CAIETAE

PORTUS (mod.

See also:

• GAETA (anc. Caietae Portus)

Gaeta)  , an ancient harbour of Latium adiectum, Italy, in the territory of Formiae, from which it is 5 m . S.W . The name (originally Ai, rn) is generally derived from the nurse of Aeneas . The harbour, owing' to its fine anchorage, was much in use, but the place was never' a separate town, but always dependent on Formiae . Livy mentions a temple of Apollo . The coast of the Gulf not only between Caietae Portus and Formiae, but E. of the latter also, as fat as the modern Monte Scauri, was a favourite summer resort (see FORMIA) . Cicero may have had villas both at Portus Caietae and at Formiael proper, and the emperors certainly possessed property at both places . After the destruction of Formiae'in A.D . 847 it became one of the most important seaports of central Italy (see GAETA) . In the town are scanty remains of an amphitheatre and theatre: near the church of La Trinita, higher up, are remains of a large reservoir . There are also traces of an aqueduct . The promontory (548 ft.) is crowned by the tomb of Munatius Plancus, founder of Lugudunum (mod .

Lyons), who died after 22 B.C . It is a circular structure of blocks of travertine 16o ft. high and 18o ft. in diameter . Further inland is the so-called tomb of L . Atratinus, about too ft. in diameter . Caietae Portus was no doubt connected with the Via Appia (which passed through Formiae) by a deverticulum . There seems also to have been a road running W.N.W. along the precipitous coast to Speluncae (mod . Sperlonga) . See E . Gesualdo Osservazioni critiche sopra la storia della Via Appia di Pratilli p . 7 (Naples, 1754) . (T . As.) CAILLI$ (or CA1r.LE), RENE AUGUSTE (1799-1838), French explorer, was born at Mauze, Poitou, in 1799, the son of a baker .

The

reading of Robinson Crusoe kindled in him a love of travel and adventure, and at the age of sixteen he made a voyage to Senegal whence he went to Guadeloupe . Returning to Senegal in 1818 he made a journey to Bondu to carry supplies to a British expedition then in that country . Ill with fever he was obliged to go back to France, but in 1824 was again in Senegal with the fixed idea of penetrating to Timbuktu . He spent eight months with the Brakna " Moors " living north of Senegal river, learning Arabic and being taught, as a convert, the laws and customs of Islam . He laid his project of reaching Timbuktu before the governor of Senegal, but receiving no encouragement went to Sierra Leone where the British authorities made him superintendent of an indigo plantation . Having saved go he joined a Mandingo caravan going inland . He was dressed as a Mussulman, and gave out that he was an Arab from Egypt who had been carried off by the French to Senegal and was desirous of regaining his own country . Starting from Kakundi near Boise on the Rio Nunez on 19th of April 1827, he travelled east along the hills of Futa Jallon, passing the head streams of the Senegal and crossing the Upper Niger at Kurussa . Still going east he came to the Kong highlands, where at a place called Time he was detained five months by illness . Resuming his journey ' The two places are sufficiently close for the one villa to have borne both names; but Mommsen (Corp . Inscrip . Lat. x., Berlin, 1883, p .

603) prefers to differentiate them . in

January 1828 he went north-east and gained the city of Jenne, whence he continued his journey to Timbuktu by water . After spending a fortnight (loth April-4th May) in Timbuktu he joined a caravan crossing the Sahara to Morocco, reaching Fez on the 12th of August . From Tangier he returned to France . He had been preceded at Timbuktu by a British officer, Major Gordon Laing, but Laing had been murdered (18'26) on leaving the city and Caillie was the first to accomplish the journey in safety . He was awarded the prize of 1400 offered by the Geographical Society of Paris to the first traveller who should gain exact information of Timbuktu, to be compared with that given by .Mungo Park . He also received the order of the Legion of Honour, a pension, and other distinctions, and it was at the public expense that his Journal d'un voyage a Temboctou et d Jenne clans l'Afrique Centrale, etc . (edited by E . F . Jomard) was published in three volumes in 1830 . Caillie died at Badere in 1838 of a malady contracted during his African travels . For the greater part of his life he spelt his name Caillie, afterwards omitting the second " i." See Dr Robert Brown's The Story of Africa, vol. i. chap. xii .

,(

London, 1892); Goepp and Cordier, Les Grands Hommes de France, voyageurs: Rene Caille (Paris, 1885) ; E . F . Jomard, Notice historique sur la vie et les voyages de R . Caillie (Paris, 1839) . An English version of Caillie's Journal was published in London in 183o in two volumes under the title of Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo, &c .