-* Portuguese Explorations 



Dieppois) again frequented the West Coast of Africa. They 

 had, indeed, commenced in 1483 — perhaps earlier — to renew 

 the Atlantic voyages interrupted seventy years before. But 

 the Portuguese kept for nearly a hundred years a pretty tight 

 grip on the Gulf of Guinea. They did not object, however, 

 to engaging Genoese captains or officers for their vessels, and 

 it was in this service that Columbus made several voyages to 

 Guinea a few years before his great adventure. The Discoverer 

 of America, therefore, in all probability landed on the Liberian 

 coast when the Portuguese ships called there for fresh water 

 or commerce in pepper. 



When Creasy was writing on the decisive battles of the 

 world, it is curious that he did not include amongst them 

 the battle of Kasr-al-Kablr, which occurred on August 4th, 

 1578; for the results of this conflict in Northern Morocco on 

 the banks of the River Aulkus were felt in a remarkable series 

 of events all over the habitable globe — just as when some 

 obscure volcanic outburst or earthquake occurs at the bottom 

 of the sea in the Pacific, or in the Indian Ocean, tidal wave 

 after tidal wave ravages the coasts and islands of some unwitting 

 land a thousand miles or so from the scene of the scarcely 

 noticed outbreak of natural forces. 



Portugal, ever since the capture of Ceuta in 141 5 (the 

 event which had set Prince Henry of Portugal thinking on 

 West African discovery), had been striving to conquer for 

 herself an empire over Morocco. Spain — that is to say, 

 Castille — was shut off from any such ambition in the first half 

 of the fifteenth century because the Moorish kingdom of 

 Granada still stood between the territories of the kingdom of 

 Castille and the nearest part of the Morocco coast. Portugal 

 by degrees laid hands on most of the principal ports, pro- 

 montories, and islets along the coast of Morocco from Ceuta 



45 



