What Azurara says here about the Nile, etc., is largely borrowed from Solinus, _Collectanea_, xxxii; Pliny, _Natural History_, v, 51-59; viii, 89-97; _Pomponius Mela_, iii, viii, 9. We may also (for mediæval ideas on the Nile, etc.) cf. Dicuil, _De Mensura Orbis Terrae_, vi, 4, 7, etc.; ix, 6 (on Mount Atlas); St. Basil, _Hexaemeron_, iii, 6; Vibius Sequester; Procopius, _De Bell. Goth._, ii, 14, 15; iv, 29; St. Isidore, _Origins_, xiv, 5; Ven. Bede, _De Natur. Rer._; and above all, Edrisi (Jaubert), i, 11-13, 17-19, 27-33, 35, 37, 297, 301-5, 312, 315, 320-325, ii, 137; Masudi, _Meadows of Gold_, ch. xiv (see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. xliv-l, and _Dawn of Modern Geography_, pp. 267-8, 323-6, 367, 462-3, 348, 363, 365.)] [Endnote 155: (p. 191). _Fish or some other natural product of the sea._--[This important passage is one proof the more of the priority of our discoveries on the west coast of Africa.]--S. Not, of course, an absolute proof, though it strengthens the plausibility of the Portuguese claim.] [Endnote 156: (p. 193). _Arms of the Infant._--[This island, as well as the other of which mention is made above, where these sailors encountered the Arms of the Infant carved upon the trees, are very clearly marked, as between Cape Verde and the Cape of Masts, on a curious map of Africa in the unpublished _Atlas_ of Vaz Dourado, executed in 1571 (see _Mémoire sur la navigation aux côtes occidentales d'Afrique_, by Admiral Roussin, p. 61--_Des iles de la Madeleine_).]--S.] [Endnote 157: (p. 193). _This tree_, etc.--[This is the baobab, a tree noted for its enormous size, and which is to be met with on the Senegal, on the Gambia, and even on the Congo, at which point Captain Tucklay (Tuckey) mentions it among the trees to be found on the banks of the Zaire. This tree had been described by Adanson (_Histoire Naturelle du Sénégal_, Paris, 1757, pp. 54 and 104), and from this circumstance Bernardo Jussieu gave it the name of Adansonia. Its trunk is sometimes more than 90 ft. in circumference (see the work cited above). Our mariners, and Azurara himself, however, described it 310 years before the French naturalist who gave it the botanical name by which it is now known.]--S.] [Endnote 158: (p. 194). _Rio d'Ouro._--[Some French writers, who have lately treated of the famous Catalan Atlas in the Royal Library of Paris, to which they assign the date of 1375, assert that the Catalans reached the Rio d'Ouro before the Portuguese, because on this map is marked a galliot, with a legend referring to Jayme Ferrer, who sailed to a river of that name (in 1346).