After the fortnight's stay in Battimansa's country, the crews began to fall ill and Cadamosto determined to drop down the river once more to the coast, noting as he did so all the habits of the natives. Most of them were idolaters, nearly all had implicit faith in charms, some worshipped "Mahmoud most vile," and some were Nomades like the Gypsies of Europe. For the most part the people of the Gambra lived like those of the Senegal, dressing in cotton and using the same food, except that they ate dog's flesh and were all tattooed, women as well as men.
We need not follow Cadamosto in his accounts of the great trees, the wild elephants, great bats and "horse-fish" of the country. A chief called Gnumi-Mansa, "King Gnumi," living near the mouth of the Gambra, took him on an elephant-hunt, in which he got the trophies, foot, trunk, and skin, that he took home and presented to Prince Henry.
On descending the Gambra, the caravel tried to coast along the unexplored land, but was driven by a storm into the open sea. After driving about some time and nearly running on a dangerous coast, they came at last to the mouth of a great river which they called Rio Grande, "for it seemed more like a gulf or arm of the sea than a river, and was nearly twenty miles across, some twenty-five leagues beyond the Gambra." Here they met natives in two canoes, who made signs of peace, but could not understand the language of the interpreters. The new country was absolutely outside the farthest limits of earlier exploration, and discovery would have to begin afresh. Cadamosto had no mind to risk anything more. His crew were sick and tired, and he turned back to Lisbon, observing, before he left the Ra or Rio Grande, as he noticed in his earlier voyage, that the North Star almost touched the horizon and that "the tides of that coast were very marvellous. For instead of flow and ebb being six hours each, as at Venice, the flow here was but four, and the ebb eight, the tide rising with such force that three anchors could hardly hold the caravel."
The last voyage of Henry's lifetime was that of his faithful servant, Diego Gomez, by which the Cape Verde islands first became clearly and fully known. It followed close upon Cadamosto's venture.