SEARCH FOR THE REALM OF PRESTER JOHN 61 Charged with this all-important information Covil- ham hastened homewards, by way of the Red Sea. v But at Cairo, on learning that his fellow traveller Paiva was dead, he himself proceeded to Ormuz and eventually to Abyssinia, the country of Prester John where he married, rose to high office, and died after a residence of thirty-three years. Before leaving Cairo, however, in 1490, he sent home a report of his discoveries to the Portuguese king, with the pregnant message: " That the ships which sailed down the coast of Guinea might be sure of reaching the termination of the continent, by persisting in a course to the south; and that when they should arrive in the Eastern Ocean their best direc- tion must be to inquire for Sofala and the Island of the Moon." These striking words make Covilham the theoretical discoverer of the Cape route to India. They supple- mented the news which Dias brought to Lisbon in De- cember, 1487, of his having rounded the southern point of Africa. The pious zeal of the Portuguese sovereign in seeking for the unknown Christian country of Prester John was thus amply rewarded by land and by sea. Bias's discovery of the Cape passage toward India ren- dered John IE uneasy lest Columbus 's alternative route westward should be taken up by a rival power. On March 20, 1488, he accordingly wrote to Columbus at Seville, accepting the offer of the great navigator for the discovery of new continents. But Portugal had missed its chance. John H, during the remaining seven years of his life, laboured amid sickness and domestic
