But the great voyagings of the Spaniards were not destined to be in the East. The Portuguese, led on originally by Prince Henry, one of the most extraordinary men of his age, had, as it were, already appropriated to themselves that quarter of the world by discovering the easy route of the Cape of Good Hope; and, both by the right of discovery and by the provisions of the well-known Papal bull and the equally well-known treaty of 1479, had cautiously cut off their great rivals, the Spaniards, from all adventure in that direction; leaving open to them only the wearisome waters that were stretched out unmeasured towards the West. Happily, however, there was one man to whose courage even the terrors of this unknown and dreaded ocean were but spurs and incentives, and whose gifted vision, though sometimes dazzled from the height to which he rose, could yet see, beyond the waste of waves, that broad continent which his fervent imagination deemed needful to balance the world. It is true, Columbus was not born a Spaniard. But his spirit was eminently Spanish. His loyalty, his religious faith and enthusiasm, his love of great and extraordinary adventure, were all Spanish rather than Italian, and were all in harmony with the Spanish national character, when he became a part of its glory. His own eyes, he tells us, had watched the silver cross, as it slowly rose, for the first time, above the towers of the Alhambra, announcing to the world the final and absolute overthrow of the infidel power in Spain;[334] and from that period,--or one even earlier, when some poor monks from Jerusalem had been at the camp of the two sovereigns before Granada, praying for help and protection against the unbelievers in Palestine,--he had conceived the grand project of consecrating the untold wealth he trusted to find in his westward discoveries, by devoting it to the rescue of the Holy City and sepulchre of Christ; thus achieving, by his single power and resources, what all Christendom and its ages of crusades had failed to accomplish.[335] [334] In the account of his first voyage, rendered to his sovereigns, he says he was in 1492 at Granada, “adonde, este presente año, á dos dias del mes de Enero, por fuerza de armas, _vide_ poner las banderas reales de Vuestras Altezas en las torres de Alfambra,” etc. Navarrete, Coleccion de los Viajes y Descubrimientos que hicieron por Mar los Españoles desde Fines del Siglo XV., Madrid, 1825, 4to, Tom. I. p. 1;--a work admirably edited, and of great value, as containing the authentic materials for the history of the discovery of America. Old Bernaldez, the friend of Columbus, describes more exactly what Columbus saw: “E mostraron en la mas alta torre primeramente el estandarte de Jesu Cristo, que fue la Santa Cruz de plata, que el rey traia siempre en la santa conquista consigo.” Hist. de los Reyes Católicos, Cap. 102, MS.