Ibid: Other fish.—[This is the Pristis.]—S.
[139] (p. 176). Quite alive.—[This fish appears to be the Remora.]—S.
[140] (p. 176). The two palm trees, etc.—[These palm trees exist on some old MS. maps. We may compare this passage with what the author says in ch. xxxi, and with the notes on pp. 96, 177; also Introduction, p. iv. Barros (Decade I, ch. xiii) says "Lancerote reached the two palm trees which Dinis Fernandez, when he went there, marked out as a feature worthy of notice ... where the natives of the land say the Azanegue Moors are divided from the idolatrous Negroes." And, in fact, the course of this stream forms a remarkable boundary between the Moors, or Berbers, who inhabit the northern bank, and the Negro Jaloffs who dwell on the southern bank (see Durand, vol. ii, p. 60, and Rennell, Appendix, p. 80).]—S.
[141] (p. 177). This green land.—[On the manuscript map of João Freire of 1546, appears marked at the entrance of the river Senegal, the "arvoredo" of which Azurara speaks.]—S.
[142] (p. 177). Azanegue prisoners.—[Compare this important passage with what Azurara says in other places, pp. 41, 45-6, 48-9, 55; and Introduction to vol. ii, pp. iv, xxvi, lviii, lix, about the Infant and the information which he collected from the natives, and which he compared with the geographical charts he was constantly studying.]—S.
[143] (p. 178). Entereth into it so.—[This same confusion which the Portuguese mariners made between the Senegal and the Nile is one more proof of the influence which the geographical system of the ancients exercised over them. According to Pliny, the Niger was an arm of the Nile. The river Senegal traverses in its course nearly 350 leagues from its source in the country of Fouta (Jallon) to the Atlantic (see Durand, Voyage au Sénégal, p. 343, and Demanet, Nouvelle histoire d'Afrique, vol. i, p. 62, iv, xii, xxii-xxv, xxxiii, xlii-xliii, xlvii-xlix, lviii.)]—S. Also see Introduction to vol. ii, p. lviii, etc.
[144] (p. 180). Mediterranean Sea, etc.—[This passage shows that Azurara only had notice at that time of the ivory commerce which was carried on through the ports of the Levant situated on the Mediterranean, and that he had no knowledge that a like commerce was carried on through the ports of the empire of Marocco, situated on the west coast of Africa. "I learnt," says he, "that in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea," etc. ... and these words of his are important, as showing that a man, otherwise well informed in matters of commerce and navigation, was not aware that the ivory trade was carried on by the western coast; which gives us one more proof of the priority of the Portuguese in the discovery of Guinea. Our author, then, knew the truth: for until that epoch the trade in ivory was carried on by the Arabs by way of Egypt, the Arabs going to the coast of Zanzibar to seek for the same, since there the better quality was to be found (see Masudi, Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque du Roi, i, p. 15; Ibn-al-Wardi, ibid, ii, p. 40; El Bakoui, ibid, pp. 394, 401). The Arab caravans also brought ivory from places in the neighbourhood of the Niger. These caravans followed the routes of the ancient Itineraries (see Ibn-al-Wardi, Notices et Extraits des MSS., ii, pp. 35-7, and Edrisi (Jaubert), vol. i, pp. 10-26, 105-120, 197-293). But the principal centre of this commerce with the interior of Africa was in the northern part, then already known under the name of Barbary, and in the countries which form to-day the kingdoms of Fez and Marocco. The expressions of Azurara about the size of the elephant are evidently exaggerated, because the species indigenous to Africa is only the second in size in the (animal) family of the Proboscidians, or "trunked" Pachyderms. The African elephant is smaller than the Asiatic elephant, although the tusks of the latter are smaller than those of the former. The details given in this part of our Chronicle are, in our opinion, so important for the information they give about the state of knowledge among our first discoverers, the influences of ancient tradition, and the mediæval spirit which dominated them, that it seems opportune to indicate here to the reader what we consider most worthy of study and of reflection, in order that we may be able to estimate the state of instruction in Portugal relative to those matters in the beginning of the fifteenth century, seeing that up to now no (writing) work has yet appeared upon the subject from any one of our nation. Among other passages of this Chronicle we noted, on p. 156, note 128, the extraordinary exaggeration with which our seamen described the beak of the Buceros Africanus, of which they said "the mouth and maw of these birds is so great that the leg of a man, however large it were, could go into it as far as the knee." We have also seen another marvellous description of the beak of the Phœnicopterus, and finally the one which was inspired by the account given them of the elephant by the Negroes—an exaggeration which reminds one of the description given by a Byzantine writer of the eleventh century, Michael Attaliotes, when he saw an elephant for the first time in Constantinople (see the extract from the Greek MSS. of the Royal Library at Paris [Bibliothèque Nationale], on p. 499 of the work of M. Berger de Xivrey: Recits de l'antiquité sur quelques points de la fable, du merveilleux et de l'histoire naturelle). In these exaggerated and marvellous accounts, therefore, of birds and animals which were unknown as late as then, we find a proof of the influence of the teratological traditions of antiquity and of the Middle Ages, in consequence of the studies which men had previously made of the figures they saw depicted in the planispheres and Mappemondes of their time; and also we may see in this a result of the reading of Pliny, and above all of the Treatise on Marvels, attributed to Aristotle, "the philosopher," as Azurara calls him (see p. 12, note 19), whose authority was so great among the Portuguese of the fifteenth century that even the "Proctors of the People" (in the Cortes of 1481), quoted his work on "Politics" (see our Memoir on the Cortes, ii, p. 186). We see, then, that our seamen of that period were impregnated with these traditions, and were diligent readers of works which during the Middle Ages were given the title of Mirabilia, the reading of which enchanted (in that age) not only men of education, but even students, and often the people, to whom ecclesiastics read in public those marvellous relations, as we see, among other examples from the case of Giraldus Cambrensis, who thrice read to the people in Oxford his description of Ireland; and still more in the celebrated statutes made in 1380 by Bishop Wykeham for the college which he founded in the same city, in which he determined that the chronicles of various realms should be read to the students and the marvels of the world (Mirabilia Mundi); see Sprengel, p. 221, and Wharton, History of English Poetry, i, p. 92. In the period at which the statutes we mention were given to (New) College in Oxford, the relations between Portugal and England were knit more closely than in preceding centuries. The Court of the King, D. John I, adopted most of the English usages, and the literary communication between the two peoples was more extensive than in earlier time. The citation of the romances of chivalry made by the King to his knights, the adoption of the French language (which was then that of the Court of England), the devices and mottoes of which the Infants made use, prove the existence of that influence. Besides this, divers passages of King D. Duarte's Leal Conselheiro show that the Infants of the House of Aviz (often) discussed various literary matters with the King, their father, and other literary persons, and that they even debated about the rules and regulations for properly translating classical works. We have also noticed that King D. John I, in the discourse which he made to the fidalgos who remained at Ceuta in 1415, cited the De Regimine Principum of Fr. Gil de Roma, bidding them recall to memory how they had often read the same in his Privy Chamber. So then, at that epoch of discoveries, in which the greatest enthusiasm prevailed for the prosecution of enterprises of such moment, the reading of the Marvels of the World, and of the Travels of Marco Polo, which the Infant D. Pedro brought from Venice, formed beyond doubt the delight of all those famous men, courtiers of the Infant D. Henry, of his illustrious father, and of his brothers—courtiers, moreover, who received their education in the royal or princely palaces. The passages, then, which we read in this Chronicle, and which we indicate to the reader, in spite of their brevity, and of the defects which the critical study of our own time enables us to note—these passages, we say, are of the highest importance when they are studied in harmony with other contemporary documents. The great men of the fifteenth century, formed in the school of the Infant Don Henry, were unquestionably possessed of great erudition for those times—an erudition and knowledge which at first eludes observation, through being muffled up in the rudeness of a language without polish, and which was more energetic in action than explicit and agreeable in writing, but it is nevertheless clear that they knew all that was known in their age.
It was this notable school, therefore, which prepared the great body of geographical learning which we note appearing in the famous congress of Portuguese and Spanish geographers at Badajoz in 1524 and 1525: at which, in the discussion which took place on the demarcation of the Moluccas and on the size of the world, Aristotle was quoted along with Strabo, Eratosthenes, Macrobius, St. Ambrose, Pliny, Theodosius, Marinus of Tyre, Alfergani, and Pierre d'Ailly, etc.]—S.
Long as this note is, a word must be added to it:—
Santarem here covers a large part of the field of mediæval geography, but his treatment in this place is hardly so clear or exhaustive as one might expect from the author of the Essai sur Cosmographie, or the compiler of the leading Atlas of mediæval maps. As to the immediate subject, the phrase Mediterranean [Sea] was first used in the sense of a proper name by St. Isidore of Seville, c. a.d. 600 (Origins or Etymologies, Book xiii); though its adjectival use, like the parallel expressions "Our [sea]," "the Roman [sea]," "the Inner [sea]," was of course much earlier. As late as Solinus (c. a.d. 230) this last is clearly the only shade of meaning. As to the commerce of North Africa, we must refer to the Introduction to vol. ii, pp. xxii-xxvi, xlv-lvi, lxiv. As to the mediæval Mirabilia, it is strange that Santarem gives no adequate reference to the great sources of these collections: Pliny's Natural History, and above all Solinus' Collectanea, principally compiled from Pliny, Mela, and Varro, and itself reproduced (wholly or partially) in well-nigh every mediæval work of similar character, translated into the pictorial language of Mappemondes, such as that of Hereford, of Ebstorp, or of the Psalter (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 28,681). On these, see Dawn of Modern Geography, pp. 243-273, 327-391. Santarem's remarks hardly give a sufficient idea of the systematic domination exercised over much of mediæval thought, not only in geography, natural history and ethnology, but in other departments also by the pseudo-science represented in these Mirabilia.