A Book of Discovery / The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole

by M. B. Synge

But Cadamosto pushed on for some four hundred miles by the low, sandy shore to the Senegal River. The Portuguese had already sailed by this part of the coast, and the negroes had thought their ships to be great birds from afar cleaving the air with their white wings. When the crews furled their sails and drew into shore the natives changed their minds and thought they were fishes, and all stood on the shore gazing stupidly at this new wonder.

Cadamosto landed and pushed some two hundred and fifty miles up the Senegal River, where he set up a market, exchanging cotton and cloth for gold, while "the negroes came stupidly crowding round me, wondering at our white colour, which they tried to wash off, our dress, our garments of black silk and robes of blue cloth."

Joined by two other ships from Portugal, the Italian explorer now sailed on to Cape Verde, so called from its green grass.

"The land here," he tells us, "is all low and full of fine, large trees, which are continually green. The trees never wither like those in Europe; they grow so near the shore that they seem to drink, as it were, the water of the sea. The coast is most beautiful. Many countries have I been in, to East and West, but never did I see a prettier sight."

But the negroes here—big, comely men—were lawless and impossible to approach, shooting at the Portuguese explorers with poisoned arrows. They discovered that the capital of the country was called Gambra, where lived a king, but the negroes of the Gambra were unfriendly; there was little gold to be had; his crews fell sick and ill, and Cadamosto turned home again. But he had reached a point beyond all other explorers of the time, a point where "only once did we see the North Star, which was so low that it seemed almost to touch the sea." We know that he must have been to within eleven degrees of the Equator, and it is disappointing to find the promising young Italian disappearing from the pages of history.

A PORTION OF AFRICA FROM FRA MAURO'S MAP ILLUSTRATING CADAMOSTO'S VOYAGE BEYOND CAPE BLANCO.

And now we come to the last voyage planned by Prince Henry, that of Diego Gomez, his own faithful servant. It followed close on Cadamosto's return.

No long time after, the Prince equipped a ship called the Wren and set over it Diego Gomez, with two other ships, of which he was commander-in-chief. Their orders were to go as far as they could. Gomez wrote his own travels, and his adventures are best told in his own words. We take up his story from the far side of Cape Blanco.

"After passing a great river beyond Rio Grande we met such strong currents in the sea that no anchor could hold. The other captains and their men were much alarmed, thinking we were at the end of the ocean, and begged me to put back. In the mid-current the sea was very clear, and the natives came off from the shore and brought us their merchandise. As the current grew even stronger we put back and came to a land, where were groves of palms near the shore, with their branches broken. There we found a plain covered with hay and more than five thousand animals like stags, but larger, who showed no fear of us. Five elephants with two young ones came out of a small river that was fringed by trees. We went back to the ships, and next day made our way from Cape Verde and saw the broad mouth of a great river, which we entered and guessed to be the Gambia. We went up the river as far as Cantor (some five hundred miles). Farther than this the ships could not go, because of the thick growth of trees and underwood. When the news spread through the country that the Christians were in Cantor, they came from Timbuktu in the north, from Mount Gelu in the south. Here I was told there is gold in plenty, and caravans of camels cross over there with goods from Carthage, Tunis, Fez, Cairo, and all the land of the Saracens. I asked the natives of Cantor about the road to the gold country. They told me the King lived in Kukia and was lord of all the mines on the right side of the river of Cantor, and that he had before the door of this palace a mass of gold just as it was taken from the earth, so large that twenty men could hardly move it, and that the King always fastened his horse to it. While I was thus trafficking with these negroes, my men became worn out with the heat, and so we returned towards the ocean."