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 coast of Africa had been slowly but surely advancing, as, in spite of their religious differences, the Christians of the West and the Muhammedans had throughout all time mutually conceded to each other the same advantages in their commercial conventions. Thus the Tunisians were allowed to trade as freely at Barcelona as the Catalans did at Tunis, and the corsairs of each country found safe refuge in the harbours of both nations. International arrangements of an intimate character enabled the ship-owners of Catalonia and Sardinia to enter into many profitable joint adventures with those of Barbary and Marocco, especially in the coral and other fisheries, and in the trade of corn, of which Spain obtained, at a price fixed by treaty, large supplies from the coasts of Africa. By this time, too, Portugal had become alive to the advantages to be derived from the discovery of other and distant lands.

But though the travels of Marco Polo had more than a century before shown to the nations of Europe the vast extent of the continent of Asia, and had furnished the means of obtaining clearer ideas of its unspeakable riches than had hitherto prevailed, the merchants of the Mediterranean were too desirous of retaining in their own hands the monopoly of the Indian trade to encourage expeditions which had for their object merely the extension of geographical knowledge; the merchants and seamen, who were the chief travellers, having been induced to restrict their knowledge and experience to their own classes.