Chapter VI: Introduction (5)

No. (23), of 1455, signed "Presbiter Bartolomeus de Pareto civis Janue ... composuit ... MCCCCLV. in Janua," is not of high value for its date, and shows no evidence of correspondence with Prince Henry's work. The West Africa of this design need not be specially noticed here.

No. (24), the most famous of the whole series, is more fully noticed on pp. cxl-cxliv. Fra Mauro was, perhaps, helped by Cadamosto among others. It is noteworthy that the Doge Foscarini, in the letter quoted below, pp. cxl-cxli, couples the success of Cadamosto and the work of Fra Mauro, as two things which should induce Prince Henry to persevere.[268]

[Footnote 268: See Major, _Henry Navigator_, p. 312.]

A new mappemonde,[269] discovered by Kretschmer in the Vatican Library, and noticed in his monograph of 1891, is of 1448; while under date of 1444, Santarem refers to a "Portolan portugais inédit," which is not further known.

[Footnote 269: The "Walsperger," _Eine neue mittelälterliche
Weltkarte_.]

These were the works[270] which in cartography bore most closely upon the Infant's explorations; and we may here summarise the evidence of the same as to the advance of knowledge along the West African coast and among the Atlantic Islands.

[Footnote 270: On all these maps, see especially G. Uzielli
and P. Amat di S. Filippo, _Studi biographici e bibliographici
sulla storia della Geografia in Italia_, ii, Mappemonde, etc.,
dei secoli xiii-xvii, Roma, 1882--especially pp. 49, 52, 54,
55, 57-8, 60, 62, 64, 66, 72-3, 230-1; Theobald Fischer,
_Sammlung Mittelälterlicher Welt und See-karten_, Venice,
1886, pp. 111, 117-9, 127, 150-5, 207-213, 220; Santarem,
_Atlas_, 1849; Santarem, _Essai sur l'histoire de la
Cosmographie_, etc., 1849-52; Santarem, _Notices sur plusieurs
monuments géographiques du moyen âge_, etc. (Bull. Soc. Géog.,
3e série, vii, Paris, 1847), especially pp. 289, 295;
Santarem, _Recherches sur la priorité des découvertes
portugaises_, 1842; C. Desimoni and L. T. Belgrano, "_Atlante
... posseduto dal Prof. Tammar Luxoro_ ..." in _Atti della
societa ligure di storia patria_, v, Genoa, 1867; K.
Kretschmer, _Marino Sanudo der Altere_, in _Zeitschrift d.
Ges. f. Erdkunde_, Berlin, xxvi, 1891; H. Simonsfeld, in
_Neues Archiv für altere deutsche Geschichtskunde_, vii,
especially pp. 43, etc., Hannover, 1881; E. T. Hamy, _La
mappemonde d'Angelino Dulcert_ (Bull. Géog. Hist, et Descr.,
1886-7); ibid., _Les origines de la Cartographie de l'Europe
Septentrionale_, 1888; ibid., _Cresques lo Juheu, note sur un
géographe juif Catalan de la fin du XIVe siécle_, 1891;
Jomard, _Atlas ("Monuments de la Géographe"), 1862; Choix de
Documents Géographiques conservés a la Biblèque Nata'e_,
especially p. 4, Paris, 1883; Buchon and Tastu, _Notices et
Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque du Roi_, xiv, 2nd partie,
Paris, 1841, especially p. 67; G. Marcel, _Recueil des
Portolans_, Paris, 1886; Hommaire de Hell, in _Bulletin de la
Soc. de Géog._, 3e série, vii, Paris, 1847, p. 302; M. A. P.
d'Avezac (-Maçaya) "... _Notice sur un Atlas de la Biblèque
Walckenaer_" (Bull. Soc. Géog., 3e série, viii, Paris, 1847,)
especially p. 142, etc.; P. Matkovic, in _Mittheilungen der K.
K. Geog. Gesellsch._, vi, p. 83, etc., Vienna, 1862;
Cortambert, _Introduction à l'Atlas ... par feu M. Jomard_
(Bull. Soc. Géog., 6e série, xviii, Paris, 1879) p. 74; R. H.
Major, _Henry the Navigator_, London, 1868; _Notice des objets
exposés dans la section de Géographie_, Paris, 1889
(Exposition), especially p. 14; Lelewel, _Géographie de Moyen
Age_, especially _Epilogue_, pp. 167-184, Brussels, 1857;
Placido Zurla, _Il Mappemonde di Fra Mauro Camaldolese_,
Venice, 1806; A. E. Nordenskjöld, _Facsimile Atlas_,
Stockholm, 1886; _Periplus_, Stockholm, 1897.]

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, as we have seen, there is no cartographical evidence of knowledge extending far beyond the Straits of Gibraltar--either down the mainland shore or among the Islands in the Ocean. But on Dulcert's Portolan of 1339, and on other productions of the same epoch, such as the _Conosçimiento_ of about 1330, we meet with some of the Islands, and with the Continental coast as far as Bojador. Thus, in the _Conosçimiento_ and the Laurentian Portolano of 1351, "the most important of the Azores, the Madeira group, and the Canary Islands, are denoted by the names they still bear," or by the prototypes of these names.[271] The same Medicean or Laurentian map of 1351, the Pizzigani of 1367-1373, the Catalan[272] of 1375, and others, "bear inscriptions even beyond C. Bojador"--inscriptions, however, which do not in their scattered and half-fabulous character give any decisive evidence of actual exploration to the south of this point before Henry's time.[273] Moreover, the shape of Africa in the "Atlante Mediceo" of 1351,[274] suggests--though it can hardly be said to prove--actual observations far beyond Cape Bojador made by the crews of storm-driven or India-seeking ships. But, after all, the map knowledge shown of Africa to the south of latitude 26° N. was so incomplete and so vague--perhaps even in the Laurentian Portolan the engrafting of a great theory on a tiny plant of fact--that the claim of first discovery in more southern regions cannot well be refused to Gil Eannes, Dinis Diaz, Cadamosto, and the other explorers of the Infant's school.

[Footnote 271: _E.g._, Legname for Madeira, "The Isle of
Wood."]

[Footnote 272: We must note that the ship of the Catalan
explorers, with the accompanying legend commemorative of the
expedition of 1346, is depicted in this map _as well to the
south of Bojador_.]

[Footnote 273: Though Nordenskjöld seems to think otherwise.]

[Footnote 274: See _Azurara_, vol. i, Plate 1, at end of
volume.]

On the other hand, all the Atlantic groups, except the Cape Verdes and some of the Azores, were evidently known in whole or part to some of the fourteenth-century navigators and draughtsmen.

A good deal of hearsay knowledge about the interior of Africa is also indicated, as we have seen, in some of these maps, especially the Dulcert of 1339, and the Catalan of 1375; and in this connection we must refer to what has been said upon the trade-routes of North Africa; but these elaborate pictures of mountain ranges, Moslem kings, traders with their camels, and towns on eminences, have little more pretence to scientific accuracy than the Negro Nile of so many old geographers, which is probably a mistaken combination of the real but separate courses of the Benue, the Niger, and the Senegal.

Once more we have seen that the first two portolani plainly influenced by Prince Henry's discoveries are the Valsecca[275] of 1434-9 and the 1448 map of Andrea Bianco, drawn in London; and that the 1436 Bianco is probably a copy of a thirteenth-century work, showing no clear evidence of the new explorations. As to the Bianco of 1448, we may here add a word to what has been already said. On this example we find the west coast of Africa end suddenly with Cape Rosso, or Roxo, immediately south of Cape Verde, and "from this point the coast is drawn straight eastward in a style which indicates that the country beyond is unknown;" the "outline of this southern shore of Africa being delineated according to the maps of the Macrobius type." The work of 1448 is frequently copied in following years; as, for example, on several designs of Gratiosus Benincasa (1435 to 1482), wherein the west coast of Africa, from Ceuta to Cape Verde, "has the same contours and the same names."[276] All of these charts are believed by Nordenskjöld to be copies of the same Portuguese original. On the other hand, "Benincasa's Atlas of 1471 is widely divergent as regards the legends, and extends much further south.[277] It reproduces the discoveries along the coast down to Pedro de Sintra's voyage of 1462-3, and seems in part to be based on direct information from Cadamosto."[278]

[Footnote 275: The Valsecca Map delineates the West African
coast to Cape Bojador (C. de Bujeteder). Beyond this the
outline of the coast is "suggested" for a distance about as
great as from the Straits to Bojador, but with no names or
legends except "Plagens arenosas," "Tarafal," "Bujeteder," and
at the extreme south, "Tisilgame."]

[Footnote 276: This is especially true of the Benincasa of
1467. Nordenskjöld gives twenty-eight parallel names from this
and the Bianco of 1448 between Bojador and Capes Verde and
Rosso.]

[Footnote 277: To Rio de Palmeri, immediately beyond Cape St.
Anne.]

[Footnote 278: This may be seen, as Nordenskjöld suggests
(_Periplus_, p. 127), by comparing the names on the lower part
of Benincasa's West Africa with the following names occurring
in Cadamosto's account of De Sintra's voyage: Rio di Besegue,
Capo di Verga, Capo di Sagres, Rio di San Vicenzo, Rio Verde,
Cape Liedo, Fiume rosso. Capo rosso, Isola rossa, Rio di Santa
Maria della nave, Isola di Scanni, Capo di Santa Anna, Fiume
della palme, Rio de Fiume, Capo di monte, Capo Cortesi, Bosco
di Santa Maria. Benincasa, however, appears to have access to
other sources besides Cadamosto, as many of his names are not
found in the latter.]

Lastly, a more special notice must be taken of the great map of Fra Mauro, 1457-9.

In this undertaking[279] Andrea Bianco is said to have assisted, and the work was (either originally or in copy) executed for the Portuguese Government, and assisted by the same. King Affonso V supplied the draughtsmen with charts on which the recent discoveries of Prince Henry's seamen were laid down. Payment was liberal (12 to 15 sous a day to every one of the common artisans and copyists); and the Doge Francesco Foscarini, "when he witnessed the plan and the beginning of Mauro's work," trusted that Prince Henry would find therein fresh reasons for pressing on his explorations. The completed mappemonde was sent to Portugal, in charge of Stefano Trevigiano, on April 24th, 1459. This was based, perhaps, in part on the map, or maps, illustrating the voyages of Marco Polo, in the Doges' Palace in Venice, apparently on one of the walls of the Sala della Scudo. The "Polo" portions of the New Design were, however, chiefly in the Far East. In N.W. Africa, Cape Verde and Cape Rosso are marked, and near the S.W. coast of the Continent is a long inscription about the Portuguese voyages, stating that the latter "here gave new names to rivers, bays, harbours, etc., and that they made new charts, of which he (Fra Mauro) had had many in his possession." At the extreme south point of Africa is the name "Diab," with a legend telling how an Indian junk was said to have been storm-driven to this point in about 1420, and (without reaching land) to have sailed further westward for 2,000 miles during forty days. After this the Indians turned back, and after seventy days' sail, returned to Cavo di Diab, where they found on shore a huge bird's egg, as large as a barrel.[280] Fra Mauro had also himself spoken with a trustworthy person, who said that he had sailed from India past Sofala to "Garbin," a place located in the middle of the west coast of Africa close to "Dafur." "Fundan," again, a little south of Cape Rosso, may represent some Portuguese coast-name which has not elsewhere survived.

[Footnote 279: See Zurla, _Il Mappemonde di Fra Mauro_,
Venezia, 1806, p. 62; Humboldt's _Kritische Untersuchungen_,
i, p. 274; Ongania and Santarem's Reproductions of the Map
itself; Nordenskjöld's _Periplus_, 127-8.]

[Footnote 280: Egg of the Rukh, or Roc?]

Yet, apart from these references, there is but little evidence of the new discoveries forthcoming, and, from a critical point of view, Fra Mauro's planisphere is somewhat disappointing. True it is in certain regions (its Mediterranean and Black Sea, for instance), of the portolano type, but in the more outlying parts of the world, and even in much of Africa, it is far more similar to one of the old Macrobius type of wheel-maps (continued in such fifteenth-century specimens[281] as the "Borgian" design of _c._ 1430), than to a specimen of enlightened cartography like the "Laurentian" example of 1351. The traditional centre at Jerusalem is not taken, but a point slightly north of Babylon serves instead. In Africa numerous tribes and cities are marked even beyond the Equator, in regions inscribed as "Inhabitabiles propter calorem;" but the general shape of the west coast is hardly satisfactory. Fra Mauro knows nothing of the great bend of the Guinea coast; N.W. Africa appears not as a great projection, but only as a gently-sloping shoulder of land; Cape Verde is not the westernmost point of the Continent. This position is given to the traditional "Promontory of Seven Mountains" (north of the Western Nile), which we have met with in earlier examples. To the south of the Green Cape appears a long and narrow inlet of sea,[282] which can hardly be supposed to represent in any way the South coast of "Guinea" from Sierra Leone to Benin, but perhaps is a combination and exaggeration of the great estuaries so recently visited by Henry's seamen--the Gambia, the Casamansa, the Rio Grande or Geba, and others. The Western or Negro Nile is drawn as flowing straight from Meroe in Nubia to the Atlantic, passing through a great swamp (Lake Chad?), an elongated piece of open water in the country of Melli (the Middle Niger in flood?), and the course of the Senegal. South of Cape Roxo, the coast, trending gradually south-east, exhibits a very broken contour and is fringed with many islands--evidence only too certain that the draughtsman is working by the light of imagination. Finally, although Africa is rightly conceived as on the whole projecting into the Southern Ocean, and having its length or greatest dimension from south to north rather than from east to west, it is greatly twisted out of shape by the inclination S.E., which bends round its southmost point almost to the longitude of Guzerat.[283] The general size of the Continent, however, is more accurately guessed[284] than on most maps of this or earlier time. Here Fra Mauro is nearer the truth even than the Laurentian Portolano of 1351, so far superior to the work of 1457-9 in many respects. Parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude are not indicated in the Camaldolese mappemonde, which has been sometimes referred to as "an immeasurable advance on all earlier cartography;" and the importance of this famous design, as an index to current geographical ideas, and as a world-picture of great size and magnificence, possessing in its time considerable official importance, must not lead us to take it as an example of cartographical perfection.

[Footnote 281: Cp. also the elliptical Florentine example of
1447 (Nordenskjöld, _Facsimile Atlas_, 116), or Leardus'
Mappemondes of 1448 and 1452 (_ibid._ 61).]

[Footnote 282: "Sinus Ethiopicus:" very similar to that
depicted on the Leardus of 1448. On the southern side of this
is "Fundan."]

[Footnote 283: Perhaps a Ptolemaic concession.]

[Footnote 284: Still more is this the case with Asia, where
Fra Mauro is in some ways more satisfactory than anywhere
else, and contrasts well even with the "Harleian" or Dieppe
Map of _c._ 1536, and many other similar works.]

* * * * *

The use of the magnetic needle is essentially connected with the portolan type of map; this instrument was well known to Prince Henry's sailors, and is referred to by the Infant himself as being, like the sailing chart, a necessity for navigators.[285] But it could hardly come into general employment till men reached beyond the mediæval stage of a magnetic needle enclosed in a tube so as to float on water.

[Footnote 285: _Azurara_, ch. ix.]

In the Discovery of the Compass four stages may be distinguished:

(1) The discovery of a species of stone with polar-magnetic qualities, _i.e._, with the power of attracting iron.

(2) The discovery that steel or hardened iron could be made polar-magnetic by rubbing it with a lode-stone.

(3) The discovery that the magnet (or magnetised iron) possessed the quality of definite direction, one of its poles always indicating the north, if it were so supported or suspended that it could move freely.

(4) The discovery of using the magnetised iron needle as a compass.

The first dates from a high antiquity, and is noticed by Plato, Theophrastus, Pliny, Ptolemy, Claudian, and many writers of the Mediæval as well as of the Classical period. The subsequent advances we cannot date, for Europe, earlier than the twelfth century; when Alexander Neckam and Guyot de Provins (_c._ 1190-1200) show us that some investigators had advanced as far as the third of the stages above recounted.

It is now generally understood that magnetic cars, "based on the same principle as the compass," were used in China much earlier than this. The Helleno-Roman world of antiquity, in describing the magnet, only dwelt on its attraction for iron, and did not notice its power of indicating the poles; whereas the Celestials were aware in the first place of the communication of magnetic fluid to iron, and in the second place of the mysterious power of iron so magnetized, as early as about A.D. 120. The earliest use of the water-compass in China is fixed by Klaproth at A.D. 1111-17; and as to the magnetic figures or magnetic cars with which in earlier times Chinese junks sailed to the south of Asia, and Chinese travellers made their way across the plains and mountains to the west of their country, it must not be assumed that their use was universal. Thus, in the fifth century A.D., when Wu-Ti, afterwards Emperor, stormed Singanfu (417 A.D.), he seized upon one of these as a great curiosity.

It is uncertain, as already remarked, when the complete compass, or even the polarity of the magnet, was first discovered in Europe. We may, however, note the following evidence:

(1) Alexander Neckam, an English monk of St. Albans (born 1157, died 1217), who had studied for some time in the University of Paris, refers more than once to what we may suppose was a compass needle, placed on a metal point.[286] This, he implies, was then in common use among sailors, and was not merely a secret of the learned. For, "when the mariners cannot see the sun clearly in murky weather or at night, and cannot tell which way their prow is tending, they put a needle above a magnet, which revolves until its point looks North and then stands still." These words were probably written between 1190-1200.

[Footnote 286: Cf. Neckam's references. (α) In his work,
_De Utensilibus_: "Qui ergo munitam vult habere navem ...
habeat etiam acum jaculo superpositam: rotabitur enim et
circumvolvetur, donec cuspis acus respiciat Septentrionem,
sicque comprehendent quo tendere debeant nautae, cum Cynosura
latet in aeris turbatione, quamvis ea occasum nunquam teneat
propter circuli brevitatem." (β) In his _De Naturis Rerum_,
c. 98: "Nautae ... mare legentes, cum beneficium claritatis
solis in tempore nubilo non sentiunt, aut ... cum caligine
... tenebrarum mundus obvolvitur, acum super magnetem ponunt,
quae circulariter circumvolvitur usque dum ejus motu cessante,
cuspis ipsius Septentrionalem Plagam respiciat."]

(2) Guyot de Provins, a satirist of Languedoc, in his poem, _La Bible_, written about 1200, wishes the Pope would more nearly resemble the Pole-star,[287] which always stands immovable in the firmament and guides the sailor. Even in darkness and mist can the Pole-star make itself felt. For the mariner has only to place in a vessel of water a straw pierced by a needle which has been rubbed with a black and ugly stone, that will draw iron to itself; and the point of the needle unfailingly turns towards the Pole-star.

[Footnote 287: "La tresmontaine."]

(3) Jacques de Vitry, the French historian-bishop, writing about 1218, in his _Historia Orientalis_, speaks of "the iron needle which always turns to the North Star after it has touched the magnet" or "adamant."[288]

[Footnote 288: "Acus ferrea, postquam adamantem contigerit, ad
stellam septentrionalem ... semper convertitur; unde valde
necessarium est navigantibus in mari."]

(4) "An unknown singer of the same period" speaks of sailors to Friesland, Venice, Greece or Acre, finding in the Pole-star a sign-post in heaven. Even in darkness and mist the star can still help them, for it has the same power as the magnet of attracting iron. So mariners attach an iron needle to a piece of cork and rub it with a black lodestone. The cork and needle are then put into water, and never fail to point to the north.

(5) Brunetto Latini, writing about 1260, tells how Roger Bacon showed him[289] a magnet, a stone black and ugly, and explained its use. If one rubbed a needle with it, and then put the needle, fixed to a straw, in water, the point of the needle always turned towards "the Star." By this the sailor could hold a straight course, whether the stars were visible or no.

[Footnote 289: In Oxford, A.D. 1258. This is not a very
certain tradition.]

(6) In the _Landnamabok_, or Icelandic Book of Settlement, the main text of which was finished before 1148, there occurs a passage, probably added about 1300,[290] which describes a voyage of the ninth century (_c._ 868) to Iceland, and explains the use of ravens to direct this early course--"for at that time the sailors of the northern countries had not yet any lodestone."

[Footnote 290: See Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, 50. "The
_Landnamabok_ was written by Are Torgillson Frode, who died in
1148;" but "the passage here in question first occurs in a
copy or revision by Hauk Erlandsson, who lived at the end of
the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth."]

(7) The Arabic author of the _Baïlak el Kibjaki_, or "Handbook for Merchants in the Science of Stones," relates how, in 1242, on a voyage from Tripoli to Alexandria, he himself witnessed the use of the polarized needle. He adds that Moslem merchants sailing to India, instead of the magnet-needle attached to a straw, tube or cork, used a hollow iron fish which, thrown into water, pointed north and south.

"Subsequently the instrument was improved by degrees, till it assumed the shape of a box, containing a needle moving freely on a metal point, and covered by a compass-rose." It is here probably that the share of Amalfi is to be found,[291] and it may have been Flavio Gioja, or some other citizen of the oldest commercial republic of Italy, who first fitted the magnet into the box, and connected it with the compass-card, thus making it generally and easily available.[292]

[Footnote 291: "Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis."]

[Footnote 292: Such a compass-box is figured on the margins of
some MSS. of Dati's _Sphera_ of the early fifteenth century.
See Nordenskjöld _Periplus_, p. 45.]

This it certainly was not in Latini's time. "No mariner could use it (the polarized magnet), nor would sailors venture themselves to sea ... with an instrument so like one of infernal make." In the latter part of the thirteenth century, and not before, its use seems to have crept in among Mediterranean pilots and captains, and in the course of the fourteenth century it was almost universally accepted.

A mistake has been made on one point. The first scientific (or portolano) type of map is generally associated with the first scientific use of the magnet; but portolani began while men had not advanced beyond the use of the primitive water-compass above described; and "accurate determination by means of this" must have been very difficult on a tossing sea. "A comparison of the contours of the Mediterranean, according to various portolanos, with a modern chart, shows that the normal portolano contained no mistake due to the misdirection of the compass."[293] Nor do the earliest portolani contain any compass-roses or wind-roses. Gradually these were introduced into the new charts,_ e.g._, they are found in the Catalan Atlas of 1375, in the Pinelli of 1384, and in many fifteenth-century portolani; but not till the sixteenth century do we have a number of these roses drawn on the same map-sheet.

[Footnote 293: _Periplus_, p. 47.]

The use of the quadrant by Prince Henry and his sailors is expressly mentioned by Diego Gomez; but neither in this case, nor in that of the compass, are we warranted in assuming (as some authorities have done) that to the Infant is due the first use of astronomical instruments at sea.

C. RAYMOND BEAZLEY.

13, THE PARAGON, BLACKHEATH.
_March 27th, 1899._

FACSIMILE OF PRINCE HENRY'S INITIAL SIGNATURE.
[I. D. A. = Iffante Dom Anrique.]

AZURARA'S CHRONICLE

OF THE

DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF
GUINEA.