Earliest written records

The first written records on the area now known as Cape Mount were left by Portuguese navigators who started arriving in the mid-1400s.

A Venetian mariner gave an Italian name to one of the first points visited in present-day Liberia: Capo del Monte (for “chief mountain”). This came to be rendered as Cape Mount in English. Others would map this coast and give names to many of its features. They named geographical features like “Cape Palmas” and such rivers as “St. Paul’s” and “St. John’s.”

Footnote: Rodney, 1980, p. 193; Davis, 1976, p. 2; Periera, 1937, pp. 108; J. D. Fage, “A commentary on Duarte Pacheco Pereira’s account of the Lower Guinea coastlands in his Esmeralda de Situ Orbis and on some other early accounts,” History in Africa, 7 (1980), p. 50. On Duarte Pacheco Pereira, see Masonen, 2000, pp. 148-152.