Again, Henry was founding upon his work of exploration an over-sea dominion, a "commercial and colonial" empire for his country. He desired to see her rich and prosperous, and there cannot be any reasonable doubt that his ideas agreed with those of Italian land and sea travellers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He and they were agreed in thinking it possible and very important to secure a large share of Asiatic, especially of Indian, trade for their respective countries. By exploring and making practicable the maritime route around Africa to the Indies, he would probably raise Portugal into the wealthiest of European nations. Azurara's "second reason" for the "search after Guinea" is that "many kinds of merchandise might be brought to this realm ... and also the products of this realm might be taken there, which traffic would bring great profit to our countrymen." Thirdly, Prince Henry had the temperament of a Crusader and a missionary. Of him, fully as much as of Columbus, it may be said that if he aimed at empire, it was for the extension of Christendom. Azurara's three final reasons for Henry's explorations all turn upon this. The Prince desired to find out the full strength of the Moors in Africa, "said to be very much greater than commonly supposed," "because every wise man" desires "a knowledge of the power of his enemy." He also "sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian princes" who would aid him against the enemies of the faith. And, lastly, he desired to "make increase in the faith of Jesus Christ, and to bring to Him all the souls that should be saved." It has often been pointed out how the Infant was aided in his work by the tendencies of his time and country; how in him the spirit of mediæval faith and the spirit of material, even of commercial, ambition, were united; how he was the central representative of a general expansive and exploring movement; and how he took up and carried on the labours of various predecessors. At the same time it must be recognised that his work forms an epoch in the history of geographical, commercial, and colonial advance; that he gave a permanence and a vitality to the cause of maritime discovery which it had never possessed before; that even his rediscoveries of islands and mainland frequently had all the meaning and importance of fresh achievements; that he made his nation the pioneer of Europe in its conquest of the outer world; and that without him the results of the great forty years (1480-1520) of Diaz, Columbus, Da Gama, and Magellan must have been long, might have been indefinitely, postponed.