PROGRESS OF THE PORTUGUESE 23 



nearly fifty years before, and had, as we have seen, 

 been named by him the River of Good Signs. 



With these three ports estabhshed, therefore, the 

 Portuguese felt that their commercial aspirations 

 had been placed upon a sound basis, and that trade 

 with the surrounding tribes would soon become a 

 source of fabulous wealth — the wealth which, in 

 anticipation, had roused the enthusiasm of the 

 Portuguese nation, and awakened that craving for 

 suddenly acquired riches which the amazing dis- 

 coveries of Spain under Cortes on the other side of 

 the Atlantic went far about this time to strengthen 

 and heighten. 



In spite of all this, the Arabs, in their light- 

 draught sailing boats and rapid dhows, succeeded 

 in carrying off the greater portion of the gold and 

 ivory with which the natives could be induced to 

 part ; for, as is indeed the case to the present day, 

 the Asiatic was the man who sought out the native 

 markets, and there bartered European commodities 

 and those of India and the East. To-day the Arab 

 is gone from these parts of the coast, and his old 

 place on the African seaboard knows him no more ; 

 but his latter-day representative, the astute British 

 Indian Banyan trader, whose tactics are almost the 

 same as those of his long-dead prototype in the 

 early days of the Portuguese occupation, is a 

 picturesque figure with which we are sufficiently 

 familiar in every coast town on the East African 

 littoral. 



Little by little the Portuguese were asserting 

 themselves ; gradually they were pushing their way 

 onward into the interior, when an event occurred 



