[10] This tribe of Assenhaji, or Azanaghi, are the Zenhaga of our maps, and the Sanhagae of Edrisi and Abulfeda. They are at present represented as inhabiting at no great distance from the coast of Africa, between the rivers Nun and Senegal.--Cl.
In the subsequent year, 1446, Don Henry sent out a small squadron of three caravels, under the command of Antonio Gonzales, assisted by Diego Alfonso, and by Gomez Perez, the kings pilot. They were directed to proceed for the Rio del Ouro, and were strictly enjoined to cultivate the friendship of the natives by every possible means, to establish peace with them and to use their utmost endeavours to convert them to the Christian religion; among other instructions, they were urged to pass unnoticed the insults or neglect of honour which they might experience from the negroes. The Portuguese endeavoured, but ineffectually, to conciliate the natives, and to remove the angry prejudices which they entertained. They returned to Lagos with no other fruit from their voyage except one negro whom they had received in ransom, and an aged Moor who requested permission to accompany them to Portugal. One of their own companions, Juan Fernandez, from an ardent desire to procure information for the prince, got leave to remain among the Assanhaji Arabs.
Next year, 1447, Antonio Mendez was ordered to return in search of Juan Fernandez, from whose inquisitive disposition much information was expected. In this expedition he was accompanied by two other caravels, commanded by Garcia Mendez and Diego Alfonso, but they were separated by a storm in the early part of the voyage. Alfonso was the first who reached the coast at Cape Branco, where he landed, and set up a wooden cross as a signal to his consorts, and then proceeded to the islands of Arguin, which afforded shelter from the tremenduous surf which breaks continually on the coast of Africa. While waiting at Arguin for the other ships, Alfonso paid many visits to the continent, where he made prisoners of twenty-five of the natives. When the other two ships of the squadron had joined, they went to the Rio del Ouro in search of their countryman, Juan Fernandez, who had been several days anxiously looking out for a vessel to carry him off.
After experiencing many hardships, Fernandez had succeeded in gaining the friendship of a considerable person among the Moors, and was accompanied to the shore by that mans slaves in a body. The natives exerted themselves to procure the release of some of their countrymen who were prisoners with the Portuguese, to whom they gave nine negroes and a quantity of gold dust by way of ransom. To the place where this transaction took place, the navigators gave the name of Cabo do Resgati , or Cape Ransom; where likewise Fernam Tavares, an aged nobleman, received the honour of knighthood, a distinction he had long been entitled to, but which he would only receive upon the newly discovered coast. During the homeward voyage, Gonzales touched at a village near Cape Branco, where he increased his captives to ninety.
Juan Fernandez described the natives of the coast as wandering shepherds, of the same race with the Moor who had been brought over to Portugal by Antonio Gonzales in the former voyage. After he had been conveyed to a considerable distance inland, he was stripped of all his clothes, and even deprived of all the provisions he had taken on shore. A tattered coarse rug, called an alhaik , was given him instead of the clothes he had been deprived of. His food was principally a small farinaceous seed, varied sometimes by the roots which he could find in the desert, or the tender sprouts of wild plants. The inhabitants, among whom he lived as a slave, unless when better supplied by means of the chase, fed on dried lizards, and on a species of locust or grasshopper. Water was bad, or scarce, and their chief drink was milk. They only killed some of their cattle on certain great festivals; and, like the Tartars, they roamed from place to place in quest of a precarious sustenance for their flocks and herds. The whole country presented only extensive wastes of barren sand, or an uncultivated heath, where a few Indian figs here and there variegated the dreary and extensive inhospitable plain. A short time before he rejoined his countrymen, Fernandez acquired the protection and kindness of Huade Meimon, a Moor of distinction, who permitted him to watch for the arrival of the ships, and even assigned him a guard for his protection.
In the interval between these two voyages of Gonzales, Denis Fernandez, a gentleman of Lisbon, who had belonged to the household of the late king, fitted out a vessel for discovery under the patronage of Don Henry, with a determination to endeavour to penetrate farther to the southwards than any preceding navigator. He accordingly passed to the southwards of the Senegal river, which divides the Azanhaji moors from the Jaloffs, or most northern negroes, and fell in with some almadias or canoes, one of which he captured, with four natives. Proceeding still farther on, without stopping to satisfy his curiosity in visiting the coast, he at length reached the most westerly promontory of Africa, to which he gave the name of Cabo Verde, or the Green Cape, from the number of palm trees with which it was covered. Alarmed by the breakers with which the shore was everywhere guarded, Denis did not venture to proceed any farther, especially as the season was already far advanced, but returned with his captives to Portugal, where he met with a flattering reception from Don Henry, both on account of his discovery of the Cape de Verd, and for the natives he had procured from the newly discovered coast, without having been traded for with the Moors.
SECTION V.
Progress of Discovery from Cape de Verd to the Gambia .
Soon after the return of Denis from the Cape de Verd, Gonzales Pachecos, a wealthy officer belonging to the household of Don Henry, fitted out a ship at his own expence, of which he gave the command to Dinisianez da Gram, one of the princes equerries, who was accompanied by Alvaro Gil, an essayer of the mint, and Mafaldo de Setubal. After touching at Cape Branco, they steered along the coast for the isle of Arguin, making descents in several places, where they made a considerable number of captives from the Moors. At the isle De las Garças they found another caravel, commanded by Lourenço Dias, which formed part of a considerable squadron that had been lately fitted out from Lagos. Two days afterwards, the admiral of that squadron, Lançarot, and nine other caravels arrived. Gram informed Lançarot of his success in making fifty prisoners, whom he had dearly purchased by the loss of seven of his men, who had been murdered by the Moors. Lançarot immediately sailed for Arguin, bent on revenge, and sacrificed the lives of eight, and the liberty of four of the natives, to the memory of Gonzales da Cintra and the mariners of Gram. On this occasion two of the Portuguese officers were knighted on the newly discovered coast, which seems then to have been a fashionable ambition among them, no doubt arising from the prevailing zeal for maritime discovery. From Arguin Lançarot passed over to the isle of Tider, whence the inhabitants made their escape to the adjacent continent; but the Portuguese soon followed, and the astonished Moors fled on all sides, after a sharp skirmish, in which a good many of them were slain, and sixty taken prisoners.
The fleet now separated, a part returning home by way of the Canaries, while Lançarot, with several other caravels, advanced along the coast of Africa southwards, till he got beyond what the Moors called the Çahara, or Sahara, of the Assenaji. This Moorish nation is mentioned by Abulfeda as the ruling tribe in Audagost, or Agadez, and as inhabiting the southern part of Morocco. They are therefore to be considered as the peculiar people of the great desert and its environs, at its western extremity on the Atlantic. The latter part of their name, aji , or rather aspirated haji , signifies a pilgrim, and is now the appropriate title of one who has made the great pilgrimage of Mecca. In the present case, the name of Assenaji probably signifies the Wanderers of the Desert . The Sanhaga, or Assenaji tribe, is now placed at no great distance from the African coast, between the rivers Nun and Senegal; and this latter river has probably received its Portuguese name of Sanaga from that tribe. Ptolemy likewise probably named Cape Verd Arsinarium , from the same people, from which it may be inferred that they anciently occupied both sides of the Senegal river, which is named Dardalus by that ancient geographer.
Twenty leagues beyond the southern boundary of the great desert, Lançarot came to the mouth of a large river, which had been formerly seen by Denis Fernandez, and named by him Rio Portugues , or the Portuguese river; which was called Ouedech by the natives, and afterwards got the name of Canaga, Zanaga, Sanhaga, Sanaga, or Senega, now the Senegal. Lançarot passed in safety over the bar of this river, and endeavoured