Under the king's orders, in August, 1477, three caravels sailed from the Tagus, under Bartolomeo Diaz, for southern discovery.

Diaz was himself brave enough to be willing to go on to the Red Sea, after he made the great discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, but his crews mutinied, after he had gone much farther than his predecessors, and compelled him to return.

He passed the southern cape of Africa and went forty miles farther.

He called it the Cape of Torments, "Cabo Tormentoso," so terrible were the storms he met there.

But when King John heard his report he gave it that name of good omen which it has borne ever since, the name of the "Cape of Good Hope." In the midst of such endeavors to reach the East Indies by the long voyage down the coast of Africa and across an unknown ocean, Columbus was urging all people who cared, to try the route directly west.