Note 221 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 6)

(p. 288). Path of Salvation.—[Some modern writers, founding themselves on the accounts of Cadamosto, have tried to make out that the Portuguese were the first among modern nations to introduce the slave trade from the beginning of their discoveries on the coast of Africa. It does not fall within the limits of this note to show how erroneous such assertions are; but we will nevertheless say that the celebrated Las Casas, in his Historia de las Indias, MSS., ch. xix, says that Jean de Bethencourt brought many captives from the Canaries whom he sold in Spain, Portugal, and France.]—S.