Reliable evidence of French voyages to the Gold Coast of Guinea can only be quoted for the sixteenth century. Thus Braun in 1617, and Dapper some time shortly before 1668, inspected buildings and collected traditions from the natives on that shore which alone would prove these later expeditions, if they were not confirmed by several documents in Ramusio, Temporal, and Hakluyt.[127] Equally reliable is the tradition of Béthencourt's _Conquest of the Canaries_ in 1402, etc.; yet the authors of this history, Béthencourt's chaplains, give no hint of any knowledge possessed by their countrymen about the mainland coast beyond Cape Bojador, but rather imply the reverse. Finally, though so many of the best sixteenth-century maps are Dieppese, none of these show the fourteenth-century settlements, which are also wanting in all charts of the earlier time. The controverted names are first found on a map of 1631, by Jean Guérand; and this is probably not unconnected with the fact that in 1626 Rouen and Dieppe united for trade with the Guinea coast. [Footnote 127: See De Bry's _Collection des petits Voyages_, Frankfort, 1625; Oliver Dapper's _Description of Africa_ (in Dutch), Amsterdam, 1668; Ramusio's _Collection_, Ed. of 1565, iii. p. 417 _verso_, in the _Discorso sopra la Nuova Francia_; Dr. David Lewis' _Letter to Burleigh_, March 9, 1577. Santarem's _Priority of Portuguese Discoveries, etc._ (1842), is mainly directed against the French claims.] It is of course possible, as M. d'Avezac long ago argued from the evidence of the great Portolani of the fourteenth century, especially the Laurentian or Medicean[128] of 1351, the Pizzigani[129] of 1367, and the Catalan of 1375, that some unrecorded advance was accomplished along the African mainland coast during the middle years of this century; the imperfection of our records must never be forgotten; and we shall return to this question in another section. But nothing definite and certain can be gathered about the coast beyond Cape Bojador, except in a few small points.[130] With the Atlantic islands the case was very different. [Footnote 128: Genoese.] [Footnote 129: Venetian.] [Footnote 130: Unless the contour of the Laurentian Map of 1351 is held to prove a circumnavigation of Africa shortly before 1351. The comparative accuracy of this outline, so incredibly good as mere guesswork, must remain one of the chief _cruces_ of Mediæval geography.]