CONQUESTS OF SONNI ALI 177 in his most westerly African home. The prince, whose name was Bemoy, is described as *'a man of about forty years of age, of a fine figure and generally well made.

He had a long and well-trimmed beard, and did not appear to be a negro, but a prince to whom all honour and respect were due." He was received by King John with the utmost distinction. Fetes, bull-fights, and other entertainments were given in his honour, and he had many audiences of the king and queen. In these interviews he spoke well, and gave the king most interesting information about Negroland, and especially about the King of Mossi, of whose defeat by Sonni Ali he had not then heard, and whom he described as "neither pagan nor Mohammedan, but as conforming in many things to the views of the Christians." Mossi was at that time regarded by the pagans of the coast as the greatest of the kings of the interior — so little did they know of the life and civilisation of the Nigerian Soudan. Bemoy, who would seem to have been himself better informed, gave it as a proof of the important position held by Mossi that he had not been conquered by the King of Timbuctoo.

The outcome of all this knowledge gained by the Portuguese was that they conceived the idea of carrying their trade from the coast to the interior of the country, and that they desired to gain the friendship of the King of Timbuctoo. They accordingly despatched an embassy to Sonni Ali, asking for his permission to establish a trading station at Wadan in the back country of Cape Blanco, within the western borders of the Mellestine. Sonni Ali acceded to their request, and a Portuguese trading station was actually established within his territories at the oasis of Hoden or Wadan in the western desert. The place was unsuitable, and it was afterwards abandoned. The fact of its having existed for some time with the friendly recognition of the Songhay king is an interesting indication of the intercourse with Europe, which might have been developed along the northern trades routes of the Soudan, but for the approaching M