View of Capes de Verde. / a nother View at a distance / View of the Negro Town at Rufisco.

Title

View of Capes de Verde. / a nother View at a distance / View of the Negro Town at Rufisco.

Description

Three views on one sheet. The top two views show a Cape Verde island. The bottom view shows the city of Rufisque in Senegal. From “A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels,” printed for Thomas Astley, published with His Majesty's permission, London.

ca. 1745

Artist

Parr

Historical Description

The uninhabited islands were circled by António Fernandes in 1445 and discovered and entered for the first time in 1456 by the Venetian Alvise Cadamosto, who was in Portuguese service (Boa Vista). Antonio da Noli, a Genoese captain who also sailed on behalf of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, continued to explore the islands from 1458 in collaboration with Diogo Gomes, discovered most of the rest of the eastern Cape Verde Islands and baptized the archipelago with the name Ilhas de Cabo Verde and began settling the islands as governor of the Portuguese crown from 1461. In fact, Diogo Gomes later claimed to be the first of the two to have seen the island of Santiago from afar and also to have been the first to set foot on it. Antonio da Noli, however, managed to return to Portugal earlier, and he was then understandably rewarded by Heinrich the Navigator with the encouragement of the discovery, which, in the words of Diogo Gomes, "I, Gomes, discovered". Because of the rivalry between the two, Diogo Gomes is considered to be the true discoverer of the main island of Santiago in Portuguese historiography. The islands were named by the Portuguese after Cabo Verde (Green Cape) on the west coast of Africa.