Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/39





WEST AFRICAN ISLANDS.

HE Azores, or "Hawk" Islands, are the most oceanic of all the Atlantic archipelagoes. Rising from abysses some 2 miles deep, San-Miguel, their easternmost point, lies 830 miles due west of the Portuguese Cape Roca, and 930 miles from Cape Cantin, the most The archipelago is still farther removed from the New World, Corvo, the north-westernmost islet, being over 1,000 miles distant from Cape Race in Newfoundland, the nearest American headland, 2,400 miles from St. Thomas, at the north-east angle of the Antilles, and 1,800 from the Bermudas, which, although lying in deep water, advanced headland on the Marocco coast. may still be regarded as belonging geographically to America.

Disposed in three groups of unequal size, the Azores are scattered over nearly three degrees of latitude and more than six of longitude ; but of this vast marine area, about 80,000 square miles in extent, the space occupied by dry land is extremely small, all the islands together having an area of scarcely more than 1,000 square miles. The population, however, is relatively greater than that of the mother country, Portugal, exceeding two hundred to the square mile, although there is much waste and uninhabitable land on the upper slopes and about the volcanic cones.

Since the middle of the fourteenth century, that is to say, eighty years before they were first visited by the Portuguese, the Azores were already known to the Mediterranean seafarers navigating the dreaded waters of the "Mare Tenebrosum,' or "Gloomy Sea." A Florentine document, dated 1351, already presents a correct outline of the whole group, except that they are turned in the direction from north to south instead of from south-west to north-east. Two of the islands have even preserved, in slightly modified form, their Italian names; the farthest removed from Europe, after having been called the Insula de Corvis Marinis, has become the Ilha do Corvo, or "Raven Island;" while San-Zorze, whose very name shows that it was a Genoese discovery, has taken the Spanish appellation of San-Jorge. The Azores were first sighted in 1431 by the Portuguese while occupied with the