Portuguese Explorations 



20. A BARCA. EARLY TYPE OF PORTUGUESE 

 SAILING-SHIP (fifteenth CENTURY) 



voyages), he was the first of these captains to give a clear and 

 accurate account of the people and geography of North- West 

 Africa. 



Pedro de Sintra, or Cintra (an account of whose voyages 

 was written by Ca' da 

 Mosto), was the first 

 Portuguese to reach 

 the coast of modern 

 Liberia, part of which 

 in the vicinity of the 

 modern Marshall 

 (River Junk) he de- 

 scribes as " a great 

 green forest." He set 

 out from Portugal in 1461, shortly after the death of that 

 great prince, Henry the Navigator. De Sintra was dispatched 

 by King Alfonso V. to survey the coast of Guinea beyond 

 Ca' da Mosto's farthest point (Cape Roxo, Casamance River). 

 He passed the Bisagos Archipelago, Cape Verga, and the 

 high mountain of Kakulima (near Konakri), which he named 

 Mount Sagres, after the place of residence of Prince Henry 

 in the Algarve. (This mountain was evidently the Theon 

 Ochema in the Greek translation of Hanno's voyage.) He 

 also first gave the name " Serra Leoa " (Sierra Leone) to the 

 mountainous promontory which the natives at that period 

 seemingly called Bulom-bel (by which name it was even 

 quoted by the French and Dutch travellers^). The western 



' We are distinctly told by Ca' da Mosto that this name — The Lion-like Mountain 

 Range — was given to Sierra Leone because of the loud noises coming from its 

 echoing hollows to the ships out at sea, these noises being caused, he says, by the 

 beating of the surf on the coast, or more probably by the constant thunderstorms. It 

 is highly improbable that lions were ever found in the forest region of Sierra Leone. 

 " Leo^," moreover, in conjunction with " Serra," is an adjective meaning lion-lik(. 



^9 



