The Fortunate Islands[122] (Canaries) of the ancients—discovered, it is claimed, by the Carthaginians[123]—had been practically lost to Europe for thirteen hundred years, when, in the beginning of the fifteenth century (1402), Juan de Béthencourt led his colony to settle them.[124] They had not indeed been altogether forgotten, for Marino Sanuto in 1306 had delineated them on a map given by Camden, though this cartographer omitted them on later charts. Traders and pirates had also visited them since 1341, but such acquaintance had hardly caused them to be generally known.[125]
THE ATLANTIC OF THE ANCIENTS AS MAPPED BY LELEWEL.
This is part of a map of the ancient world given in Lelewel’s Die Entdeckung der Carthager und Griechen auf dem Atlantischen Ocean, Berlin, 1831.
The Canaries, however, as well as the Azores, appear in the well-known portolano of 1351,[126] which is preserved in the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana in Florence. A chart of the Brothers Pizigani, dated in 1367, gives islands which are also identified with the Canaries, Azores, and Madeira;[127] and the Canaries also appear on the well-known Catalan mappemonde of 1375.[128] These Atlantic islands are again shown in a portolano of a period not much later than 1400, which is among the Egerton manuscripts in the British Museum, and is ascribed to Juan da Napoli;[129] and in 1436 they are conspicuous on the detailed sea-chart of Andrea Bianco. This portolano has also two islands on the extreme western verge of the sheet,—“Antillia” and “De la man Satanaxio,” which some have claimed as indicating a knowledge of the two Americas.[130] It was a map brought in 1428 from Venice by Dom Pedro,—which, like the 1351 map, showed the Azores,—that induced Prince Henry in 1431 to despatch the expedition which rediscovered those islands; and they appear on the Catalan map, which Santarem (pl. 54) describes as “Carte de Gabriell de Valsequa, faite à Mallorcha en 1439.” It was in 1466 that the group was colonized, as Behaim’s globe shows.[131]
The Madeira group was first discovered by an Englishman,—Machin, or Macham,—in the reign of Edward III. (1327-1378). The narrative, put into shape for Prince Henry of Portugal by Francisco Alcaforado, one of his esquires, was known to Irving in a French translation published in 1671, which Irving epitomizes.[132] The story, somewhat changed, is given by Galvano, and was copied by Hakluyt;[133] but, on account of some strangeness and incongruities, it has not been always accepted, though Major says the main recital is confirmed by a document quoted from a German collection of voyages, 1507, by Dr. Schmeller, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Science at Munich, 1847, and which, secured for Major by Kunstmann, is examined by him in his Prince Henry.[134] The group was rediscovered by the Portuguese in 1418-1420.[135] Prince Henry had given the command of Porto Santo to Perestrello; and this captain, in 1419, observing from his island a cloud in the horizon, found, as he sailed to it, the island now called Madeira. It will be remembered that it was the daughter of Perestrello whom Columbus at a later day married.[136]
It was not till 1460[137] that the Cape De Verde Islands were found, lying as they do well outside of the route of Prince Henry’s vessels, which were now following down the African coast, and had been pursuing explorations in this direction since 1415.