62 MAPS AND THEIR MAKERS 



information was deliberately withheld from the cartographer 

 by the Portuguese authorities. They, after all, were well 

 informed on the progress of their navigators. In causing the 

 world map to be drawn, they were presumably interested in 

 the sea-route round Africa to the Indies, and as we have seen, 

 the latest information on the spice islands was incorporated in it. 

 On the southern island, 'Diab', already mentioned, there 

 are a number of names, including 'Xegiba' (Zanzibar), 'Soffala' 

 'Chelue' (Kilwa) and *Maabase' (Mombasa). These names are 

 of Arab origin, and Arabs had been active on this coast for 

 centuries. The strength of tradition and its influence on 

 European cartographers is strikingly illustrated in a legend 

 placed near the southern extremity which has attracted much 

 attention. It reads 



* 'About the year of Our Lord 1420 a ship or junk of 

 India on a crossing of the Sea of India towards the islands 

 of men and women was driven beyond the Cape of Diab 

 and through the Green Islands and the darkness towards 

 the west and south-west for forty days, finding nothing but 

 air and water, and by their reckoning they ran 2,000 miles 

 and fortune deserted them. They made the return to the 

 said Cavo de Diab in seventy days and drawing near to the 

 shore to supply their wants the sailors saw the egg of a bird 

 called roc, the egg being as big as a seven gallon cask, and the 

 size of the bird is such that from the point of one wing to 

 another was sixty paces and it can quite easily lift an elephant 

 or any other large animal. It does great damage to the in- 

 habitants and is very fast in its flight." 



(Elsewhere he says he had spoken to persons who had been 

 driven forty days beyond the Cavo de Soffala.) The roc is of 

 course the fabulous bird of the 'Arabian Nights'. But the 

 interesting point is that, five hundred years before Fra Mauro's 

 time an Arab chronicler writing about Sofala has a very similar 

 story of a vessel not only being driven by storm but also 

 encountering the roc. Fra Mauro was here drawing ultimately 

 on Arabic sources, and the doubt arises whether any significance 

 should be attached to the date of 1420. There is other evidence 



