ia, are the twentieth century remnants of Portugal's colonial
empire. The greater part of it fell away between 1580 and 1640, when
Portugal was under Spanish rule. But her own system of colonial
administration, or rather exploitation, was if possible worse than
Spain's. Her scanty resources of man power were exhausted in colonial
warfare. The expulsion of Protestants and Jews deprived her of
elements in her population that might have known how to utilize
wealth from the colonies to build up home trade and industries.
Her situation was too distant from the European markets; and the
raw materials landed at Lisbon were transshipped in Dutch bottoms
for Amsterdam and Antwerp, which became the true centers of
manufacturing and exchange. Cervantes, in 1607, could still speak
of Lisbon as the greatest city in Europe,[1] but her greatness was
already decaying; and her fate was sealed when Philip of Spain
closed her ports to Dutch shipping, and Dutch ships themselves
set sail for the east.

[Footnote 1: PERSILES AND SIGISMUDA, III, i.]

But the period of Portugal's maritime ascendancy cannot be left
without recording, even if in barest outline, the circumnavigation
of the globe by Fernao da Magalhaes, or Magellan, who, though he
made this last voyage of his under the Spanish flag, was Portuguese
by birth and had proved his courage and iron resolution under Almeida
and Albuquerque in Portugal's eastern campaigns. Seeking a westward
passage to the Spice Islands, the five vessels of 75 to 100 tons
composing his squadron cleared the mouth of the Guadalquivir on
September 20, 1519. They established winter quarters in the last
of March at Port St. Julian on the coast of Patagonia. Here, on
Easter Sunday, three of his Spanish captains mutinied. Magellan
promptly threw a boat's crew armed with cutlasses aboard one of
the mutinous ships, killed the leader, and overcame the unruly
element in the crew. The two other ships he forced to surrender
within 24 hours. One of the guilty captains was beheaded and the
other marooned on the coast when the expedition left in September.
Five weeks were now spent in the labyrinths of the strait which has
since borne the leader's name. "When the capitayne Magalianes,"
so runs the contemporary English translation of the story of the
voyage, "was past the strayght and sawe the way open to the other
mayne sea, he was so gladde thereof that for joy the teares fell
from his eyes."

He had sworn he would