Italy and the Spain of Fra Mauro and Prince Henry, and
it will seem to be almost absurd to ask the question: Do these belong to
the same civilisation, in any kind of way? What would the higher
criticism answer, out of its infallible internal evidence tests? Of
course, these are quite different. The one is merely a collection of
the scratchings of savages, the other is the prototype of modern maps.
Yet the Christian world is answerable for both kinds; it had struggled
through ignorance and superstition and tradition into clearer light and
truer knowledge.

[Illustration: WESTERN SECTION OF THE MAPPE-MONDE OF FRA MAURO. 1457-9.
(SEE LIST OF MAPS)]

And when Greek geography came to be reprinted and revived, this was in
part at least a consequence of that revival of true science which had
begun in that very dark time, the night of the twelfth century, where we
are not likely to see any signs of dawn till we look, not so much at
what is written now, as at what the poor besotted savages of the ages of
Abelard and Bernard and Aquinas and Dante have left to bear witness of
themselves.

Between Henry's return from Alcacer and his death, while the great
Venetian map was in making, two years went by, years in which Diego
Gomez was finding the Cape Verde islands and pushing the farthest south
of European discovery still farther south, but of the Prince's own
working, apart from that of his draughtsmen, we have little or nothing,
but a set of charters. These charters were concerned with the trade
profits of the Guinea commerce and the settlers in the new found lands
off the continent--Madeira, the Azores, the Canaries,--and have an
interest as being a sort of last will and testament of the Prince to his
nation, settling his colonies, providing for the working of the lands he
had explored, before it should be too late. Already on the 7th June,
1454, Affonso had granted to the Order of Christ, for the explorations
"made and to be made at the expense of the aforesaid Order," the
spiritual jurisdiction of Guinea, Nubia, and Ethiopia, with all rights
as exercised in Europe and at the Mother house of Thomar.

Now on the 28th December, 1458, Prince Henry granted "in his town" that
"the said Order should receive one twentieth of all merchandise from
Guinea," slaves, gold and all other articles; the rest of the profit to
fall to the Prince's successor in this "Kingdom of the Seas." In the
same way on the 18th September, 1460, the Prince