None of the Spaniards or Portuguese are in use to trade up the river Senegal, except one Portuguese named Ganigogo who dwells far up that river, where he has married the daughter of one of the kings.  In the towns of Porto d’Ally and Joala, which are the places of chief trade on this coast, and at Cauton and Cassan in the river Gambia, there are many Spaniards and Portuguese who have become resident by permission of the negroes, and carry on a valuable trade all along the coast, especially to the Rio San Dominica and Rio Grande, which are not far distant from the Gambia, to which places they transport the iron which they purchase from us and the French, exchanging it for negro slaves, which are transported to the West Indies in ships that come hither from Spain.  By order of the governor and renters of the castle of Mina, and of all those places on the coast of Guinea where gold is to be had, these residents have a place limited for them in the river Gambia, beyond which they must not go under pain of death and confiscation of their goods; as the renters themselves send their own barks at certain times up the river, to those places where gold is to be had.  In all those places hereabout, where we are in use to trade, the Spaniards and Portuguese have no castle or other place of strength, merely trading under the licence and safe conduct of the negroes.  Most of the Spaniards and Portuguese who reside in those parts are banished men or fugitives, who have committed heinous crimes; and their life and conversation is conformable to their conditions, as they are the basest and most villainously behaved persons of their nation that are to be met with in any part of the world.

CHAPTER VIII.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS EARLY VOYAGES OF THE ENGLISH.

INTRODUCTION.

The present chapter is rather of an anomalous nature, and chiefly consists of naval expeditions against the Spaniards and Portuguese, scarcely belonging in any respect to our plan of arrangement:  yet, as contained mostly in the ancient English collection of Hakluyt, and in that by Astley, we have deemed it improper to exclude them from our pages, where they may be considered in some measure as an episode.  Indeed, in every extensively comprehensive plan, some degree of anomaly is unavoidable.  The following apology or reason given by the editor of Astley’s collection for inserting them in that valuable work, may serve us likewise on the present occasion; though surely no excuse can be needed, in a national collection like ours, for recording the exploits of our unrivalled naval defenders.