the massacre and subsequent exile of the New Christians or Marranos,
[Sidenote: 1506-7] most of whom went to Holland, commenced an era of
destructive bigotry completed by the Inquisition. [Sidenote: The
Inquisition established, 1536] Strict censorship of the press and the
education of the people by the Jesuits each added their bit to the
forces of spiritual decadence.

For the fury of religious zeal ill supplied the exhausted powers of a
state fainting with loss of blood and from the intoxication of
corruption. Gradually her grasp relaxed on North Africa until only
three {446} small posts in Morocco were left her, those of Ceuta,
Arzila and Tangier. A last frantic effort to recover them and to
punish the infidel, undertaken by the young King Sebastian, ended in
disaster and in his death in 1578. After a short reign of two years by
his uncle Henry, who as a cardinal had no legitimate heirs, Portugal
feebly yielded to her strongest suitor, Philip II, [Sidenote:
1580-1640] and for sixty years remained a captive of Spain.

[Sidenote: Other nations explore]

Other nations eagerly crowded in to seize the trident that was falling
from the hands of the Iberian peoples. There were James Cartier of
France, and Sebastian Cabot and Sir Martin Frobisher and Sir Francis
Drake of England, and others. They explored the coast of North America
and sought a Northwest Passage to Asia. Drake, after a voyage of two
years and a half, [Sidenote: 1577-80] duplicated the feat of Magellan,
though he took quite a different course, following the American western
coast up to the Golden Gate. He, too, returned "very richly fraught
with gold, silver, silk and precious stones," the best incentive to
further endeavor. But no colonies of permanence and consequence were
as yet planted by the northern nations. Until the seventeenth century
their voyages were either actuated by commercial motives or were purely
adventurous. The age did not lack daring explorers by land as well as
by sea. Lewis di Varthema rivalled his countryman Marco Polo by an
extensive journey in the first decade of the century. Like Burckhardt
and Burton in the nineteenth century he visited Mecca and Medina as a
Mohammedan pilgrim, and also journeyed to Cairo, Beirut, Aleppo and
Damascus and then to the distant lands of India and the Malay peninsula.

[Sidenote: Russia]

It may seem strange to speak of Russia in connection with the age of
discovery, and yet it was pr