Liberia ^ 



possibly a station at or near the mouth of the River Cestos. 

 " Grand Buteau" and " Petit Buteau " were placed, it is suggested, 

 at Great and Little Butu (Bootoo), a few miles north of Greenville 

 (Sino). Great and Little Paris are identified with Grand and 

 Picaninny ( = little) Sesters (places in the western part of Maryland 

 County). They are also thought to have had a calling-place at 

 Fresco, on the Ivory Coast (near Lahou), stations at Cape Mount 

 (1375) and Sierra Leone. By 1382 their ships are alleged 

 to have reached the Gold Coast, and in 1382 and 1383 they 

 built a fort at the modern Elmina, on a bastion of which (long 

 called the French bastion) it is said (by Dr. Dapper) that two 

 figures indicating the first part of " thirteen hundred " were still 

 visible at the close of the eighteenth century.^ All these Norman- 

 French settlements, however, seem to have been completely 

 abandoned by about 141 3, at which time Normandy was involved 

 in the internal internecine wars which raged in France after the 

 death of Charles VI. 



Very soon after the Normans commenced their adventurous 

 voyages in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, the seamen of 

 Genoa, Majorca, and Barcelona (the Moorish power in south- 

 eastern Spain having abated) took to adventurous voyages for 

 trading purposes along the North Coast of Africa and out into the 

 Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar.^ During the thirteenth 

 and fourteenth centuries there was a lull in the ferocious conflict 

 between Christians and Muhammadans in the Mediterranean 



^ MCCCLXXXIII would represent 1383 in Roman numerals. It is almost 

 certain that at that date Arabic figures would not be employed in inscriptions ; 

 consequently, as it would require fo?(r Roman numerals (MCCC) to indicate 1300, 

 Dapper's story is not quite credible. Colonel Binger, however, thinks that Norman 

 seamen used Arabic figures, as did the English, in the thirteenth century. 



^ Noteworthy among these adventures is the story of Jac Ferrer, a Majorcan 

 captain who sailed for the River of Gold in 1346, and perhaps reached the Senegal 

 River. In the French traditions about the Norman voyages to the Grain Coast there 

 is one pointing to Catalan ships frequenting this coast in 1375. 



32 



