"The chief area of our concern is the Sierra Leone Peninsula that is backed by a stretch of mountains, remarkably visible to ships approaching the coastal area of present day Sierra Leone. It is those mountains that attracted the attention of early Portuguese voyagers to this area in the early fifteenth century and they nicknamed the area sera lyoa {lion (looking) mountains}. We are not certain which of the early Portguese voyagers first used this name but it was certainly not Pedro de Çintra who claimed to have done so and whose name has been unfortunately stuck in the minds of Sierra Leoneans as subsequent writers believed him without question. His name therefore came to be seen as a point of departure in the writing of the colonial version of Sierra Leone History. Extant records clearly show that the term serr lyoa was already in use well before Pedro da Çintra got to this area." C. Magbaily Fyle.