Note 117 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 3)

(p. 142). Cape Tira.—[In the old maps we meet with no cape of this name, but combining this passage with what our author says in ch. xxx (How Nuno Tristam went to Tira), and with the distance of 80 leagues which they navigated after leaving the Isle of Herons, or of Arguim, it appears that the cape to which Azurara gives this name, or to which our first navigators gave the name of Tira, was a point, or "tira," of land at the embouchure of the Senegal, at a place marked in the old maps a little beyond Palma Seca, an inscription which is to be read on many (of the ancient charts), and especially on that of João Freire of 1546, and on that of Vaz Dourado of 1571. Although on this last there appears marked a point in close proximity with the name of Tarem, which is not met with in the preceding (maps). Be this as it may, by the distances of latitude between Arguim and that point at the mouth of the Senegal, it appears that the Cape of Tira of which our author speaks, is the place which we indicate. Notwithstanding the unfortunate laconism of Azurara about a fact so interesting for the history of geography, we nevertheless see clearly by this passage that the exploration of the bays, inlets, and points of that part of the coast of Africa was steadily pressed on; that all these points were successively examined by our sailors; and that to these same men are due the names which served for the hydro-geographical nomenclature (of W. Africa) adopted by all nations from the end of the fifteenth century to nearly the end of the seventeenth (see as to this our Memoria sobre a prioridade dos descobrimentos Portuguezes na costa d'Africa occidental, § ix).]—S.