of navigation. The Canary Islands were sighted by a
French vessel in 1330, and colonized in 1418 by the Portuguese, who two
years later landed on Madeira. In 1431 the Azores were discovered by a
shipmaster of Bruges. The Atlantic was being gradually explored. In
1486, Diaz, a Portuguese, steering his course almost unwittingly along
the coast of Africa, came upon the land's-end of that continent; and
eleven years afterwards Vasco da Gama, of the same nation, not only
doubled the Cape of Good Hope, but reached India. About the same period
Portuguese travellers penetrated to India by the old time-honoured way
of Suez; and a land which tradition and imagination had invested with
almost fabulous wealth and splendour was becoming more real to the
European world at the moment when the expedition of Vasco da Gama had
made an oceanic route to its shores distinctly visible. One can hardly
now realize the impression made by these discoveries in an age when the
minds of men were awakening out of a long sleep, when the printing press
was disseminating the ancient classical and sacred literature, and when
geography and astronomy were subjects of eager study in the seats both
of traffic and of learning. But their practical effect was seen in
swiftly-succeeding events. Before the end of the century Columbus had
thrice crossed the Atlantic, touched at San Salvador, discovered
Jamaica, Porto Rico and the Isthmus of Darien, and had seen the waters
of the Orinoco in South America. Meanwhile Cabot, sent out by England,
had discovered Newfoundland, planted the English flag on Labrador, Nova
Scotia and Virginia, and made known the existence of an expanse of land
now known as Canada. This tide of discovery by navigators flowed on
without intermission. But the opening of a maritime route to India and
the discovery of America, surprising as these events must have been at
the time, were slow in producing the results of which they were a sure
prognostic. The Portuguese established in Cochin the first European
factory in India a few years after Vasco da Gama's expedition, and other
maritime nations of Europe traced a similar course. But it was not till
1600 that the English East India Company was established, and the
opening of the first factory of the Company in India must be dated some
ten or eleven years later. So also it was one thing to discover the two
Americas, and another, in any real sense, to possess or colonize them,
or to bring their pro