[Endnote 117: (p. 142). _Cape Tira._--[In the old maps we meet with no _cape_ of this name, but combining this passage with what our author says in ch. xxx (How Nuno Tristam went to Tira), and with the distance of 80 leagues which they navigated after leaving the Isle of Herons, or of Arguim, it appears that the cape to which Azurara gives this name, or to which our first navigators gave the name of Tira, was a point, or "tira," of land at the embouchure of the Senegal, at a place marked in the old maps a little beyond Palma Seca, an inscription which is to be read on many (of the ancient charts), and especially on that of João Freire of 1546, and on that of Vaz Dourado of 1571. Although on this last there appears marked a point in close proximity with the name of Tarem, which is not met with in the preceding (maps). Be this as it may, by the distances of latitude between Arguim and that point at the mouth of the Senegal, it appears that the _Cape of Tira_ of which our author speaks, is the place which we indicate. Notwithstanding the unfortunate laconism of Azurara about a fact so interesting for the history of geography, we nevertheless see clearly by this passage that the exploration of the bays, inlets, and points of that part of the coast of Africa was steadily pressed on; that all these points were successively examined by our sailors; and that to these same men are due the names which served for the hydro-geographical nomenclature (of W. Africa) adopted by all nations from the end of the fifteenth century to nearly the end of the seventeenth (see as to this our _Memoria sobre a prioridade dos descobrimentos Portuguezes na costa d'Africa occidental_, § ix).]--S.] [Endnote 118: (p. 143). _Turtles._--[This passage shows that these mariners were navigating among the great banks and shoals of sand which exist between the isles of Arguim and the mouth of the Senegal. "And they saw an island, which is further out than all the others, but small and very sandy." Combining this account with the map which we meet in vol. i of the work of the Abbé Demanet (_Nouvelle Histoire de l'Afrique_) we perceive two islands clearly marked to the west of the last (sand-) bank, and in front of the places which, on the ancient Portuguese charts are indicated as Tarem, Palmar, and Palma Seca (as in the maps of Freire, 1546, of the Royal Library, and of Vaz Dourado). Also in the following chapter our author says "They afterwards saw another island which was separated by an arm of the sea that ran between the two--to wit, that in which they were, and the other they had in sight."]--S. The lake, or fiord, of Obidos, between Atouguya and Pederneira (p. 143) is in the Estremadura province of Portugal, an inlet on the coast, 47 miles N.N.W. of Lisbon.] [Endnote 119: (p. 146). _Arguim._--See notes 75 and 97, pp. 58 and 103.]