Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/97

 *[Footnote: which, bearing no fruit, lived eighty years. (Grundzüge der Botanik, 1843, S. 1003).

With the dragon trees, which, notwithstanding the gigantic development of their closed vascular bundles, must by reason of their floral parts be placed in the same natural family with asparagus and garden onions, we must associate the Adansonia (monkey bread-tree, Baobab,) as being certainly among the largest and oldest inhabitants of our planet. In the very first voyages of discovery of the Catalans and Portuguese, the navigators were accustomed to cut their names on these two species of trees, not merely to gratify the desire of handing down their names, but also to serve as marks or signs of possession, and of whatever rights nations claim on the ground of being the first discoverers. The Portuguese navigators often used as their "marco" or token of possession the French motto of the Infant Don Henrique the Discoverer. Manuel de Faria y Sousa says in his Asia Portuguesa (T. i. cap. 2, pp. 14 and 18):—"Era uso de los primeros Navegantes de dexar inscrito el Motto del Infante, talent de bien faire, en la corteza de los arboles." (Compare also Barros, Asia, Dec. I. liv. ii. cap. 2, T. i. p. 148; Lisboa, 1778.)

The above-named motto cut on the bark of two trees by Portuguese navigators in 1435, twenty-eight years therefore before the death of the Infante, is curiously connected in the history of discoveries with the elucidations to which the comparison of Vespucci's fourth voyage with that of Gonzalo Coelho, in 1503, has given rise. Vespucci relates that Coelho's admiral's ship was wrecked on an island]*