Boa Vista

Boa Vista is the easternmost of the Cape Verde islands, a dry island of sand and volcanic rock lying off the West African coast. Its salt deposits drew ships to an otherwise sparsely watered landscape, and the name of its northwestern port, Sal Rei, recalls the trade that grew around them.

Uninhabited when Portuguese navigators reached it in the fifteenth century, the island was used for raising cattle before permanent settlement took hold. Around 1620 people settled at Povoação Velha to exploit its salt, with English merchants prominent in the trade. Salt production depended in large part on enslaved labor. A port later grew at Porto Inglês, or Sal Rei; after repeated pirate attacks, it became the principal settlement in the early nineteenth century.