1900-1.] Spanish Documents Relative to the Canary Islands. 29 



CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF SPANISH DOCUMENTS 

 RELATIVE TO THE CANARY ISLANDS, SUBMITTED 

 TO THE WRITER BY SENOR DON JUAN BETHEN- 

 COURT ALFONSO, OF TENERIFE. 



By John Campbell, LL.D., F.R.S.C, Etc., 



Professor in the Presbyterian College, Montreal. 



(Read 26th January, igoi). 



A VALUABLE treatise, published in Paris, and bearing date 1629-30, 

 is entitled : " Histoire de la premiere Descouverte et Conqueste des 

 Canaries. Faite des I'an 1402, par Jean de Bethencourt, Chambellan 

 du Roy Charles VI., etc." A translation of it is to be found in the 

 publications of the Hakluyt Society, which first appeared in 1872. 

 De Bethencourt was the first European discoverer of the Canary 

 Islands, which passed into the hands of Spain, in whose possession 

 they still remain. A lineal descendant of the Conquistador is Senor 

 Don Juan Bethencourt Alfonso, a doctor of medicine and scholar of 

 note in Tenerife. With a generous confidence in the philological 

 attainments of the writer, he sent him last summer (1900), through 

 M. Henri O'Shea, of Biarritz, member of the Royal Academy of 

 History of Madrid, three important documents presenting problems 

 for solution. These are a printed pamphlet of fifty-six pages octavo, 

 entitled, " Vocabulario del antiquo Dialecto de los Canaries " ; a folio 

 manuscript of seventy-seven pages, designated, " Complemento al 

 Vocabulario del antiquo Dialecto de los Canarios"; and a nineteen 

 page manuscript quarto, with many pen and ink illustrations, bearing 

 the heading, " Aclaraciones : Inscripciones de las islas Canarias." 



The first contains vocabularies of the Guanche or Canary Island 

 language, now extinct, taken down from the lips of the aborigines 

 from 1503 onward. A few words go farther back, at least as far as 

 1482. The vocabularies embrace Religious Concepts, Titles, Arms, 

 Clothing and Utensils, Aliments, Animals and Vegetables, Proper 

 Names of Persons and Places, Miscellaneous Words, and a few Phrases 

 or Sentences. They are from Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, 

 Tenerife, Gomera, Palma and Hierro. The second implements the 



