The Spaniards prefer to believe that after Jehan de Béthencourt's attack upon the Canaries (A.D. 1403), his soldier Lancelot, who named Lanzarote Island, touched at Porto Santo in 1417; and presently, sailing to the south-west, discovered Madeira. This appears reasonable enough. Patriotic Barbot (1700), in company with the mariner Villault de Belfons, Père Labat, and Ernest de Fréville, [Footnote: _Mémoire sur le Commerce Maritime de Rouen._] claims the honour for France. According to that 'chief factor for the African Company,' the merchants of Dieppe first traded to West Africa for cardamoms and ivory. This was during the reign of Charles V., and between 1364 and 1430, or half a century before the Portuguese. Their chief stations were Goree of Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, Cape Mount, the Kru or Liberian coast, then called 'of Grain,' from the 'Guinea grains' or Malaguetta pepper (_Amomum granum Paradisi_), and, lastly, the Gold Coast. Here they founded 'Petit Paris' upon the Baie de France, at 'Serrelionne;' 'Petit Dieppe,' at the mouth of the St. John's River, near Grand Bassá, south of Monrovia; and 'Cestro' [Footnote: Now generally called Grand Sestros, and popularly derived from the Portuguese _cestos_--pepper.] or 'Sestro Paris,' where, three centuries afterwards, the natives retained a few words of French. Hence Admiral Bouet-Willaumez explains the Great and Little 'Boutoo' of our charts by _butteau_, from _butte_, the old Norman word still preserved in the great western prairies. Barbot resumes that in 1383 the Rouen traders, combining with the Dieppe men, sent upon an exploring voyage three ships, one of which, _La Vierge_, ran down coast as far as where Commenda (Komenda or Komání) and Elmina now stand. At the latter place they built a fort and factory just one century before it was occupied by the Portuguese. The Frenchman declares that one of the Elmina castles was called Bastion de France, and 'on it are still to be seen some old arithmetical numbers, which are _anno_ 13' (i.e. 1383); 'the rest being defaced by weather.' This first factory was afterwards incorporated with the modern building; and in 1387 it was enlarged with the addition of a chapel to lodge more than ten or twelve men, the original garrison.