The world: historical and actual . Cuba eclipsed it. The island is smalland has beenmainly useful toEurope of late asa retreat for in-valids, especiallysufferers fromlung climate is ab-solutely were no in-habitants upon itwhen discovered,and the presentpeople are a mix-ed race, the Por-tuguese and Ne-gro blood beingintermingled. Slavery existedthere once, butwas long sinceabolished. Thelast vestige ofslavery in thePortuguese col-onies was wipedout in 1878. Thetotal colonial pos-sessions of Portu-gal embrace 709,-469 square milesand a populationof over three mil
The world: historical and actual . Cuba eclipsed it. The island is smalland has beenmainly useful toEurope of late asa retreat for in-valids, especiallysufferers fromlung climate is ab-solutely were no in-habitants upon itwhen discovered,and the presentpeople are a mix-ed race, the Por-tuguese and Ne-gro blood beingintermingled. Slavery existedthere once, butwas long sinceabolished. Thelast vestige ofslavery in thePortuguese col-onies was wipedout in 1878. Thetotal colonial pos-sessions of Portu-gal embrace 709,-469 square milesand a populationof over three mil-lions, mostly inAfrica and theislands adjacentto the dark con-tinent. But these possessions are trivial as comparedwith what originally seemed likely to be Portugalsshare in the Orient and the New World. The Azores islands were discovered twenty yearslater than Madeira. The great achievement ofPortuguese enterprise, however, was the discoveryof the passage to the East Indies by the Cape ofGood Hope. What Columbus vainly sought by. sailing westward, missing it only to find somethingincomparably better, was found by skirting alongthe western coast of Africa. Ships from Lisbon hadlong been doing a thrifty trade with the Africans, finding a regionpreviously sup-posed to be unin-habited, peopledby a race of sav-ages who wereonly too eager toexchange for thebaubles of civili-zation ivory andother preciousthings. It hadbeen the theoryof Ptolemy thatAfrica extendedwestward as it ex-tended south-ward. The Por-tuguese foundthat just the op-posite was thecase, and that en-couraged them topush their wayfarther and far-ther in the hopeof finding a pointat which landceased. Theirhope was realiz-ed. Repeated ex-peditions weremade withoutsuccess, beyondthe farther exten-sion of com-merce, until Vas-co da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and sail-ed along the eastern coast of Africa. The people hefound to be less barbarous than the negroes of thewest; at least he came upon some evidences of
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectworldhistory, bookyea
