To the World Displayed. - Clarke.
[2] Cape Bojador is imagined to have been the _Canarea_ of Ptolemy. -
Clarke I. 15
[3] The _barcha_ is a sort of brig with topsails, having all its yards on
one long pole without sliding masts, as still used by tartans and
settees. The _barcha longa_ is a kind of small galley, with one mast
and oars. - Clarke, I. p. 153.
[4] Clarke says in the same year 1418. But this could not well be, as the
Discovery of Puerto Santo was made so late as the 1st of November of
that year. The truth is, that only very general accounts of these
early voyages remain in the Portuguese historians. - E.
[5] Such is the simple and probable account of the discovery of Madeira in
Purchas. Clarke has chosen to embellish it with a variety of very
extraordinary circumstances, which being utterly unworthy of credit,
we do not think necessary to be inserted in this place. See Progress
of Maritime Discovery, I. 157. - E.
[6] In the Introduction to the World Displayed, Dr Johnson remarks on this
story, that "green wood is not very apt to burn; and the heavy rains
which fall in these countries must surely have extinguished the
conflagration were it ever so violent." Yet in 1800 Radnor forest
presented a conflagration of nearly twenty miles circumference, which
continued to spread for a considerable time, in spite of every effort
to arrest its progress.
