufed to his father of difloyalty. His mother, queen Eleanor, gained time by one artifice after another, till the king was calmed; he then heard the caufe again, declared his fon innocent, and punished his accufers with death.

The king died foon after, and the throne was difputed by Alphonfo, fupported by the chriftians,

and Aquitimo his brother, followed by the infidels. A battle was fought, Aquitimo was taken and put to death, and chriftianity was for a time eftablished in Congo; but the nation has relapfed into its former follies.

Such was the state of the Portuguese navigation, when in 1492, Columbus made the daring and profperous voyage, which gave a new world to European curiofity and European cruelty. He had offered his propofal, and declared his expectations to king John of Portugal, who had flighted him as a fanciful and rash projector, that promifed what he had not reafonable hopes to perform. Columbus had folicited other princes, and had been repulfed with the fame indignity; at laft Ifabella of Arragon furnished him with fhips, and having found America, he entered the mouth of the Tagus in his return, and fhewed the natives of the new country. When he was admitted to the king's prefence, he acted and talked with fo much haughtiness, and reflected on the neglect which he had undergone with fo much acrimony, that the courtiers who faw their prince infulted, offered to destroy him; but the king, who knew that he deferved the reproaches that had been used, and who now fincerely regretted his incredulity, would fuffer no violence to be offered him, but dimiffed him with presents and with honours.

The Portuguese and Spaniards became now jealous of each other's claim to countries which neither had yet feen; and the Pope, to whom they appealed, divided the new world between them by a line drawn from north to fouth, a hundred leagues weftward from Cape Verd and the Azores, giving all that lies

weft

weft from that line to the Spaniards, and all that lies east to the Portuguese. This was no fatisfactory divifion, for the east and weft must meet at last, but that time was then at a great distance.

According to this grant, the Portuguese continued their discoveries eastward, and became masters of much of the coaft both of Africa and the Indies; but they feized much more than they could occupy, and, while they were under the dominion of Spain, loft the greater part of their Indian territories.