Liberia «*> 



Other unrecorded Norman adventurers may have sailed past 

 the Canary Islands along the Sahara Coast to Cape Verde and 

 the Land of the Blacks, probably trading with the natives in 

 spices. It is asserted by Villault de Bellefonds^ that as early 

 as 1339 (the year in which Dieppe was taken and plundered by 

 the English) the Dieppois adventurers had sailed along the 

 North-West African coast, and that in 1364-5 two of their 

 ships reached the " Grain " Coast, which is now known as 

 Liberia. They started in November, reached Cape Verde at 

 Christmas, visited " Boulombel " (Sierra Leone), Cap Moute 

 (Cape Mount), and extended their voyage to Petit Dieppe 

 (Grand Basa). In 1365 and 1367^ the Norman adventurers 

 founded this Petit Dieppe, which might be identified with Basa 

 Cove, near the modern town of Lower Buchanan at the mouth 

 of the Biso River (Grand Basa). " Grand Dieppe " was 



effected a landing at Lanzarote and Fiierteventura. This first expedition of Jehan 

 de Bethencourt's was repulsed by the natives ; but four years after, having obtained 

 a grant of the islands from Henry III. of Castille, De Bethencourt mastered four 

 of the smaller among the Canary Islands, and proclaimed himself king. He was 

 unsuccessful, however, in his attempts on Grand Canary and Tenerife, and died 

 in France in 1408. His nephew disposed of the De Bethencourt claim to a 

 Spaniard and afterwards to the Crown of Portugal. After some dispute as to 

 ownership between private individuals and the Crowns of Spain and Portugal — 

 disputes which dragged on for nearly eighty years — and after violent and effective 

 opposition on the part of the warlike indigenes of Grand Canary, Tenerife, and 

 Palma, the whole archipelago was finally conquered and occupied by Spain at 

 the close of the fifteenth century. During the next hundred years the indigenous 

 Berber inhabitants were either exterminated or became fused in the mass of 

 Spanish settlers, to whom physically they were not very dissimilar. 



' A Relation of the Coasts of Africa called Guinea, a book published in 

 London in 1670, apparently a translation of an earlier work in French. Villault 

 was a supercargo or controller of the Europa^ a trading vessel sent from Amsterdam 

 to the Guinea Coast by the French West Indian Company. The Dutch writer, Dr. 

 Dapper, also alludes to these traditions of pre-Portuguese settlements by the 

 French in his work published at Amsterdam in 1686 (p. 230). 



2 For an admirable summary of all the traditions and evidences regarding 

 these Norman voyages, see Beasley and Prestage, Discovery and Conquest of 

 Guinea (Hakluyt Society), p. Ixvi. These authors consider the case "non 

 proven." 



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