And in this chapter I
can only give you a short list of the most important discoveries.
Keep in mind that all during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the navigators were trying to accomplish just ONE
THING--they wanted to find a comfortable and safe road to the
empire of Cathay (China), to the island of Zipangu (Japan)
and to those mysterious islands, where grew the spices which
the mediaeval world had come to like since the days of the
Crusades, and which people needed in those days before the
introduction of cold storage, when meat and fish spoiled very
quickly and could only be eaten after a liberal sprinkling of
pepper or nutmeg.
The Venetians and the Genoese had been the great navigators
of the Mediterranean, but the honour for exploring the
coast of the Atlantic goes to the Portuguese. Spain and Portugal
were full of that patriotic energy which their age-old
struggle against the Moorish invaders had developed. Such
energy, once it exists, can easily be forced into new channels.
In the thirteenth century, King Alphonso III had conquered
the kingdom of Algarve in the southwestern corner of the
Spanish peninsula and had added it to his dominions. In the
next century, the Portuguese had turned the tables on the
Mohammedans, had crossed the straits of Gibraltar and had
taken possession of Ceuta, opposite the Arabic city of Ta'Rifa
(a word which in Arabic means ``inventory'' and which by way
of the Spanish language has come down to us as ``tariff,'') and
Tangiers, which became the capital of an African addition to
Algarve.
Pages:
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247