Thus the French colonists in the early fifteenth century, in Prince Henry's boyhood, know nothing first-hand, nothing save half-legendary rumours, about the African coast beyond Cape Bojador. They are anxious to reach the River of Gold, and traffic there, but they do not know the way. Of Petit Paris, Petit Dieppe, La Mine, and other Norman settlements or factories beyond Cape Verde, they give no sign. The late and doubtful[135] tradition of Macham's discovery of Madeira (_c._ 1350-1370) does not concern the exploration of the African mainland, except that after the death of the "discoverer" in his island, some of his sailors were said to have escaped in the ship's boat (according to the story) to the Continent, to have been made prisoners by the Berbers, and to have been held in slavery till some of the survivors were ransomed in 1416. But all this, if true, belongs to the well-known coast within Cape Non, and in no manner furthered exploration, except as regarded the island group of Madeira and Porto Santo.[136] [Footnote 135: Admitted by Nordenskjöld with singular facility: _Periplus_, pp. 115-6. As to the Portuguese sailor named Machico, and the possibility that the Machico district of Madeira was named after him or one of his descendants, see below, pp. lxxxiv-lxxxv.] [Footnote 136: See Atlantic Islands.] Fra Mauro preserves a tradition[137] of two voyages from India or the East coast of Africa round the Southern Cape--one in 1420, the other at an unfixed date. These, he says, had been accomplished by a person with whom he actually spoke, who claimed to have passed from Sofala to "Garbin," in the middle of the West coast, as it is marked on Fra Mauro's planisphere. If genuine, they would be the last anticipations of Prince Henry's enterprises left to chronicle; but few have placed much confidence in these statements, which seem indeed incredible in the form they are related by the Venetian draughtsman. [Footnote 137: See Map section.] THE ATLANTIC ISLANDS. I. BEFORE PRINCE HENRY. The history of the exploration of the Azores, the Canaries, and the Madeira group, before Prince Henry's time, seems to deserve a special notice in this place.