A Wind From the North by Ernle Bradford Page A

European knowledge at that time. Idrisi knew, for instance, that beyond the dreary wastes of the Sahara there was a fertile land beginning at the Senegal River. Called Bilad Ghana, “Land of Wealth,” it appears on a map made for King Roger about 1150. Even so, the Arabs’ knowledge was confined to the Mediterranean and North Africa and, to some extent, the east coast of Africa. Little was known about the Atlantic coast, and most people accepted the statement of the traveler Ibn Said that the world ended in the Sea of Obscurity near Cape Bojador. But whereas Cape Not—the limit of the world, according to the Portuguese fisherman’s saying —lies on the same latitude as the Canary Islands, Cape Boja-dor is 100 miles farther south. No doubt Prince Henry thought that the perils of Cape Bojador were also grossly exaggerated.
    Azurara gives us a picture of Prince Henry’s early life at Sagres. “… After the taking of Ceuta, the Prince had ships always at sea to do battle against the Infidel.” It was these ships with the cross on their sails that now began to harry the Arab traders, just as the latter had, for centuries, harried the Christian merchantmen. Soon the Portuguese ships would do more than that, for Azurara tells us that “he desired to know what lands there were beyond the Canary Isles and a cape called Bojador. For at that time there was no knowledge, either in writing or in the memory of any man, of what might lie beyond this cape.”
    Azurara states the reasons for Prince Henry’s embarking upon his career of discovery. It is particularly interesting that he gives first the scientific reason that “no sailor or merchant would undertake it, for it is very sure that such men do not dream of navigating other than to places where they already know they can make a profit.” Later historians have sometimes tended to denigrate Prince Henry by saying either that his aims were those of a militant medieval knight, or that he was guided solely by the desire of material gain. There seems no justification for either of these views. The fact that a contemporary like Azurara puts the scientific aspect first is evidence enough that he was impressed by this—at that time unusual—motive. As the second reason he gives the commercial one, that Henry wanted to know whether there were any Christians to the south of Morocco with whom the Portuguese might trade, and what harbors there might be. Thirdly he gives the strategic reason, that Henry wanted to know the strength of his enemy and how far south Moorish power extended.
    Fourthly comes the political reason, the desire to know whether he might find a Christian ally against the Mohammedans. Only fifthly does he cite the religious motive: “to increase the Holy Faith … that lost souls might be saved.” Lastly—and curiously enough Azurara devotes considerable space to it—comes the fact that, astrologically, the disposition of the planets at Henry’s birth was such that he “was bound to engage in great and noble conquests and, above all, to attempt the discovery of things hidden from other men, and secret.” Henry was a “man of a star,” and it is evidence of the curious awe that surrounded him that his contemporaries should have felt this prince was not as other men.
    A thing that strikes one at once about this early assessment of Henry’s motives in setting out on the exploration of Africa is the double reference to the possibility of finding a “Christian ally” somewhere to the south and beyond the kingdom of the Moors. What reason had anyone for thinking that a Christian country might lie hidden behind the iron curtain of Mohammedan power? The answer lies in that enigmatic, and still problematical, figure, Prester John.
    Prester John was a legend, a dream of hope that had fascinated Europeans since the twelfth century. He was supposed to be a powerful Christian monarch living in either Africa or Asia—reports varied—and eternally at war with the