Note 125 — Chapter I

Charton (Voyageurs, iii. 75) gives a partial bibliography of the literature of the discovery and conquest. The best English book is Major’s Conquest of the Canaries, published by the Hakluyt Society, London, 1872, which is a translation, with notes, of the Béthencourt narrative; and the same author has epitomized the story in chapter ix. of his Discoveries of Prince Henry. There is an earlier English book, George Glas’s Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands, London, 1764, 1767, which is said to be based on an unpublished manuscript of 1632, the work of a Spanish monk, J. de Abreu de Galineo, in the island of Palma. The Béthencourt account was first published in Paris, 1630, with different imprints, as Histoire de la première descovverte et conqueste des Canaries. Dufossé prices it at from 250 to 300 francs. The original manuscript was used in preparing the edition, Le Canarien, issued at Rouen in 1874 by G. Gravier (Leclerc, no. 267). This edition gives both a modern map and a part of that of Mecia de Viladestes (1413); enumerates the sources of the story; and (p. lxvi) gives D’Avezac’s account of the preservation of the Béthencourt manuscript. The Spanish translation by Pedro Ramirez, issued at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1847, was rendered from the Paris, 1630, edition.