[Footnote 2: See Portugal Becomes a Republic, page 28.]

Meantime Portugal was for sixty years an appanage of the Spanish crown, while the Netherlands were at their heroic labor for independence.

Portugal is a small nation with a great history; and the pride of a small nation which has anything to be proud of is apt to amount to a passion.

Portugal was not the only land to seek a sea-route to India.

EMANUEL I., king of Portugal from 1495 to 1521; his reign inaugurated the golden period of Portuguese history, during which Portugal became the first maritime and commercial power in Europe; was the patron of Vasco da Gama and Albuquerque; issued an edict for the expulsion of the Jews from his kingdom, and wrote to the Elector of Saxony begging him to get rid of Luther (1469-1521).

Portugal was Portugal long before Spain was Spain.

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.