[Footnote 30: "Jean de Bethancourt knew that before the expedition of Alvaro Beccara, that is to say, before the end of the fourteenth century, Norman adventurers had penetrated as far as Sierra Leone (lat. 8 deg. 30'), and he sought to follow their traces. Before the Portuguese, however, no European nation appears to have crossed the equator."--Humboldt. "Les Normands et les Arabes sont les seules nations qui, jusqu'au commencement du douzieme siecle, aient partage la gloire des grandes expeditions maritimes, le gout des aventures etranges, la passion du pillage et des conquetes ephemeres. Les Normands ont occupe successivement l'Islande et la Neustrie, ravage les sanctuaires de l'Italie, ravage la Pouille sur les Grecs, inscrit leurs caracteres runiques jusque sur les flancs d'un des lions que Morosini enleva au Piree d'Athenes pour en orner l'arsenal de Venise."--Humboldt's _Geog. du Nouveau Continent_, vol. ii., p. 86.] [Footnote 31: "No nation," says Southey, "has ever accomplished such great things in proportion to its means as the Portuguese." Its early maritime history does, indeed, present a striking picture of enterprise and restless energy, but the annals of Europe afford no similar instance of rapid degeneracy. There was an age when less than forty thousand armed Portuguese kept the whole coasts of the ocean in awe, from Morocco to China; when one hundred and fifty sovereign princes paid tribute to the treasury of Lisbon. But in all their enterprises they aimed at conquest, and not at colonization. The government at home exercised little control over the arms of its piratical mariners; the mother country derived no benefit from their achievements. To the age of conquest succeeded one of effeminacy and corruption.--Merivale's _Lectures on Colonization_, vol. i., p. 44.] [Footnote 32: See Appendix, No. IX. (see Vol II)]