[211] (p. 268). Porto da Caldeira.—[A name not met with in the oldest maps (e.g., Benincasa of 1467), which is one of those most nearly contemporaneous with our discoveries, and contains many names given by our explorers; the same remark applies to those of La Cosa (1500) and Freire (1546), etc. It seems, then, that our seamen gave this name to a port within the Rio do Ouro, as the text would indicate. The caravel of Gomez Pirez reaching the mouth of this river, cast anchor; afterwards the captain decided to go to the end of the river, that is, six leagues up; and arriving there he entered a port on which our men had previously bestowed the name of Porto da Caldeira.]—S.
[212] (p. 268). Well content.—[To our mind this important passage shows that before the discovery of the Rio do Ouro by the Portuguese, Europeans did not trade there. The very declaration of the Arabs seems to us to contradict the opinion held by some that the Catalans knew this river in 1346, and that Jacques Ferrer made his way to this point (see p. 194, note 158, and note 74). In fact, it is clear that the Arabs of that part were well aware that to get caravans to that place meant a journey of many days across the desert, and also that, even were this journey undertaken, they would perhaps find a difficulty in persuading others to change the roads used from remote antiquity, and come and traffic at a point of which they know little, and give it a preference to the recognised entrepôts of ancient caravan commerce.]—S.
[213] (p. 274). Land ... level.—[The low land marked on ancient maps to the north of the Rio do Ouro.]—S.
[214] (p. 275). Rocks.—[We saw before how Gomez Pires, on reaching the Rio do Ouro, cast anchor at the mouth of the river, and afterwards made his way up the stream to a port at its furthest part, which our mariners had named the Porto da Caldeira, where he stayed twenty-one days in order to establish commercial relations with the Arabs of the African hinterland. But, as these negociations came to nothing, he set sail and moved four leagues from there towards the other bank of the river, and came upon an island in the river (the "ilot de roches très élevé" of the maps of Admiral Roussin); and after they had made eleven leagues in all, they met with the Arabs, who took refuge in "some very big rocks that were there." These rocks are the seven mountains marked in maps by our mariners of that time, and they are depicted in the Mappemonde of Fra Mauro (1460), and copied from these very Portuguese nautical charts—the "lofty mountains" of the globe of Martin de Behaim, of Nuremburg.]—S.
[215] (p. 277). Meça.—[A city in the province of Sus and empire of Marocco. Leo Africanus, Book ii, says it was built by the ancient Africans.]—S.
[216] (p. 278). Guineas.—[This passage shows that even then traffic in the Guinea negroes was carried on through the ports on this side of Cape Não. The Infant then knew, before he undertook the business, that this was one of the commercial entrepôts between Marocco and the Negro States, just as is since 1810 the small kingdom (founded by Hescham) of the independent Moors to the south of Marocco, of the commerce between Marocco and Timbuctoo.]—S.
[217] (p. 278). Eighteen Moors.—[This detail shows the great influence possessed by João Fernandez over the Moors, doubtless owing to his speaking Arabic and having travelled with them. M. Eyriès, in the biographical article he wrote on this intrepid traveller (Biographie universelle) says, with justice, that he was the first European to penetrate into the interior of Africa, and that the details of his story present a great analogy with those of the account given by Mungo Park.]—S.
[218] (p. 280). Denmark, Sweden and Norway.—[King Christopher then reigned in these three Kingdoms. He was grandson of the Emperor Robert, and nephew of Eric XII, who had abdicated in 1441. He died on January 6th, 1448, and the three crowns were separated.]—S. They were united in 1397 by the Union of Calmar.
[219] (p. 286). Lost men ... Returned to the Kingdom.—[This detail, which is not to be found in ch. xv of the First Decade of Barros, where he treats of this expedition, is of the greatest importance, because it explains the event related in the letter of Antoniotto Usus di Mare, i.e., Antonio da Nole, dated December 12th, 1455, and found in the archives of Genoa in 1802 by Gräberg (Annali di geografia e di statistica, vol. ii, p. 285), in which that traveller tells how he met in those parts with a man of his own country, whom he took to be a member of the expedition of Vivaldi, which had set out one hundred and seventy years before, and of which nothing had been heard since its departure, according to Italian writers. Now it cannot be admitted that a descendant of the Genoese expeditioners of Thedisio Doria and Vivaldi would have kept his white colour if his ancestor had remained among the negroes, nor could he know the language. Therefore, Antoniotto can have seen no other white man in those parts except one of the mariners of the Portuguese caravel of Affonso and Vallarte of which Azurara treats in the text: especially as neither the different Portuguese captains, nor Cadamosto, found in any part of the African coast beyond Bojador a single vestige or tradition of other Europeans having gone there before their discovery by the Portuguese. Of the expedition of Vivaldi no news arrived after its departure in the thirteenth century. In the time of Antoniotto there remained a tradition only that it had set out intending to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar and make an unaccustomed voyage to the West. Antoniotto was a man of good education, and we see that he knew the authors who treated of this event; but having imbibed these traditions, and knowing of the existence of a Christian who had remained in these parts, he came to the conclusion—of course in ignorance of the fact mentioned by Azurara—that this man might be a descendant of the members of Vivaldi's expedition, "ex illis galeis credo Vivaldœ qui se amiserit sunt anni 170." If this important passage of Azurara's chronicle be confronted with the letter of Antoniotto, and both with the account of Cadamosto's second voyage, there remains not the least doubt that the man mentioned by Antoniotto was one of the three belonging to the caravel of Fernando Affonso and Vallarte, who had remained there in 1447, that is, eight years before Antoniotto visited the same parts, and that he was not a descendant of the men of Vivaldi's caravel, whose destiny had then for nearly two centuries been unknown. The passage also seems to refute the conjecture of the publisher of the said letter, and the induction of Baldelli in his Millone, vol. i, p. 153, etc., about the Medicean Portulano and the two maps of Africa therein, which we have analysed in our "Memoir on the priority of the Portuguese in the Discovery of the West Coast of Africa beyond Cape Bojador," where we show that these maps, far from disproving our priority, rather confirm it.]—S.
[220] (p. 286). The Cabo dos Ruyvos.—[Otherwise the Angra dos Ruivos of ancient maps (see note 53). On the great abundance of fish in these parts, see the curious and erudite work of M. Berthelot (De la péche sur la côte occidentale d'Afrique. Paris, 1840).]—S.