the prospect of successful voyages from Venice to
Ceylon. Sixty years earlier, even before Polo returned from China, the
heroic attempt had been made; Tedisio Doria and the Vivaldi, venturous
Genoese seamen, passing the Rock of Gibraltar, pointed their galleys to
the south in order "to go by sea to the ports of India to trade there."
They never returned, nor were ever heard of beyond Cape Non in Barbary,
but the memory of their hapless venture was perpetuated in legends of
the fourteenth century which credited them with sailing "the sea of
Ghinoia to the City of Ethiopia."

To go by sea to the ports of India was an undertaking not to be achieved
by unaided Italian effort, or in a single generation. The skill and
daring of many captains might find the way, but discovery was futile
unless backed by conquest, for which the support of a powerful
government was essential. Not from Italian states, weak and distracted
by inter-city wars, or absorbed in established and profitable Levantine
trade, was such support to come, but from the rising nations of the
Atlantic, which profited least by the established commercial system.
Lying at the extreme end of the old trade routes, the merchants of
France, England, Spain, and Portugal were mulcted of the major profits
of Oriental trade. Here prices were lowest and money most scarce. Yet
the future of these countries, consolidated under centralized monarchies
in alliance with a moneyed class, depended upon a full royal treasury
and thriving industry. "The king," said Cardinal Morton, addressing the
English Commons, "wishes you to arrest the drain of money to foreign
countries. The king wishes to enrich you; you would not wish to make him
poor. Consider that the kingdoms which surround us grow constantly
stronger, and that it cannot be well that the king should find himself
with an empty treasury." To replenish the royal treasury by enriching
the _bourgeois_ class was the basic motive which enlisted the Western
monarchs in maritime exploration and discovery.

Yet not to the greater states of the West was reserved the honor of
first reaching the Indies by sea. The Kingdom of Portugal, first to
venture, was first to reach the goal. Looking out over Africa and the
South Atlantic, effectively consolidated under King John of Good Memory
while its neighbors were still involved in foreign wars or the problems
of internal organization, the little state enjoyed advantages denied to
England befor