But  during  this  period  of  strange  inaction  or  hesitancy,  great
discoveries  were  made.  Long  before  the  Bulls  of  Borgia  were
granted  to  Portugal  and  CastiUe,  Prince  Henry  of  Portugal  had  dis-
covered the  Canary  and  Cape  Yard  islands,  and  had  coasted  along
the  north-western  shore  of  Africa.  The  spirit  of  enterprise  was
kept  up  by  Portugal  through  the  fifteenth  century,  at  the  conclusion
of  which,  in  1497,  the  Cape  was  doubled,  and  the  foundation  was
begun  of  the  Portuguese  settlements  in  Asia,  both  on  the  Indian
Peninsula  and  in  the  Eastern  Archipelago.  Spain  discovered  thp
New  World  and  speedily  got  possession  of  Central  America,  and
the  Pacific  coast  of  the  Andes.  While  English  voyagers  had  hardly
trusted  themselves  out  of  sight  of  land,  other  nations  had  crossed
the  oceans  and  founded  empires  or  factories.  Like  the  early  settle-
ments of  all  European  nations,  the  ultimate  object  of  these
conquests  or  occupations  was  the  creation  of  a  sole  market,  a  right
guarded  jealously  and  angrily,  as  we  know  from  the  issue  of  the
Darien  expedition.  After  the  Treaty  of  Utrecht,  the  subordinate
agreement,  known  as  the  Assiento  treaty,  the  commencement  of
the  English  slave  trade,  the  proximate  cause  of  the  South  Sea
Babble,  and  the  occasion  of  a  short  war  with  Spain,  was  the  con-
cession of  a  very  limited  right  of  trade  with  the  Spanish  plantations.
The  Spaniards  governed  their  colonies  in  a  peculiar  manner.  No
one  was  permitted  to  have  a  share  in  their  administration,  unless
he  were  a  native  Spaniard,  sent  out  for  the  purpose.  Men  bom,
though  of  the  purest  Spanish  blood,  in  these  settlements,  were  per-
petually disabled  from  all  share  in  the  government  of  the  colony.
