Passing by the (for our purposes) less important Portolans of Battista Becharius, or Beccario, of Genoa, executed in 1426 and 1435; of Francisco de Cesani of Venice (1421), of Claudius Clavus[263](1427), of Cholla de Briaticho (1430), there are only about ten maps or atlases belonging to this period which have still to be noticed, and which with some probability may be connected with the work of Prince Henry.
These are—not counting the lost map brought back by D. Pedro from Venice in 1428,—
(17) The Atlas of 1435-1445, by Gratiosus Benincasa, of Ancona.
(18) The so-called Andrea Bianco of 1436.
(19) The Andrea Bianco of 1448.
(20) The Portolano of 1434-39 by Gabriele de Valsecca, of Majorca, together with one of 1447 by the same draughtsman.
(21) The anonymous planisphere of 1447.
(22) The planispheres of 1448 and 1452, by Giovanni Leardo (Leardus), of Venice.
(23) The planisphere of 1455, by Bartolommeo Pareto, of Genoa; and
(24) The planisphere of 1457-9, by Fra Mauro of the Camaldolese Convent of Murano, in Venice.
As to these, we need only remark:
No. (17) is the earliest known work of Gracioso Benincasa, consists of sixty-two maps, and belongs to a MS. giving sailing directions, etc. Its West Africa does not call for special remark, though the later discoveries of Prince Henry's lifetime are admirably illustrated in the same draughtsman's work of 1468, 1471, etc.
No. (18) consists of ten maps, including a graduated Ptolemaic mappemonde, and a circular world-map, somewhat resembling Vesconte, probably copied and re-edited from a very early portolan, with a certain theoretical extension.[264]The original of this is supposed by some to have been a late thirteenth-century work; its West African names and detailed charting end at Cape Non—an incredibly backward point for the time of revision, viz.,a.d.1436. A ship is, however, depicted in full sail far down the west coast[265]of a Continent whose general shape isconceived as "Strabonian" or "Macrobian," with its length from east to west, and consequently possessing a long southern shore. The Negro Nile flows straight from Babylon or Cairo, into the Atlantic, near (but north of) the picture labelled Rex de Maroco. The western Mediterranean, Adriatic and Ægaean, as well as the Black Sea and Caspian, are poorly drawn, and suggest an early and crude type of portolan.
No. (19), signed "Andrea Biancho venician comito di galia mi fexe aLondra mccccxxxxviii," was probably executed with a special view of illustrating the discoveries of the Portuguese along West Africa, and contains the enigmatical inscription in the S.W., which some have construed into a Portuguese discovery of South America about this time.[266]Besides the interest of this controversy, and of the fact that it was one of the first scientific maps drawn in England, this chart gives us in West Africa some of the earliest indications of the new Portuguese discoveries. Thus, beyond Cape Bojador, or Buyedor, we have on the mainland shore-line twenty-seven names reaching to Cape Roxo or Rosso, and including Rio d'Oro, Portodo Cavalleiro ("Pro Chavalero"), the Port of Galé ("Pedra de Gala"), Cape Branco, Cape St. Anne, and Cape Verde.
This example has often been spoken of as the earliest map-register of Prince Henry's discoveries, but herein it must yield to
No. (20), the Valsecca (Vallesecha) of 1434-9, which mentions the discoveries of Diego de Sevill in the Azores in 1427,[267]and maps the north-west coast of Africa scientifically to Cape Bojador (Bujeteder) and "theoretically" for some way beyond.
No. (21), of 1447, inscribed, "... Vera cosmographorum cum marino accordata terra, quorundam frivolis narrationibus rejectismccccxlvii," denotes, as Nordenskjöld points out, not any connection with Marinus of Tyre (by means of a since lost MS., or otherwise), but merely the author's purpose, viz., "to present here a picture of the world, according to the conception of learned cosmographers, adapted to or grouped round a skipper-chart or portolan of the Inner Sea."
West Africa, in this chart, does not present anything specially noteworthy.
No. (22). Similar in purpose to No. (8) are both the Leardo Maps of 1448 and 1452, which in detail are somewhat similar to the Bianco of 1436.
The West African coast of these Designs does not call for special notice.
No. (23), of 1455, signed "Presbiter Bartolomeusde Pareto civis Janue ... composuit ...mcccclv. in Janua," is not of high value for its date, and shows no evidence of correspondence with Prince Henry's work. The West Africa of this design need not be specially noticed here.
No. (24), the most famous of the whole series, is more fully noticed on pp. cxl-cxliv. Fra Mauro was, perhaps, helped by Cadamosto among others. It is noteworthy that the Doge Foscarini, in the letter quoted below, pp. cxl-cxli, couples the success of Cadamosto and the work of Fra Mauro, as two things which should induce Prince Henry to persevere.[268]
A new mappemonde,[269]discovered by Kretschmer in the Vatican Library, and noticed in his monograph of 1891, is of 1448; while under date of 1444, Santarem refers to a "Portolan portugais inédit," which is not further known.
These were the works[270]which in cartography boremost closely upon the Infant's explorations; and we may here summarise the evidence of the same as to the advance of knowledge along the West African coast and among the Atlantic Islands.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, as we have seen, there is no cartographical evidence of knowledge extending far beyond the Straits of Gibraltar—either down the mainland shore oramong the Islands in the Ocean. But on Dulcert's Portolan of 1339, and on other productions of the same epoch, such as theConosçimientoof about 1330, we meet with some of the Islands, and with the Continental coast as far as Bojador. Thus, in theConosçimientoand the Laurentian Portolano of 1351, "the most important of the Azores, the Madeira group, and the Canary Islands, are denoted by the names they still bear," or by the prototypes of these names.[271]The same Medicean or Laurentian map of 1351, the Pizzigani of 1367-1373, the Catalan[272]of 1375, and others, "bear inscriptions even beyond C. Bojador"—inscriptions, however, which do not in their scattered and half-fabulous character give any decisive evidence of actual exploration to the south of this point before Henry's time.[273]Moreover, the shape of Africa in the "Atlante Mediceo" of 1351,[274]suggests—though it can hardly be said to prove—actual observations far beyond Cape Bojador made by the crews of storm-driven or India-seeking ships. But, after all, the map knowledge shown of Africa to the south of latitude 26° N. was so incomplete and so vague—perhaps even in the Laurentian Portolan the engrafting of a great theory on a tiny plant of fact—that the claim of first discovery inmore southern regions cannot well be refused to Gil Eannes, Dinis Diaz, Cadamosto, and the other explorers of the Infant's school.
On the other hand, all the Atlantic groups, except the Cape Verdes and some of the Azores, were evidently known in whole or part to some of the fourteenth-century navigators and draughtsmen.
A good deal of hearsay knowledge about the interior of Africa is also indicated, as we have seen, in some of these maps, especially the Dulcert of 1339, and the Catalan of 1375; and in this connection we must refer to what has been said upon the trade-routes of North Africa; but these elaborate pictures of mountain ranges, Moslem kings, traders with their camels, and towns on eminences, have little more pretence to scientific accuracy than the Negro Nile of so many old geographers, which is probably a mistaken combination of the real but separate courses of the Benue, the Niger, and the Senegal.
Once more we have seen that the first two portolani plainly influenced by Prince Henry's discoveries are the Valsecca[275]of 1434-9 and the 1448 map of Andrea Bianco, drawn in London; and that the 1436 Bianco is probably a copyof a thirteenth-century work, showing no clear evidence of the new explorations. As to the Bianco of 1448, we may here add a word to what has been already said. On this example we find the west coast of Africa end suddenly with Cape Rosso, or Roxo, immediately south of Cape Verde, and "from this point the coast is drawn straight eastward in a style which indicates that the country beyond is unknown;" the "outline of this southern shore of Africa being delineated according to the maps of the Macrobius type." The work of 1448 is frequently copied in following years; as, for example, on several designs of Gratiosus Benincasa (1435 to 1482), wherein the west coast of Africa, from Ceuta to Cape Verde, "has the same contours and the same names."[276]All of these charts are believed by Nordenskjöld to be copies of the same Portuguese original. On the other hand, "Benincasa's Atlas of 1471 is widely divergent as regards the legends, and extends much further south.[277]It reproduces the discoveries along the coast down to Pedro de Sintra's voyage of 1462-3, and seems in part to be based on direct information from Cadamosto."[278]
Lastly, a more special notice must be taken of the great map of Fra Mauro, 1457-9.
In this undertaking[279]Andrea Bianco is said to have assisted, and the work was (either originally or in copy) executed for the Portuguese Government, and assisted by the same. King Affonso V supplied the draughtsmen with charts on which the recent discoveries of Prince Henry's seamen were laid down. Payment was liberal (12 to 15 sous a day to every one of the common artisans and copyists); and the Doge Francesco Foscarini, "when he witnessed the plan and the beginning of Mauro's work," trusted that Prince Henry would find therein fresh reasons for pressing on his explorations. The completed mappemonde was sent to Portugal, in charge of Stefano Trevigiano, on April 24th, 1459. This was based, perhaps, in part on the map, or maps, illustrating the voyages of Marco Polo, in the Doges' Palace in Venice, apparently on one of the walls of the Sala della Scudo. The "Polo" portions of the New Design were, however, chiefly in the FarEast. In N.W. Africa, Cape Verde and Cape Rosso are marked, and near the S.W. coast of the Continent is a long inscription about the Portuguese voyages, stating that the latter "here gave new names to rivers, bays, harbours, etc., and that they made new charts, of which he (Fra Mauro) had had many in his possession." At the extreme south point of Africa is the name "Diab," with a legend telling how an Indian junk was said to have been storm-driven to this point in about 1420, and (without reaching land) to have sailed further westward for 2,000 miles during forty days. After this the Indians turned back, and after seventy days' sail, returned to Cavo di Diab, where they found on shore a huge bird's egg, as large as a barrel.[280]Fra Mauro had also himself spoken with a trustworthy person, who said that he had sailed from India past Sofala to "Garbin," a place located in the middle of the west coast of Africa close to "Dafur." "Fundan," again, a little south of Cape Rosso, may represent some Portuguese coast-name which has not elsewhere survived.
Yet, apart from these references, there is but little evidence of the new discoveries forthcoming, and, from a critical point of view, Fra Mauro's planisphere is somewhat disappointing. True it is in certain regions (its Mediterranean and Black Sea, for instance), of the portolano type, but in the more outlying parts of the world, and even in muchof Africa, it is far more similar to one of the old Macrobius type of wheel-maps (continued in such fifteenth-century specimens[281]as the "Borgian" design ofc.1430), than to a specimen of enlightened cartography like the "Laurentian" example of 1351. The traditional centre at Jerusalem is not taken, but a point slightly north of Babylon serves instead. In Africa numerous tribes and cities are marked even beyond the Equator, in regions inscribed as "Inhabitabiles propter calorem;" but the general shape of the west coast is hardly satisfactory. Fra Mauro knows nothing of the great bend of the Guinea coast; N.W. Africa appears not as a great projection, but only as a gently-sloping shoulder of land; Cape Verde is not the westernmost point of the Continent. This position is given to the traditional "Promontory of Seven Mountains" (north of the Western Nile), which we have met with in earlier examples. To the south of the Green Cape appears a long and narrow inlet of sea,[282]which can hardly be supposed to represent in any way the South coast of "Guinea" from Sierra Leone to Benin, but perhaps is a combination and exaggeration of the great estuaries so recently visited by Henry's seamen—the Gambia, the Casamansa, the Rio Grande or Geba,and others. The Western or Negro Nile is drawn as flowing straight from Meroe in Nubia to the Atlantic, passing through a great swamp (Lake Chad?), an elongated piece of open water in the country of Melli (the Middle Niger in flood?), and the course of the Senegal. South of Cape Roxo, the coast, trending gradually south-east, exhibits a very broken contour and is fringed with many islands—evidence only too certain that the draughtsman is working by the light of imagination. Finally, although Africa is rightly conceived as on the whole projecting into the Southern Ocean, and having its length or greatest dimension from south to north rather than from east to west, it is greatly twisted out of shape by the inclination S.E., which bends round its southmost point almost to the longitude of Guzerat.[283]The general size of the Continent, however, is more accurately guessed[284]than on most maps of this or earlier time. Here Fra Mauro is nearer the truth even than the Laurentian Portolano of 1351, so far superior to the work of 1457-9 in many respects. Parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude are not indicated in the Camaldolese mappemonde, which has been sometimes referred to as "an immeasurable advance on all earlier cartography;" and the importance of thisfamous design, as an index to current geographical ideas, and as a world-picture of great size and magnificence, possessing in its time considerable official importance, must not lead us to take it as an example of cartographical perfection.
* * * * *
The use of the magnetic needle is essentially connected with the portolan type of map; this instrument was well known to Prince Henry's sailors, and is referred to by the Infant himself as being, like the sailing chart, a necessity for navigators.[285]But it could hardly come into general employment till men reached beyond the mediæval stage of a magnetic needle enclosed in a tube so as to float on water.
In the Discovery of the Compass four stages may be distinguished:
(1) The discovery of a species of stone with polar-magnetic qualities,i.e., with the power of attracting iron.
(2) The discovery that steel or hardened iron could be made polar-magnetic by rubbing it with a lode-stone.
(3) The discovery that the magnet (or magnetised iron) possessed the quality of definite direction, one of its poles always indicating the north, if it were so supported or suspended that it could move freely.
(4) The discovery of using the magnetised iron needle as a compass.
The first dates from a high antiquity, and is noticed by Plato, Theophrastus, Pliny, Ptolemy, Claudian, and many writers of the Mediæval as well as of the Classical period. The subsequent advances we cannot date, for Europe, earlier than the twelfth century; when Alexander Neckam and Guyot de Provins (c.1190-1200) show us that some investigators had advanced as far as the third of the stages above recounted.
It is now generally understood that magnetic cars, "based on the same principle as the compass," were used in China much earlier than this. The Helleno-Roman world of antiquity, in describing the magnet, only dwelt on its attraction for iron, and did not notice its power of indicating the poles; whereas the Celestials were aware in the first place of the communication of magnetic fluid to iron, and in the second place of the mysterious power of iron so magnetized, as early as abouta.d.120. The earliest use of the water-compass in China is fixed by Klaproth ata.d.1111-17; and as to the magnetic figures or magnetic cars with which in earlier times Chinese junks sailed to the south of Asia, and Chinese travellers made their way across the plains and mountains to the west of their country, it must not be assumed that their use was universal. Thus, in the fifth centurya.d., when Wu-Ti, afterwards Emperor, stormed Singanfu (417a.d.), he seized upon one of these as a great curiosity.
It is uncertain, as already remarked, when the complete compass, or even the polarity of themagnet, was first discovered in Europe. We may, however, note the following evidence:
(1) Alexander Neckam, an English monk of St. Albans (born 1157, died 1217), who had studied for some time in the University of Paris, refers more than once to what we may suppose was a compass needle, placed on a metal point.[286]This, he implies, was then in common use among sailors, and was not merely a secret of the learned. For, "when the mariners cannot see the sun clearly in murky weather or at night, and cannot tell which way their prow is tending, they put a needle above a magnet, which revolves until its point looks North and then stands still." These words were probably written between 1190-1200.
(2) Guyot de Provins, a satirist of Languedoc, in his poem,La Bible, written about 1200, wishes the Pope would more nearly resemble the Pole-star,[287]which always stands immovable in the firmament and guides the sailor. Even in darkness and mistcan the Pole-star make itself felt. For the mariner has only to place in a vessel of water a straw pierced by a needle which has been rubbed with a black and ugly stone, that will draw iron to itself; and the point of the needle unfailingly turns towards the Pole-star.
(3) Jacques de Vitry, the French historian-bishop, writing about 1218, in hisHistoria Orientalis, speaks of "the iron needle which always turns to the North Star after it has touched the magnet" or "adamant."[288]
(4) "An unknown singer of the same period" speaks of sailors to Friesland, Venice, Greece or Acre, finding in the Pole-star a sign-post in heaven. Even in darkness and mist the star can still help them, for it has the same power as the magnet of attracting iron. So mariners attach an iron needle to a piece of cork and rub it with a black lodestone. The cork and needle are then put into water, and never fail to point to the north.
(5) Brunetto Latini, writing about 1260, tells how Roger Bacon showed him[289]a magnet, a stone black and ugly, and explained its use. If one rubbed a needle with it, and then put the needle, fixed to a straw, in water, the point of the needle always turned towards "the Star." By this the sailorcould hold a straight course, whether the stars were visible or no.
(6) In theLandnamabok, or Icelandic Book of Settlement, the main text of which was finished before 1148, there occurs a passage, probably added about 1300,[290]which describes a voyage of the ninth century (c.868) to Iceland, and explains the use of ravens to direct this early course—"for at that time the sailors of the northern countries had not yet any lodestone."
(7) The Arabic author of theBaïlak el Kibjaki, or "Handbook for Merchants in the Science of Stones," relates how, in 1242, on a voyage from Tripoli to Alexandria, he himself witnessed the use of the polarized needle. He adds that Moslem merchants sailing to India, instead of the magnet-needle attached to a straw, tube or cork, used a hollow iron fish which, thrown into water, pointed north and south.
"Subsequently the instrument was improved by degrees, till it assumed the shape of a box, containing a needle moving freely on a metal point, and covered by a compass-rose." It is here probably that the share of Amalfi is to be found,[291]and it may have been Flavio Gioja, or some othercitizen of the oldest commercial republic of Italy, who first fitted the magnet into the box, and connected it with the compass-card, thus making it generally and easily available.[292]
This it certainly was not in Latini's time. "No mariner could use it (the polarized magnet), nor would sailors venture themselves to sea ... with an instrument so like one of infernal make." In the latter part of the thirteenth century, and not before, its use seems to have crept in among Mediterranean pilots and captains, and in the course of the fourteenth century it was almost universally accepted.
A mistake has been made on one point. The first scientific (or portolano) type of map is generally associated with the first scientific use of the magnet; but portolani began while men had not advanced beyond the use of the primitive water-compass above described; and "accurate determination by means of this" must have been very difficult on a tossing sea. "A comparison of the contours of the Mediterranean, according to various portolanos, with a modern chart, shows that the normal portolano contained no mistake due to the misdirection of the compass."[293]Nor do the earliest portolani contain any compass-roses or wind-roses. Gradually these were introduced into the newcharts,e.g., they are found in the Catalan Atlas of 1375, in the Pinelli of 1384, and in many fifteenth-century portolani; but not till the sixteenth century do we have a number of these roses drawn on the same map-sheet.
The use of the quadrant by Prince Henry and his sailors is expressly mentioned by Diego Gomez; but neither in this case, nor in that of the compass, are we warranted in assuming (as some authorities have done) that to the Infant is due the first use of astronomical instruments at sea.
C. Raymond Beazley.
13,The Paragon, Blackheath.March 27th, 1899.
Facsimile of Prince Henry's Initial Signature.[I. D. A. = Iffante Dom Anrique.
Illustration: Signature
[236]E.g., the Peutinger Table.
[237]Viz., before the end of the thirteenth century; seeDawn of Modern Geography, ch. vi, on "Geographical Theory in the Earlier Middle Ages," and especially pp. 273-284, 327-340, 375-391.
[238]E.g., in the Carte Pisane and the work of Giovann de Carignano.
[239]See d'Avezac,Bolletino d. Soc. Geog. Ital., 1874, p. 408; Nordenskjöld,Periplus, 16 A.
[240]See d'Avezac,Coup d'Å“il historique sur la projection des Cartes de Geographie(1863), p. 38.
[241]Reproduced in part at the end of this edition ofAzurara, vol. i, Plate 4.
[242]Thus Nordenskjöld sums up after an exhaustive review of all the chief early portolans: "Not only are the coast-legends the same, even the ... names in red ink of places considered of special importance to navigators were not essentially different in the three centuries from Vesconte to Voltius. Moreover: (1) The Mediterranean and Black Sea have exactly the same shape on all these maps; (2) a distance-scale, with the same unit of length, such as otherwise is used only on the Spanish and French Mediterranean coasts, occurs on all these maps, independently of the land of their origin; (3) the distances across the Mediterranean and Black Sea, measured with this scale, agree perfectly on the different maps; (4) the conventional shape given to many islands and capes remain almost unaltered on portolanos from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. So that it may be thought proved that all these portolanos are only amended codices of the same original" (Periplus, 45a).
[243]E.g., Nordenskjöld, in his last work (Periplus, 46, 47).
[244]Nordenskjöld conjectures probably between 1266 and 1300.
[245]Cf. (1) the Beatus maps of "St. Sever," "Ashburnham," "Turin," "London," of 1109, "Valladolid," "Madrid," etc., of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries; (2) the HerefordMappemondeof thelatethirteenth century, with which may be compared the Ebstorf world-map of c. 1300; see Konrad Miller,Die ältesten Weltkarten, Heft v, 1896.
[246]Signed "Johannes presbyter, rector Sancti Marci de Porta Janue me fecit." A priest answering to this description flourished in Genoa, 1306-1344; this may have been a younger relative.
[247]No Atlantic islands exist on the Tammar Luxoro portolan.
[248]Konrad Kretschmer believes Sanudo's maps to have been draughted entirely or principally by Vesconte.
[249]Essai sur l'Histoire de la Cosmographie, i, 272, ed. of 1849.
[250]One being merely "Plagae Arenae."
[251]SeeAzurara, Hakluyt Soc. ed., vol. i, Reproduction at end, No. 1
[252]For Pactolus (?).
[253]A considerable knowledge of the Atlantic Islands is also shown, sixteen names being given. This number, however, is less than we have in theConosçimientoof slightly earlier date,c. 1330 (?).
[254]Jayme Ferrer, etc.
[255]Quoted and discussed above, pp. lxiii-lxiv.
[256]Names are given to twenty-seven islands in the Atlantic, among them St. Brandan's isle, most of the Canaries, the whole Madeira group and several of the Azores.
[257]The Soleri of 1380 gives twenty Atlantic islands; nineteen appear in the Soleri of 1385 (some legendary). In neither is any addition made to earlier lists.
[258]Bojador?
[259]Reproduced in Nordenskjöld,Periplus, 111, and labelled only "before 1481." The only name on the West African mainland is well down S.W., "India [portus?]pbīsfons." The deep indent on the middle of the W. African coast, noticed in several other maps and even in Fra Mauro, appears here on a great scale.
[260]Twelfth century.
[261]A work by the same author, of 1457, is said to be at the Carthusian Monastery of Segorbe, near Valencia, but it is not yet fully identified, and is supposed by some to be the same as that just noticed.
[262]The same is the case with the Atlantic Islands; but though giving us fewer actual isles, it supplies more names to points therein—thirty-two in all.
[263]An important chart for N. European cartography, and for the fact that it is one of the earliest graduated non-Ptolemaic maps.
[264]SeeAzurara, Hakluyt Soc. ed., vol. i, Map No. 4 at end of volume.
[265]Is this an addition of the Editor to bring it up to date? The reviser must, however, have added very largely to this map;e.g., both Russia and Turkey (?), as here depicted, do not correspond at all to thelatethirteenth century, but agree better with the fifteenth; though for 1436 Russia seems unduly magnified.Imperium Tartarorumappears immediately north of the Sea of Azov. The Moslem prince near the Bosphorus is probably meant for the Ottoman Sultan.
[266]See pp. ciii-cvi.
[267]See p. cxiv of this Introduction.
[268]See Major,Henry Navigator, p. 312.
[269]The "Walsperger,"Eine neue mittelälterliche Weltkarte.
[270]On all these maps, see especially G. Uzielli and P. Amat di S. Filippo,Studi biographici e bibliographici sulla storia della Geografia in Italia, ii, Mappemonde, etc., dei secoli xiii-xvii, Roma, 1882—especially pp. 49, 52, 54, 55, 57-8, 60, 62, 64, 66, 72-3, 230-1; Theobald Fischer,Sammlung Mittelälterlicher Welt und See-karten, Venice, 1886, pp. 111, 117-9, 127, 150-5, 207-213, 220; Santarem,Atlas, 1849; Santarem,Essai sur l'histoire de la Cosmographie, etc., 1849-52; Santarem,Notices sur plusieurs monuments géographiques du moyen âge, etc. (Bull. Soc. Géog., 3esérie, vii, Paris, 1847), especially pp. 289, 295; Santarem,Recherches sur la priorité des découvertes portugaises, 1842; C. Desimoni and L. T. Belgrano, "Atlante ... posseduto dal Prof. Tammar Luxoro..." inAtti della societa ligure di storia patria, v, Genoa, 1867; K. Kretschmer,Marino Sanudo der Altere, inZeitschrift d. Ges. f. Erdkunde, Berlin, xxvi, 1891; H. Simonsfeld, inNeues Archiv für altere deutsche Geschichtskunde, vii, especially pp. 43, etc., Hannover, 1881; E. T. Hamy,La mappemonde d'Angelino Dulcert(Bull. Géog. Hist, et Descr., 1886-7); ibid.,Les origines de la Cartographie de l'Europe Septentrionale, 1888; ibid.,Cresques lo Juheu, note sur un géographe juif Catalan de la fin du xivesiécle, 1891; Jomard,Atlas ("Monuments de la Géographe"), 1862; Choix de Documents Géographiques conservés a la BiblèqueNata'e, especially p. 4, Paris, 1883; Buchon and Tastu,Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque du Roi, xiv, 2nd partie, Paris, 1841, especially p. 67; G. Marcel,Recueil des Portolans, Paris, 1886; Hommaire de Hell, inBulletin de la Soc. de Géog., 3esérie, vii, Paris, 1847, p. 302; M. A. P. d'Avezac (-Maçaya) "...Notice sur un Atlas de la BiblèqueWalckenaer" (Bull. Soc. Géog., 3esérie, viii, Paris, 1847), especially p. 142, etc.; P. Matkovic, inMittheilungen der K. K. Geog. Gesellsch., vi, p. 83, etc., Vienna, 1862; Cortambert,Introduction à l'Atlas ... par feu M. Jomard(Bull. Soc. Géog., 6esérie, xviii, Paris, 1879) p. 74; R. H. Major,Henry the Navigator, London, 1868;Notice des objets exposés dans la section de Géographie, Paris, 1889 (Exposition), especially p. 14; Lelewel,Géographie de Moyen Age, especiallyEpilogue, pp. 167-184, Brussels, 1857; Placido Zurla,Il Mappemonde di Fra Mauro Camaldolese, Venice, 1806; A. E. Nordenskjöld,Facsimile Atlas, Stockholm, 1886;Periplus, Stockholm, 1897.
[271]E.g., Legname for Madeira, "The Isle of Wood."
[272]We must note that the ship of the Catalan explorers, with the accompanying legend commemorative of the expedition of 1346, is depicted in this mapas well to the south of Bojador.
[273]Though Nordenskjöld seems to think otherwise.
[274]SeeAzurara, vol. i, Plate 1, at end of volume.
[275]The Valsecca Map delineates the West African coast to Cape Bojador (C. de Bujeteder). Beyond this the outline of the coast is "suggested" for a distance about as great as from the Straits to Bojador, but with no names or legends except "Plagens arenosas," "Tarafal," "Bujeteder," and at the extreme south, "Tisilgame."
[276]This is especially true of the Benincasa of 1467. Nordenskjöld gives twenty-eight parallel names from this and the Bianco of 1448 between Bojador and Capes Verde and Rosso.
[277]To Rio de Palmeri, immediately beyond Cape St. Anne.
[278]This may be seen, as Nordenskjöld suggests (Periplus, p. 127), by comparing the names on the lower part of Benincasa's West Africa with the following names occurring in Cadamosto's account of De Sintra's voyage: Rio di Besegue, Capo di Verga, Capo di Sagres, Rio di San Vicenzo, Rio Verde, Cape Liedo, Fiume rosso. Capo rosso, Isola rossa, Rio di Santa Maria della nave, Isola di Scanni, Capo di Santa Anna, Fiume della palme, Rio de Fiume, Capo di monte, Capo Cortesi, Bosco di Santa Maria. Benincasa, however, appears to have access to other sources besides Cadamosto, as many of his names are not found in the latter.
[279]See Zurla,Il Mappemonde di Fra Mauro, Venezia, 1806, p. 62; Humboldt'sKritische Untersuchungen, i, p. 274; Ongania and Santarem's Reproductions of the Map itself; Nordenskjöld'sPeriplus, 127-8.
[280]Egg of the Rukh, or Roc?
[281]Cp. also the elliptical Florentine example of 1447 (Nordenskjöld,Facsimile Atlas, 116), or Leardus' Mappemondes of 1448 and 1452 (ibid.61).
[282]"Sinus Ethiopicus:" very similar to that depicted on the Leardus of 1448. On the southern side of this is "Fundan."
[283]Perhaps a Ptolemaic concession.
[284]Still more is this the case with Asia, where Fra Mauro is in some ways more satisfactory than anywhere else, and contrasts well even with the "Harleian" or Dieppe Map ofc.1536, and many other similar works.
[285]Azurara, ch. ix.
[286]Cf. Neckam's references. (α) In his work,De Utensilibus: "Qui ergo munitam vult habere navem . . . habeat etiam acum jaculo superpositam: rotabitur enim et circumvolvetur, donec cuspis acus respiciat Septentrionem, sicque comprehendent quo tendere debeant nautae, cum Cynosura latet in aeris turbatione, quamvis ea occasum nunquam teneat propter circuli brevitatem." (β) In hisDe Naturis Rerum, c. 98: "Nautae ... mare legentes, cum beneficium claritatis solis in tempore nubilo non sentiunt, aut ... cum caligine ... tenebrarum mundus obvolvitur, acum super magnetem ponunt, quae circulariter circumvolvitur usque dum ejus motu cessante, cuspis ipsius Septentrionalem Plagam respiciat."
[287]"La tresmontaine."
[288]"Acus ferrea, postquam adamantem contigerit, ad stellam septentrionalem ... semper convertitur; unde valde necessarium est navigantibus in mari."
[289]In Oxford,a.d.1258. This is not a very certain tradition.
[290]See Nordenskjöld,Periplus, 50. "TheLandnamabokwas written by Are Torgillson Frode, who died in 1148;" but "the passage here in question first occurs in a copy or revision by Hauk Erlandsson, who lived at the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth."
[291]"Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis."
[292]Such a compass-box is figured on the margins of some MSS. of Dati'sSpheraof the early fifteenth century. See NordenskjöldPeriplus, p. 45.
[293]Periplus, p. 47.