Cão’s Second Voyage, 1485-6.
Cão’s departure on a second voyage was much delayed, either because the King’s Council were opposed to these adventures, which strained the resources of a small kingdom like Portugal, or—and this is more likely—because it was desired that a change in the Royal Arms, which was only made in June, 1485, should be recorded on the stone pillars which Cão was to take with him.
Great was the rejoicing when Cão’s “fleet” appeared in the Kongo, and the hostages, loud in praise of the good treatment they had received, were once more among their friends. Cão at once forwarded rich presents to the King, with an invitation to throw aside all fetishes, and to embrace the only true and saving faith; promising that, on his return from a voyage to the south, he would personally visit the capital of his kingdom. This promise Cão was not permitted to fulfil, for having set up a pillar on Monte Negro (15° 40´ S.) and another on Cape Cross (21° 50´),300 he died a short distance beyond. Of the details of his death we know nothing.301 It seems, however, that the loss of their commander induced a speedy return home: for Cão’s vessels must have arrived in Portugal before August, 1487, as in that month Dias sailed on his famous voyage, taking with him the negroes whom Cão had kidnapped to the south of the Kongo, with a view to their learning Portuguese, and being employed as interpreters in future voyages.
Cão, therefore, never saw the King of Kongo; and there are good grounds for believing that Nsaku who was sent by the King to Portugal to ask for priests, masons, carpenters, agricultural labourers, and women to make bread, only reached Europe in one of Dias’s vessels, in December, 1488. Nsaku, most certainly, was first introduced to King John at Beja, in January, 1489, when he and his companions were baptised, the King himself, the Queen, and gentlemen of title acting as sponsors.(312) He was sent back to the Kongo with Don Gonçalo de Sousa, in December, 1490, about two years after he had been baptised.302