Note 35 — Chapter I

Barros, Dec. I., lib. iii., cap. iv., p. 190, says distinctly, "Bartholomeu Diaz, e os de sua compantica per causa dos perigos, e tormentas, que em o dobrar delle passáram che puyeram nome Tormentoso." The merit of the first circumnavigation, therefore, does not belong to Vasco de Gama, as is generally supposed. Diaz was at the Cape in May, 1487, and, therefore, almost at the same time that Pedro de Covilham and Alonzo de Payva of Barcelona commenced their expedition. As early as December, 1487, Diaz himself brought to Portugal the account of his important discovery. The mission of Pedro Covilham and Alonzo de Payva, in 1487, was set on foot by King John II., in order to search for "the African priest Johannes." Believing the accounts which he had obtained from Indian and Arabian pilots in Calicut, Goa, Aden, as well as in Sofala, on the eastern coast of Africa, Covilham informed King John II., by means of two Jews from Cairo, that if the Portuguese were to continue their voyages of discovery upon the western coast in a southerly direction, they would come to the end of Africa, whence a voyage to the Island of the Moon, to Zanzibar, and the gold country of Sofala, would be very easy. Accounts of the Indian and Arabian trading stations upon the east coast of Africa, and of the form of the southern extremity of the Continent, may have extended to Venice, through Egypt, Abyssinia, and Arabia. The triangular form of Africa was actually delineated upon the map of Sanuto, made in 1306, and discovered in the "Portulano della Mediceo-Laurenziana," by Count Baldelli in 1351, and also in the chart of the world by Fra Mauro.—Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 290, 461.