A curious accident happened to this priceless geographical document in 1839. Georges Sand obtained leave to see it. Up to that time the stiff parchment had been rolled up in a tin case. It was brought out and spread on a table. The famous novelist, to keep it down, took up an inkstand and placed it on the edge of the map. But the parchment, which had been rolled up for centuries, was too strong. It flew back and the ink was upset. Georges Sand, horrified at what she had done, ran straight out of the house. Luckily the injury was not serious, and is confined to the part outside the Mediterranean. The precious map now has a room to itself in the Montenegro palace at Palma. It is framed and glazed on both sides, and kept in a locked case covered with crimson velvet.
The outline of the Mediterranean is almost exactly correct. The lines of the Valseca _portolano_ placed over the coast-lines of a modern chart correspond very nearly, especially the western part. Italy is slightly out in longitude. The Valseca _portolano_ includes Great Britain, Ireland, Jutland, the Euxine and Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea painted bright red. The chart is covered with rhumb-lines. The Nile is separated into two, one taken through Abyssinia and the other away to the Niger region. There are kings on their thrones, and every country has its arms painted on flags. The golden shield of Aragon, with its four pales gules, flies over Aragon, Majorca, Sardinia, and Sicily. It is interesting to see the south of Spain painted green, for the Moors were still at Granada. There are several legends in minute handwriting on the map. Majorca may well be proud of having in her island in this priceless map the most valuable and interesting geographical document of the fifteenth century. Next to it comes the _mapa mondi_ of Jayme Cresques, also of Catalonian origin, and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris.
The fame of the geographers of Majorca, for their profound knowledge as navigators and skill as cartographers, spread over Europe. When Prince Henry founded his celebrated school for pilots at Sagres, as an essential part of his plans for the discovery of the African coast, he found no one more competent to direct it than ‘Maestro Jacome de Mallorca,’ a most able navigator and constructor of nautical instruments. But the Majorcan sailors did not confine themselves to these important studies, nor to cruises in the Mediterranean. They undertook voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules in very early times. On August 10, 1346, Jayme Ferrar set sail from Palma, passed through the Straits, and coasted along Africa as far as the mouth of the Rio del Oro, five degrees south of that Cape Nun which the Portuguese did not round until 1419.