re,
clothed by eager fancy with all manner of charms and riches. The more
effectually the eastern Mediterranean was closed, the stronger grew the
impulse to venture upon unknown paths in order to realize the vague but
glorious hopes that began to cluster about these remote countries. Such
an era of romantic enterprise as was thus ushered in, the world has
never seen before or since. It was equally remarkable as an era of
discipline in scientific thinking. In the maritime ventures of
unparalleled boldness now to be described, the human mind was groping
toward the era of enormous extensions of knowledge in space and time
represented by the names of Newton and Darwin. It was learning the right
way of putting its trust in the Unseen.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.

_EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE._

[Sidenote: Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing
around Africa.]

As it dawned upon men's minds that to find some oceanic route from
Europe to the remote shores of Asia was eminently desirable, the first
attempt would naturally be to see what could be done by sailing down the
western coast of Africa, and ascertaining whether that continent could
be circumnavigated. It was also quite in the natural order of things
that this first attempt should be made by the Portuguese.

In the general history of the Middle Ages the Spanish peninsula had been
to some extent cut off from the main currents of thought and feeling
which actuated the rest of Europe. Its people had never joined the other
Christian nations in the Crusades, for the good reason that they always
had quite enough to occupy them in their own domestic struggle with the
Moors. From the throes of this prolonged warfare Portugal emerged
somewhat sooner than the Spanish kingdoms, and thus had somewhat earlier
a surplus of energy released for work of another sort. It was not
strange that the Portuguese should be the first people since the old
Northmen to engage in distant maritime adventure upon a grand scale.
Nor was it strange that Portuguese seamanship should at first have
thriven upon naval warfare with Mussulmans. It was in attempting to
suppress the intolerable nuisance of Moorish piracy that Portuguese
ships became accustomed to sail a little way down the west coast of
Africa; and such voyages, begun for military purposes, were kept up in
the interests of commerce, and presently served as a mighty stimulus to
geographical curiosity