ertained. They returned to Lagos with no other fruit from their voyage
except one negro whom they had received in ransom, and an aged Moor who
requested permission to accompany them to Portugal. One of their own
companions, Juan Fernandez, from an ardent desire to procure information
for the prince, got leave to remain among the Assanhaji Arabs.

Next year, 1447, Antonio Mendez was ordered to return in search of Juan
Fernandez, from whose inquisitive disposition much information was
expected. In this expedition he was accompanied by two other caravels,
commanded by Garcia Mendez and Diego Alfonso, but they were separated by
a storm in the early part of the voyage. Alfonso was the first who
reached the coast at Cape Branco, where he landed, and set up a wooden
cross as a signal to his consorts, and then proceeded to the islands of
Arguin, which afforded shelter from the tremenduous surf which breaks
continually on the coast of Africa. While waiting at Arguin for the other
ships, Alfonso paid many visits to the continent, where he made prisoners
of twenty-five of the natives. When the other two ships of the squadron
had joined, they went to the Rio del Ouro in search of their countryman,
Juan Fernandez, who had been several days anxiously looking out for a
vessel to carry him off.

After experiencing many hardships, Fernandez had succeeded in gaining the
friendship of a considerable person among the Moors, and was accompanied
to the shore by that mans slaves in a body. The natives exerted
themselves to procure the release of some of their countrymen who were
prisoners with the Portuguese, to whom they gave nine negroes and a
quantity of gold dust by way of ransom. To the place where this
transaction took place, the navigators gave the name of _Cabo do Resgati_,
or Cape Ransom; where likewise Fernam Tavares, an aged nobleman, received
the honour of knighthood, a distinction he had long been entitled to, but
which he would only receive upon the newly discovered coast. During the
homeward voyage, Gonzales touched at a village near Cape Branco, where he
increased his captives to ninety.

Juan Fernandez described the natives of the coast as wandering shepherds,
of the same race with the Moor who had been brought over to Portugal by
Antonio Gonzales in the former voyage. After he had been conveyed to a
considerable distance inland, he was stripped of all his clothes, and
even deprived of all the provisions he had taken on shor