FERNANDEZ, ALVARO, one of the leading Portuguese explorers of the earlier 15th century, the age of Henry the Navi gator. He was brought up in the household of Prince Henry, and while still "young and audacious" took an important part in the discovery of "Guinea." When the great expedition of 1445 sailed for. West Africa he was entrusted by his uncle, Joao Goncalvez Zarco, with a caravel, under injunctions to devote himself to discovery. Fernandez outstripped all other servants of the prince at this time. After visiting the mouth of the Senegal, rounding Cape Verde and landing in Goree (?), he pushed on to the "Cape of Masts" (Cabo dos Matos or Mastos, so called from its tall spindle-palms), probably between Cape Verde and the Gam bia, the most southerly point till then attained. Next year (1446) he returned, and coasted on to a bay no leagues "south" (i.e., S.S.E.) of Cape Verde, little short of Sierra Leone. This record was not broken till 1462, when Sierra Leone was sighted and named. A wound received from a poisoned arrow compelled Fernandez to return to Portugal.
See Gomes Eannes de Azurara, Chronica de . Guine, chs. lxxv., lxxxvii. ; Joao de Barros, Asia, Decade I., bk. i., chs. xiii., xiv.