for the monopoly of this trade, but the voyage from Venice was
more direct, and after a time Genoa had to content itself with
the trade with Constantinople and the northern overland route from
China. From Venice the spices, the jewels, the perfumes, and stuffs
of the East were transmitted north through Augsburg and Nuernberg
to Antwerp and Bruges and the Hanse Towns, receiving from them
the gold they had gained by their fisheries and textile goods.
England sent her wool to Italy, in order to tickle her palate and
her nose with the condiments and perfumes of the East.

The wealth and importance of Venice were due almost entirely to
this monopoly of the lucrative Eastern trade. By the fifteenth
century she had extended her dominions all along the lower valley
of the Po, into Dalmatia, parts of the Morea, and in Crete, till
at last, in 1489, she obtained possession of Cyprus, and thus had
stations all the way from Aleppo or Alexandria to the north of the
Adriatic. But just as she seemed to have reached the height of her
prosperity--when the Aldi were the chief printers in Europe, and
the Bellini were starting the great Venetian school of painting--a
formidable rival came to the front, who had been slowly preparing
a novel method of competition in the Eastern trade for nearly the
whole of the fifteenth century. With that method begins the great
epoch of modern geographical discovery.

[_Authorities:_ Heyd, _Commerce du Levant_, 2 vols., 1878.]

CHAPTER VI

TO THE INDIES EASTWARD--PRINCE HENRY AND VASCO DA GAMA

Up to the fifteenth century the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula
were chiefly occupied in slowly moving back the tide of Mohammedan
conquest, which had spread nearly throughout the country from 711
onwards. The last sigh of the Moor in Spain was to be uttered in
1492--an epoch-making year, both in history and in geography. But
Portugal, the western side of the peninsula, had got rid of her
Moors at a much earlier date--more that 200 years before--though
she found it difficult to preserve her independence from the
neighbouring kingdom of Castile. The attempt of King Juan of Castile
to conquer the country was repelled by Joao, a natural son of the
preceding king of Portugal, and in 1385 he became king, and freed
Portugal from any danger on the side of Castile by his victory
at Aljubarrota. He married Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt;
and his third son, Henry, was destined to be the means of
revolut