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.

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