to Asia, it is possible to mention several genuine attempts to anticipate the Portuguese along the Eastern or African mainland course. [Footnote 108: Raymond Lulli ["of Lull"] is thought by some to have made the first definite suggestion of this route in the central mediæval period. This "doctor illuminatus" was born at Palma in Majorca, 1235, became a Franciscan Tertiary in 1266, and died 1315. We may perhaps connect him with the very early school of portolano-draughtsmanship in the Balearics. See Map section of this Introduction.] The first of these, as far as known, is the voyage of Lancelot Malocello, of Genoa, in 1270. There is no proof that he started, like the adventurers of 1291, to find the ports of India: it is probable his ambitions were more modest; but we do not know how far he reached along the African mainland--only that he touched the Canaries, and staying there some time built a castle in Lancarote[109] island. [Footnote 109: = Lancelote? See pp. lxxviii-lxxix.] The next venture in this direction is also Genoese. In May, 1291,[110] Tedisio Doria and Ugolino de Vivaldo, with the latter's brother and certain other citizens of Genoa, equipped two galleys "that they might go by sea to[wards] the ports of India and bring back useful things for trade." But "after they had passed a place called Gozora,[111] nothing more certain has been heard of them." This is confirmed by Pietro d'Abano, writing in 1312; but in the fifteenth century one of Prince Henry's captains, the Genoese colleague of Cadamosto, Antoniotto Ususmaris or Uso di Mare, professed to give some more details. On December 12th, 1455, he wrote his creditors a letter, in which he stated[112] that the two galleys of "Vadinus and Guido Vivaldi," leaving Genoa in 1281 "for the Indies," reached the "Sea of Ghinoia," where one ship was stranded, but the other sailed on to a city of Ethiopia called Menam, where lived Christian subjects of Prester John, who held them captive. None ever returned, but Uso di Mare himself spoke with the last surviving descendant of those Genoese.[113] Menam, he concludes, was on the sea coast, near the river Gihon.[114] [Footnote 110: According to some authorities, 1281. See Giustiniani, _Castigatissimi Annali di Genova_, 1537, fol. cxi, verso. Giustiniani refers to Francesco Stabili, otherwise Cecco d'Ascoli, in his Commentary on the _De Sphaera Mundi_ of Sacrobosco (John of Holywood, in Yorks, _c._ A.D. 1225). The year 1291 corresponds with the fall of Acre, and the consequent embarrassment of the Syrian overland routes to Inner Asia.] [Footnote 111: At or near Cape Non, which, on the Pizzigani Map of 1367, is marked "Caput Finis Gozole."]