Page:West African Studies.djvu/319

French in ever having abandoned it owing to certain prejudices they had taken against the climate. His account of it is that about the year 1346 some adventurers of Dieppe, a port in Normandy, who as descendants of the Normans, were well used to long voyages, sailed along the coast of the negroes, Guinea, and settled several colonies in those parts, particularly about Cape Verde, in the Bay of Rio Fesco, and along the Melequeta coast. To the Bay, which extends from Cape Ledo to Cape Mount they gave the name of the Bay of France; that of Petit Dieppe to the village of Rio Corso (between Rio France and Rio Sestro); that of Sestro Paris to Grand Sestro, not far from Cape Palmas; while they carried to France great quantities of Guinea pepper and elephants' tusks, whence the inhabitants of Dieppe set up the trade of turning ivory and making several useful works, as combs, for which they grew famous, and still continue so. Villault also speaks of "a fair church still in being" at Elmina, adorned with the arms of France, and also says that the chief battery to the sea is called by the natives La Battarie de France; and he speaks of the affection the natives have for France, and says they beat their drums in the French manner. Barbot also speaks of the affection of the natives for the French, and says that on his last voyage in 1682 the king sent him his second son as hostage, if he would come up to Great Kommondo, and treat about settling in his country, although he had refused the English and the Dutch. Barbot, however, does not agree with Villault about the prior rights of France to the discovery of Guinea; he thinks that if these facts be true it is strange that there is no mention of so important an enterprise in French historians, and concludes that it would be unjust to the Portuguese to