In 1588 Andrew Battel, a fisherman of Leigh in Essex, was wrecked on the coast of Brazil, seized by the Indians as a “pirate,” and handed over to the Portuguese at Rio de Janeiro. The Portuguese decided to deport him to Angola. The vessel in which he travelled reached Benguela at a time when it was being ravaged by the predatory “Jagas[167].” The Portuguese being obliged to leave a hostage with the Jagas, left Battel behind; and in the company of these wild people he seems to have traversed much of the Congo country behind Angola and Loango before he eventually reached the coast again (north of the Congo) near a Portuguese fort, where he was allowed by the Jagas to leave them and whence the Portuguese permitted him to return to England in 1607. He appears to have roamed over South-West Africa for nearly 18 years, and he brought back with him fairly truthful accounts of the pygmy races, the anthropoid apes, and some of the big game which penetrates the interior of Benguela from the south. At the commencement of the 17th century, William Lithgow, a Scottish traveller, visited Tunis and Algeria. In 1618 the London Company of Adventurers despatched George Thompson, who had already travelled in Barbary, to explore the river Gambia. During his absence up the river the ship by which he had come from England was seized and the crew murdered by Portuguese and half-caste slave traders, who resented this invasion of their special domain. Thompson managed to send back word of his difficulties, and the Company of Adventurers despatched another small ship. After sending her back with letters, Thompson continued his journeys for a distance of about 80 miles above the mouth of the Gambia. Thompson, however, lost his head, became fantastic in his notions, and is supposed to have been killed by his own English seamen, who afterwards boldly walked to the Senegal coast and were sent home in a Dutch ship. A third vessel sailed from London, commanded by Richard Jobson, to enquire after Thompson’s fate. Jobson’s first voyage, though he reached the point where Thompson had disappeared, was not very successful. On his return from Gravesend with two ships in 1620, he sailed up the Gambia to a place called Kasson, where dwelt an influential Portuguese who had been the instigator of the destruction of his predecessor’s ship. This man fled at Jobson’s approach, and the latter continued on his way till he reached Tenda, where Thompson had disappeared. He then travelled in boats far above the Barrakonda Rapids[168].