10 Annals of the South African Museum. 



the date is missing, also the continuation of the four lines of 

 letters. 



On the reverse of the thick slah is a Dutch record dated 1634. 

 On examination it becomes apparent that the block on which the 

 French inscription stood was pared or reduced so as to allow of the 

 new one, which is entire, being graved on the reverse. But how long 

 the first preceded the second, and whose record it is, remains, so far, 

 a mystery. 



Paulmier de Gonville is believed, with good reason, yet without 

 much documentary evidence, to have rounded the Cape in 1503, and 

 to have reached Madagascar in that year. But he sailed from 



FIG. 5. 



57 cm. x 24 cm. 

 ICY EST ARRIVE DAVID DIGAED DE DIEPPE 8 10 DE FEVRER 1 ... 



(Here arrived David Digaed from Dieppe, 8-10 February, 1 . . .) 



Honfleur, not Dieppe, in June. The inscription cannot be, there- 

 fore, ascribed to him. 



There is no information about the vessels who were flying the 

 French flag in 1508 in the Mozambique Channel, and even captured 

 there, as stated before, one of the ships of Tristan da Cunha's fleet. 



In 1527 a French vessel, one of a company of three, all from 

 Dieppe, stopped at Madagascar, traded there, and left behind a sailor, 

 whom Diogo de Fonseca picked up in 1531. 



The brothers Parmentier, also of Dieppe, following the Cape route, 

 left with two ships, La Pensee (400 tons) and Le Sacre(l%Q tons), on 



