FURTHER DISCOVERIES.
During their stay in this river Ca da Mosto and his companions saw the constellation of the southern cross for the first time. Finding that the natives would have nothing to do with them,
for they believed that the Christians were very bad people, and bought negroes to eat them, Ca da Mosto and the other commanders wished to proceed a hundred miles further up the river; but the common sailors would not hear of it, and the expedition forthwith returned to Portugal.
Two years later, in 1456, Ca da Mosto made another voyage, in the course of which he discovered the Cape de Verde Islands. Leaving them, he went again to the Gambia River, which he ascended much further than he had done during his previous expedition, and he also succeeded on this occasion in conciliating the natives. Then he went down the coast, passed Cape Roxo, and afterwards sailed up the Rio Grande, but, from want of any knowledge of the language of the people, was unable to prosecute his explorations among them.
Some time between 1460 and 1464, an expedition went out under Pedro de Cintra, one of the King of Portugal's gentlemen, to make further discoveries along the African coast. These voyagers, whose story is briefly told by Ca da Mosto, discovered Sierra Leone (so called on account of the roaring thunder heard there), and went a little beyond Cape Mesurado. The precise date of this voyage is uncertain, but we may fairly consider Sierra Leone as being the point attained at, or about, the death of Prince Henry in 1463, of whose character, before parting with him, something deserves to be said.