e. A tattered
coarse rug, called an _alhaik_, was given him instead of the clothes he
had been deprived of. His food was principally a small farinaceous seed,
varied sometimes by the roots which he could find in the desert, or the
tender sprouts of wild plants. The inhabitants, among whom he lived as a
slave, unless when better supplied by means of the chase, fed on dried
lizards, and on a species of locust or grasshopper. Water was bad, or
scarce, and their chief drink was milk. They only killed some of their
cattle on certain great festivals; and, like the Tartars, they roamed
from place to place in quest of a precarious sustenance for their flocks
and herds. The whole country presented only extensive wastes of barren
sand, or an uncultivated heath, where a few Indian figs here and there
variegated the dreary and extensive inhospitable plain. A short time
before he rejoined his countrymen, Fernandez acquired the protection and
kindness of Huade Meimon, a Moor of distinction, who permitted him to
watch for the arrival of the ships, and even assigned him a guard for his
protection.

In the interval between these two voyages of Gonzales, Denis Fernandez, a
gentleman of Lisbon, who had belonged to the household of the late king,
fitted out a vessel for discovery under the patronage of Don Henry, with
a determination to endeavour to penetrate farther to the southwards than
any preceding navigator. He accordingly passed to the southwards of the
Senegal river, which divides the Azanhaji moors from the Jaloffs, or most
northern negroes, and fell in with some almadias or canoes, one of which
he captured, with four natives. Proceeding still farther on, without
stopping to satisfy his curiosity in visiting the coast, he at length
reached the most westerly promontory of Africa, to which he gave the name
of Cabo Verde, or the Green Cape, from the number of palm trees with
which it was covered. Alarmed by the breakers with which the shore was
everywhere guarded, Denis did not venture to proceed any farther,
especially as the season was already far advanced, but returned with his
captives to Portugal, where he met with a flattering reception from Don
Henry, both on account of his discovery of the Cape de Verd, and for the
natives he had procured from the newly discovered coast, without having
been traded for with the Moors.

SECTION V.

_Progress of Discovery from Cape de Verd to the Gambia_.

Soon after the return of Denis