One of the first French vessels to reach this region was piloted by a Portuguese renegade Joåo Afonso (also known as Jean Alfonce), who traded for gold and ivory at Cape Mount and the Junk River in 1533.
Next to enter the fray were the Dutch, who sent a fleet to Sierra Leone in 1626. They accidentally brought cholera or the “bloody flux,” blamed for killing “multitudes” after “they have lost all their blood.” This outbreak was followed soon after by the measles, which “swept away the best part of the people” (due probably to a lack of immunity).
Footnote: P. E. H. Hair, “Some minor sources for Guinea, 1519-1559: Enciso and Alfonce/Fonteneau,” History in Africa, Vol. 3 (1976), pp. 19-46, especially pp. 30-31; P. E. H. Hair, “Some French sources on Upper Guinea, 1540-1575,” Bulletin de l’Institute francais d’Afrique noire, Série B, t, 31, no. 4 (1969): 1030-1034.Barbot, 1732, p. 118; Hair, 1974, pp. 25-54.
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