Course to two large islands and some small
ones, which lay about thirty miles distance from the continent, which we
found quite low, yet full of large and beautiful green trees, and
inhabited by Negroes[10]. Encountering here the same difficulty of
intercourse, for want of knowing their language, we made no stop, but
took our departure for Portugal, where we arrived in safety.
[1] At this place Grynaeus calls him Batrinense; though he had named him
rightly Bati-mansa before. - Astl.
[2] This is now called Cape St Mary. - E.
[3] This seems to allude to what is now called Bald Cape, about twenty
miles south from Cape St Mary, and stretching somewhat farther west;
from which there extends breakers or sunken rocks a considerable
distance from the land. - E.
[4] Between the mouth of the Gambia and that of the Casamansa, there are
three inlets, which appear to be smaller mouths of the latter river.
The most northern of these is named St Peter, the most southerly
Oyster river; the intermediate one has no name. - E.
[5] The actual distance is barely a degree of latitude, or less than
seventy English miles. Cada Mosto probably estimated by the log, the
more circuitous track by sea. - E.
[6] Cada Mosto does not mention the remarkable change which takes place
here in the direction of the coast. From the Gambia to Cape Rosso, the
coast runs direct south; after which its direction is E.S.E. to the
mouth of the river St Ann. - E.
[7] Called in modern charts, Rio S. Dominica. - E.
[8] According to de Faria, Rio Grande was discovered by Nunez Tristan in
1447, nine years before it was visited by Cada Mosto. - Astl.
[9] Cada Mosto is exceedingly superficial in his account of the Rio Grande;
and it even seems dubious if he ever saw or entered this river, as he
appears to have mistaken the navigable channel between the main and
the shoals of the Rio Grande for the river itself; which channel
extends above 150 English miles, from the island of Bulam in the E.S.E.
to the open sea in the W.N.W. This channel agrees with his description,
in being twenty miles wide, whereas the real Rio Grande is greatly
smaller than the Gambia. - E.
[10] These may be the island of Waring and the Marsh islands, at the
north-western entry of the channel of the Rio Grande, forming part of
the Bissagos islands. - E.
SECTION XI.
_The Voyage of Piedro de Cintra to Sierra Leona, and the Windward coast of
Guinea; written by Alvise da Cada Mosto._
The two voyages to the coast of Africa in which Cada Mosto was engaged,
and which have, been narrated in the foregoing Sections of this Chapter,
were followed by others; and, after the death of Don Henry, two armed
caravels were sent out upon discovery by orders from the king of Portugal,
under the command of Piedro de Cintra, one of the gentlemen of his
household, with injunctions to proceed farther along the coast of the
Negroes than had hitherto been effected, and to prosecute new discoveries.
In this expedition, Piedro de Cintra was accompanied by a young
Portuguese who had formerly been clerk to Cada Mosto in his two voyages;
and who, on the return of the expedition to Lagos, came to the house of
his former employer, who then continued to reside at Lagos, and gave him
an account of the discoveries which had been made in this new voyage, and
the names of all the places which had been touched at by Piedro de Cintra,
beginning from the Rio Grande, the extreme point of the former voyage[1].
De Cintra first went to the two large inhabited islands at the mouth of
the Rio Grande which I had discovered in my second voyage, where he
landed, and ordered his interpreters to make the usual inquiries at the
inhabitants; but they could not make themselves understood, nor could
they understand the language of the natives.
