It is evident that the two accounts are at variance, as the first asserts that the passage was round Cape Diab, at the termination of Africa, and the second that it was round Cape Sofala, fifteen degrees to the north of the extremity of this quarter of the world:  but without attempting to reconcile this contradiction, it is abundantly evident that Mauro, by noticing the Portuguese navigators, as having reached 2000 miles to the south of Gibraltar, and adding that 2000 miles more of the coast of Africa had been explored by an Indian ship, meant to encourage the further enterprises of the Portuguese, by the natural inference that a very small space of unsailed sea must lie between the two lines, which were the limits of the navigation of the Portuguese and Indian vessel.  The unexplored space was indeed much greater than Mauro estimated and represented it in his map to be; but, as Dr. Vincent remarks, his error in this respect manifestly contributed to the prosecution of the Portuguese designs, as the error of the ancient geographers, in approximating China to Europe, produced the discovery of America by Columbus.

We have dwelt thus long on the map of Mauro, as being by far the most important of the maps of the second description, or those in which were inserted real or supposed discoveries.  The rest of this description require little notice.

A map of the date of 1346, in Castilian, represents Cape Bojada in Africa as known, and having been doubled at that period.  A manuscript, preserved at Genoa, mentions that a ship had sailed from Majorca to a river called Vedamel, or Rui Jaura (probably Rio-do-Ouro,) but her fate was not known.  The Genoese historians relate that two of their countrymen in 1291, attempted to reach India by the west; the fate of this enterprize is also unknown.  The Canary Islands, the first discovery of which is supposed to have taken place before the Christian era, and which were never afterwards completely lost sight of, being described by the Arabian geographers, appear in a Castilian map of 1346.  Teneriffe is called in this map Inferno, in conformity with the popular notion of the ancients, that these islands were the seat of the blessed.  In a map of 1384, there is an island called Isola-di-legname, or the Isle of Wood, which, from this appellation, and its situation, is supposed by some geographers to be the island of Madeira.  It would seem that some notions respecting the Azores were obscurely entertained towards the end of the fourteenth century, as islands nearly in their position are laid down in the maps of 1380.

In the library of St. Marc, at Venice, there is a map drawn by Bianco, in 1436.  In it the ancient world is represented as forming one great continent, divided into two unequal parts by the Mediterranean, and by the Indian Ocean, which is carried from east to west, and comprises a great number of islands.  Africa stretches from west to east parallel to Europe and Asia, but it terminates to the north of the equator.