Note 75 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA; (continued 6)

(p. 58). Gete (or Arguim).—[Barros, Decade I, 7, says: "Nuno Tristam on this voyage went on as far as an island which the people of the country called Adeget, and which we now call Arguim." The Arab name was "Ghir," which Azurara turns into "Gete," Barros into "Arget." The discovery and possession of this point was of great importance for the Portuguese. It helped them to obtain news of the interior, and to establish relations with the negro states on the Senegal and Gambia. The Infant began to build a fort on Arguim in 1448. Cadamosto gives a long account of the state of commercial relations which the Portuguese had established there with the dwellers in the upland; and the Portuguese pilot, author of the Navigation to the Isle of St. Thomas (1558), published by Ramusio, says of Arguim: "Here there is a great port and a castle of the King our Lord with a garrison and a factor. Arguim is inhabited by black-a-moors, and this is the point which divides Barbary from Negroland." Cf. Bordone's Isolario (1528) on the Portuguese trade with the interior. In 1638 this factory and fortress were taken by the Dutch.]—S.

The subsequent changes of this position may be briefly noticed. After passing, in 1665, from the Dutch to the English and afterwards back again, in 1678 from the Dutch to the French, in 1685 from the French to the Dutch, in 1721 once more falling into French hands, only to be recovered shortly afterwards by the Netherlanders, it became definitely and finally a French possession in 1724, and at present forms part of the great North-West African empire of the Third Republic. At the northern extremity of the Bight of Arguim, or a little beyond, near Cape Blanco, is the present boundary between the French and Spanish spheres of influence in this part of the world.

The native boats, worked by "bodies in the canoes and legs in the water," must be, Santarem remarks, what the Portuguese call "jangadas."