Note 2 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY.
Reading edition
I owe this information to the kind researches of Mr. E. G. Ravenstein, F.R.G.S., the learned African cartographer. The following is a quotation from Enciso’s great work, the “Suma de Geographia que trata de todas las partidas y provincias del Mundo,” published at Seville in 1519 (later editions 1530, 1546), fol. 57.
(Translation.) “West of this port (Mombaça) is the Ethiopian Mount Olympus, which is very high, and further off are the mountains of the moon, in which are the sources of the Nile. In all this country are much gold and ‘aiales fieros,’ and here devour the people locusts (lãgostas).”
No gold has since been met with by succeeding travellers, and as to the “aiales fieros,” neither Mr. Ravenstein nor myself can give any translation to the former of the two words. “Aiales” may be a name of a tribe, perhaps a hint at the Masai; or more possibly it may be a printer’s contraction of “animales”—“animales fieros”—“fierce animals.”
Enciso was a Spanish pilot, but his information is evidently derived from the Portuguese, who held Mombaça as early as 1507.