south from the mouth of the Tagus, skirted the coast of Africa,
rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean, and dropped
his anchor in the harbor of Calicut--the first European to reach the
beckoning East by sea. For a quarter of a century the Portuguese were
the only people in Europe who knew the way to the East, and their
secret gave them a monopoly of the Eastern trade. Lisbon became the
richest port of Europe. Portugal was mistress of the seas. But in 1519
another Portuguese seafarer, Hernando de Maghallanes--we call him
Ferdinand Magellan--who, resenting his treatment by the King of
Portugal, had shifted his allegiance to Spain, sailed southwestward
across the Atlantic, rounded the southern extremity of America by the
straits which bear his name, crossed the unknown Pacific, and raised
the flag of Spain over the islands which came in time to be called the
Philippines. Spain had reached the Indies by sailing west, as Portugal
had reached them by sailing east.

Though the fabulous wealth of the lands thus discovered was discussed
around every council table and camp-fire in Europe, the routes by which
that wealth might be attained were guarded by Portugal and Spain as
secrets of state. The charts showing the routes were not intrusted to
the captains of vessels in the Eastern trade until the moment of
departure, and they were taken up immediately upon their return; the
silence of officers and crews was insured by every oath that the church
could frame and every penalty that the state could devise. For more
than three-quarters of a century, indeed, the two Iberian nations
succeeded in keeping the secret of the sea roads to the East, its
betrayal being punishable by death. In 1580, however, the English
freebooter, Francis Drake, nicknamed "The Master Thief of the Unknown
World," duplicated the voyage of Magellan's expedition of threescore
years before, thus discovering the route to the Indies used by Spain.

At this period the Dutch, "the waggoners of the sea," possessed, as
middlemen, a large interest in the spice trade, for the Portuguese,
having no direct access to the markets of northern Europe, had made a
practise of sending their Eastern merchandise to the Netherlands in
Dutch bottoms for distribution by way of the Rhine and the Scheldt. As
a result, the enormous carrying trade of Holland was wholly dependent
upon Lisbon. But when Spain unceremoniously annexed Portugal in 1580,
the first act of Philip