Memoria sobre a descoberta das ilhas de Porto Santo e Madeira 1418-1419 (Fragmento de um livro inedito)

The manuscript opens with Prince Henry the Navigator’s restless drive to push beyond the known edges of Europe after his campaigns in Africa. From his coastal outpost at Sagres, he commissions two daring courtiers, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, to brave the Atlantic and seek new lands beyond the Cape Bojador. Caught in a fierce storm, their small vessel is blown far from the African coast and drops them on an uncharted island they name Porto Santo.

There they establish a makeshift settlement, only to discover that a rabbit they had brought aboard multiplies rapidly and threatens their crops, offering a vivid early example of ecological imbalance in colonization. Determined to explore further, the two men set sail again, following a mysterious cloud‑filled horizon that reveals rugged mountains and dense vegetation. Their arrival on the larger island of Madeira marks the first recorded European encounter with the archipelago, and the author records the prince’s reward of captaincies that would shape the islands’ early governance.