[Greek:
Prason] Signifies A Leek, And Is Also Used To Denote A Sea-Weed Of A
Similar Green Colour, And
The name may either have been derived from the
verdure of the point, or from the sea-weeds found in
Its neighbourhood.
At all events, Prasum cannot be farther south than Cape Corientes, or
farther north than Quiloa or the Zanguebar islands. The harbour of
Mozambique has seldom less than eight or ten fathom water, which is so
clear, that every bank, rock, or shallow can be easily seen.
"The Moors, so often mentioned, are supposed by Bruce to have been
merchants expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella, who first fixed
their residence on the western coast of Africa, and extending themselves
eastwards, formed settlements in Arabia and Egypt, till the oppressions
of Selim and Soliman, the Turkish emperors, interrupted their commerce,
and obliged them to disperse along the coast of Abyssinia and eastern
Africa. Besides the impossibility, chronologically, for the assigned
causes having produced the supposed effect, there is no necessity for
having recourse to this improbable hypothesis. From being best acquainted
with their Moorish conquerors, the Spaniards and Portuguese have always
been accustomed to name all the Arabians Moors, wherever they found them,
and even gave at first the name of _black_ Moors to the Negroes, whence
our old English term _Black-a-moors_. It is well known that the Arabs,
especially after their conversion to Mahometanism, were great colonizers
or conquerors; even the now half-christian kingdom of Abyssinia was an
early colony and conquest of the pagan Arabs, and its inhabitants are
consequently _white_ Moors in the most extended Portuguese sense. The
Arab, or Moorish kingdoms along the African coast of the Indian ocean,
are branches from the same original stem, and the early Mahometan
missionaries were both zealous and successful in propagating Islaemism
among the most distant pagan colonies of their countrymen. As all zealous
Mussulmen are enjoined the pilgrimage of Mecca, and commerce mixes
largely with religion in the holy journey, by which the faithful from
every distant region often meet at Mecca, and induce each other to extend
their commercial adventures to new regions, it may possibly have been,
that some Moors originally from Spain, may even have reached Mozambique
before the time of De Gama; but it is ridiculous to suppose that all the
Moors on the African coast had been Spaniards. The overthrow of the great
Moorish kingdom of Granada only took place five or six years before the
present voyage.
"The island of Mozambique, which does not exceed a league in
circumference, is described as low and swampy, and was inhabited by Moors
who had come from Quiloa and Sofala. It was afterwards much resorted to
by the Portuguese as a winter station, and became the key of their Indian
trade. The African coast stretches out on both sides of the island into
two points, that on the north-east called Pannoni, off which a shoal with
three islets extends, some way into the sea.
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