It Is Evident That The Two Accounts Are At Variance, As The First Asserts
That The Passage Was Round Cape Diab, At The Termination Of Africa, And The
Second That It Was Round Cape Sofala, Fifteen Degrees To The North Of The
Extremity Of This Quarter Of The World:
But without attempting to reconcile
this contradiction, it is abundantly evident that Mauro, by noticing the
Portuguese navigators, as
Having reached 2000 miles to the south of
Gibraltar, and adding that 2000 miles more of the coast of Africa had been
explored by an Indian ship, meant to encourage the further enterprises of
the Portuguese, by the natural inference that a very small space of
unsailed sea must lie between the two lines, which were the limits of the
navigation of the Portuguese and Indian vessel. The unexplored space was
indeed much greater than Mauro estimated and represented it in his map to
be; but, as Dr. Vincent remarks, his error in this respect manifestly
contributed to the prosecution of the Portuguese designs, as the error of
the ancient geographers, in approximating China to Europe, produced the
discovery of America by Columbus.
We have dwelt thus long on the map of Mauro, as being by far the most
important of the maps of the second description, or those in which were
inserted real or supposed discoveries. The rest of this description require
little notice.
A map of the date of 1346, in Castilian, represents Cape Bojada in Africa
as known, and having been doubled at that period. A manuscript, preserved
at Genoa, mentions that a ship had sailed from Majorca to a river called
Vedamel, or Rui Jaura (probably Rio-do-Ouro,) but her fate was not known.
The Genoese historians relate that two of their countrymen in 1291,
attempted to reach India by the west; the fate of this enterprize is also
unknown. The Canary Islands, the first discovery of which is supposed to
have taken place before the Christian era, and which were never afterwards
completely lost sight of, being described by the Arabian geographers,
appear in a Castilian map of 1346. Teneriffe is called in this map Inferno,
in conformity with the popular notion of the ancients, that these islands
were the seat of the blessed. In a map of 1384, there is an island called
Isola-di-legname, or the Isle of Wood, which, from this appellation, and
its situation, is supposed by some geographers to be the island of Madeira.
It would seem that some notions respecting the Azores were obscurely
entertained towards the end of the fourteenth century, as islands nearly in
their position are laid down in the maps of 1380.
In the library of St. Marc, at Venice, there is a map drawn by Bianco, in
1436. In it the ancient world is represented as forming one great
continent, divided into two unequal parts by the Mediterranean, and by the
Indian Ocean, which is carried from east to west, and comprises a great
number of islands.
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