At the beginning of the fourteenth century, as we have seen, there is no cartographical evidence of knowledge extending far beyond the Straits of Gibraltar--either down the mainland shore or among the Islands in the Ocean. But on Dulcert's Portolan of 1339, and on other productions of the same epoch, such as the _Conosçimiento_ of about 1330, we meet with some of the Islands, and with the Continental coast as far as Bojador. Thus, in the _Conosçimiento_ and the Laurentian Portolano of 1351, "the most important of the Azores, the Madeira group, and the Canary Islands, are denoted by the names they still bear," or by the prototypes of these names.[271] The same Medicean or Laurentian map of 1351, the Pizzigani of 1367-1373, the Catalan[272] of 1375, and others, "bear inscriptions even beyond C. Bojador"--inscriptions, however, which do not in their scattered and half-fabulous character give any decisive evidence of actual exploration to the south of this point before Henry's time.[273] Moreover, the shape of Africa in the "Atlante Mediceo" of 1351,[274] suggests--though it can hardly be said to prove--actual observations far beyond Cape Bojador made by the crews of storm-driven or India-seeking ships. But, after all, the map knowledge shown of Africa to the south of latitude 26° N. was so incomplete and so vague--perhaps even in the Laurentian Portolan the engrafting of a great theory on a tiny plant of fact--that the claim of first discovery in more southern regions cannot well be refused to Gil Eannes, Dinis Diaz, Cadamosto, and the other explorers of the Infant's school. [Footnote 271: _E.g._, Legname for Madeira, "The Isle of Wood."] [Footnote 272: We must note that the ship of the Catalan explorers, with the accompanying legend commemorative of the expedition of 1346, is depicted in this map _as well to the south of Bojador_.] [Footnote 273: Though Nordenskjöld seems to think otherwise.] [Footnote 274: See _Azurara_, vol. i, Plate 1, at end of volume.] On the other hand, all the Atlantic groups, except the Cape Verdes and some of the Azores, were evidently known in whole or part to some of the fourteenth-century navigators and draughtsmen. A good deal of hearsay knowledge about the interior of Africa is also indicated, as we have seen, in some of these maps, especially the Dulcert of 1339, and the Catalan of 1375; and in this connection we must refer to what has been said upon the trade-routes of North Africa; but these elaborate pictures of mountain ranges, Moslem kings, traders with their camels, and towns on eminences, have little more pretence to scientific accuracy than the Negro Nile of so many old geographers, which is probably a mistaken combination of the real but separate courses of the Benue, the Niger, and the Senegal.