thirst. The water failed them
on the way, and for three days they had nothing to drink.

Altogether, Fernandez' report discouraged any further attempts to
explore by land, where all the country as far as could be reached seemed
to yield nothing but desert with a few slender oases. It was not indeed
till the European explorers reached the Congo on their coasting voyages
to the south that they found a natural and inviting pathway into the
heart of Africa. The desert of the north and west, the fever-haunted
swamps and jungle of the Guinea Coast only left narrow inlets of more
healthy and passable country, and these the Portuguese did their best to
close by occasional acts of savage cruelty and impudent fraud in their
dealings with the natives.

Another expedition, and that an unlucky one, under Gonsalo Pacheco, a
gentleman of Lisbon, followed this last of Antam Gonsalvez. Pacheco got
leave to make the voyage, equipped a caravel that he had built for
himself, and got two others to share the risk and profits with him. And
so, says Azurara, hoisting the banners of the Order of Christ, they made
their way to Cape Blanco. Here they found, one league from the Cape, a
village, and by the shore a writing, that Antam Gonsalvez had set up, in
which he counselled all who passed that way not to trouble to go up and
sack the village, as it was quite empty of people. So they hung about
the Bank of Arguin, making raids in various places, and capturing some
one hundred and twenty natives, all of which is not of much interest to
any one, though as Pacheco and his men had to pay themselves for their
trouble, and make a profit on the voyage, these man-hunts were the
chief thing they thought about and the main thing in their stories when
they got home.

Men like Pacheco and his friends were not explorers at all. They stopped
far short of the mark that Diniz Diaz had made for the European
Furthest, and their only discovery was of a new cape one hundred miles
and more beyond the Bank of Arguin. Sailing south, because the natives
fled at their approach and left the coast land all bare, "they came to a
headland which they called Cape St. Anne, by which an arm of the sea ran
four leagues up the country," where they hunted for more prisoners.

Still in search of slaves and gold they sailed on two hundred and fifty
miles--eighty leagues--to Negroland, where Diaz had been before, and
where they saw a land, to the north of the Great Western Cape,