country had, for many years, fostered the exploration of the coast of
Africa, and were pushing expeditions farther and farther South.

In doing this, they were, in a fashion, making new discoveries. For
Europe was wholly ignorant of the western coast of Africa, beyond the
Canaries, when their expeditions began. But all men of learning
knew that, five hundred years before the Christian era, Hanno, a
Carthaginian, had sailed round Africa under the direction of the senate
of Carthage. The efforts of the King of Portugal were to repeat the
voyage made by Hanno. In 1441, Gonzales and Tristam sailed as far as
Sierra Leone. They brought back some blacks as slaves, and this was the
beginning of the slave trade.

In 1446 the Portuguese took possession of the Azores, the most western
points of the Old World. Step by step they advanced southward, and
became familiar with the African coast. Bold navigators were eager to
find the East, and at last success came. Under the king's orders, in
August, 1477, three caravels sailed from the Tagus, under Bartolomeo
Diaz, for southern discovery. Diaz was himself brave enough to be
willing to go on to the Red Sea, after he made the great discovery of
the Cape of Good Hope, but his crews mutinied, after he had gone much
farther than his predecessors, and compelled him to return. He passed
the southern cape of Africa and went forty miles farther. He called it
the Cape of Torments, "Cabo Tormentoso," so terrible were the storms he
met there. But when King John heard his report he gave it that name of
good omen which it has borne ever since, the name of the "Cape of Good
Hope."

In the midst of such endeavors to reach the East Indies by the long
voyage down the coast of Africa and across an unknown ocean, Columbus
was urging all people who cared, to try the route directly west. If
the world was round, as the sun and moon were, and as so many men of
learning believed, India or the Indies must be to the west of Portugal.
The value of direct trade with the Indies would be enormous. Europe had
already acquired a taste for the spices of India and had confidence in
the drugs of India. The silks and other articles of clothing made in
India, and the carpets of India, were well known and prized. Marco Polo
and others had given an impression that there was much gold in India;
and the pearls and precious stones of India excited the imagination of
all who read his travels.

The immense value of such a com