t there being any division of race or of language between its
inhabitants and those of Galicia.

The youngest of all the Peninsular kingdoms, it is the only one which
still remains separate from the rest of the Spains, for when in 1580
union was forced on her by Philip II., Portugal had had too glorious a
past, and had become too different in language and in custom easily to
submit to so undesired a union, while Spain, already suffering from
coming weakness and decay, was not able long to hold her in such hated
bondage.

It is not necessary here to tell the story of each of Affonso Henriques'
descendants. He himself permanently extended the borders of his kingdom
as far as the Tagus, and even raided the Moslem lands of the south as
far as Ourique, beyond Beja. His son, Sancho I., finding the Moors too
strong to make any permanent conquests beyond the Tagus, devoted himself
chiefly--when not fighting with the king of Castile and Leon--to
rebuilding and restoring the towns in Beira, and it was not till the
reign of his grandson, Affonso III., that the southern sea was reached
by the taking of the Algarve in the middle of the thirteenth century.

Dom Diniz, Affonso III.'s son, carried on the work of settling the
country, building castles and planting pine-trees to stay the blowing
sands along the west coast.

From that time on Portugal was able to hold her own, and was strong
enough in 1387 to defeat the king of Castile at Aljubarrota when he
tried to seize the throne in right of his wife, only child of the late
Portuguese king, Fernando.

Under the House of Aviz, whose first king, Joao I., had been elected to
repel this invasion, Portugal rose to the greatest heights of power and
of wealth to which the country was ever to attain. The ceaseless efforts
of Dom Henrique, the Navigator, the third son of Dom Joao, were crowned
with success when Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in May 1498, and when
Pedro Alvares Cabral first saw the coasts of Brazil in 1500.

To-day one is too ready to forget that Portugal was the pioneer in
geographical discovery, that the Portuguese were the first Westerns to
reach Japan, and that, had Joao II. listened to Columbus, it would have
been to Portugal and not to Spain that he would have given a new world.

It was, too, under the House of Aviz that the greatest development in
architecture took place, and that the only original and distinctive
style of architecture was formed. That was also t