Each of these Canary islands being some forty miles from the next, the people of one do not understand the speech of their neighbours. They have no walls, but open villages; watch towers are placed on the highest mountains to guard the people of one village from the attacks of the next, for a guerilla warfare, half marauding, half serious civil war, is the order of the day.
Speaking of the three heathen islands, "which were also the most populous," Cadamosto stops a little over the mention of Teneriffe, "wonderful among the islands of the earth, and able to be seen in clear weather for a distance of seventy Spanish leagues, which is equal to two hundred and fifty miles. And what makes it to be seen from so far, is that on the top is a great rock of adamant, like a pyramid, which stone blazes like the mountain of Ætna, and is full fifteen miles from the plain, as the natives say."
These natives have no iron weapons, but fight with stones and wooden daggers; they go naked except for a defensive armour of goat-skins, which they wear in front and behind. Houses they have none, not even the poorest huts, but live in mountain caves, without faith, without God. Some indeed worship the sun and moon, and others planets, reverence certain idols; in their marriage customs the chiefs have the first right by common consent, and at the graves of their dead chiefs are most of their religious sacrifices; the islanders have only one art, that of stone-slinging, unless one were to count their mountain-climbing and skill in running and in all bodily exercises, in which nature has created these Canarians to excel all other mortals.
They paint their bodies with the juice of plants in all sorts of colours and think this the highest point of perfection, to be decked out on their skins like a garden bed.
From the Canaries, Cadamosto sails to the White Cape, C. Blanco, on the mainland, some way beyond Bojador, "towards Æthiopia," passing the bay and isles of Arguin on the way, where the crews found such quantities of sea-birds that they brought home two ship-loads. And here it is to be noticed, says the narrative, that in sailing from the parts of Cadiz to that Æthiopia which faces to the south, you meet with nothing but desert lands till you come to Cape Cantin, from which it is a near course to C. Blanco. These parts towards the south do run along the borders of the negroes' land, and this great tract of white and arid land, full of sand, very low lying at a dead level, it would be a quick thing to cross in sixty days. At C. Blanco some hills begin to rise out of the plain, and this cape was first found by the Portuguese, and on it is nothing but sand, no trace of grass or trees; it is seen from far, being very sharply marked, three-sided, and having on its crest three pyramids, as they may be called, each one a mile from its neighbour. A little beyond this great desert tract is a vast sea and a wondrous concourse of rivers, where only explorers have reached. At C. Blanco there is a mart of Arab traders, a station for the camels and caravans of the interior, and those pass by the cape who are coming from Negro-land and going to the Barbary of North Africa. As one might expect on such a barren stony soil, no wine or grain can be raised; the natives have oxen and goats, but very few; milk of camels and others is their only drink; as for religion, the wretches worship Mahomet and hate Christians right bitterly. What is of more interest to the Venetian merchant, the traders of these parts have plenty of camels which carry loads of brass and silver, and even of gold, brought from the negroes to the people of our parts.
The natives of C. Blanco are black as moles, but dress in white flowing robes, after the Moorish fashion, with a turban wound round the head; and indeed plenty of Arabs are always hovering off the cape and the bay of Arguin for the sake of trade with the Infant's ships, especially in silver, grain, and woven stuffs, and above all in slaves and gold. To protect this commerce, the Prince some time since (1448), built a fort in the bay, and every year the Portuguese caravels that come here lie under its protection and exchange the negro slaves that they have captured farther south for Arab horses, one horse against ten or fifteen slaves, or for silks and woven stuffs from Morocco and Granada, from Tunis and the whole land of Barbary. The Arabs on their side sell slaves, that they have driven from the upland, to the Portuguese at Arguin, in all nearly a thousand a year, so that the Europeans, who used to plunder all this coast as far as the Senegal, now find it more profitable to trade.
The mention of the Senegal brings Cadamosto to the next stage of his voyage, to the great river, "which divides the Azaneguys, Tawny Moors, from the First Kingdom of the Negroes."
The Azaneguys, Cadamosto goes on to define more exactly as a people of a colour something between black and ashen hue, whom the Portuguese once plundered and enslaved but now trade with peacefully enough. "For the Prince will not allow any wrong-doing, being only eager that they should submit themselves to the law of Christ. For at present they are in a doubt whether they should cleave to our faith or to Mahomet's slavery." But they are a filthy race, continues the traveller, all of them mean and very abject, liars and traitorous knaves, squat of figure, noisome of breath, though of a truth they cover their mouths as of decency, saying that the mouth is a very cesspool and sewer of impurity. They oil their hair with a foul-smelling grease, which they think a great virtue and honour. Much do they make also of their gross fat women, whose breasts they deform usually, that they may hang out the more, straining their bodies (when) at seventeen years of age with ropes.
Ignorant and brutal as they are, they know no other Christian people but the Portuguese, who have enslaved and plundered them now fourteen years. This much is certain, that when they first saw the ships of Don Henry sailing past, they thought them to be birds coming from far and cleaving the air with white wings. When the crews furled sail and drew in to the shore, the natives changed their minds and thought they were fishes; some, who first saw the ships sailing by night, believed them to be phantoms gliding past. When they made out the men on board of them, it was much debated whether these men could be mortal; all stood on the shore, stupidly gazing at the new wonder.
The centre of power and of trade in these parts was not on the coast, but some way inland. Six days' journey up the country is the place called Tagaza, or the Gold-Market, whence there is a great export of salt and metals which are brought on the camels of the Arabs and Azaneguys down to the shore. Another route of merchants is inland to the Negro Empire of Melli and the city of Timbuctoo, where the heat is such that even animals cannot endure to labour and no green thing grows for the food of any quadruped, so that of one hundred camels bearing gold and salt (which they store in two hundred or three hundred huts) scarce thirty return home to Tagaza, for the journey is a long one, 'tis forty days from Tagaza to Timbuctoo and thirty more from Timbuctoo to Melli.