From as early as the sixteenth century the account written by Alvise da Cadamosto of his two voyages to west Africa has been recognized as of great importance. It is the only account of one of the early ‘Portuguese’ voyages written by an eyewitness and it contains a wealth of observation and information on which any account of western Africa and of the Portuguese slaving and exploratory voyages in the fifteenth century must be based. Cadamosto was from a noble Venetian family and first saw service as a crossbowman in the Venetian galleys. Returning from a voyage to Flanders in 1452, he found his family in difficult financial circumstances and decided to go with his brother to try to redeem the family fortunes. He obtained a licence from Prince Henry to undertake two trading voyages to the upper Guinea region, visiting the Gambia, the Senegal, the Rio Grande and the Cape Verde Islands, which he claimed to have discovered. He returned to Venice around 1463, and his account was completed by 1468.

The two following passages constitute one of the earliest detailed accounts of the Atlantic islands. The legend of the burning of the forests on Madeira may have been an account of an actual event, but to modern readers it seems more like an allegory of the environmental disaster which has so often accompanied European overseas expansion. […]