Note 74 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 6)

(p. 57). Who traded in that gold.—[Azurara seems ignorant that the gold was brought from the interior by caravans, which from ancient times had carried on this trade across the great desert, especially since the Arab invasion. Under the Khalifs, this Sahara commerce extended itself to the western extremity of the continent, and even to Spain. The caravans crossed the valleys and plains of Suz, Darah and Tafilet to the south of Morocco. Cf. the Geographia Nubiensis of Edrisi (1619 ed.), pp. 7, 11, 12, 14; Hartmann's Edrisi, pp. 26, 49, 133-4. This gold came from the negro-land called Wangara, as Edrisi and Ibn-al-Wardi tell us. See Notices et extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque du Roi, fo. 11, pp. 33 and 37: so Leo Africanus and Marmol y Carvajal speak of the gold of Tiber, brought from Wangara. "Tiber" is from the Arab word Thibr = gold (cf. Walckenaer, Recherches géographiques, p. 14). So Cadamosto, speaking of the commerce of Arguim, says, ch. x, that men brought there "gold of Tiber;" and Barros, Decade I, ch. vii, in describing the Rio d' Ouro, refers to the same thing:—"A quantity of gold-dust, the first obtained in these parts, whence the place was called the Rio d' Ouro, though it is only an inlet of salt water running up into the country about six leagues."]—S.