<P> "What is more, I have spoken with a person worthy of trust, who says that he sailed in an Indian ship caught in the fury of a tempest for 40 days out in the Sea of India, beyond the Cape of Soffala and the Green Islands towards west - southwest; and according to the astrologers who act as their guides, they had advanced almost 2,000 miles . Thus one can believe and confirm what is said by both these and those, and that they had therefore sailed 4,000 miles". </P> <P> Fra Mauro also comments that the account of the expedition, together with the relation by Strabo of the travels of Eudoxus of Cyzicus from Arabia to Gibraltar through the southern Ocean in Antiquity, led him to believe that the Indian Ocean was not a closed sea and that Africa could be circumnavigated by her southern end (Text from Fra Mauro map, 11, G2). This knowledge, together with the map depiction of the African continent, probably encouraged the Portuguese to intensify their effort to round the tip of Africa . </P> <P> In the Early Modern Era, the first European to reach the cape was the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias on 12 March 1488, who named it the "Cape of Storms" (Cabo das Tormentas). It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as "Cape of Good Hope" (Cabo da Boa Esperança) because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East . </P> <P> The land around the cape was home to the Khoikhoi people when the Dutch first settled there in 1652 . The Khoikhoi had arrived in these parts about fifteen hundred years before . They were called Hottentots by the Dutch, a term that has now come to be regarded as pejorative . </P>

What was the original name of the cape of good hope