Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/409

Italy and the Renaissance 297 498. The Discoveries of the Portuguese. By the middle of the fourteenth century the Portuguese had discovered the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores. Before this time no one had ventured along the coast of Africa beyond the arid region of Sahara. The country was forbidding, there were no ports, and mariners were, moreover, discouraged by the general belief that the torrid region was uninhabitable. In 1445, however, some adventurous sailors came within sight of a headland beyond the desert, and, struck by its luxuriant growth of tropical trees, they called it Cape Verde (the green cape). Its discovery put an end once for all to the idea that there were only parched deserts to the south. For a generation the Portuguese ventured farther and farther along the coast, in the hope of finding it coming to an end, so that they might make their way by sea to India. At last, in 1486, Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Twelve years later (1498) Vasco da Gama, spurred on by Columbus's great discovery, after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope and northward beyond Zanzibar, aided by an Arab pilot, steered straight across the Indian Ocean and reached Calicut, in Hindustan, by sea. 499. The Spice Trade. The Portuguese concluded treaties with the Indian princes and established trading stations at Goa and elsewhere. In 1512 a successor of Vasco da Gama reached Java and the Moluccas, where the Portuguese speedily built a fortress. By 1515 Portugal had become the greatest among sea powers, and spices reached Lisbon regularly without the interven- tion of the Mohammedan merchants or the Italian towns, which, especially Venice, were mortally afflicted by the change (487). There is no doubt that the desire to obtain spices was at this time the main reason for the exploration of the globe. This motive led European navigators to try in succession every pos- sible way to reach the East by going around Africa, by sailing west in the hope of reaching the Indies (before they knew of the existence of America), then, after America was discovered, by sailing around it to the north or south, and even sailing around Europe to the north.