Note 214 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 5)

(p. 275). Rocks.—[We saw before how Gomez Pires, on reaching the Rio do Ouro, cast anchor at the mouth of the river, and afterwards made his way up the stream to a port at its furthest part, which our mariners had named the Porto da Caldeira, where he stayed twenty-one days in order to establish commercial relations with the Arabs of the African hinterland. But, as these negociations came to nothing, he set sail and moved four leagues from there towards the other bank of the river, and came upon an island in the river (the "ilot de roches très élevé" of the maps of Admiral Roussin); and after they had made eleven leagues in all, they met with the Arabs, who took refuge in "some very big rocks that were there." These rocks are the seven mountains marked in maps by our mariners of that time, and they are depicted in the Mappemonde of Fra Mauro (1460), and copied from these very Portuguese nautical charts—the "lofty mountains" of the globe of Martin de Behaim, of Nuremburg.]—S.