[153] (p. 189). So directly passeth the sun, etc.—[See Strabo, Bk. xvii, who refers to the wells without shade during the summer solstice.]—S.
[153a] (pp. 188-9). Bishop Achoreus.—[Azurara refers here to Achoreus, the Egyptian high priest of whom Lucan speaks in the Pharsalia, Canto x. The passage to which Azurara refers begins with the following verse:—Vana fides veterum, Nilo, quod crescat in arva. Comparing this chapter of Azurara with the episode of Canto x of the Pharsalia, we see clearly that it was from Lucan he derived the whole of his description of the Nile.]—S.
[154] (p. 191). The marvels of the Nile.—[So great was the influence of the systematic geography of the ancients upon the imagination of the Portuguese of the fifteenth century, that, on arriving at the Senegal, and seeing that the water was sweet very near to the mouth, and very clear, in the same manner as the Nile (Nulli fluminum dulcior gustus est, said Seneca), and observing the same phenomena, they did not doubt for a moment that they had discovered the Nile of the Negroes. In these two chapters we see something of the vast erudition of Azurara, and at the same time something of the historical and cosmographical knowledge of our first discoverers. Moreover, we must call the attention of the reader to a very important detail, namely, that while Azurara shows himself imbued with the reading of the ancient authors on these matters, in the same way as our mariners, the latter, if we study the spirit of their words, show that they had some knowledge of the system of the Arab geographers in this respect. These latter applied the same terms (as our first Portuguese explorers) to the two rivers, distinguishing the Nile of Egypt and the Nile of the Negroes. This opinion of the Niger being an arm of the Nile was even maintained in our own day by Jackson, in his work entitled, An Account of the Empire of Marocco and the District of Suze. In vol. xiv of the Annales des Voyages, by Malte-Brun, 1811, and in vol. xvii of the same work, p. 350, we meet with a curious analysis of this work of Jackson's on the identity of the two rivers.]—S.
What Azurara says here about the Nile, etc., is largely borrowed from Solinus, Collectanea, xxxii; Pliny, Natural History, v, 51-59; viii, 89-97; Pomponius Mela, iii, viii, 9. We may also (for mediæval ideas on the Nile, etc.) cf. Dicuil, De Mensura Orbis Terrae, vi, 4, 7, etc.; ix, 6 (on Mount Atlas); St. Basil, Hexaemeron, iii, 6; Vibius Sequester; Procopius, De Bell. Goth., ii, 14, 15; iv, 29; St. Isidore, Origins, xiv, 5; Ven. Bede, De Natur. Rer.; and above all, Edrisi (Jaubert), i, 11-13, 17-19, 27-33, 35, 37, 297, 301-5, 312, 315, 320-325, ii, 137; Masudi, Meadows of Gold, ch. xiv (see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. xliv-l, and Dawn of Modern Geography, pp. 267-8, 323-6, 367, 462-3, 348, 363, 365.)
[155] (p. 191). Fish or some other natural product of the sea.—[This important passage is one proof the more of the priority of our discoveries on the west coast of Africa.]—S. Not, of course, an absolute proof, though it strengthens the plausibility of the Portuguese claim.
[156] (p. 193). Arms of the Infant.—[This island, as well as the other of which mention is made above, where these sailors encountered the Arms of the Infant carved upon the trees, are very clearly marked, as between Cape Verde and the Cape of Masts, on a curious map of Africa in the unpublished Atlas of Vaz Dourado, executed in 1571 (see Mémoire sur la navigation aux côtes occidentales d'Afrique, by Admiral Roussin, p. 61—Des iles de la Madeleine).]—S.
[157] (p. 193). This tree, etc.—[This is the baobab, a tree noted for its enormous size, and which is to be met with on the Senegal, on the Gambia, and even on the Congo, at which point Captain Tucklay (Tuckey) mentions it among the trees to be found on the banks of the Zaire. This tree had been described by Adanson (Histoire Naturelle du Sénégal, Paris, 1757, pp. 54 and 104), and from this circumstance Bernardo Jussieu gave it the name of Adansonia. Its trunk is sometimes more than 90 ft. in circumference (see the work cited above). Our mariners, and Azurara himself, however, described it 310 years before the French naturalist who gave it the botanical name by which it is now known.]—S.
[158] (p. 194). Rio d'Ouro.—[Some French writers, who have lately treated of the famous Catalan Atlas in the Royal Library of Paris, to which they assign the date of 1375, assert that the Catalans reached the Rio d'Ouro before the Portuguese, because on this map is marked a galliot, with a legend referring to Jayme Ferrer, who sailed to a river of that name (in 1346).
Without discussing this point here, let us say, nevertheless, that as to this voyage of the Catalans, whose arrival at the said river is not attested by any document, the reader should consult the map of M. Walckenaer, published in the scientific journal, Annales des Voyages, tom. 7, p. 246 (a.d. 1809), in which that learned geographer says, with good reason, that the said legend and project of Jayme Ferrer's voyage (as stated) does not at all prove that geographical knowledge in 1346 extended beyond Cape Bojador, or even beyond Cape Non (see also our Memoir on the priority of our discoveries, and the Atlas which accompanies the said memoir).]—S. Cf. Introduction to vol. ii, pp. lxiii-lxiv.
[159] (p. 194). To the Kingdom.—[By this passage, and similar ones in chs. x, xi, and xvi, it is proved that the commercial relations of the Portuguese with the west coast of Africa beyond Bojador were established before the middle of the fifteenth century. The imports then consisted of gold-dust, slaves, and skins of sea-calves.]—S. Cf. Introduction to vol. ii, pp. x-xiii, lxi-lxxi.