Liberia ^ 



man on one of the Portuguese ships, and fetched up In Benin. 

 He discovered that pepper at any rate came from Benin. 

 This discovery nearly cost him his hfe ; but he showed the way 

 to other adventurers, and by 1553 Englishmen were trading 

 with the Guinea Coast in their own ships. 



As early as 1482 King John II. of Portugal sent an 

 embassy to Edward IV. of England, asking him to restrain by 

 his orders two Englishmen, John Tintam and William Fabian, 

 from making a voyage to Guinea, in defiance of the Portuguese 

 restrictions, which forbade persons not subjects of Portugal to 

 trade with that " lordship." These two English adventurers 

 were to have gone out in the pay, and possibly commanding 

 the ships of, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, a great Spanish 

 nobleman. 



A vigorous English trade with the Canary Islands had 

 sprung up at the end of the fifteenth century, and even at the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century English merchant captains sent 

 back the most copious notes about the indigenes (Guanches) 

 and natural productions of the Canary Islands.^ Already at the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century sugar-cane was grown there, 

 and sugar was manufactured in twelve bakeries. Also, even at this 

 early date the Spaniards, with the help of the Portuguese, had 

 orange trees, lemons, and bananas^ growing in Grand Canary and 

 Tenerife. 



Probably the first Englishmen to see the coast of Liberia 

 were the officers and crew of the Primrose and the Lion, 

 two goodly ships accompanied by a pinnace called the Moon 

 which sailed from Portsmouth on August 12th, 1553. (Prior 



• "Tenerifa is a high land with a great pike like a sugar loaf, and upon the 

 said pike is snow throughout all the yeere, and by reason of that pike it may be 

 knowen above all other islands. . . ." — Captain John Lok, 1554. 



^ The banana was introduced from Senegambia. The word "banana" comes 

 from the languages of the Sieira Leone Coast, such as Bullom. 



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