ds.]

The first work in hand was the rediscovery of coasts and islands that
had ceased to be visited even before the breaking up of the Roman
Empire. For more than a thousand years the Madeiras and Canaries had
been well-nigh forgotten, and upon the coast of the African continent no
ship ventured beyond Cape Non, the headland so named because it said
"No!" to the wistful mariner.[382] There had been some re-awakening of
maritime activity in the course of the fourteenth century, chiefly due,
no doubt, to the use of the compass. Between 1317 and 1351 certain
Portuguese ships, with Genoese pilots, had visited not only the Madeiras
and Canaries, but even the Azores, a thousand miles out in the Atlantic;
and these groups of islands are duly laid down upon the so-called Medici
map of 1351, preserved in the Laurentian library at Florence.[383] The
voyage to the Azores was probably the greatest feat of ocean navigation
that had been performed down to that time, but it was not followed by
colonization. Again, somewhere about 1377 Madeira seems to have been
visited by Robert Machin, an Englishman, whose adventures make a most
romantic story; and in 1402 the Norman knight, Jean de Bethencourt, had
begun to found a colony in the Canaries, for which, in return for aid
and supplies, he did homage to the King of Castile.[384] As for the
African coast, Cape Non had also been passed at some time during the
fourteenth century, for Cape Bojador is laid down on the Catalan map of
1375; but beyond that point no one had dared take the risks of the
unknown sea.

[Footnote 382: The Portuguese proverb was "Quem passar o Cabo
de Nao ou voltara ou _nao_," i. e. "Whoever passes Cape _Non_
will return or _not_." See Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_,
tom. i. p. 173; Mariana, _Hist. de Espana_, tom. i. p. 91;
Barros, tom. i. p. 36.]

[Footnote 383: An engraved copy of this map may be found in
Major's _Prince Henry the Navigator_, London, 1868, facing p.
107. I need hardly say that in all that relates to the
Portuguese voyages I am under great obligation to Mr. Major's
profoundly learned and critical researches. He has fairly
conquered this subject and made it his own, and whoever touches
it after him, however lightly, must always owe him a tribute of
acknowledgment.]

[Footnote 384: See Bontier and Le Verrier, _The Canaria