the shape of men, before which they make offerings of victuals as often as they eat or drink.  These people are more of a tawny colour than black, having marks on their faces and bodies made with hot irons.  They go almost entirely naked, except that they wear pieces of the bark of trees before them.  They have no arms, as there is no iron in their country.  They live on rice, millet, beans, and kidney beans, larger than ours; and have also beef and goats flesh, but not in any great abundance.  Near to Cape Sagres there are several very small uninhabited islands.

The inhabitants of this river have large almadias, carrying from thirty to forty men, who row standing, without having their oars fixed to any thing, as formerly noticed.  They have their ears pierced with many holes, in which they wear a variety of gold rings.  Both men and women have also a hole through the cartilage of the nose, in which they wear a gold ring, just like that of iron in the noses of our buffalos, which they take out when eating.  The ladies belonging to the kings and great men, by way of extraordinary grandeur, have gold rings on other parts of their body, which decorum prevents us from particularizing.

Passing Cape Sagres, they sailed about forty miles farther along the coast, and came to the Rio de San Vincents, which is about four miles wide; and about five miles farther they found another, which they called Rio Verde, larger at the mouth than the former[5].  Both of these rivers were so named by the sailors in the caravels.  About twenty-four miles beyond the Rio Verde, they came to another cape which they called Cape Liedo, signifying the cheerful, because of the beautifully verdant country in its neighbourhood[6].  From Cape Liedo there extends a large mountain for about fifty miles along the coast, all of which is very high, and covered with tall verdant trees.  At the end of this mountain, and about eight miles from the shore, there are three small islands, the largest of which does not exceed ten or twelve miles in circumference.  To these the sailors gave the name of Saluezze[7]; and they named the mountain Sierra Leona, or the Lion Mountain, on account of the continual roaring of thunder on its summit, which is always enveloped in clouds.

Proceeding beyond Sierra Leona, the coast was quite low, and the shore full of sand banks running out into the sea.  About thirty miles from the southern extremity of the mountain, they found a river near three miles wide at the entrance, and because the water had a red colour, they called it Rio Roxo[8].  And farther on they found a cape, likewise of a red colour, which they named Cape Roxo[9].  And they gave the same name of Roxo to a small uninhabited island, about ten miles off at sea, where the north polar star seemed only the height of a man above the horizon.  Beyond Cape Roxo, the sea forms a gulf, about the middle of which there enters a river, which the seamen called St Mary del Nievos, or of the snow,