Freiburger historische Bestände - digital

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in 1485. " King Furfur''s Country " is undoubtedly Benin,
and if Behaim has placed the legend referring to it about
a hundred leagues inland he did so only for want of space.
Behaim, elsewhere, states that King Furfur's Country is
at a distance of 1,200 leagues from Portugal, and this
distance, measured on the Globe, carries us a hundred
leagues beyond the Rio do lagoa (Lagos), as far as a Rio
de Behemo (Behaim river), an appellation undoubtedly
intended to point out the discoverer of the river, but
absolutely ignored by all his contemporaries.1 It is, however
, more likely that merely new names were given to
rivers previously discovered. For on Soligo's " Ginea
Portugalexe " (1484) fourteen rivers are shown between
the Rio dos Ramos and the Rio dos Camaroes, including
a Rio de S. Jorge and a Rio de S. Clara to the west of
the Cabo Formoso, and a Rio de S. Bartholomeu
immediately to the east of it.

The Guinea Islands.

The islands in the Gulf of Guinea, we are told, were
" found " by the vessels which the King sent forth from
Portugal in 1484, but they were actually discovered, with
the possible exception of Annobom, during the reign of
King Affonso, who died in 1481.

Fernando P6, a cavalier of the household of that King,
discovered, about 1471, the ilha formosa which now bears
his name.

The ilhas de S. Thome and S. Antao (Antonio) were
perhaps discovered by Ruy de Sequeira, on his return
from the Cabo de S. Catharina, the last discovery made
during the reign of King Affonso.2 The revenues of
S. Antao having been granted to Prince Joao, the future
King John II., when nineteen years of age (i.e. in 1474),
the island was re-named Ilha do Principe, the Prince's
Island, and under that name it figures on the Globe, as on
all the available maps of the period.

The captaincy of S. Thome was granted to Joao de
Paiva on September 24, 1485, and its earliest colonists
arrived there on December 16 of the same year. He was
succeeded, in 1490, by Joao Pereira; in 1493 by Alvaro
*de Caminha, who sent thither the children of Jews who
had been expelled from Spain in 1492,3 and " degradados "
or convicts; and in 1498 by Fernao de Mello. King
John, in a conversation with Dr. Monetarius, in 1494,
spoke of this deportation, but Behaim, whose Globe was
made in 1492, may refer to an earlier deportation
consequent upon the cruel persecution of the Jews which,
instigated by the Pope, took place in Portugal in 1487.4

1 I fancy that this Rio de Behemo may be identical with the Rio
Formoso, or river of Benin.

■ The Saints' days are, St. Catherine, November 25, St. Thomas,
December 21, St. Anthony, January 17.

3 King John received these fugitives on condition of their paying a
ransom and departing the kingdom within a limited time, on pain of being
made slaves.

* Ruy de Pina, c. 29.

Insula Martini—-Anno bom.

The Insula Martini of the Globe appears to have been
named by Behaim in his own honour. It is undoubtedly
identical with the Ilha do Anno bom. The omission of
this island on Soligo's "Ginea Portugalexe,"5 which was
drawn immediately after the return of Cao from his first
voyage in 1484, does not conclusively prove that the
island had not been discovered at that time, for Duarte
Pacheco Pereira, the author of the ' Esmeraldo de situ
orbis,' who wrote his work after 1505, and had access to
all official documents, was equally ignorant of its existence
.6 The existence of the island cannot, indeed, have
remained unknown for any length of time to vessels
trading to the Gulf of Guinea, for it lies within the
equatorial current, which carries a homeward-bound vessel
at a rate of from 20 to 50 miles daily to the westward.
Already Ruy de Sequeira, returning from the Cabo de
S. Catharina, may thus have passed within sight of it, for
it is visible for over forty miles, whilst traders bound
homeward from Benin or Bonny, and desirous of avoiding
the tedious struggle against the strong current flowing
eastward along the Guinea coast, would try to make all
the southing they could, and having passed Prince's Island
and St. Thome', would cross the Line, one or two degrees
beyond which they would be carried westward by the
equatorial current. By this route the passage from
Bonny to Sierra Leone has been accomplished in less than
three weeks, whilst vessels keeping near the coast have
been as long as three months. This southern course may
frequently have taken a vessel within sight of Anno bom,
and as most of these vessels were traders and not royal
ships, this may account for the ignorance of official
historians. Indeed, I believe that the island was sighted
or " discovered " repeatedly without much notice being
taken of the fact. Valentin Ferdinand, on the authority
of Gon^alo Pirez, a Portuguese skipper, who had been
engaged for years in the trade of S. Thome, states that
Anno bom was discovered on January 1,1501 in a caravel
of Fernao de Mello, the captain donatory of that island,
when it was found that seven years previously a fishing
boat with three negroes in her, only one of whom was
still alive, had been carried thither by the currents from
the river Congo.7 This seems to have been the " official "
discovery of the island, which has retained the name then
bestowed upon it up to the present time, but it was not
the " first" and real discovery, unless we reject the account

• See p. 26.

8 As was also Waldseemiiller or Hylacomilus when he compiled his
map of the world in 1507, and the modern maps which appeared in the
Strassburg edition of Ptolemy in 1513. Waldseemiiller was born about
1470 at Radolfzell, studied at Freiburg, and is the author of two large
maps of the world only recently discovered and published by J. Fischer
and F. R. von Wieser (the oldest map of the world with the name
America, Innsbruck, 1903). He died in 1521. See L. Gallois ('Americ
Vespucci,' 1900) and F. Albert ('Zeitschrift f. Oesch. desOberrheins.' XV.
1901, p. 510).

J 'Bol. da Soc. de Geogr.,' Lisbon, VI., 1900, p. 353.