[Footnote 217: See Azurara, _Guinea_, iv; Barros, _Asia_, Decade I, i, 16.]
[Footnote 218: From the Venetian _Darcena_; see Goes, _Chron. do pr. D. João IV_; O. Martins, _Filhos de D. João I_, p. 75.]
[Footnote 219: It retained its importance till the Prince's death, when it gradually declined; it was sacked by Drake in 1597; and ruined by earthquakes. Finally it became again as deserted as before the Infant's time. Ferdinand Denis believed that before the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 there were traces of a much earlier habitation of the Sagres Promontory, including buildings (Moorish?) at least as old as the XIth century. The headland measures only one kilometre in circuit, half a kilometre in its extreme length.]
[Footnote 220: Prince Henry's will refers to the Church of St. Catherine, and the Chapel of St. Mary; see the _MS. Collection_ of Pedro Alvarez, iii; Martins, _Os Filhos de D. João_, p. 74. The observatory was not on Sagres Cape proper, but "un peu en avant quand on vient de l'Ouest" (V. St. Martin).]
Two original statements of Portuguese authors have been often quoted to support this tradition. The first comes from John de Barros, the Livy of Portugal (A.D. 1496-1570). "In his wish to gain a prosperous result from his efforts, the Prince devoted great industry and thought to the matter, and at great expense procured the aid of one Master Jacome[221] from Majorca, a man skilled in the art of navigation and in the making of maps and instruments, who was sent for, with certain of the Arab and Jewish mathematicians, to instruct the Portuguese officers in that science." Secondly, we have the statement of the mathematician Pedro Nuñes, that the Infant's mariners were "well taught and provided with instruments and rules of astrology and geometry which all map-makers should know."[222] On the other hand, it has been contended that there is no satisfactory evidence of the Infant's town having ever been finished, or of the Prince ever having lived there continuously, except during the last years of his life; and that our best authorities do not warrant us in believing that the settlement was even begun before the Tangier expedition. Henry's earlier charters are, with one exception, dated from other places, and his residence before 1438 seems to have been usually at Lisbon, Lagos, or Reposeira. Further, we have no right to speak of the "School," or "University," or "Academy" of Sagres; there may have been both teachers and learners, but there was nothing of an "institution for instruction" in the Prince's establishment.