As for their king, he was three days' journey from the river,
which was called Gambra.
When Cadamosto tried to come to closer quarters, the natives
disappeared, and the crews refused to venture any farther upstream. So
the caravels turned back, sailed down the river, and coasted away west
to Cape Verde, and so home to Portugal. But before the Venetian ends his
journal, he tells us how near Prince Henry's ships had now come to the
Equator. "When we were in the river of Gambra, once only did we see the
North Star, which was so low that it seemed almost to touch the sea." To
make up for the loss of the Pole Star--sunk to "the third part of a
lance's length above the edge of the water,"--Cadamosto and his men had
a view of six brilliant stars, "in form of a cross," while the June
night was "of thirteen hours and the day of eleven."
Cadamosto only went home to refit for a second voyage. Though at first
he had been baffled by the "savagery of the men of Gambra" from finding
out much about them, he resolved to try again, sailed out the very next
year by way of the Canaries and Cape Blanco, and found, after three
days' more sailing, certain islands off Cape Verde, where no one had
been before.
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