DISCOVERY OF CAPE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 64, 17 March 1933, Page 5

DISCOVERY OF CAPE

ACCEPTED DATE WJMMG

TWO YEARS EARLY

The best-known date in South African history is wrong. .

In every part of the Union thousands of books, more especially schoolbooks, have been mistaken about the first and in many ways most famous date in her chronicles. Bartholomew Diaz did not discover the Cape of Good Hope ia 1486, as has "been_ supposed. Neither did he do so in 1487, as stated by the Union of South Africa Official Government Year Book (page 953). In fact, the Cape of Good Hope was discovered in 1488, writes Eric Eosenthal in the "San Francisco Chronicle." The authority for this statement is no less than Christopher Columbus. Curiously enough, the official account of the voyage- of Bartholomew, Diaz, written shortly after the event,-is also wrong. . Joao de Barros in his "History of the Portuguese Conquest of Asia," dated 1506, describing how King John of Portugal sponsored exploration of the unknown African coast, says that "he resolved to send, in the year 1486, ships by sea, to see the end of this matter." Without being too particular about dates, de Barros proceeds to tell how Diaz's expedition, having passed the Cape, turned home, " reaching it in December of the year 1487, having been, absent sixteen months and seventeen days from the time they set out' on it." Dr. J. M. Theal, South Africa's chief authority, said: "No other dates than those given by early Portuguese historians are available; thus the exact time of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope-and the coast onward to the mouth of the Infante River is doubtful, and it can only be stated as having occurred in the early months of 1487." That date.has been perpetuated by a multitude of reference books, including encyclopaedias, while school children all over the world have been taught accordingly. / RECORDED BY FRENCHMAN. Prom Seville, Spain, now comes tht information that this is an error. In a famous collection in that city known as the "Columbina," whereia are preserved relics directly and indirectly connected with Christopher Columbus, is a valuable manuscript by a French scholar, Pierre D'Ailly, known as "Imago Mundi." This document contains all the exploratory knowledge gathered up to the end of the fifteenth, century, and was actually used by the discoverer of America in preparing for . his various voyages. Columbus marked on folio 13 of the book the fact that Bartholomew Diaa found the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and that on 2nd February of that year he had been at the place now called Mossel Bay. D 'Ailly was personally present when Diaz returned from his famous voyage and was received by King John of Portugal, when the monarch declared that the foreland should not be the Cape of Storms," but. the "Cape of Good Hope." Here, too, he saw Bartholomew Diaz, explaining his navigating chart to the- Court. Historians are satisfied that da Barros, upon whose statements the accepted version has been based, made a mistake. Commenting on the discovery: a Johannesburg schoolmaster observes-It-is fully as surprising as if we discovered that William tie Conqueror did not arrive in 1066, or that the date for Julius Caesar's landing in England was two years wrong." '

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