A History of Japan Author:James Murdoch Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: t .' .... CHAPTER in. THE PORTUGUESE IN THE ORIENT AND THE JESUITS. rilHE position of Portugal in the comity of civilised nations is now so insignifican... more »t that it is somewhat hard to credit the assertion that some four centuries ago the little kingdom stood in the very forefront of European progress and enterprise. Yet such is an undoubted fact—in certain spheres of activity at least. In the all-important matter of maritime discovery, the Portuguese led the way with indomitable courage and perseverance for the greater part of two centuries. The chief impulse to their early activity in facing the mystery and lifting the veil of the unknown that shrouded the African coast came from the lonely and wave-biiffetted promontory of Sagres, on whoso inhospitable and. windy height the half-English Prince, Henry the Navigator, had reared his observatory and established the school whence proceeded the most daring and the most skilful seamen of the age. During the Prince's lifetime (1394-1460) the successive captains he had sent out had league by league groped their way southwards along the African coast as far as the Gambia; while twenty-six years after his death, Dias, with two ships of 50 tons burthen each, actually reached the extreme southerly point of the continent. This point he called Cabo Tormentoso, but King John II., foreseeing the realisation of the long-sought passage to India, changed this name of sinister import to the euphemistic and enduring one of the Cape of Good Hope. In a little less than two years the King's prescience was fully justified, for on May 20th, 1498, Da Gama anchored before Calicut. Seven years thereafter the first Viceroy of the Indies was sent out in the person of Almeida, shortly to be followed by tho great Albuquerque. In 1510 Goa was captured and ...« less