Liberia <*- 



who, in consulting this Portolano, chose to add a correction of 

 his own. In any case this map is a very remarkable guess at 

 the real configuration of the West African coast-line, drawn as 

 it was in 1351, at least a century before the Portuguese had 

 published the positive results of their West African discoveries. 

 No doubt much in this map is due to the information given 

 by Moors and Arabs to Italian geographers. To this source is 

 obviously due the delineation of the upper course of the Niger 

 and the outline of Lake Chad. Nevertheless, if we could turn 

 back the leaves of the book of time, and see the West African 

 coast as it was in the fourteenth century, we might descry 

 Norman, Majorcan, and Genoese sailors trafficking with the 

 blacks of Senegambia and Liberia for ivory and Guinea pepper, 

 possibly even for gold on the Gold Coast. 



There can be little doubt (although it is hotly denied by 

 Portuguese historians — who indeed have endeavoured to relegate 

 the Norman adventurers on the West Coast of Africa to the 

 region of myth) that the trade in gold, ivory, and pepper 

 started by those Norman adventurers (whose attempts to seize 

 the Canary Islands had already excited Portuguese ambitions) 

 had come to the knowledge of Prince Henry the Navigator, 

 and had, with other influences, created in him the desire to 

 send forth the Portuguese on similar voyages of discovery. 

 His desire in its accomplishment led to the turning of the 

 Cape of Good Hope and the revelation of the sea-route to 

 Arabia, Persia, India, the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago, 

 China, Japan, and Korea.^ 



1 The very citation of these East Asiatic names shows us that we first received 

 our existing versions from the Portuguese. 



36 



