Note 222 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 6)

(p. 289). Toil in arms.—[Barros could not supply the want of a continuation of the text of Azurara (Dec. I, Bk. i, cap. i, fol. 32). This great historian confesses that everything he relates of the prosecution of these discoveries is taken from some memoranda he found in the Torre and in Treasury Books of King Affonso V. To show how deplorable it is that Azurara did not complete this Chronicle, at least as far as the death of the Infant, and include the discoveries made from this year of 1448 to 1460, it suffices to say that from this year henceforward all is confusion in the dates and events relative to this prosecution both in Barros and in Goes (Chronica do principe D. João, ch. viii, which is devoted to these discoveries).

Barros limits himself to citing, in the year 1449, the licence given by the king to D. Henry to people the seven islands of the Azores. From this year he leaps to the year 1457, in which he only speaks of the king's donation to the Infant D. Fernando, and only in the year 1460 does he relate that at this time Antonio de Nolli, a Genoese by nation and a noble man, "who owing to some troubles in his own country had come to this kingdom" in company with Bartholemew de Nolli, his brother, and Raphael de Nolli, his nephew, obtained a licence from the Infant to go and discover the Cape Verde Islands; and that some servants of the Infant D. Fernando went on the same discovery at the same time by Prince Henry's order.

So he (Barros) leaves us in ignorance of the regular progress of our discoveries on the west coast of Africa from 1448, the year in which Azurara finished this Chronicle, until 1460, in which the Infant died. Damião de Goes, who pretended to relate more exactly and circumstantially these events, leaves us in the same confusion in ch. viii of the Chronicle of the Prince D. John, where he treats of Prince Henry's discoveries; and, besides, he makes a great mistake regarding the portion of coast discovered to the year 1458 (see ch. xvi, pp. 39 and 40 of the work cited), an error which is refuted by what Azurara says in ch. lxxviii of this present Chronicle.]—S.

Santarem is mistaken in assuming (see note 219, to p. 286) that "Antonio da Nole" and Antoniotto Uso di Mare are one and the same.