CADAMOSTO.
1455-6.
We have now come to the voyages of the Venetian Cadamosto, in the
service of Prince Henry. And though these were far from being the most
striking in their general effect, they are certainly the most famous,
the best known, of all the enterprises of these fifty years (1415-1460).
It is true that Cadamosto fairly reached Sierra Leone and, passing the
farthest mark of the earlier Portuguese caravels, coasted along many
miles of that great eastern bend of the West African coast which we call
the Gulf of Guinea. But it is to his general fame as a seaman, his
position in Italy, and the interest he aroused by his written and
published story that he owed his greater share of attention.
When I first set my mind, begins his narrative, on sailing the ocean
between the Strait of Cadiz and the Fortunate Islands, the one man who
had tried to enter the aforesaid ocean, since the days of our Father
Adam, was the Infant Don Henry of Portugal, whose illustrious and
almost countless deeds I pass over, excepting only his zeal for the
Christian faith and his freedom from the bonds of matrimony. For his
father, King John, had not given up the ghost before he had warned his
son Henry with saving precepts, that the aforesaid Holy Faith he should
foster with a dauntless mind and not fail in his vows of warring down
the foes of Christ.
Therefore every year did Don Henry, as it were, challenging and hurling
defiance at the Moors, persist in sending out his caravels as far as the
headland called the Cape of Non (Not), from the belief that beyond the
said Cape there is "_No_" return possible. And as for a long time the
ships of the Prince did not dare to pass that point, Henry roused
himself to accomplish this feat, seeing that his caravels did much excel
all other sailing ships afloat, and strictly enjoined his captains not
to return before they had passed the said Cape. Who steadily pressing
on, and never leaving sight of the shore, did in truth pass near one
hundred miles beyond, finding nothing but desert land.
Beyond this again, for the space of one hundred and fifty miles, the
Prince then sent another fleet, which fared no better, and finding no
trace of men or of tillage, returned home. And Don Henry, growing ever
keener for discovery, and excited by the opposition as it were of
nature, sent out again and again till his sailors had reached beyond the
Desert Coast to the land of the Arabs and of those new races called
Azaneguys, people of a tawny colour.
And finally there appeared to these bold mariners the land of Æthiopia,
which lies upon the shore of the Southern ocean, and here again from day
to day the explorers discovered new races and new lands.
"Now I, Luigi Ca da Mosto, who had sailed nearly all the Mediterranean
coasts, once leaving Venice for 'Celtogallia' (France), but being caught
by a storm off C. St. Vincent, had to take refuge in the Prince's town,
near the said Cape, and was here told of the glorious and boundless
conquests of the Prince, whence accrued such gain that from no traffic
in the world could the like be had.
"The which," continues the candid trader, "did exceedingly stir my soul,
eager as it was for gain above all things else; and so I made suit to be
brought before the Prince, if so be that I might gain leave to sail in
his service, for since the profit of this voyage is subject to his
pleasure, he doth guard his monopoly with no small care."
With the Prince, at last, Cadamosto made terms: either that he, the
adventurer, should furnish the ships at his own cost, and take the whole
risk upon himself, and of the merchandise that he might gain a fourth
part to go to his lord; or that the Prince should bear the cost of
equipment and should have half the profits. But in any case, if there
was no profit, the whole expense should fall upon the trader. The Prince
added that he would heartily welcome any other volunteers from Venice,
and on Cadamosto himself he urged an immediate start. "As for me,"
repeats the sailor, "my age, my vigour, my skill equal to any toil,
above all my passionate desire to see the world and explore the
unknown, set me all on fire with eagerness. And especially the fact that
no countryman of mine had ever tried the like, and my certainty of
winning the highest honour and gain from such a venture, made me forward
to offer myself. I only stayed to enquire from veteran Portuguese what
merchandise was the most highly prized among the Æthiopians and people
of the furthest South, and then went home to find the best light craft
for the ocean coasting that I had in mind." Meantime the Prince ordered
a caravel to be equipped, which he gave to one Vincent, a native of
Lagos, as captain, and caused to be armed to the teeth, as was required,
and on the 21st of March, 1455, Cadamosto sailed for Madeira. On the
25th they were off Porto Santo, and the Venetian stops to give us a
description of the island, which, he says in passing, had been found and
colonised by the Prince's seamen twenty-seven years before. It was worth
the settling. Every kind of grain and fruit was easily raised, and there
was a great trade in dragon's blood, "which is made from the tears of a
tree."
On March 27th, Cadamosto sailed from Porto Santo to Madeira, forty miles
distant, and easily seen from the first island when the weather was
cloudy, and here the narrative stops some time to describe and admire
sufficiently. Madeira had been colonised under the lead and action of
the Prince four and twenty years before, and was now thickly peopled by
the Portuguese settlers. Beyond Portugal its existence was hardly known.
Its name was "from its woodland,"--here Cadamosto repeats the
traditional falsehood about the place,--but the first settlers had
destroyed most of this in trying to clear an open space by fire. The
whole island had once been in flames, the colonists only saved their
lives by plunging into the rivers, and even Zarco, the chief discoverer,
with his wife and children had to stand in a torrent bed for two whole
days and nights before they could venture on dry land again.
The island was forty miles round; like Porto Santo, it was without a
harbour, but not without convenient roads for ships to lie in; the soil
was fertile, well watered by eight rivers that flowed through the
island. "Various kinds of carved wood are exported, so that almost all
Portugal is now adorned with tables and other furniture made from these
woods."
"Hearing of the great plenty of water in the island, the Prince ordered
all the open country to be planted with sugar-cane and with vines
imported from Crete, which do excellent well in a climate so well suited
to the grape; the vine staves make good bows, and are exported to Europe
like the wine, red and white alike, but especially the red. The grapes
are ripe about Easter in each year," and this vintage, as early as
Cadamosto's day, was evidently the main interest of the islanders, who
had all the enthusiasm of a new venture in their experiment, "for no one
had ever tried his hand upon the soil before."
From Madeira the caravel sailed on 320 miles to the Canaries, of which
says our Venetian, there are ten, seven cultivated and three still
desert; and of the seven inhabited four are Christian, three Heathen,
even now, fifty years after De Béthencourt's conquest. Neither wine nor
grain can be produced on this soil, and hardly any fruit, only a kind of
dye, used for clothes in Portugal; goat's flesh and cheese can also be
exported, and something, Cadamosto fancies, might be made of the wild
asses that swarm in the islands.
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.
"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.
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."
From the place the description again changes to the people, and we are
told once more with wearisome repetitions about the people beyond C.
Verde, in most ways like the negroes of the Senegal but "not obedient to
that kingdom and abhorring the tyranny of the negro Princes, having no
King or laws themselves, worshipping idols, using poisoned arrows which
kill at once, even though they drew but little blood,"--in short a most
truculent folk, but very fine of stature, black and comely. The whole
coast east of C. Verde was found unapproachable, except for certain
narrow harbours, till "with a south wind we reached the mouth of a
river, called Ruim, a bowshot across at the mouth. And when we sighted
this river, which was sixty miles beyond C. Verde, we cast anchor at
sunset in ten or twelve paces of water, four or five miles from the
shore, but when it was day, as the look-out saw there was a reef of
rocks on which the sea broke itself, we sailed on and came to the mouth
of another river as large as the Senegal, with trees growing down to the
water's edge and promising a most fertile country." Cadamosto determined
to land a scout here, and caused lots cast among his slave-interpreters
which was to land. "And of these slaves, negroes whom the native kings
in the past had sold to Portuguese and who had then been trained in
Europe I had many with me who were to open the country for our trade and
to parley between us and the natives. Now the lot fell upon the Genoese
caravel (which had joined the explorers), to draw into the shore and
land a prisoner, to try the good will of the natives before any one else
ventured." The poor wretch, instructed to enquire about the races living
on the river and their manners, polity, King's name and capital, gold
supply, and other matters of commerce, had no sooner swum ashore than he
was seized and cut to pieces by some armed savages, while the ships
sailed on with a south wind, making no attempt to avenge their victim,
till after a lovely coast, fringed with trees, low-lying, and rich
exceedingly, they came to the mouth of the Gambra, three or four miles
across, the haven where they would be, and where Cadamosto expected his
full harvest of gold and pepper and aromatics.
The smallest caravel started at once the very next morning after the
discovery to go upstream, taking a boat with it, in case the stream
should suddenly get too shallow for anything larger, while the sailors
were to keep sounding the river with their poles all the way. Everybody
too kept a sharp look-out for native canoes. They had not long to wait.
Two miles up the river three native "Almadias" came suddenly out upon
them and then stopped dead, too astonished at the ship and the white men
in it to offer to do more, though they had at first a threatening look
and were now invited to a parley by the Europeans with every sign that
could be thought of.
As the natives would not come any nearer, the caravel returned to the
mouth of the river, and next morning at about nine o'clock the whole
fleet started together upstream to explore "with the hope of finding
some more friendly natives by the kind care of Heaven." Four miles up
the negroes came out upon them again in greater force, "most of them
sooty black in colour, dressed in white cotton, with something like a
German helmet on their heads, with two wings on either side and a
feather in the middle. A Moor stood in the bow of each Almadia, holding
a round leather shield and encouraging his men in their thirteen canoes
to fight and to row up boldly to the caravels. Now their oars were
larger than ours and in number they seemed past counting." After a short
breathing space, while each party glared upon the other, the negroes
shot their arrows and the caravels replied with their engines, which
killed a whole rank of the natives. The savages then crowded round the
little caravel and set upon her; they were at last beaten off with heavy
loss and all fled; the slave interpreters shouting out to them as they
rowed away that they might as well come to terms with men who were only
there for commerce, and had come from the ends of the earth to give the
King of Gambra a present from his brother of Portugal, "and for that we
hoped to be exceeding well loved and cherished by the king of Gambra.
But we wanted to know who and where their king was, and what was the
name of this river. They should come without fear and take of us what
they would, giving us in return of theirs."
The negroes shouted back that they could not be mistaken about the
strangers, they were Christians. What could they have to do with them;
they knew how they had behaved to the King of Senegal. No good men could
stand Christians who ate human flesh. What else did they buy negro
slaves for? Christians were plundering brigands too and had come to rob
them. As for their king, he was three days' journey from the river,
which was called Gambra.
When Cadamosto tried to come to closer quarters, the natives
disappeared, and the crews refused to venture any farther upstream. So
the caravels turned back, sailed down the river, and coasted away west
to Cape Verde, and so home to Portugal. But before the Venetian ends his
journal, he tells us how near Prince Henry's ships had now come to the
Equator. "When we were in the river of Gambra, once only did we see the
North Star, which was so low that it seemed almost to touch the sea." To
make up for the loss of the Pole Star--sunk to "the third part of a
lance's length above the edge of the water,"--Cadamosto and his men had
a view of six brilliant stars, "in form of a cross," while the June
night was "of thirteen hours and the day of eleven."
Cadamosto only went home to refit for a second voyage. Though at first
he had been baffled by the "savagery of the men of Gambra" from finding
out much about them, he resolved to try again, sailed out the very next
year by way of the Canaries and Cape Blanco, and found, after three
days' more sailing, certain islands off Cape Verde, where no one had
been before. The lookouts saw two very large islands, towards the larger
of which they sailed at once, in the hope of finding good anchorage and
friendly natives. But no one, friend or foe, seemed to live there.
So next morning, says Cadamosto, that I might satisfy my own mind, I
bade ten of my men, armed with missiles and cross-bows, to explore the
inland. They crossed the hills that cut off the interior from the coast,
but found nothing except doves, who were so tame that they could be
caught in any number by the hand.
And now from another side of the first island they caught sight of three
others towards the north, and of two more towards the west, which could
not be clearly seen because of the great distance. "But for the matter
of that, we did not care to go out of our way to find what we now
expected, that all these other islands were desolate like the first. So
we went on our way (due south) and so passed another island, and, coming
to the mouth of a river, landed in search of fresh water and found a
beautiful and fruitful country covered with trees. Some sailors who went
inland found cakes of salt, white and small, by the side of the river,
and immense numbers of great turtles, with shells of such size that they
could make very good shields for an army."
Here they stayed a couple of days, exploring in the country and fishing
in the river, which was so broad and deep that it would easily bear a
ship of one hundred and fifty tons burden and a full bowshot would not
carry across it. Then, naming their first discovered island Boa Vista,
and the largest of the group St. James, because it was on the feast of
the Apostle they found it, they sailed on along the coast of the
mainland, till they came to the Place of the Two Palms, between the
Senegal and Cape Verde, "and since the whole land was known to us
before, we did not stay, but boldly rounded C. Verde and ran along to
the Gambra." Up this they at once began to steer.
No canoes came out upon them this time, and no natives appeared, except
a few who hung about some way off and did not offer to stop them. Ten
miles up they found a small island, where one of the sailors died of a
fever, and they called the new discovered land "St. Andrew," after him.
The natives were now much more approachable and Cadamosto's men
conversed with the bolder ones who came close up to the caravel. Like
the men of Senegal, two things above all astonished and confounded them,
the white sails of the ships and the white skins of the sailors. After
much debate, carried on by yelling from boat to boat, one of the negroes
came on board the caravel and was loaded with presents, to make him more
communicative. The ruse was successful. The string of his tongue was
quite loosed and he chattered along freely enough. The country, like the
river, was called "Gambra"; its king, Farosangul, lived ten days'
journey toward the south, but he was himself under the Emperor of Melli,
chief of all the negroes.
Was there no one nearer than Farosangul? Oh, yes, there was Battimansa,
"King Batti," and a good many other princes who lived quite close to the
river. Would he guide them to Battimansa? Yes, safe enough, his country
was only some forty miles from the mouth of the Gambra.
"And so we came to Battimansa, where the river was narrowed down to
about a mile in breadth," where Cadamosto offered presents to the King,
and made a great speech before the negro magnates, which is abridged in
the narrative, "lest the matter should become a great Iliad." King Batti
returned the Portuguese presents with gifts of slaves and gold, but the
Europeans were sadly disappointed with the gold. It was not at all equal
to what they expected, or what the people of Senegal had talked of;
"being poor themselves, they had fancied their neighbours must be rich."
On the other hand, the negroes of Gambra would give almost any price for
trinkets and worthless toys, because they were new. Fifteen days, or
nearly that, did the Portuguese stay there trading, and immense was the
variety of their visitors in that time. Most came on board simply from
wonder and to stare at them, others to sell their cotton cloths, nets,
gold rings, civet and furs, baboons and marmots, fruit and especially
dates. Each canoe seemed to differ in its build and its crew from the
last. The river, crowded with this light craft, was "like the Rhone,
near Lyons," but the natives worked their boats like gondolas, standing,
one rowing and another steering with oars, that were like half a lance
in shape, a pace and a half long, with a round board like a trencher
tied at the end. "And with these they make very good pace, being great
coasting voyagers, but not venturing far out to sea or away from their
own country, lest they should be seized and sold for slaves to the
Christians."
After the fortnight's stay in Battimansa's country, the crews began to
fall ill and Cadamosto determined to drop down the river once more to
the coast, noting as he did so all the habits of the natives. Most of
them were idolaters, nearly all had implicit faith in charms, some
worshipped "Mahmoud most vile," and some were Nomades like the Gypsies
of Europe. For the most part the people of the Gambra lived like those
of the Senegal, dressing in cotton and using the same food, except that
they ate dog's flesh and were all tattooed, women as well as men.
We need not follow Cadamosto in his accounts of the great trees, the
wild elephants, great bats and "horse-fish" of the country. A chief
called Gnumi-Mansa, "King Gnumi," living near the mouth of the Gambra,
took him on an elephant-hunt, in which he got the trophies, foot, trunk,
and skin, that he took home and presented to Prince Henry.
On descending the Gambra, the caravel tried to coast along the
unexplored land, but was driven by a storm into the open sea. After
driving about some time and nearly running on a dangerous coast, they
came at last to the mouth of a great river which they called Rio Grande,
"for it seemed more like a gulf or arm of the sea than a river, and was
nearly twenty miles across, some twenty-five leagues beyond the Gambra."
Here they met natives in two canoes, who made signs of peace, but could
not understand the language of the interpreters. The new country was
absolutely outside the farthest limits of earlier exploration, and
discovery would have to begin afresh. Cadamosto had no mind to risk
anything more. His crew were sick and tired, and he turned back to
Lisbon, observing, before he left the Ra or Rio Grande, as he noticed in
his earlier voyage, that the North Star almost touched the horizon and
that "the tides of that coast were very marvellous. For instead of flow
and ebb being six hours each, as at Venice, the flow here was but four,
and the ebb eight, the tide rising with such force that three anchors
could hardly hold the caravel."