Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/153

 SENEGAMBIA. 121 (Azurarar's Chronicle). But next year the Portuguese slavers were less fortunate, for Gon^alo de Cintra having stranded on a sandbank, was suddenly set upon by the natives and massacred with all his followers. The year 1445 is one of the glorious dates in this century of great discoveries. The mariner Diniz Dias, Diniz Fernandez, as the name is variously written by contemporaries, leaving behind him the sandy or rocky Saharian coasts, sailed beyond the first clump of palms on the strand south of the desert, and after passing the mouth of the Senegal, doubled the extreme western headland of the continent. By this discovery of Cape Yerd was once for all exploded the Aris- totelian theory, so discouraging for previous navigators, that the solar rays must scorch the ground in the south of the world, and render impossible the germination of plants, the development of all animal or human life. Henceforth the analogy of the climatic conditions in the northern and southern hemispheres was an established truth. One of the twenty-six caravels which in 1445 sailed from Portugal for the African coasts discovered the mouth of the " Canaga," that river of gold which was at the same time regarded as a branch of the Egyptian Nile. Next year, Nuno Tristam, who had been the first to double Cape Blanco, penetrated south of the island now bearing his name, to a little coast stream, where he was suddenly surrounded, perishing with nearly all his companions. This was most probably the river afterwards known as the Rio Nuno, or Nunez. Alvaro Fernandez pushed forward the same year to the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, which, however, was not passed for some fifteen years later. In three years all the Senegambian coast had been explored and most of the estuaries surveyed ; but the slave-hunting practices rendered all expeditions to the interior extremely dangerous. Neverthe- less regular commercial relations were at last established at certain points, factories and forts sprang up on favourable sites, and from the beginning of the fifteenth century the Portuguese, penetrating north of the Senegal into Adrar, began to trade with the people of Wadan, 420 miles east of their station at Arguin. From the seventeenth century the Dutch, English, and French contended with the first conquerors for the possession of the Senegambian coast, and traders of these nationalities pushed into the interior of the continent. But geographical explora- tion, properly so called, first began with Andre Briie, director of the ** French Company in Senegal," at the end of the seventeenth and commencement of the eighteenth century. He penetrated into the region of the Upper Senegal above the confluence of the Faleme, and sent several explorers into the riverain districts along the main stream. The monk Apollinaire visited the gold country in Bambuk, which was traversed in all directions by Corapagnon. The map prepared by him and published in Labat's work contains some details which have not yet been verified by any modern explorers. In 1786 Rubault surveyed the thinly peopled tracts between the Gjmibia and the northern bend of the Senegal, and other trips were made into the basin of the Gambia. Then Mungo Park, charged with a mission of discovery by the London African Association, mother of all contemporary geographical societies, made a 72— AF