[Footnote 39: This seems one of the earliest notices of non-Portuguese craft in these waters. But Uso di Mare was almost certainly in the Prince's service, like "Vallarte the Dane," and "Balthasar the German," noticed in Azurara, _Guinea_, chs. xvi. and xciv. Uso di Mare's letter to his creditors of December 12, 1455, seems to show that the expedition had returned before Christmas.] [Footnote 40: As in the collections of Ramusio, Temporal, Astley, and Stanier Clarke; in Major, _Henry Navigator_, chs. xv.-xvi.; and in "Heroes of Nations" life of Prince Henry, ch. xvi.] In the next year, 1456, Cadamosto sailed out again with Antoniotto Uso di Mare, made straight for Cape Branco, and found, three days' sail from this point, "certain islands" off Cape Verde "where no one had been before."[41] The explorer then, in his own as well as in the official, "Ramusian," or Venetian, account, proceeded to the Gambia, opened trade successfully with the natives, and explored the coast "about 25 leagues" beyond this river as far as the Bissagos Islands, or some point of the mainland not far distant. [Footnote 41: Of these two were "very large," and on these they landed, finding no inhabitants but plenty of animal life. Five more isles were sighted in the distance, but not visited. They called the first discovered "Boa Vista," and the largest of the group "St. James," from the day of the discovery. This is, of course, the Santiago which forms the centre of the Cape Verde archipelago.]