Portugal had already buried a king--the great grandson of Edward III. of
England--whose enterprise had won for him the name of Henry the
Navigator.

Slowly and sadly--slowly always, sadly often--his vessels had crept down
the west coast of Africa; little by little one captain had overstepped
the distance traversed by his predecessor, until at last in 1497 a
successful voyager actually rounded the Cape.

Then Portugal, clear of the long wall that had fenced her in on one side
for so many thousands of miles, trod the vast expanse of waters to the
east, and soon began to plant her flag in various ports of the Indian
Ocean. [See Portuguese flags on Desliens' Map.]

Pushing on further east in search of the Spice Islands, she found
Sumatra, Borneo, the Celebes, Java, Timor, Ceram, the Aru Islands and
Gilolo; she had reached the famous and much coveted Moluccas, or Spice
Islands, and set to work building forts and establishing trading stations
in the same way as England is doing nowadays in South Africa and
elsewhere.*

[* In a chart of the East Indian Archipelago, drawn probably during the
first Portuguese voyages to the Spice Islands (1511-1513), the island of
Gilolo is called Papoia. Many of the islands situated on the west and
north-west coast of New Guinea became known to the Portuguese at an early
date, and were named collectively OS PAPUAS. The name was subsequently
given to the western parts of New Guinea. Menezes, a Portuguese
navigator, is said to have been driven by a storm to some of these
islands, where he remained awaiting the monsoonal change.]