As to these, we need only remark:

No. (17) is the earliest known work of Gracioso Benincasa, consists of sixty-two maps, and belongs to a MS. giving sailing directions, etc. Its West Africa does not call for special remark, though the later discoveries of Prince Henry's lifetime are admirably illustrated in the same draughtsman's work of 1468, 1471, etc.

No. (18) consists of ten maps, including a graduated Ptolemaic mappemonde, and a circular world-map, somewhat resembling Vesconte, probably copied and re-edited from a very early portolan, with a certain theoretical extension.[[264]] The original of this is supposed by some to have been a late thirteenth-century work; its West African names and detailed charting end at Cape Non—an incredibly backward point for the time of revision, viz., a.d. 1436. A ship is, however, depicted in full sail far down the west coast[[265]] of a Continent whose general shape is conceived as "Strabonian" or "Macrobian," with its length from east to west, and consequently possessing a long southern shore. The Negro Nile flows straight from Babylon or Cairo, into the Atlantic, near (but north of) the picture labelled Rex de Maroco. The western Mediterranean, Adriatic and Ægaean, as well as the Black Sea and Caspian, are poorly drawn, and suggest an early and crude type of portolan.

No. (19), signed "Andrea Biancho venician comito di galia mi fexe a Londra mccccxxxxviii," was probably executed with a special view of illustrating the discoveries of the Portuguese along West Africa, and contains the enigmatical inscription in the S.W., which some have construed into a Portuguese discovery of South America about this time.[[266]] Besides the interest of this controversy, and of the fact that it was one of the first scientific maps drawn in England, this chart gives us in West Africa some of the earliest indications of the new Portuguese discoveries. Thus, beyond Cape Bojador, or Buyedor, we have on the mainland shore-line twenty-seven names reaching to Cape Roxo or Rosso, and including Rio d'Oro, Porto do Cavalleiro ("Pro Chavalero"), the Port of Galé ("Pedra de Gala"), Cape Branco, Cape St. Anne, and Cape Verde.

This example has often been spoken of as the earliest map-register of Prince Henry's discoveries, but herein it must yield to

No. (20), the Valsecca (Vallesecha) of 1434-9, which mentions the discoveries of Diego de Sevill in the Azores in 1427,[[267]] and maps the north-west coast of Africa scientifically to Cape Bojador (Bujeteder) and "theoretically" for some way beyond.

No. (21), of 1447, inscribed, "... Vera cosmographorum cum marino accordata terra, quorundam frivolis narrationibus rejectis mccccxlvii," denotes, as Nordenskjöld points out, not any connection with Marinus of Tyre (by means of a since lost MS., or otherwise), but merely the author's purpose, viz., "to present here a picture of the world, according to the conception of learned cosmographers, adapted to or grouped round a skipper-chart or portolan of the Inner Sea."

West Africa, in this chart, does not present anything specially noteworthy.

No. (22). Similar in purpose to No. (8) are both the Leardo Maps of 1448 and 1452, which in detail are somewhat similar to the Bianco of 1436.

The West African coast of these Designs does not call for special notice.