[Endnote 74: (p. 57). _Who traded in that gold._--[Azurara seems ignorant that the gold was "brought from the interior by caravans, which from ancient times had carried on this trade across the great desert, especially since the Arab invasion. Under the Khalifs, this Sahara commerce extended itself to the western extremity of the continent, and even to Spain. The caravans crossed the valleys and plains of Suz, Darah and Tafilet to the south of Morocco. Cf. the _Geographia Nubiensis_ of Edrisi (1619 ed.), pp. 7, 11, 12, 14; Hartmann's _Edrisi_, pp. 26, 49, 133-4. This gold came from the negro-land called Wangara, as Edrisi and Ibn-al-Wardi tell us. See _Notices et extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque du Roi_, fo. 11, pp. 33 and 37: so Leo Africanus and Marmol y Carvajal speak of the gold of Tiber, brought from Wangara. "Tiber" is from the Arab word Thibr = gold (cf. Walckenaer, _Recherches géographiques_, p. 14). So Cadamosto, speaking of the commerce of Arguim, says, ch. x, that men brought there "gold of Tiber;" and Barros, _Decade I_, ch. vii, in describing the Rio d' Ouro, refers to the same thing:--"A quantity of gold-dust, the first obtained in these parts, whence the place was called the Rio d' Ouro, though it is only an inlet of salt water running up into the country about six leagues."]--S.] [Endnote 75: (p. 58). _Gete_ (or Arguim).--[Barros, _Decade I_, 7, says: "Nuno Tristam on this voyage went on as far as an island which the people of the country called Adeget, and which we now call Arguim." The Arab name was "Ghir," which Azurara turns into "Gete," Barros into "Arget." The discovery and possession of this point was of great importance for the Portuguese. It helped them to obtain news of the interior, and to establish relations with the negro states on the Senegal and Gambia. The Infant began to build a fort on Arguim in 1448. Cadamosto gives a long account of the state of commercial relations which the Portuguese had established there with the dwellers in the upland; and the Portuguese pilot, author of the _Navigation to the Isle of St. Thomas_ (1558), published by Ramusio, says of Arguim: "Here there is a great port and a castle of the King our Lord with a garrison and a factor. Arguim is inhabited by black-a-moors, and this is the point which divides Barbary from Negroland." Cf. Bordone's _Isolario_ (1528) on the Portuguese trade with the interior. In 1638 this factory and fortress were taken by the Dutch.]--S.