hand it may be claimed that the antipodes, of which they knew so little, were the avowed object of all the expeditions sent out by both parties. See the original bull and treaty in _Navarrete_, _Col. de Viages_, tom. ii. pp. 28, 130; also _Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella_, vol. ii. pp. 173-83; _Calvo_, _Recueil Complet des Traités_, Paris, 1862, tom. i. pp. 1-36; _Purchas_, _His Pilgrimes_, vol. i. booke ii. pp. 13-15; _Curious and Ent. Voy._, p. 20; _Cancellieri_, _Notizie di Colombo_, p. 183. Italy, and especially Venice, as we have seen, was the first of the European states to display in any marked degree in mediæval times that commercial spirit so early and so well developed in the Phœnicians. Portugal caught the flame under John the Great, 1385-1433, and led the van of a more daring discovery and exploration by conquests on the north-west coast of Africa. Simultaneously Prince Henry was sending expeditions farther down the western coast of Africa, and among the islands of the Atlantic. His country reaped the reward in 1486, when the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope opened her a way by sea to Hindostan, and to the commerce of the Orient, and gave at the same time the death-blow to Venetian ascendancy in that market. But Spain, as chance would have it, did not lag far behind her sister kingdom. The fact of the great navigators, Columbus and Vespucci, being Italians, and yet having to seek assistance of Spain, sufficiently indicates in what direction the swing of maritime power was tending. The astronomical schools of Córdova, Seville, and Granada had well prepared Spain for the application of astronomy to navigation, and the long internal wars had bred those bold and enduring spirits who alone are fitted to conduct with success great enterprises of certain danger and uncertain result. * * * * * It is claimed by some that John and Sebastian Cabot made their first voyage and discovered Newfoundland in 1494. The claim rests on a statement of the Spanish ambassador to England in a letter dated July 25, 1498, to the effect that during the past seven years several vessels had been sent each year from Bristol in search of Brasil and the Islands of the Seven Cities, and on an inscription on Sebastian Cabot's map of 1544, which states that land was first discovered by the Cabots on June 24, 1494. _D'Avesac_, _Letter on the Voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot_, in _Kohl_, pp. 506-7. But other authors consider the map—even if made by Cabot, which is extremely doubtful—insufficient authority to prove such a voyage.