The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. Vol. II

by Gomes Eannes de Zurara

[130] (p. 159). What we have been ordered.—[By these expressions it is evident that the views and plans of the illustrious Infant were not concerned with making captives or slaves, or with expeditions against the natives, but only with the prosecution of the discoveries. The passage which occurs in the next chapter, as to the "great joy" of the crews, and especially of the "lower class" at meeting with the other caravels at the Isle of Herons, "in order to put in hand the matter," i.e., a new incursion against the Moors, shows us the spirit which animated those sailors: which spirit, perhaps, some of the captains were not able at times to hold in check and moderate.]—S.

[131] (p. 164). The Banner of the Crusade ... Gil Eannes.—[Barros omits these details, which are so interesting for the history of those expeditions. This Gil Eannes was the same who had first passed beyond Cape Bojador. (See ch. ix of this Chronicle.)]—S. On the Banner of the Crusade, see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. xviii-xix.

[132] (p. 165). Alvaro de Freitas.—[Barros says that Alvaro de Freitas was Commander of Algezur. (Decade I, Bk. i, ch. ii.)]—S. Cf. in this Chronicle, pp. 152, 157-8, 161, 165-6, 174, 194-5, 197.

[133] (p. 167). Fra Gil de Roma [lived in the time of Philippe le Bel, King of France. The treatise De Regimine Principum, which he wrote in 1285 for the education of that Prince, was a book of the highest reputation (in its time), especially at the close of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By the notice which is given us in the Chronicle of the Count D. Pedro, and by the quotation of Azurara, we perceive the estimation in which this book was held amongst us at the beginning of the latter century (the fifteenth).]—S. In fact, King John I (of Portugal), in his discourse at Ceuta in 1415, recalled to his fidalgos and knights the maxims and precepts which they had read in the same book, De Regimine Principum, and which he always kept in his own room. And if we are to believe Barbosa (Bibliotheca Lusitana), the Infant D. Pedro had made a Portuguese translation of the same treatise; but this learned bibliographer calls Fr. Gil de Roma, Fr. Gil Correa. This note is not a fitting place to show whether the name of Correa, which Barbosa gives to that author, is or is not exact. We must confine ourselves here to saying that King D. Edward (Duarte), quoting this book several times in chs. xxxi, xxxii, xxxvi, lii, lvi of his Leal Conselheiro, calls the author, like Azurara, Fr. Gil de Roma. In the library at Cambrai there exists a manuscript, No. 856, of the De Regimine Principum, which was finished in 1424, and consequently at an epoch subsequent to the one of which King John I made use. This is probably one of those used by King Edward and by Azurara. The first printed edition was published in 1473 (see Dictionnaire bibliographique, La Serna Santander, etc.) If, as we have just said, the manuscript used by King John I, by King Edward, and by Azurara, is one of the most ancient of which any notice survives, the Portuguese translation of the book of Fr. Gil de Roma by the Infant Don Pedro is also one of the most ancient versions—if we except the French translation attributed to Henry of Ghent. (On this consult the Abbé Lebœuf, Dissertation sur l'histoire ecclésiastique et civile de Paris, II, p. 41.) We think it well to give the reader this notice, in view of the importance of Azurara's citation in this place, which shows us the state of learning and literary culture among our people at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and at the same time the literary relations which existed between Portugal, France, and other countries at the end of the Middle Ages.]—S. See Martins, Os Filhos de D. João I, chs. i, iv, v, vi.

[134] (p. 169). Pero Allemain, etc.—See p. 55 of this Chronicle, on Balthasar, an undoubted German of the "household of the Emperor."

[135] (p. 173). Directions from the Lord Infant.—These seem to have been rather vague for purposes of exploration, and are differently given by Gomez Pirez (p. 173). See text of this version pp. 95, 173, etc., and next note.

[136] (p. 174). River of Nile.—[Compare this passage with our remarks in the notes to chs. liii, xxxii, xv, and xiii, about the true plans of the illustrious Infant, author of these discoveries. These passages reveal to us, in spite of the brevity of the Chronicler, the intention and the system of the Prince in relation to these expeditions. It is clear that he desired not only to discover those countries, but above all to obtain information from the natives themselves of the interior of Africa, in order to compare it with the scientific, historical, and geographical ideas of antiquity and of the Middle Ages, with a view of prosecuting his discoveries till the East was reached. Thus, Garcia de Resende says, with good reason (Chronicle of the King D. John II, ch. cliv), when treating of the discovery of the Congo, made twenty-five years after the death of the Infant:—"In the year 1485, the King desiring the discovery of India and Guinea, which the Infant D. Henry, his uncle, first among all the Princes of Christendom, commenced,...">[—S. What Gomez Pirez says here implicitly contradicts Lançarote's statement, p. 172; see note 135.

[137] (p. 174). The terrestrial Paradise.—[We call the attention of the reader to this passage, in itself very interesting, especially because the words of Alvaro de Freitas indicate beyond doubt a certain geographical idea as to the situation of the terrestrial Paradise agreeing with the cosmographical knowledge of the Middle Ages, and as to the distance at which they found themselves from those delicious parts of the world.

The sailors whom the Infant employed in these navigations and discoveries were well instructed in nautical science. They set out from Portugal furnished with "naval charts" in which the cosmographers of that time had designed not merely the hydrographical configuration of the coasts of the various countries then known, but also which is more curious, the interior of the Continents, in which they represented, by a multitude of figures, the various sovereigns, animals, birds, woodland, and other details, both real, fantastic, and hypothetical: as the curious reader may see in the Planisphere of Andrea Bianco of 1436, published in the work of Formaleone, entitled Saggio sulla nautica antica de Veneziani, and in the other planisphere of the famous Fra Mauro, published by Cardinal Zurla in his work, Sulle antiche Mappe lavorate in Venezia (1818).