194 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



the new education and of the rapid spread of intelligence 

 soon began to appear. 



At this time the Italian trade, principally Venetian, 

 came overland from India by way of the Persian Gulf to 

 the Caspian and Mediterranean, and through the Red Sea 

 to Egypt. The transhipments were many, the delays seri- 

 ous and the expense of carriage enormous; yet the Italian 

 merchants were the most opulent in the world. The ad- 

 venturers of Spain and Portugal looked upon their com- 

 merce with envy, and hungered for its profits. Meanwhile 

 the knowledge of the compass had reached the Spanish and 

 Portuguese mariners, and the latter, from their Atlantic 

 ports, had begun to make, by its aid, voyages upon the 

 Western Ocean longer than ever before. Their audacity, 

 however, was checked by their superstition. They be- 

 lieved in a region of fire about the equator, in a weedy and 

 entangling sea far to the West, and in the certain destruc- 

 tion of vessels that doubled Cape Bojador; currents bewild- 

 ered them, and the trade-winds suggested only gales always 

 blowing them away from home. Yet, if these men could 

 be got to steer around the African cape, as the Egyptians 

 had done ages before, it was certain that a water-way to 

 India would thus be opened, and the nation to which they 

 belonged might well hope to wrest from the proud Vene- 

 tians the commercial supremacy which made all Europe 

 their tributary/ So thought Prince Henry of Portugal, son 

 of John the First Henry the Navigator and, thereupon, 

 he set to work to educate the sailors. He founded a naval 

 college, got together the cosmographers and the mariners 

 and the artificers skilled in instrument making, and having 

 corrected the charts, and improved the astrolabes and the 

 compasses the last more especially he provided the 

 money and equipment for great voyages. Ultimately, 

 under this stimulus, the Portuguese doubled Cape Bojador, 

 penetrated to the tropics and found there no deadly heats, 

 explored the African coast to Cape de Verde, and sailed 

 to the Azores, passed with impunity through the weedy 



