The sum
paid for this copy, and the account of expenditure, are detailed in a MS.
account in the monastery of St. Michael.
The third, and by far the most important part of Dr. Vincent's
dissertation, examines what the map contains respecting the termination cf
Africa to the south. On the first inspection of the map it is evident, that
the author has not implicitly followed Ptolemy, as he professes to do. The
centre of the habitable world is fixed at Bagdat. Asia and Europe he
defines rationally, and Africa so far as regards its Mediterranean coast.
He assigns two sources to the Nile, both in Abyssinia. On the east coast of
Africa, he carries an arm of the sea between an island which he represents
as of immense size, and the continent, obliquely as far nearly as the
latitude and longitude of the Cape of Good Hope. This island he calls Diab,
and the termination on the south, which he makes the extreme point of
Africa, Cape Diab.
The great object of Mauro, in drawing up this map, was to encourage the
Portuguese in the prosecution of their voyages to the south of Africa. This
is known to be the fact from other sources, and the construction of the
map, as well as some of the notices and remarks, which are inserted in its
margin, form additional evidence that this was the case. Two passages, as
Dr. Vincent observes, will set this in the clearest light.
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