CHAP. V I . ]
CHRISTOPHER
61
COLUMBUS.
There was, henceforth, to be no retrogression in knowledge, nor any pause in its career.
Every step in advance, was imme
diately, and simultaneously, and widely promulgated, recorded in a thousand forms, and fixed for ever.
There could never again be
a dark age ; nations might shut their eyes to the light, and sit in willful darkness, but they could not trample it out; it would still shine on, dispensed to happier parts of the world, by the diffusive powers of the press. At this juncture, in 1481, a monarch ascended the throne of Portugal, of different ambition from Alphonso.
John II, then
in the twenty-fifth year of his age, had imbibed the passion for discovery from his grand-uncle, Prince Henry, and with his reign all its activity revived.
His first care was to build a fort at St.
George de la Mina, on the coast of Guinea, to protect the trade carried on in that neighborhood for gold dust, ivory, and slaves. The African discoveries had conferred great glory upon Portugal, but as yet they had been expensive rather than profitable.
The accomplishment of the route to India, how
ever, it was expected would repay all cost and toil, and open a source of incalculable wealth to the nation.
The project of
Prince Henry, which had now been tardily prosecuted for half a century, had excited a curiosity about the remote parts of Asia, and revived all the accounts, true and fabulous, of travelers. Beside the work of Marco Polo, already mentioned, there was the narrative of Rabbi Benjamin ben Jonah, of Tudela, a Spanish Jew, who set out from Saragossa in 1173, to visit the scattered remnants of the Hebrew tribes.
Wandering with un
wearied zeal on this pious errand, over most parts of the known world, he penetrated China, and passed thence to the southern