Portuguese were one of the leading nations of Europe,
and they were specially interested in maritime enterprise.
Thanks to Columbus, the Spaniards had, it is true, carried
off the grand prize of discovery. But the Portuguese had
rendered service not less useful. From their coasts,
jutting far out into the Atlantic, they had sailed
southward and eastward, and had added much to the knowledge
of the globe. For generations, both before and after
Columbus, the pilots and sailors of Portugal were among
the most successful and daring in the world.

For nearly a hundred years before the discovery of America
the Portuguese had been endeavouring to find an ocean
route to the spice islands of the East and to the great
Oriental empires which, tradition said, lay far off on
a distant ocean, and which Marco Polo and other travellers
had reached by years of painful land travel across the
interior of Asia. Prince Henry of Portugal was busy with
these tasks at the middle of the fifteenth century. Even
before this, Portuguese sailors had found their way to
the Madeiras and the Canary Islands, and to the Azores,
which lie a thousand miles out in the Atlantic. But under
the lead of Prince Henry they began to grope their way
down the coast of Africa, braving the torrid heats and
awful calms of that equatorial region, where the blazing
sun, poised overhead in a cloudless sky, was reflected
on the bosom of a stagnant and glistening ocean. It was
their constant hope that at some point the land would be
found to roll back and disclose an ocean pathway round
Africa to the East, the goal of their desire. Year after