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A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama 1497-1499

Note 457 — APPENDIX G.

Ernest Georg Ravenstein translation

Charts on a larger scale, but of a later date, are available, and enable us to trace the physical features of the coast, but their nomenclature is not always that of the original discoverers. Nor are we so fortunate as to possess such full descriptions of the coast as are to be found in the “Africa Pilot”, for the Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis (1505) of the famous Duarte Pacheco Pereira stops short at the Rio de Infante; whilst works such as Linschoten’s Itinerarium ofte Schipvaert, belong either to a much later epoch, or are of too general a nature to prove of use when attempting to identify the more obscure place-names. I think it was Admiral Ignacio da Costa Quintella, the author of the Annaes da marinha Portugueza, who regretted that the task of writing the history of Portuguese exploration should have devolved almost exclusively upon landsmen, who neglected to give satisfactory accounts of the routes followed by the early navigators. This regret we fully share.

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