[120] Humboldt points this island out on a map of 1425.
[121] Cf. Humboldt, Examen critique, ii. 156-245; Kunstmann, Entdeckung Amerikas, pp. 6, 35; D’Avezac on the “Isles fantastiques,” in Nouvelles annales des voyages, April, 1845, p. 55. Many of these islands clung long to the maps. Becher (Landfall of Columbus) speaks of the Isle of St. Matthew and Isle Grande in the South Atlantic being kept in charts till the beginning of this century. E. E. Hale tells amusingly of the Island of Bresil, lying off the coast of Ireland and in the steamer’s track from New York to England, being kept on the Admiralty charts as late as 1873. American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, Oct. 1873. Cf. Gaffarel, Congrès des Américanistes, 1877, i. 423, and Formalconi’s Essai sur la marine ancienne des vénitiens; dans lequel on a mis au jour plusieurs cartes tirées de la bibliothèque de St. Marc, antérieures à la découverte de Christophe Colomb, & qui indiquent clairement l’existence des isles Antilles. Traduit de l’italien par le chevalier d’Hénin, Venise, 1788.
[122] There are seven inhabitable and six desert islands in the group.
[123] Cf. Die Entdeckung der Carthager und Griechen auf dem Atlantischen Ocean, by Joachim Lelewel, Berlin, 1831, with two maps (Sabin, x. 201) one of which shows conjecturally the Atlantic Ocean of the ancients (see next page).
[124] Two priests, Bontier and Le Verrier, who accompanied him, wrote the account which we have. Cf. Peter Martyr, dec. i. c. 1; Galvano, p. 60; Muñoz, p. 30; Kunstmann, p. 6.
[125] Charton (Voyageurs, iii. 75) gives a partial bibliography of the literature of the discovery and conquest. The best English book is Major’s Conquest of the Canaries, published by the Hakluyt Society, London, 1872, which is a translation, with notes, of the Béthencourt narrative; and the same author has epitomized the story in chapter ix. of his Discoveries of Prince Henry. There is an earlier English book, George Glas’s Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands, London, 1764, 1767, which is said to be based on an unpublished manuscript of 1632, the work of a Spanish monk, J. de Abreu de Galineo, in the island of Palma. The Béthencourt account was first published in Paris, 1630, with different imprints, as Histoire de la première descovverte et conqueste des Canaries. Dufossé prices it at from 250 to 300 francs. The original manuscript was used in preparing the edition, Le Canarien, issued at Rouen in 1874 by G. Gravier (Leclerc, no. 267). This edition gives both a modern map and a part of that of Mecia de Viladestes (1413); enumerates the sources of the story; and (p. lxvi) gives D’Avezac’s account of the preservation of the Béthencourt manuscript. The Spanish translation by Pedro Ramirez, issued at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1847, was rendered from the Paris, 1630, edition.
Cf. Nuñez de la Peña’s Conquista y antiguedades de las Islas de la Gran Canaria, Madrid, 1676, and reprint, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1847; Cristóval Perez de el Christo, Las siete Islas de Canaria, Xeres, 1679 (rare, Leclerc, no. 644,—100 francs); Viera y Clavijo, Historia general de las Islas de Canaria, Madrid, four volumes, 1772-1783 (Leclerc, no. 647, calls it the principal work on the Canaries); Bory de Saint Vincent, Essais sur les Isles Fortunées, Paris, an xi. (1803); Les Iles Fortunées, Paris, 1869. D’Avezac, in 1846, published a Note sur la première expéditien de Béthencourt aux Canaries, and his “Isles d’Afrique” in the Univers pittoresque may be referred to.
[126] It is given by Lelewel, Géographie du Moyen Age; and has been issued in fac-simile by Ongania at Venice, in 1881. It is also given in Major, Prince Henry, 1868 edition, p. 107, and in Marco Polo, edition by Boni, Florence, 1827. Cf. Winsor’s Kohl Collection of Early Maps, issued by Harvard University.
[127] This chart is given by Jomard, pl. x., and Santarem, pl. 40. Ongania published in 1881 a Pizigani chart belonging to the Ambrosian Library in Milan, dated 1373.
[128] This map is given in Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi, vol. xiv. part 2; in Santarem, pl. 31, 40; Lelewel, pl. xxix.; Saint-Martin’s Atlas, pl. vii.; Ruge’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, 1881, and full size in fac-simile in Choix de documents géographiques conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1883.