%2.  European Trade with the East; the Old Routes.%—­For two hundred years before North and South America were known to exist, a splendid trade had been going on between Europe and the East Indies.  Ships loaded with metals, woods, and pitch went from European seaports to Alexandria and Constantinople, and brought back silks and cashmeres, muslins, dyewoods, spices, perfumes, ivory, precious stones, and pearls.  This trade in course of time had come to be controlled by the two Italian cities of Venice and Genoa.  The merchants of Genoa sent their ships to Constantinople and the ports of the Black Sea, where they took on board the rich fabrics and spices which by boats and by caravans had come up the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris from the Persian Gulf.  The men of Venice, on the other hand, sent their vessels to Alexandria, and carried on their trade with the East through the Red Sea.

[Illustration:  Routes to India]

%3.  New Routes wanted.%—­Splendid as this trade was, however, it was doomed to destruction.  Slowly, but surely, the Turks thrust themselves across the caravan routes, cutting off one by one the great feeders of the Oriental trade, till, with the capture of Constantinople in 1453, they destroyed the commercial career of Genoa.  As their power was spreading rapidly over Syria and toward Egypt, the prosperity of Venice, in turn, was threatened.  The day seemed near when all trade between the Indies and Europe would be ended, and men began to ask if it were not possible to find an ocean route to Asia.

Now, it happened that just at this time the Portuguese were hard at work on the discovery of such a route, and were slowly pushing their way down the western coast of Africa.  But as league after league of that coast was discovered, it was thought that the route to India by way of Africa was too long for the purposes of commerce.[1] Then came the question, Is there not a shorter route? and this Columbus tried to answer.

[Footnote 1:  Read the account of Portuguese exploration in search of a way to India, in Fiske’s Discovery of America, Vol.  I., pp. 274-334.]

%4.  Columbus seeks the East and finds America.%[2]—­Columbus was a native of Genoa, in Italy.  He began a seafaring life at fourteen, and in the intervals between his voyages made maps and globes.  As Portugal was then the center of nautical enterprise, he wandered there about 1470, and probably went on one or two voyages down the coast of Africa.  In 1473 he married a Portuguese woman.  Her father had been one of the King of Portugal’s famous navigators, and had left behind him at his death a quantity of charts and notes; and it was while Columbus was studying them that the idea of seeking the Indies by sailing due westward seems to have first started in his mind.  But many a year went by, and many a hardship had to be borne, and many an insult patiently endured in poverty and distress, before the Friday morning in August, 1492, when his three caravels, the Santa Maria (sahn’-tah mah-ree’-ah), the Pinta (peen’-tah), and the Nina (neen’-yah), sailed from the port of Palos (pah’-los), in Spain.