Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/54

 dated 1367, and preserved in the library of Parma, lays down the African coast as far as Cape Bojador, in a way generally in conformity with the results of the most careful modern surveys. The people of Dieppe on their part claim for their ancestors the glory of having founded a "Little Dieppe" on the Guinea Coast in 1364, and of having in 1402 colonised the Canaries under the orders of Jean de Béthencourt. The Portuguese also, whose navigators claimed to be the first to

sail into the waters of the "Impenetrable Sea" and open up the "Dark Ocean," regard their missionaries of the sixteenth century as the pioneers in the chief discoveries made in the interior of the continent. Yet long after the time of these missionaries, the maps of Africa continued to be disfigured by the names of peoples described as the "Tongueless," the "Noseless," the "Opistodactyles," with fingers grown backward, or of "Pygmies fighting the cranes for their food."