COMMERCIAL SUPREMACY OF PORTUGAL 39 ence, and cherishing an undying hatred against the Moors whom it had driven forth. In the thirteenth century Portugal attained its Eu- ropean limits. At the end of the fourteenth it entered on a career of splendour under a singularly able and long-lived line of kings. John I, or the Great, of the house of Aviz, and his four successors ruled from 1385 to 1521, and raised their country from an outlying strip TRADING IN AN INDIAN MARKET. on the Atlantic to the ocean outpost of Christendom. Their combined reigns form the heroic age of Portugal. That period commenced with a firm alliance with Eng- land; it ended with the complete establishment of the Portuguese in India. It is marked throughout by a fierce hostility to the Mussulmans, and by a spirit of exploration which in Portugal succeeded to and ab- sorbed the spirit of the Crusades. The English alliance formed the keystone of the
