height of 9,186 feet. It is generally supposed that Cape Nun was discovered in 1433 by the Knight Gilianez, despatched under the order of the celebrated Infante, Henry, Duke of Viseo, and founder of the Academy of Sagres, which was presided over by the pilot and cosmographer, Mestre Jacomè, of Majorca; but the _Portulano Mediceo_,—the work of a Genoese navigator of the year 1351,—already contains the name of “Cavo di Non.” The doubling of this Cape was as much dreaded as has been since then the passage round Cape Horn; although it is only 23′ north of the parallel of Teneriffe, and might be reached by a few days’ sail from Cadiz. The Portuguese adage, “Quem passa o Cabo de Num, ou tornarà ou não,” could not intimidate the Infante, whose heraldic French motto of “Talent de bien faire,” well expressed his noble, enterprising, and vigorous character. The name of this Cape, which has long been supposed to originate in a play of words on the negative particle, does not appear to me to be of Portuguese origin. Ptolemy placed on the north-west coast of Africa a river _Nuius_, in the Latin version _Nunii ostia_. Edrisi refers to a town, Nul, or Wadi Nun, somewhat further south, and about three days’ journey in the interior, named by Leo Africanus _Belad de Non_. Several European navigators had penetrated far to the south of Cape Nun before the Portuguese squadron under Gilianez. The Catalan, Don Jayme Ferrer, in 1346, as we learn from the _Atlas Catalan_, published at Paris by Buchon, had advanced as far as the Gold River (_Rio do Ouro_), in 23° 56′ north lat.; while the Normans, at the close of the fourteenth century, reached Sierra Leone in 8° 30′ north latitude. The merit of having been the first to cross the equator in the Western Ocean incontrovertibly belongs, like so many other great achievements, to the Portuguese. Footnote 17: p. 7.—“_As a grassy plain, resembling many of the Steppes of Central Asia._”