July 1494, the West African coast, the mouth of the Rokel River, Sierra Leone Port, Sierra Leone.
The coast of Sierra Leone had emerald tropical jungle and towering peninsular mountains. The beaches along the shore were fine and white, dotted with tall coconut trees and palm trees. Near the coast, surging rivers of fresh water poured into the Atlantic Ocean like little waterfalls, their currents very clear, tinged with a little earthen red.
This was the warm, humid coast of West Africa, where a primitive, wild, and beautiful landscape surrounded a Portuguese-style pier harbor, wooden trading posts, and stone forts. And this Sierra Leone Port had been chosen with sea on three sides and mountains on one. To the north and east of the harbor lay encircling great rivers, by which trade could follow the currents to black-skinned tribes a thousand miles inland. To the west of the harbor was the sea, while to the south stood the perilous Lion Mountains, and beneath the embrace of the peninsular range, they formed a natural deep-water harbor.
Without a doubt, this was an extremely safe harbor site, easy to defend and highly convenient by water. Its only flaw was that its area was relatively small, with little potential for expansion.
Thirty-two years ago, the Portuguese captain Pedro de Sintra, who first explored this stretch of coast, had seen at a glance the special position of this peninsular harbor, and in his letter to the former King Afonso, he had clearly recommended this "fine harbor."
However, the West African coast explored by Portugal was vast in extent. The kingdom's focus was on the Cape Verde Islands discovered in the same period, the gold-rich Ghana Coast, and the banks of the Gambia River, whose climate was more suitable for colonization.
As for the opening