PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 183
divine inspiration. " Lying one night in his bed, it came to the Infant in revelation how it would be doing much service to our Lord to discover the said Ethiopias (i. e., Guinea); in which region would be found a great multitude of new peoples and black men, as from the time of this discovery till now we have known by experience; whose color and fashion and manner of life [no] one could believe if he had not seen them; and of these folk a large part were to be saved by the Sacrament of Holy Baptism; it being further told him that in those lands would be found so much gold with other such rich merchandise that with it the kings and peoples of these kingdoms of Portugal might maintain them- selves well and adequately and would be able to make war against the infidels, enemies of our most holy Catholic faith; and this revelation [of the] discovery of so many and so great provinces newly made known to Christendom surely seems to come by a new mystery of God and not by other temporal means. "^ Barros evidently refers to this passage when he remarks in connection with Henry's work, "Some indeed maintain that this undertaking, since he was a Catholic prince of very pure and religious life, was rather revealed to him than prompted by him." 2
When Prince Henry was once started upon his life-work he prosecuted it with energetic persistency and availed him- self of every possible source of information in a way that proves at once his scientific sagacity and his profound devo- tion to the cause. One of the most striking examples of his systematic investigation is the instance where he gathered from captive Azenegues a sufficiently accurate description of the mouth of the Senegal to enable his sailors to recognize the stream when they saw it for the jBrst time.^ At another time the close agreement between information brought home
^ Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis por Duarte Pacheco Pereira. Edigao Commemo- rativa da Descoberta da America por Christovao Columbo, no sen Quarto Cente- nario Sob a Dirreccao de Raphael Eduardo de Azevedo Basto. Lisbon. Imprensa Nacional, 1892, 37.
2 Barros, Decade, I, Bk. I, ch. 11.
8 Azurara, Chronica, 278.
