Baldaya anchored here, landed a couple of horses which the Infant had
given him to scour the country, and set "two young noble gentlemen" upon
them to ride up country, to look for signs of natives, and if possible
to bring back one captive to the ship. Taking no body-armour, but only
lance and sword, the boys followed the "river" to its source, seven
leagues up the country, and here came suddenly upon nineteen savages,
armed with assegais. They rode up to them and drove them out of the open
up to a loose mound of stones; then as evening was coming on and they
could not secure a prisoner, they rode back to the sea and reached the
ship about the dawn of day. "And of these boys," says the chronicler, "I
myself knew one, when he was a noble gentleman of good renown in arms.
His name was Hector Homen, and you will find him in our history well
proved in brave deeds. The other, named Lopez d'Almeida, was a nobleman
of good presence, as I have heard from those who knew him."
This first landing of Europeans on the coasts of unknown Africa, since
the days of Carthaginian colonies, is one of the great moments in the
story of Western expansion and discovery. For it means that Christendom
on her Western side has at last got beyond the first circle of her
enemies, the belt of settled Moslem ground, and has begun to touch the
wider world outside, on the shore of the ocean as well as along the
Eastern trade routes.
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