DISCOVERIES OF THE ENGLISH. ill 
men, who had come from England, they formed a 
conspiracy to seize the vessel, and massacre the crew. 
It was discovered and thwarted. The conduct of 
the English, and their mode of trading, afforded 
the highest satisfaction to the natives, who assured 
them, " that one bar of iron would be more wel- 
" come than forty Portugals." The French are 
said at this time to have sent from Dieppe four or 
five vessels, which touched partly at the Senegal, 
and partly at the Gambia. 
The subsequent trade of the English upon these 
rivers is not recorded ; but about the commence- 
ment of the seventeenth century, an unbounded 
zeal was excited to explore the interior of West- 
ern Africa. The object of search was that which, 
in every age, has tempted human cupidity be- 
yond all others — gold. The writings of Leo 
and Edrisi were in so far known as to make it 
be understood that they had reported the inte- 
rior of the continent to contain abundant stores 
of this precious metal. It was, moreover, known, 
from the Barbary merchants, that the Moors, af- 
ter travelling southwards over a vast expanse 
of desert, came to the regions of Tombuctoo 
and Gago, * in which gold was abundant. From 
* On the 1st of August 1594, a merchant in Morocco 
wrote to his friend in London, <{ That you may not think me 
" to slumber in this action, wherein you would be truely and 
