The Portuguese were the first to enter on the brilliant path of nautical discovery, which they pursued under the infante Dom Henry with such activity that before the middle of the fifteenth century they had penetrated as far as Cape Verd, doubling many a fearful headland which had shut in the timid navigator of former days; until at length, in 1486, they descried the lofty promontory which terminates Africa on the south, and which received the cheering appellation of the Cape of Good Hope. The Spaniards, in the meanwhile, did not languish in the career of maritime enterprise. Certain adventurers from the northern provinces of Biscay and Guipuzcoa, in 1393, had made themselves masters of one of the smallest of the group of islands since known as the Canaries. Other private adventurers from Seville extended their conquests over these islands in the beginning of the following century. These were completed in behalf of the crown under Ferdinand and Isabella, who equipped several fleets for their reduction, which at length terminated in 1495 with that of Teneriffe. From the commencement of their reign, Ferdinand and Isabella had shown an earnest solicitude for the encouragement of commerce and nautical science. Under them, and indeed under their predecessors as far back as Henry III, a considerable traffic had been carried on with the western coast of Africa, from which gold-dust and slaves were imported into the city of Seville. The annalist of that city notices the repeated interference of Isabella in behalf of these unfortunate beings, by ordinances tending to secure them a more equal protection of the laws, or opening such social indulgences as might mitigate the hardships of their condition. A misunderstanding gradually arose between the subjects of Castile and Portugal, in relation to their respective rights of discovery and commerce on the African coast, which promised a fruitful source of collision between the two crowns, but which was happily adjusted by an article in the treaty of 1479, that terminated the war of the Succession. By this it was settled that the right of traffic and of discovery on the western coast of Africa should be exclusively reserved to the Portuguese, who in their turn should resign all claims on the Canaries to the crown of Castile. The Spaniards, thus excluded from further progress to the south, seemed to have no other opening left for naval adventure than the hitherto untravelled regions of the great western ocean. Fortunately, at this juncture an individual appeared among them, in the person of Christopher Columbus, endowed with capacity for stimulating them to this heroic enterprise and conducting it to a glorious issue.[g]