but the Canaries and the north-west coast of
Morocco. Cape Non, or Cape Bojador, was still the European Furthest on
the African coast.

The French Seigneur was stirred up to attack the Fortunate Islands by
two events. First in 1382 one Lopez, a captain of Seville sailing to
Gallicia, was driven by a tempest to Grand Canary, and lived among the
natives seven years till he and his men were denounced for writing home
and inviting rescue. To stop this intrigue they, the "thirteen Christian
brothers" whose testament reached Bethencourt twelve years later, were
all massacred. News of this and of the voyage of a Spaniard named
Becarra to the same islands at the same time, reached Rochelle about
1400, and found several French adventurers ready for a trial. The chief
of these, Jean de Bethencourt, Lord of Grainville, and Gadifer de la
Salle, a needy knight, started in July, 1402, to conquer in the sea a
new kingdom for themselves. Though the leaders quarrelled and Grand
Canary beat off all attacks, the enterprise was successful in the main,
and several of the islands became Christian colonies,--a first step
towards the colonial empires of the great European expansion, as the
record of Bethencourt's chaplains is the first chapter of modern
colonial history.

But nothing is clearer in this tract than its limitations. The French
colonists as late as 1425 seem to know nothing of the African coast
beyond Cape Bojador; they look upon the Canaries rather as an extension
of Spain and of Europe than as the beginning of a new world. They are
anxious to get to the River of Gold and traffic there, but they do not
know the way, save by report. De Bethencourt had been to Bojador
himself, and "if things in that country are such as they are described
in the Book of the Spanish Friar," he meant to open a way to the River
of Gold, for, the Friar says, "it is only one hundred and fifty leagues
from Cape Bojador, and the map proves the same--which is only a three
days' voyage for sailing boats--whereby access would be gained to the
land of Prester John, whence come so many riches." But as yet our
Normans are only "eager to know the state of the neighbouring countries,
both islands and _terra firma_:" they do not know the coast beyond the
"Utmost Cape" of Bojador, which had taken the place of the first Arab
Finisterre, Cape Non,[28] Nun, or Nam, as the limit of navigation.

[Footnote 28: Cape Non = Fish Cape. But Latini took it as = Not, "from
th