Prince Henry, who was born March 4, 1394, died Nov 15, 1463. He was the third son of John I. of Portugal; his mother was a daughter of John of Gaunt, of England.] The African explorations of the Portuguese are less visionary, and, as D’Avezac says, the Portuguese were the first to persevere and open the African route to India.[139] The peninsular character of Africa—upon which success in this exploration depended—was contrary to the views of Aristotle, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy, which held to an enclosed Indian Ocean, formed by the meeting of Africa and Asia at the south.[140] The stories respecting the circumnavigation of Africa by the ancients are lacking in substantial proof; and it seems probable that Cape Non or Cape Bojador was the limit of their southern expeditions.[141] Still, this peninsular character was a deduction from imagined necessity rather than a conviction from fact. It found place on the earliest maps of the revival of geographical study in the Middle Ages. It is so represented in the map of Marino Sanuto in 1306, and in the Lorentian portolano of 1351. Major[142] doubts if the Catalan map of 1375 shows anything more than conjectural knowledge for the coasts beyond Bojador. Of Prince Henry—the moving spirit in the African enterprise of the fifteenth century—we have the most satisfactory account in the _Life of Prince Henry of Portugal, surnamed the Navigator, and its Results ... from Authentic Contemporary Documents_, by Richard Henry Major, London, 1868,[143]—a work which, after the elimination of the controversial arguments, and after otherwise fitting it for the general reader, was reissued in 1877 as _The Discoveries of Prince Henry the Navigator_. These works are the guide for the brief sketch of these African discoveries now to be made, and which can be readily followed on the accompanying sketch-map.[144] [Illustration: SKETCH-MAP OF THE PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES IN AFRICA. Cf. Heinrich Wuttke’s “Zur Geschichte der Erdkunde in der letzten hälfte des Mittelalters: Die Karten der Seefahrenden Völker süd Europas bis zum ersten Druck der Erdbeschreibung des Ptolemäus,” in the _Jahrbuch des Vereins für Erdkunde in Dresden_, 1870; J. Codine’s “Découverte de la côte d’Afrique par les Portugais pendant les années, 1484-1488,” in the _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris_, 1876; Vivien de Saint-Martin’s _Histoire de la géographie et des découvertes géographiques, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours_, p. 298, Paris, 1873; Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 81; Clarke’s _Progress of Maritime Discovery_, p. 140; and G. T. Raynal’s _Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes_, Geneva, 1780; Paris, 1820. Paulitschke’s _Afrika-literatur in der Zeit von 1500 bis_ 1750, Vienna, 1882, notes the earliest accounts.]