Entries tagged with: libson
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Circumnavigation of Africa
The truth is that it would be as easy to name the discoverer of gunpowder or steam-power as to find the first circumnavigator of the African continent. I have no difficulty in believing that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians were capable of making the voyage. They were followed to West Africa in early days, according to El-Idrisi and Ibn. el-Wardi, by the Arabs. The former (late eleventh century) relates that an Arab expedition sailed from Lisbon, shortly after the eighth century, and named Madeira and Porto Santo the ’Islands El-Ghanam and Rákah.’ However that may be, the first Portuguese occupants found neither men nor ruins nor large quadrupeds upon any of the group. The English accident of hitting upon Madeira, and the romantic tale of Master Robert à Machim, or Machin, or Macham, and Mistress Anne d’Arfet, or Darby, or Dorset, which would have suited Camoens, and which I have told...
Posted on May 31, 2007 3:27 PM
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