6 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



Ormus and of Ind '. The doomed Venetians clung to their 



own counting-houses at La Tana, on the Sea of Azov, and 



at Alexandria. But usually Italians, being nationless, entered 



which led to the service of other nations. Thus ever since 1317 Genoese 



Hah 1 ?' 1 * 1 sailors were annually imported into Portugal ; * and Genoese 



covcrics in sea-captains discovered Madeira, the Cape Verde Islands, 



Africa and an( j p ro ^ a biy tne Azores, for the Portuguese, and the Canaries 



A fJlCf'llCty 



for the Spaniards. It was a Florentine astronomer, named 

 Toscanelli, who, at the request of Alphonso V of Portugal, 

 wrote his proof that the nearest way to the east lay west, which 

 proof a Genoese servant of Alphonso V, named Columbus, 

 read. The Italians were the guides and teachers, the nations 

 and their kings were the actors. Portugal and Spain were 

 the first to act ; each acted differently, but both followed 

 a tradition which was only a distant memory in the rest of 

 Europe. The south-west of Europe, where the old Crusading 

 embers still glowed, was the first to receive the new know- 

 undo- ledge. There Ferdinand and Isabella were stamping out 

 Portugal t j ie j agt vest jpr es o f Mohammedanism by planting internal 



, 



colonies of a strictly feudal type in Granada; and the Portu- 

 guese were feeling their way, headland by headland, and bay- 

 by bay, to South Africa, and so to India, or searching vaguely 

 after legendary Atlantic islands, such as Antilia, the Island 

 of Brazil, and the Land of the Seven Cities, or peopling actual 

 Atlantic islands with African slaves whom they stole and 

 converted by the score, or warring with the Moors of Barbary 

 in the name of Him whom the Crusaders thought that they 

 served. Both Portugal and Spain were growing into king- 

 doms while they colonized. Both in Portuguese and in 

 Spanish ' to colonize ' meant ' to people ', whether with foreign 

 slaves or foreign garrisons. Both Portuguese and Spanish 

 progress w-as blessed by the Pope. Pope Martin V and his 

 successors granted to the Kings of Portugal whatsoever should 

 be discovered between Cape Boiador in West Africa and the 



1 E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, vol. i, p. 87. 



an 



