ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 107 



brated Infante Henry Duke of Viseo, and founder of the Academy 

 of Sagres, which was presided over by the pilot and cosmographer 

 Mestre Jacome of Majorca; but the Portulano Mediceo, the work 

 of a Genoese navigator in 1351, already contains the name of 

 Cavo di Non. The passage round this cape was then as much 

 dreaded as that of Cape Horn has since been, although it is 23' 

 north of the parallel of Teneriife, and could be reached in a few 

 days' voyage from Cadiz. The Portuguese proverb, " quern passa 



Cabo di Num, ou tornara ou nao," could not deter the Infante, 

 whose heraldic French motto, " talent de Men faire," expressed his 

 noble, enterprising, and vigorous character. The name of the 

 cape, in which a play of words on the negative particle has long 

 been supposed, does not appear to me to have had a Portuguese 



1 origin. Ptolemy placed on the north-west coast of Africa a river 

 iNuius, in the Latin version Nunii Ostia. Edrisi speaks of a town, 

 'Nul, or Wadi Nun, somewhat more to the south, and three days' 

 j journey in the interior : Leo Africanus calls it Belad de Non. 

 Long before the Portuguese squadron of Gilianez, other European 



avigators had advanced much beyond, or to the -southward of, this 

 pe. The Catalan, Don Jayme Ferrer, in 13,46, as we learn 

 rom the Atlas Catalan published by Buchon at Paris, had ad- 

 anced as far as the Gold River (Rio do Ouro), in lat. 23 56'; 

 nd Normans, -at the end of the 14th century, as far as Sierra 

 Leone in lat. 8 30'. The merit of having been the first to cross 

 he Equator on the western coast of Africa belongs, however, like 

 lat of so many other memorable achievements, to the Portuguese. 



( 1? ) p. 30. "As a grassy plain, resembling many of the Steppes 

 of Central Asia" 



The Llanos of Caraccas and of the Rio Apure and the Meta, 

 ver which roam large herds of cattle, are, in the strictest sense of 

 ;he term, " grassy plains." Their prevalent vegetation, belonging 

 o the two families of Cyperaceae and Gramineae, consists of various 

 pecies of Paspalum, P. leptostachyum and P. lenticulare ; of Kyi- 

 ingia, K! monocephala (Rottb.), K. odorata; of Panicum, P. 

 ranuliferum, P. micranthum; of Antephora; Aristida; Vilfa; 

 ind Anthistiria, A. reflexa, and A. foliosa. Only here and there 



