In 1913 an old chest was discovered in a manor house in Worcestershire in the west of England. Packed with bundles of manuscripts, it contained several hundred letters and business papers written in a crabbed italic hand. These documents belonged to Thomas Bowrey, an English overseas merchant, who was born in 1662 and died in 1713. The collection of papers was later purchased by Colonel Henry Howard, and in 1931 part of it was presented to the Guildhall Library in London. These documents include an incomplete manuscript titled “Discription of the Coast of Affrica from the Cape of Good Hope, to the Red Sea” dated 1708. The notes indicate that Bowrey intended to write a book that encompassed descriptions of all the major ports of the region.Only fragments of the draft survive. Most of the manuscript contains amendments, crossed-out sections, and blank spaces. The text consists of different versions of a preface, brief accounts of the Dutch Cape Colony and Delagoa Bay in Mosambique, as well as a draft portion which has the title “Islands of ye Coast of Africa on ye East Side of ye Cape of Good Hope: Places of Trade on Madagascar.” The densely written and in part hardly legible text is on sixteen folio pages. It gives information about Assada, Old Masselege, Manangara, New Masselege, Terra Delgada, Morondava, Crab Island, St. Vincent, St. Iago, Tulear, St. Augustin Bay, St. John's, Port Dauphin, Matatana, Bonavola, St. Mary's Island, and Antongil Bay. This document also includes descriptions of Mauritius and Bourbon, nowadays called Réunion. Most of these places were visited by English, Dutch, and French seafarers in the last decades of the seventeenth century.
