6 
Madagascar 
ing year Almeida sent ships back to Portugal with spices 
as a token of his successful voyage ; these ships were com¬ 
manded by Fernando Soares, and on their home voyage 
from India they reached the east coast of Madagascar, 
PAb. 1st, 1506, and thus Soares is the real discoverer 
of the island. On the loth of August of the same year 
1506, the Portuguese Joao Gomez d’Abreu discovered 
the west coast of Madagascar and sailed into the Bay of 
P'ormosa, probably between Point Barrow and Point Croker. 
As it was the day of St. Lawrence the island received 
the name of San Lorengo, and this appellation is gener¬ 
ally given to it in the maps of the beginning of the 
Sixteenth Century. The navigator Tristan da Cunha 
received information about the island from one of his 
captains, Cuntinho by name, who had to put into a 
harbour in Madagascar for shelter; he then visited several 
points of the west coast and reached the north point, 
which at first he designated Cape Natal. 
Gomez d’Abreu after rounding the most northerly 
Cape, sailed along the east coast, landed near Matatane 
and even left some Portuguese behind on the coast, 
where in the following year, 1509, Diego Lopez de Sequira 
effected another landing, afterwards sailing along the coast 
as far as the Bay of San Sebastian. Thus different points 
of the island became known in rapid succession and were 
visited by the Portuguese on their voyages to India. 
There was, however, no permanent occupation of the 
island, perhaps only for the reason that the Portuguese 
already had sufficient colonial possessions in South Ame¬ 
rica, Africa, and Eastern Asia. Between 1595 and 1598 
the Dutch landed in Madagascar, but were apparently 
frightened away by the heavy losses sustained by their 
crews. 
Towards the middle of the Seventeenth Century there 
began, as will be described later, attempts at coloniza¬ 
tion on the part of the French, who designated the 
