Thence goods were shipped in Venetian galleys to Venice, and were sent over the Alps, generally by the Brenner Pass, to the Inn, the Danube, the Maine, and the Rhine, and thence to Bruges, or were conveyed round by sea in the ‘Flanders galleys.’ But at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Eastern routes to Venice became closed. The Turks, after their conquest of Constantinople, in 1453, cut off her trade with the Levant, while the advance of the Portuguese on India destroyed the trade through Egypt. | Discoveries of the Portuguese. The Genoese had been the pioneers of exploration on the western coast of Africa. They had rediscovered the Canaries and the island of Madeira, which had been known to the Carthaginians. But their attention had been directed to the Mediterranean, their strength exhausted in struggles with their Venetian rivals, and in the fourteenth century the Portuguese had reoccupied these islands. The great period of Portuguese discovery dates from the time of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460). This son of John I. of Portugal built an observatory at Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, the extreme south-west promontory of Europe, and devoted himself to the scientific study of geography, and to the encouragement of discovery. Other motives were not wanting; the desire to avenge himself on the Moors, the hereditary foes of his country, and greed for gold dust, and the profits of the slave-trade, in which the Prince was the first to engage. In one expedition no less than two hundred and sixteen negro slaves were brought to Portugal, of whom one-fifth were assigned to Henry as his share; ‘of which,’ says the chronicler, ‘he had great joy because of their salvation, who otherwise would have been destined to perdition.’ Under his influence, the Portuguese planted colonies at Porto Santo and Madeira, discovered the Azores, and the Cape de Verde Islands, and began to creep down the western coast of Africa. In 1442, Prince Henry obtained from Pope Martin V. a grant of all kingdoms and lordships from Cape Bojador to India. The hopes of reaching India spurred him on. In 1479, Ferdinand of Spain, still occupied at home with the Moors of Granada, agreed not to interfere with the exclusive right of the Portuguese to traffic and discovery on the western coast of Africa, while claiming the Canary Islands. The agreement was confirmed by the bull of Alexander VI., which gave to Portugal all newly found lands east of a line one hundred--subsequently, in 1494, extended by treaty to three hundred and seventy--leagues west of the Cape de Verde Islands. | Defeat of Egyptian fleet by Portuguese at Diu. Feb. | 1509.