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230
EARLY TRADE IN WEST AFRICA
chap.

of this wreck of a vessel belonging to Western Europe being found on the East Coast of Africa joined with the knowledge that these vessels did not pass through the Mediterranean Sea, gave Eudoxus the idea that the vessel he had the figure head of must have come round Africa from the West Coast, and he then proceeded to Cadiz and equipped three vessels, one large and two of smaller size, and started out to do the same thing, bar wrecking. He sailed down the known West Coast without trouble, but when he came to passing on into the unknown seas, he had trouble with the crews, and was compelled to beach his vessels. After doing this he succeeded in persuading his crews to proceed, but it was then found impossible to float the largest vessel, so she was abandoned, and the expedition proceeded in the smaller and in a ship constructed from the wreck of the larger on which the cargo was shipped with the expedition. Eudoxus reached apparently Senegambia, and then another mutiny broke out, and he had to return to Barbary. But undaunted he then fitted out another expedition, consisting of two smaller vessels, and once again sailed to the South to circumnavigate Africa. Nothing since has been heard of Eudoxus of Cyzicus surnamed the Brave.[1]

On his second voyage he fell in with natives who, he says, spoke the same language that he had previously heard on the Eastern Coast of Africa. If he was right in this, some authors hold he must have gone down the West Coast, at least as far as Cameroons, because there you

  1. See Ellis's History of the Gold Coast, also Tozer's History of Ancient Geography, Beazley's Dawn of Modern Geography, and Strabo, B.C. 25, book xvii, edited by Theodore Jansonius ab Almelooven, Amsterdam, 1707.