Footnote 375: This version is cited from Major's Prince Henry the Navigator, p. 58.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 376: Hüllmann, Städtewesen des Mittelalters, bd. i. pp. 125-137.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 377: Compare the remarks of Mr. Clark Russell on the mariners of the seventeenth century, in his William Dampier, p. 12.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 378: My chief authorities for the achievements of Prince Henry and his successors are the Portuguese historians, Barros and Azurara. The best edition of the former is a modern one, Barros y Couto, Decadas da Asia, nova edicão con Indice geral, Lisbon, 1778-88, 24 vols. 12mo. I also refer sometimes to the Lisbon, 1752, edition of the Decada primeira, in folio. The priceless contemporary work of Azurara, written in 1453 under Prince Henry's direction, was not printed until the present century; Azurara, Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista de Guiné, Paris, 1841, a superb edition in royal quarto, edited by the Viscount da Carreira, with introduction and notes by the Viscount de Santarem.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 379: Partly, perhaps, because Mela was himself a Spaniard, and partly because his opinions had been shared and supported by St. Isidore, of Seville (A. D. 570-636), whose learned works exercised immense authority throughout the Middle Ages. It is in one of St. Isidore's books (Etymologiarum, xiii. 16, apud Migne, Patrologia, tom. lxxxii. col. 484) that we first find the word "Mediterranean" used as a proper name for that great land-locked sea.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 380: Ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ περὶ τῆς ἔξω στηλῶν λέγεται· δυσμικώτατον μὲν γὰρ σημεῖον τῆς οἰκουμένης, τὸ τῶν Ἰβήρων ἀκρωτήριον, ὃ καλοῦσιν Ἱερόν.] Strabo, ii. 5, § 14; cf. Dionysius Periegetes, v. 161. In reality it lies not quite so far west as the country around Lisbon.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 381: See Littré, Dictionnaire, s. v. "Talent;" Du Cange, Glossarium, "talentum, animi decretum, voluntas, desiderium, cupiditas," etc.; cf. Raynouard, Glossaire Provençale, tom. v. p. 296. French was then fashionable at court, in Lisbon as well as in London.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 382: The Portuguese proverb was "Quem passar o Cabo de Não ou voltará ou não," i. e. "Whoever passes Cape Non will return or not." See Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, tom. i. p. 173; Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. i. p. 91; Barros, tom. i. p. 36.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 383: An engraved copy of this map may be found in Major's Prince Henry the Navigator, London, 1868, facing p. 107. I need hardly say that in all that relates to the Portuguese voyages I am under great obligation to Mr. Major's profoundly learned and critical researches. He has fairly conquered this subject and made it his own, and whoever touches it after him, however lightly, must always owe him a tribute of acknowledgment.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 384: See Bontier and Le Verrier, The Canarian, or, Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canaries, translated and edited by R. H. Major, London, 1872 (Hakluyt Soc). In 1414, Béthencourt's nephew, left in charge of these islands, sold them to Prince Henry, but Castile persisted in claiming them, and at length in 1479 her claim was recognized by treaty with Portugal. Of all the African islands, therefore, the Canaries alone came to belong, and still belong, to Spain.[Back to Main Text]