CADAMOSTO or CA DA MOSTO, ALVISE 2477), a Venetian explorer, navigator and writer, celebrated for his voyages in the Portuguese service to West Africa. In 1454 he sailed from Venice for Flanders and being detained by contrary winds off Cape St. Vincent, was enlisted by Prince Henry the Navigator among his explorers, and given command of an ex pedition which sailed (on March 22, 1455) for the south. He wrote an account of his voyage, El libro de la prima navigazione per l'oceano a le terre de Nigri, printed in 1507. Visiting the Madeira group and the Canary islands, and coasting the West Sahara, he arrived at the Senegal, whose lower course had already, as he tells us, been explored by the Portuguese 6om. up. The negro lands and tribes south of the Senegal, and especially the country and people of Budomel, a friendly chief reigning about som. be yond the river, are next dealt with, and Cadamosto thence pro ceeded towards the Gambia, which he ascended some distance, but he found the natives extremely hostile, and so returned direct to Portugal. Throughout his account he provides a wealth of inter esting detail about the tribes he met, their customs and their trade. Cadamosto expressly refers to the chart he kept of this voyage. At the mouth of the Gambia he records an observation of the "Southern Chariot" (Southern Cross). Next year (1456) he went out again under the patronage of Prince Henry. Doub ling Cape Blanco he was driven out to sea by contrary winds, and thus made the first known discovery of the Cape Verde islands. Having explored Boavista and Santiago, and found them uninhabited, he returned to the African mainland, and pushed on to the Gambia, Rio Grande and Geba. Returning thence to Portugal, he seems to have remained there till 1463, when he re appeared at Venice.
Besides the accounts of his two voyages, Cadamosto left a narrative of Pedro de Cintra's explorations in 1461 (or 1462) to Sierra Leone and beyond Cape Mesurado to El Mina and the Gold Coast; all these relations first appeared in the 1507 Vicenza Collection of Voyages and Travels (the Paesi novamente retrovati et novo mondo da Alberico Vesputio Florentino) ; they have frequently since been reprinted and translated (e.g., Ital. text in 1508, 1512, 1519, 1521, 155o (Ramusio), etc. See also C. Schefer, Relation des voyages . de Ca' da Mosto (1895) ; R. H. Major, Henry the Navigator (1868), pp. 246-287; C. R. Beazley, Henry the Navigator (1895), pp. 261-288, and Dawn of Modern Geography (3 vols., 1897-1906) ; Yule Oldham, Discovery of the Cape Verde Islands (1892) , especially PP•