73 (p. 57). Infant's Alfaqueque ... managing business between parties.... —The Alfaqueque, or Ransomer of Captives, must have been an interpreter as well. Later, we find "Moors" and negroes employed for this purpose.
74 (p. 57). Who traded in that gold.—[Azurara seems ignorant that the gold was brought from the interior by caravans, which from ancient times had carried on this trade across the great desert, especially since the Arab invasion. Under the Khalifs, this Sahara commerce extended itself to the western extremity of the continent, and even to Spain. The caravans crossed the valleys and plains of Suz, Darah and Tafilet to the south of Morocco. Cf. the Geographia Nubiensis of Edrisi (1619 ed.), pp. 7, 11, 12, 14; Hartmann's Edrisi, pp. 26, 49, 133-4. This gold came from the negro-land called Wangara, as Edrisi and Ibn-al-Wardi tell us. See Notices et extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque du Roi, fo. 11, pp. 33 and 37: so Leo Africanus and Marmol y Carvajal speak of the gold of Tiber, brought from Wangara. "Tiber" is from the Arab word Thibr = gold (cf. Walckenaer, Recherches géographiques, p. 14). So Cadamosto, speaking of the commerce of Arguim, says, ch. x, that men brought there "gold of Tiber;" and Barros, Decade I, ch. vii, in describing the Rio d' Ouro, refers to the same thing:—"A quantity of gold-dust, the first obtained in these parts, whence the place was called the Rio d' Ouro, though it is only an inlet of salt water running up into the country about six leagues.">[—S.
75 (p. 58). Gete (or Arguim).—[Barros, Decade I, 7, says: "Nuno Tristam on this voyage went on as far as an island which the people of the country called Adeget, and which we now call Arguim." The Arab name was "Ghir," which Azurara turns into "Gete," Barros into "Arget." The discovery and possession of this point was of great importance for the Portuguese. It helped them to obtain news of the interior, and to establish relations with the negro states on the Senegal and Gambia. The Infant began to build a fort on Arguim in 1448. Cadamosto gives a long account of the state of commercial relations which the Portuguese had established there with the dwellers in the upland; and the Portuguese pilot, author of the Navigation to the Isle of St. Thomas (1558), published by Ramusio, says of Arguim: "Here there is a great port and a castle of the King our Lord with a garrison and a factor. Arguim is inhabited by black-a-moors, and this is the point which divides Barbary from Negroland." Cf. Bordone's Isolario (1528) on the Portuguese trade with the interior. In 1638 this factory and fortress were taken by the Dutch.]—S.
The subsequent changes of this position may be briefly noticed. After passing, in 1665, from the Dutch to the English and afterwards back again, in 1678 from the Dutch to the French, in 1685 from the French to the Dutch, in 1721 once more falling into French hands, only to be recovered shortly afterwards by the Netherlanders, it became definitely and finally a French possession in 1724, and at present forms part of the great North-West African empire of the Third Republic. At the northern extremity of the Bight of Arguim, or a little beyond, near Cape Blanco, is the present boundary between the French and Spanish spheres of influence in this part of the world.
The native boats, worked by "bodies in the canoes and legs in the water," must be, Santarem remarks, what the Portuguese call "jangadas."
75A (p. 59). An infinity of Royal Herons.—[The Isle of Herons is one of the Arguim islands; cf. Barros, Decade I, ch. vii; it is marked under this name (Ilha, or Banco, das Garças) in early maps, as in Gastaldi's Venetian chart of 1564, which is founded on ancient Portuguese maps.]—S.
76 (p. 61). Lagos ... Moorish captives.—On the importance of Lagos in the new Portuguese maritime movement, see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. xi-xii; and note the reasons given by Azurara in ch. xviii for the change of feeling among Portuguese traders and others towards the Infant's plans.
77 (p. 63). Lançarote ... Gil Eannes ... Stevam Affonso ... etc., ... expedition.—This list of names includes several of the Infant's most capable and famous captains. On Lançarote see this Chronicle, chs. xviii-xxiv, xxvi, xlix, liii-v, lviii, lix; on Affonso, chs. li, lx; on John Diaz, ch. lviii; on John Bernaldez, ch. xxi; and on Gil Eannes, chs. ix, xx, xxii, li, lv, lviii; also pp. x-xiii of Introduction to vol. ii, and the notices by Ferdinand Denis and others in the Nouvelle Biographie Générale. On the "Isle of Naar," mentioned a little later on p. 63, Santarem has the following note:—[This island is marked near to the coast of Arguim on the map of Africa in the Portuguese Atlas (noticed before) at the Bibliothèque Royale (Nationale) de Paris.]
78 (p. 68). [In Bordone's Isolario (1533) all three of the islands noticed by Azurara (Naar, Garças and Tider), are indicated with the title of Isles of Herons [Ilhas das Garças]. The same is to be found in the Venetian map of Gastaldi, and in others. In the Portuguese Atlas just cited, and in another Portuguese chart made in Lisbon by Domingos Sanchez in 1618, these islands are depicted as close to the coast of Arguim, but without any name.] As to Cabo Branco [This name was, apparently, given it by Nuno Tristam.]—S. See ch. xiii (end) of this Chronicle.
79 (p. 78). In the end.—It is evident, from Azurara's language, that the Azanegues made a better stand in this fight at Cape Branco, and came nearer to defeating the Portuguese than on any previous occasion. It was a sign of what was to follow, for the native resistance now began to show itself, and the very next European slave-raiders (Gonçallo de Sintra and his men) were roughly handled, and most of them killed (see ch. xxvii. of this Chronicle).