It was only some forty miles beyond
Budomel and the caravels reached it next day.
Cape Verde gets its name from its green grass and trees, like C. Blanco
from its white sand. Both are very prominent, lofty, and seen from a
great distance, as they run out far into the sea, but Cape Verde is more
picturesque, dotted as it is with little native villages on the side of
the ocean, and with three small desert islands a short distance from the
mainland, where the sailors found birds' nests and eggs in thousands, of
kinds unknown in Europe, and, above all, enormous shell-fish (turtles),
of twelve pounds' weight.
Soon after passing C. Verde, the coast makes a great sweep to the east,
still covered with evergreen trees, coming down in thick woods to within
a bowshot of the sea, so that from a distance the forest line seems to
touch the high-water mark, "as we thought at first looking on ahead from
our ships. Many countries have I been in to East and West, but never did
I see a prettier sight."
From the place the description again changes to the people, and we are
told once more with wearisome repetitions about the people beyond C.
Verde, in most ways like the negroes of the Senegal but "not obedient to
that kingdom and abhorring the tyranny of the negro Princes, having no
King or laws themselves, worshipping idols, using poisoned arrows which
kill at once, even though they drew but little blood,"--in short a most
truculent folk, but very fine of stature, black and comely.
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