On this adventurous journey, of which we are next given a full account, Cadamosto is taken charge of by Bisboror, the Prince's nephew, "through whom I saw many things worth noting." The Venetian was not anxious to put off to sea, as the weather was very rough, so rough indeed that no boat could venture off from the bank at the river's mouth to where the ships lay, and the captain had to send word to his crews by negro swimmers, who could pass any surf, "for that they excel all other living men in the water and under it, for they can dive an hour without rising."
It is not worth while to follow Cadamosto in all his long account of what he saw and heard of negro life in the course of this journey; it is as unsavoury as it is commonplace. He repeats very much of what he has said before about the Azaneguys, of their servility to their Princes, "who are to them as mortal Gods"; of the everlasting progresses and wanderings of those Princes round their kingdoms, from kraal to kraal, living on the stores each wife has provided; of the kraals themselves, no towns or castles, as people at home might think, says Cadamosto, but merely collections of forty and fifty huts, with a hedge of living trees round, intertwined, and the royal palace in the middle.
The Prince of Budomel has a bodyguard of two hundred men, besides the volunteer guard of his innumerable children, who are broken up in two groups, one always at Court, "and these are made the most of," the other scattered up and down the country, as a sort of royal garrison. The wretched subjects, who "suffer more from their King with a good will than they would from any stranger under force," are punished with death for the smallest things. Only two small classes have any privileges: ministers of religion share with the greatest nobles the sole right of access to the person of the "Mortal God."
Cadamosto set up a mart in the upland and made what profits he could from their miserable poverty, making exchanges with cottons, cloths, oil, millet, skins, palm-leaves, and vegetables, and above all, of course, with gold, what little there was to be had. "Meantime the negroes came stupidly crowding about me, wondering at our Christian symbols; our white colour, our dress and shape of body, our Damascenes, garments of black silk and robes of blue cloth or dyed wool, all amazed them; some insisted that the white colour of the strangers was not natural but put on"; as with Cook and so many others the savages now behaved with Cadamosto. They spat upon his arm and tried to rub off the white paint; then they wondered more than ever when they found the flesh itself was white.
Of gold after all not much was to be got, and the exploring party was not long in returning to the caravels and pushing on beyond Cape Verde. To the last the ships and their instruments were the chief terror and delight of the negroes and above all of the negro women; the whole thing was the work of demons, they said, not of men, seeing that our engines of war could fell one hundred men at one discharge; the trumpets sounding they took to be the yells of a living and furious beast of prey. Cadamosto gave them a trumpet that they might see it was made by art; they changed their minds accordingly, and decided that such things were directly made by God himself, above all admiring the different tones, and crying loudly that they had never seen anything so wonderful.
The women looked through every part of the ship—masts, helm, anchors, sails, and oars. The eyes painted on the bow excited them: the ship had eyes and could see before it, and the men who used it must be wonderful enchanters like the demons. "This specially they wondered, that we could sail out of all sight of land and yet know well enough where we were, all which, said they, could not happen, without black art. Scarcely less was their wonder at the sight of lighted candles, as they had never before seen any light but that of fire, when I shewed them how to make candles from wax which before they had always thrown aside as worthless, they were still more amazed, saying there was nothing we did not know."
And now Cadamosto was ready to put off from the coast into the ocean and strike south for the kingdom of Gambro, as he had been charged by the Prince, who had told him it was not far from the Senegal, as the negroes had reported to him at Sagres. And that kingdom, he had been told, was so rich in gold that if Christians could reach it they would gain endless riches.
So with two aims, first to find the golden land, and second to make discoveries in the unknown, the Venetian was just beginning to start afresh, when he was joined by two more ships from Portugal, and they agreed to round Cape Verde together. It was only some forty miles beyond Budomel and the caravels reached it next day.
Cape Verde gets its name from its green grass and trees, like C. Blanco from its white sand. Both are very prominent, lofty, and seen from a great distance, as they run out far into the sea, but Cape Verde is more picturesque, dotted as it is with little native villages on the side of the ocean, and with three small desert islands a short distance from the mainland, where the sailors found birds' nests and eggs in thousands, of kinds unknown in Europe, and, above all, enormous shell-fish (turtles), of twelve pounds' weight.
Soon after passing C. Verde, the coast makes a great sweep to the east, still covered with evergreen trees, coming down in thick woods to within a bowshot of the sea, so that from a distance the forest line seems to touch the high-water mark, "as we thought at first looking on ahead from our ships. Many countries have I been in to East and West, but never did I see a prettier sight."