The Hispano-Italian voyage of 1341 appears to have been solely occupied with the exploration of the Canaries, which were now becoming pretty well known, and we leave over any further notice of this for the present; but the Catalan expedition of 1346 was to some extent similar, both in object and method, to the Genoese expedition of 1291. "The ship of Jayme Ferrer," according to the Catalan Mappemonde of 1375, "started for the River of Gold[116] on St. Lawrence's Day, 1346."[117] To the same effect the Genoese archives[118] assert "On the Feast of St. Lawrence there went forth from the city of the Majorcans one galley of John Ferne the Catalan, with intent to go to Rujaura.[119] Of the same nothing has since been heard."[120] And on the Map of 1375 already noticed, upon the third sheet, is depicted off Cape Bojador the picture[121] of the ship in question adjoining the legend above-quoted. We may notice, however, that Guinea, the gold land of Africa, and not India, was the objective of this voyage--although Guinea was the first step on the African route to India--and that the venture, as Major says, was apparently designed only for the discovery of the supposed Negro river in which gold was collected: a guess of Mediterranean merchants[122] from the information of Moorish middlemen. [Footnote 116: _I.e._, Guinea.] [Footnote 117: 10th August.] [Footnote 118: See Papers presented to Archives of Genoa by Federico Federici, 1660. Reference discovered by Gräberg af Hemsö.] [Footnote 119: The River of Gold.] [Footnote 120: Yet, proceeds this record, the "river [of gold] is a league wide and deep enough for the largest ship. This is the Cape of the end ... of W. Africa."] [Footnote 121: Nordenskjöld, _Periplus_, p. 114 (1897), gives a confirmation from experience. "There is hardly any doubt that the ship-drawing on the Atlas Catalan is in the main correct.... Even in my time, Norwegians went out fishing on Spitzbergen in large undecked boats, somewhat like that of Ferrer."] [Footnote 122: Such as dealt in Guinea products, especially malaguette pepper, at Nismes, Marseilles, and Montpellier.] Beginning with the year 1364, the French also claimed to have made important advances along the African coast route. The men of Dieppe, it is said, repeatedly sailed beyond Cape Verde, and even Sierra Leone, and founded settlements on what was afterwards called the La Mina coast.[123] These stations, called Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, etc., lasted till 1410, when home troubles caused their abandonment,[124] like the temporary evacuation of the French Ivory Coast Settlements after 1870; but during the forty or fifty years of their existence, they carried on a regular trade with the Norman ports. [Footnote 123: "The Mine" of Hakluyt and early English geographers.]