The discovery of an ocean route from Europe to India, followed by the establishment of the Portuguese as the preponderating power in the East, is one of the greatest events in the history of the world. It is not too much to say that every state of Central and Western Europe was affected by it. The time was critical, for the Turks were then menacing Christendom, and if they had secured a monopoly of the Indian trade their wealth and strength would have been so augmented that it is doubtful whether they might not have succeeded in entering Vienna in 1529. As yet the Moslem power was divided, for Egypt was still under the independent Mameluke rulers, and the greater portion of the Indian products that found their way to Europe was obtained by the Venetians at Alexandria. To that city they were conveyed in boats down the Nile from Cairo, after being carried by camels from the shore of the Red sea, whither they were brought by ships from the coast of Malabar. From this traffic Alexandria had thriven greatly, and from it too Venice,--whose merchants distributed over Europe the silk and cotton fabrics, gems, pepper, and spices of the East,--had become wealthy and powerful. That portion of the Indian merchandise which was brought overland by caravans from the Persian gulf to the Mediterranean coast was under the control of the Turks, and a few years later, when in 1517 the sultan Selim overthrew the Mamelukes and made Egypt a province of his dominions, the whole would have been theirs if the Portuguese had not just in time forestalled them. [Sidenote: Historical Sketches.] In the early years of the fifteenth century the Christian nations were little acquainted with distant countries, America and Australia were entirely unknown, Eastern Asia was very imperfectly laid down on the maps, and the greater part of Africa had never been explored. This continent might have terminated north of the equator, for anything that the most learned men in Europe knew with certainty to the contrary. They had only the map of Ptolemy and perhaps that of Edrisi as their guide, and these were extremely vague as regards its southern part, and, as is now known, were most incorrect. The little kingdom of Portugal at the south-western extremity of Europe was more favourably situated than any other Christian state for prosecuting discovery along the western coast of Africa, though its shipping was small in quantity compared with that of either Venice, Genoa, the Hanseatic league, or the Netherland dominions of the dukes of Burgundy. A glance at its history may not be uninteresting, and will show how it came to embark in maritime exploration.[1]