MAGELLANIC CLOUDS. 45 



the Straits of Bab-el-Mande'b, is situated in 12° 45', aivd Lo- 

 heia in 15'-' 44' north latitude. The settlement of many Ara- 

 bian colonies on the eastern coast of Africa, between the trop- 

 ics, north and south of the equator, naturally led to a mor6 

 special knowledge of the southern stars. 



The wcitern coasts of x*.5"ica beyond the line were first 

 visited by some of the more cultivated European pilots (espe- 

 cially Catalanians and Portuguese). Undoubted documents, 

 such as the Map of the World of Marino Sanuto Torsello, of 

 the year 1306, the Genoese Portulano Mediceo (1351), the 

 PLanisferio cle la Palatina (1417), and the Maiiioa-raondo 

 di Fra Mauro Camaldolese (between 1457 and 1459), prove 

 that the triangular configuration of the southern extremity of 

 the African Continent was known 178 years before the so- 

 called ^/s^^ discovery of the Cabo Torniefitoso (Cape of Good 

 Hope) by Bartholomseus Diaz, in the month of May, 1487.* 

 The importance of such a commercial route, rapidly increas 

 ing from the time of Gama's expedition, was, on account of 

 the common aim of all West-African voyages, the occasion of 

 the two Southern Clouds being designated by the pilots Cai^p- 

 Clouds, as rem.arkable celestial phenomena seen during voy- 

 ages to the Cape. 



The constant endeavors made to advance along the eastern 

 shores of America, beyond the equator, and even to the south- 

 ern extremity of the continent, directed the attention of mar- 

 iners uninterruptedly to the southern stars, from the period of 

 Alonso de Hojeda's expedition, in which Amerigo Vespucci 

 took part (in 1499), to that of Magellan and Sebastian del 

 Cano in 1521, and of Garcia de Loaysa,t with Francisco de 



* See my geographical investigations on the discovery of the south- 

 ern extremity of Africa, and on the statements of Cardinal Zurla and 

 Count BaldelU in the Examen Crit. deVHist. de la Geographic aux quin- 

 zieme el seiziemc siecles, torn, i., p. 229-348. The discovery of the Cape 

 of Good Hope, wliich Martin Behaim calls the Terra Fragosa, and not 

 Caho Tormentosa, was made, singularly enough, when Di;.iz came /rom 

 the east (from the Bay of Algoa, 33° 47' south latitude, and more than 

 7° 18' east of Table Bay). — Lichtenstein, in Das Vaterlutidische Muse- 

 tim, Hamburgh, 1810, § 372-389. 



t The merit of the discovery of the soutnernmost extremity of the 

 new continent in 55° south latitude (whose importance has not been 

 Butficiently estimated), is due to Francis de Hoces, who commanded 

 one of the ships of the expedition of Loaysa in 1525. It is very char- 

 acteristically described in Urdaneta's Journal by the words acabainientc 

 de tierra, " the ceasing of land." De Hoces probably saw a portion of 

 Terra del Fuego west of Staten Island, for Cape Horn is situated, ac 

 cording to Fitzroy, in 55° 58' 41". — See Navarette, Viages y descKbrim. 

 de los Espanoles, torn, v., p. 28, 404. 



