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Be that as it may, this excellent Aloisió Cadamosto has sought to claim for himself what was the work of another. He has related the great deeds of the Portuguese, but whether he witnessed them, as he pretends, or has merely profited by the labour of another, I am unable to state. Vivat et ipse marte suo.
When Cadamosto, the Venetian, saw the pole-star at "the third of a lance's length above the edge of the waves," he recorded it as one of the most striking phenomena of his journey towards the equator. Two instruments were known by which the elevation above the horizon of the pole-star, or any other heavenly body could be measured. The older of these was the "cross-staff," or St.
They had even advanced if the lists of countries and nations discovered at Karnak by M. Mariette may be believed as far as the great Lakes of the interior. In the twelfth century, the Arab geographer Edrisi writes an excellent description of Africa for Roger II. of Sicily, and confirms these data. Later on, Cadamosto and Ibn Batuta travel over Africa, and the latter goes as far as Timbuctoo.
Care was taken that no foreigner should mingle with the Spaniards, without the King's permission, and for this reason I am extremely astonished that a certain Venetian, Aloisió Cadamosto, who has written a history of the Portuguese, should write when mentioning the actions of the Spaniards, "We have done; we have seen; we have been"; when, as a matter of fact, he has neither done nor seen any more than any other Venetian.
In 1455 the Venetian Cadamosto entered into Henry's service; and, followed closely by Diego Gomez, discovered the Cape Verd Islands and passed so far around the shoulder of northwestern Africa as not only to reach the ends of the caravan routes from Morocco, and to open up trade in gold, ivory, and the products of the Guinea coast, but to suggest that there was open sea now all the way eastward to India.
Voyages de Aloysio Cadamosto aux Isles Madère, et des Canaries au Cap Blanc, au Sénégal, &c. en 1455. 4to. Paris, 1508. This work was originally published in Italian; its author was employed by Don Henry of Portugal, to prosecute discovery on the Western Coast of Africa.
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