"And how comes it," proceeds Cadamosto, "that these people want to use so much salt?" and after some fanciful astrological reasoning he gives us his practical answer, "to cool their blood in the extreme heat of the sun": and so much is it needed that when they unload their camels at the entrance of the kingdom of Melli, they pack the salt in blocks on men's heads and these last carry it, like a great army of footmen, through the country. When one negro race barters the salt with another, the first party comes to the place agreed on, and lays down the salt in heaps, each man marking his own heap by some token. Then they go away out of sight, about the time of midday sun, when the second party comes up, being most anxious to avoid recognition and places by each heap so much gold as the buyer thinks good. Then they too go away. The sellers come back in the evening, each one visits his pile, and where the gold is enough for the seller's wishes, he takes it, leaves the salt and goes away for good; where it is not enough, he leaves gold and salt together and only goes away to wait again till the buyers have paid a second visit. Now, the second party coming up again, take away the salt where the gold has been accepted, but where it still lies, refused, they either add more or take their money away altogether, according to what they think to be the worth of the salt.
Once the King of Melli, who sent out a party with salt to exchange for gold, ordered his men to make captive some of the negroes who concealed themselves so carefully. They were to wait till the buyers should come up to put down their gold; then they were to rush out and seize all they could. In this way one man and only one was taken, who refused all food and died on the third day after his capture, without uttering a word, "whereby the King of Melli did not gain much," but which induced the men of Melli to believe that the other people were naturally dumb. The captors described the appearance of those who escaped their hands, "men of fine build and height, more than a palm's length greater than their own, having the lower lip brought out and hung down even to the breast, red and bleeding and disclosing their teeth which were larger than the common, their eyes black, prominent, and fierce-looking."
For this treachery the trade was broken off three whole years, till the great want of salt compelled the injured negroes to resume, and since then the business had gone on as before.
The gold thus gained is carried by the men of Melli to their city, and then portioned out in three parts; one part goes by the caravan route towards Syria, the other two thirds go to Timbuctoo, and are there divided once again, part going to Tunis, the head of Barbary, and part to the regions of Marocco, over against Granada, and without the strait of the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). And to those parts come Christian merchants, and especially Italians, to buy the gold in exchange for merchandise of every sort. For among the negroes and Azaneguys there is no coinage of gold or of silver, no money token of metal, but the whole is simply matter for exchange.
From the trade, Cadamosto changes to discourse of the politics of the natives, their manners and customs. Their government for the most part is not monarchy, but a tyranny of the richest and most powerful caste. Their wars are waged only with offensive arms, light spears and swords; they have no defensive armour, but use horses, which they sit as the Moors do. Their ordinary garments are of cotton.
The plague of excessive drought during all the year, except from August to October, is aggravated at certain seasons by the worse plague of locusts, "and I myself have seen them flying by troops upon the sea and shore like an army, but of countless number." After this long digression Cadamosto comes back to the Gulf of Senegal. "And this," says he, "is the chief river of the Region of the Negroes, dividing them from the Tawny Moors." The mouth of the estuary is a mile wide, but an island lying in mid-channel divides the river into two parts just where it enters the sea. Though the central channel is deep enough, the entrance is made difficult to strangers by the shallows and sand banks on either side; every six hours the river rises and falls with the flow and ebb of the ocean, and where it pours out its waters into the sea, the flux and reflux of waters reaches to a distance of sixty miles, as say the Portuguese who have watched it. The Senegal is nearly four hundred miles beyond Cape Blanco; a sandy shore stretches between the two; up to the river the sailor sees from the shore only the wandering Azaneguys, tawny, squat, and miserable savages; across the stream to the south are the real Blacks, "well built noble-looking men," and after so long a stretch of arid and stony desert, there is now a beautiful green land, covered with fruit-bearing trees, the work of the river, which, men say, comes from the Nile, being one of the four most glorious rivers of earth that flow from the Garden of Eden and earthly paradise. For as the eastern Nile waters Egypt, so this doth water Æthiopia.
Now the land of these negroes is at the entering in of Æthiopia, from which to Cape Verde the land is all level, where the King of Senegal, reigning over people that have no cities, but only scattered huts, lives by the presents that his subjects bring him. Such are oxen, goats, and horses, which are much valued for their scarceness, but used without saddle, bridle, or trappings. To these presents the King adds what he can plunder by his own strength, especially slaves, of which the Blacks have a great trade with the Azaneguys. Their horses they sell also to the Christian traders on the coast. The King can have as many wives as he likes (and always keeps well above his minimum of thirty), to each of whom is assigned a certain estate with slaves and cattle, but not equal; to some more, to others less. The King goes the round of these farms at will, and lives upon their produce. Any day you may see hosts of slaves bringing fruits of all sorts to the King, as he goes through the country with his motley following, all living at free quarters.
Of the negroes of these parts most go naked, but the chiefs and great men use cotton shirts, as the country abounds in this sort of stuff. Cadamosto describes in great detail the native manufacture of garments, and the habits of the women; barefoot and bare-headed they go always, dressed in linen, elegant enough in apparel, vile in life and diet, always chattering, great liars, treacherous and deceitful to the last degree. Bloody and remorseless are the wars the princes of these barbarians carry on against one another. They have no horsemen or body armour, but use darts and spears, barbed with many poisonous fangs, and several kinds of arrows, as with us. From the beginning of the world they knew nothing of ships before the Portuguese came; they only used light canoes or skiffs, each of which can be carried by three men, and in which they fish and go from place to place on the river.
The boundaries of the kingdom of Senegal are the ocean on the west, the land of Gambra on the south, the inland Blackman's country on the east, and on the north the River Niger (Senegal), which, "as I have said before, divides the Azaneguys from the First Kingdom of the Negroes. And the said river," concludes Cadamosto, "five years before my coming, had been explored by the Portuguese, who hoped to open up a great commerce in those parts. So that every year from that time their ships had been off that coast to trade."
Cadamosto determined to push farther up the river than any had done before, and so to come to the land of Budomel, one of the great negro princes and kingdoms, for it was the name both of place and person. When he came there he found an "Emperor so honest that he might have been an example to any Christian," who exchanged his horses, wool-fells, and linen goods for the strangers' merchandise and slaves, with deeds as honourable as his words. Our adventurer was so taken with "Lord Budomel" that he gladly went with him two hundred and fifty miles up country, on his promising a supply of negro slaves, black but comely, and none of them more than twelve years old.