SKETCH-MAP OF THE PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES IN AFRICA.
Cf. Heinrich Wuttke’s “Zur Geschichte der Erdkunde in der letzten hälfte des Mittelalters: Die Karten der Seefahrenden Völker süd Europas bis zum ersten Druck der Erdbeschreibung des Ptolemäus,” in the Jahrbuch des Vereins für Erdkunde in Dresden, 1870; J. Codine’s “Découverte de la côte d’Afrique par les Portugais pendant les années, 1484-1488,” in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, 1876; Vivien de Saint-Martin’s Histoire de la géographie et des découvertes géographiques, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours, p. 298, Paris, 1873; Ruge’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 81; Clarke’s Progress of Maritime Discovery, p. 140; and G. T. Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, Geneva, 1780; Paris, 1820. Paulitschke’s Afrika-literatur in der Zeit von 1500 bis 1750, Vienna, 1882, notes the earliest accounts.
Prince Henry had been with his father at the capture of Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar, in 1415, when the Portuguese got their first foothold in Africa. In 1418 he established a school of nautical observation at Sagres,[145] the southwestern promontory of his father’s kingdom, and placed the geographer, Jayme,[146] of Majorca, in charge of it. The Prince at once sent out his first expedition down the Barbary coast; but his vessel, being driven out of its course, discovered the Island of Porto Santo. Expedition after expedition reached, in successive years, the vicinity of Cape Bojador; but an inexpressible dread of the uncertainty beyond deferred the passage of it till 1434. Cape Blanco was reached in 1445; Cape Verde shortly after; and the River Gambia in 1447.
Cadamosto and his Venetians pushed still farther, and saw the Southern Cross for the first time.[147] Between 1460 and 1464 they went beyond Cape Mesurado. Prince Henry dying in 1463, King Alfonso, in 1469, farmed out the African commerce, and required five hundred miles to be added yearly to the limit of discovery southward. Not long after, Diego Cam reached the Congo coast, Behaim accompanying him. In 1487, after seventy years of gradual progress down six thousand miles of coast, southward from Cape Non, the Portuguese under Diaz reached the Stormy Cape,—later to be called the Cape of Good Hope. He but just rounded it in May, and in December he was in Portugal with the news. Bartholomew, the brother of Columbus, had made the voyage with him.[148] The rounding of the Cape was hardly a surprise; for the belief in it was firmly established long before. In 1457-1459, in the map of Fra Mauro, which had been constructed at Venice for Alonzo V., and in which Bianco assisted, the terminal cape had been fitly drawn.[149]
PORTUGUESE MAP, 1490.
This map follows a copy in the Kohl Collection (no. 23), after the original, attached to a manuscript theological treatise in the British Museum. An inscription at the break in the African coast says that to this point the Portuguese had pushed their discoveries in 1489; and as it shows no indication of the voyages of Columbus and Da Gama, Kohl places it about 1490. It may be considered as representing the views current before these events, Asia following the Ptolemean drafts. The language of the map being partly Italian and partly Portuguese, Kohl conjectures that it was made by an Italian living in Lisbon; and he points out the close correspondence of the names on the western coast of Africa to the latest Portuguese discoveries, and that its contour is better than anything preceding.