The French Conquest of the Canaries in 1402-6, and the Authority for the Same Author(s): C. Raymond Beazley Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1905), pp. 77-81 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1775986 Accessed: 27-06-2016 02:30 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 02:30:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE FRENCH CONQUEST OF THE CANARIES IN 1402-6. 77 supply of water foi Egypt is ample, and the Blue Nile could be safely drawn upon for local needs. The construction of a reservoir, though of limited storage capacity, south of Rosaires, would materially assist in augmenting the winter discharge of the Blue Nile; and a beginning might be made in the irrigation of the northern portion of the Ghezira, particularly to the north of Wad Medani. But the projects of constructing a barrage on the Blue Nile, for controlling the river Gash, and for obtaining additional supplies from the rivers Dinder, Rahad, Settit, and Atbara, have yet to be studied, and a series of levels run, before any definite schemes can be formulated. In Appendix I. Sir William Garstin enumerates the following works, which deserve special attention:- (1) The remodelling of the Bahr el-Gebel. (2) The construction of a barrage in the Blue Nile. (3) A canal system in the Ghezira in connection with this barrage. (4) The regulation of the river Gash. (5) The construction of a storage reservoir somewhere in Sudan territory, south of Rosaires. (6) The regulation of the Victoria and Albert lakes. " Of these," he says, " the first and last will be undertaken more in the interests of Egypt than of the Sadan, except as regards the Nile valley north of Khartum. The others are designed for the benefit of the Sudan alone." From Khartum to Berber the conditions are quite different to those on the Blue Nile, and resemble those of Upper Egypt and Dongola. In regard to Egypt, more particularly, none of these schemes are of extreme urgency except the provision of escape power for the Nile during an exceptional flood. Sir William Willcocks' suggestions and proposals in this respect are dealt with in Appendix I. under the following heads: (1) the raising of the Aswan dam; (2) the utilization of the Wadi Rayan depres- sion as a secondary reservoir; and (3) the remodelling of the Rosetta branch of the Nile. The combination of the first two schemes, making the one the complement of the other, is an entirely novel idea, and a striking instance of the high capacity of its author; but space precludes our dealing with these technical matters, as well as with the indeterminable question of cost. A. S. W. THE FRENCH CONQUEST OF THE CANARIES IN 1402-6, AND THE AUTHORITY FOR THE SAME. By C. RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A. THE French conquest of the Canaries, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, that first chapter of modern colonial history, has long been considered to rest upon an authority (' Le Canarien') of exceptional value, being not only a contemporary witness, but written by men who were present at, and took part in, the events here recorded with such a wealth of life-like and picturesque detail. And in many respects this view is correct enough. For the Livre de la Conqueste et Conversion des Canariens . en 1402 . par Jean de Bethencourt . compose par Pierre Bontier (sic), moyne de S. Jouin de Marnes, el Jehan le Verrier, prestre seculier, chapelains du dix seigneur, printed by Pierre Bergeron in 1630, collated by d'Avezac with the Mont Ruffet manuscript of c. A.D. 1482 (from which Bergeron seems to have worked, and which Charton used for his' Voyageurs ancieas et modernes' of 1855), is, after all, one form of the original record of this Norman conquest in the Atlantic. It is also, combined with the results of d'Avezac's collation of the This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 02:30:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 78 THE FRENCH CONQUEST OF THE CANARIES IN 1402-6, manuscript aforesaid, the form reproduced and translated by Major in 1872 for the Hakluyt Society; in other words, the standard form for English scholars of the last generation. But it is not the most original, nor the most trustworthy form; for the history of the French expedition to the Fortunate islands is here revised to suit the views of the Bethencourt family. It therefore magnifies the figure of Jean de Bethencourt, depreciates the achievements and importance of his colleague, Gadifer de la Sale (or Salle), and combines the original narrative of Pierre Boutier the Benedictine and Jean le Verrier the secular priest, with additions of various kinds, such as the last twenty-five chapters of Major's edition, following upon the description of the Canary islands (Hak. Soc. edition, pp. 140-220). Its representation of many incidents is totally different from that of the primitive Record lately rediscovered, where the writers' sympathies are clearly with Gadifer, and where Jean de Bethencourt is unsparingly criticized-not in reference to his treatment of his wife, as in the later Redaction, but in regard to his conduct in the joint leadership of the Canary conquest. Gadifer de la Salle, through the words of his chaplain and advocate, Pierre Boutier, has once more, after the silence of centuries, made himself heard. The acquisition of the Egerton manuscript No. 2709 by the British Museum in 1888 has produced this result. The manuscript in question, formerly in the possession of the Baroness de Hensch de Langry, is of much earlier date than that from which Bergeron, Charton, d'Avezac, and Major worked; it belongs to the first quarter of the fifteenth century (c. A.D. 1420); it contains a reference to the Papal schism ended in 1429 (fol. 29b, "nous auons deux papez," etc.); it is usually composed in the first person plural, and not, like the text of 1482, in the third person; and it un- questionably represents an older (probably the very earliest) form of the conquest narrative. It implicitly contradicts the tradition that Jean le Verrier dictated to Pierre Boutier the record to which these two ecclesiastics jointly set their names. It makes clear that the two ecclesiastics aforesaid were not, as suggested by the later text, both chaplains of Bethencourt, but that Boutier was the spiritual attendant of Gadifer. Finally, as already noticed, it furnishes Gadifer's statement of the whole episode of the Canarian invasion, and supplies a number of detailed accusations of inefficiency, slackness, disingenuousness, fussy assumption of superiority, and the like, against Jean de Bethencourt. This Egerton manuscript, henceforth its primary authority for the French conquest of the Canaries and the first extension of European influence to the Atlantic islands, before its acquisition by the British Museum, had remained wholly without notice or collation ; a short but excellent description of it is given in the ' Catalogue of Additions to B. Mus. MSS.,' 1888-93, and a transcript of it was made by Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith for M. Pierre Margry and printed (un- fortunately with many mis-readings) in the latter's 'Conquete . des . .. Canaries,' 1896. But no one has yet made an adequate comparison of this text with that given by Major and d'Avezac, although the main features of difference have been already pointed out both by the Museum 'Catalogue of Additions ' above quoted by Margry. It may, therefore, be of use, by certain select examples, to warn English students who may touch on, or in any way interest themselves in this fascinating chapter in the History of Exploration, that the old standard text, given to them and translated for them in the Hakluyt Society's putlica- tions, can no longer be taken as sufficient. Here and there it adds points not in the Egerton manuscript, but (within the period common to both) it omits far more important matters represented only in the latter. And among these we have first and foremost the matter of the chief credit and honour. In Major's text these are almost wholly due to Bethencourt; in Egerton they are mainly Gadifer's. This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 02:30:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms AND THE AUTHORITY FOR THE SAME. 79 To show how important are the modifications now introduced into the received account, it will be enough to compare the more interesting variants of the preface and the first nine chapters. At the beginning, the 'Livre nomme le Canarien' speaks of the present Norman conquest of the Canary isles (qui se dient les Isles de Canare) as parallel to the Christian conquests of heathen lands in olden time. Here both texts agree; but whereas in that of Major Bethencourt only is named as leading the enterprise, in Egerton Gadifer is not merely mentioned but placed first.