After the decease of don Henry, the illustrious promoter of maritime discovery, the progress of the Portuguese along the coast of Africa received a considerable check, as the attention of Alphonso V. was wholly engrossed by his quarrels with the court of Castile. Ever since the year 1453 considerable importations of gold had been made to Portugal from the coast of Africa, but the efforts to extend discoveries farther to the south appear to have been remitted about the same time. In 1469 a merchant named Fernando Gomez farmed the Guinea trade from king Alphonso for the yearly rent of live hundred ducats, and bound himself at the same time to extend the discovery of the coast five hundred leagues to the south during the period of his exclusive privilege. During this time were discovered the islands of Fernando Po, Prince's Isle, St. Thomas, and Annobon; the last being within a degree and a half of the equator.

No detailed relations remain of the several voyages in which these discoveries were effected; but it appears that during the period which elapsed between the death of don Henry in 1463 and that of king Alphonso, which took place in 1481, the navigations of the Portuguese along the coast of Africa had made a great advancement; comprehending the whole coast of Guinea, with its gulfs named the Bights of Benin and Biafra> the adjacent islands, and the shore extending southwards to the northern frontier of the kingdom of Congo.

Russia in the beginning of the sixteenth century was little better than an inland kingdom; the small extent of sea-coast which it had upon the north offering at that time no means of intercourse with foreign nations. The arrival of Richard Chancelor at Archangel was looked upon in Russia as a wonderful event; and the commercial privileges accorded by the czar to the English seaman were intended as a reward for his having discovered a communication between the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The solution of the question respecting a north-east passage would have been of the greatest importance to Russia, if that empire had been in a condition to carry on foreign commerce; but the Russian empire, at present so powerful, was too feeble two centuries ago to support or feel an interest in maritime expeditions. Even in the beginning of the seventeenth century, nothing was known of the northern coast of Siberia beyond the river Yenisei. The country was unquestionably often traversed by private hunters and adventurers; but their local information was never drawn together or concentrated in such a way as to serve materially the interests of geography.

In a country where population is thin and society ill organised, conquest is sure to follow discovery. The Russians seem to have had the same advantage over the wild tribes or nations dwelling to the east of them, which the Spaniards possessed over the natives of America.

While the geography of South America thus rose into clear light, the obscurity of fable and uncertainty still hung over the northern portion of that great continent. When Cortereal returned from the coast of Labrador, where he had probably entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, he reported that he had discovered the Straits of Anian, which were supposed at that time, and for ages afterwards, to conduct into the Pacific Ocean. The origin of this name is uncertain, but the belief in the existence of the Straits of Anian gave rise to many a fiction, and communicated a tinge of the fabulous even to voyages that were actually performed. But as men are more willing to believe in the activity of their imaginations, than in their liability to become its dupes, accounts which had so large a mixture of the incredible were looked upon as mere inventions, and wholly disregarded.

The celebrated voyager Andres de Urdaneta, who accompanied Legaspi on his expedition to the Philippines, and returned to New Spain by the northern Pacific, was reported to have discovered a northern strait conducting from the great ocean into the Atlantic. The high reputation of Urdaneta as a navigator and cosmographer, by representing him as a fit person to solve an interesting geographical problem, may have conduced, along with some speculations found among his papers at his death, to give rise to this report.

A disposition to indulge in the marvellous is conspicuous in the narratives of all the earliest travellers; but already in the beginning of the fifteenth century a better taste began to appear. Among the well-informed and veracious travellers of this period, the Spaniard, Ruy-Gonzales de Clavijo is the most distinguished. The fame of Timur's conquests being spread abroad through every part of Europe, induced Henry III. king of Castile to send ambassadors to the khan, with instructions to pay their respects to him in the heart of his dominions. The real object of the embassy, however, was to learn the manners and the strength of the nations inhabiting the interior of Asia, to observe the situation of the conquered, and the character of the conqueror. In consequence of this determination, two noblemen of the court, Pelajo de Sotomayor and Ferdinand de Palazuelas, set out for the Levant in 1393, arrived at the camp of Timur before his victory over Bajazet, and witnessed the total overthrow of the Turkish army. The conqueror dismissed the Spaniards loaded with presents, and sent an embassage along with them as an additional honour to the king of Castile.

The success of this first step towards a correspondence encouraged Henry to send a second embassy to Tamerlane in 1403; at the head of this was Clavijo, who returned to Spain in 1406, and wrote an account of the reception he had met with at Samarcand, and of all that he observed in the various countries through which he passed.

The success of Chancelor's mission to Moscow diverted the attention of the merchant adventurers for a time from seeking a passage to the Indian seas. But a better acquaintance with the newly discovered country, Russia, tended to inflame that ardour in the pursuit of eastern commerce which it had for a moment allayed. It was found that the Russians carried on a lucrative trade with Persia and Bokhara; and it was determined to turn to advantage the favour with which the English were received at the court of Moscow, and to trace the commercial routes of the interior of Asia. For this purpose Mr. Anthony Jenkinson was selected; a resolute and intelligent gentleman, well acquainted with Muscovy, to which country he had made several journeys, and where he afterwards appeared in the quality of ambassador from queen Elizabeth.

Jenkinson departed from Moscow in April, 1558. The country between the Volga and the Caspian he found desolate and depopulated: the inhabitants, to the number of a hundred thousand, were in that year destroyed by civil war, pestilence, and famine, to the great satisfaction, he observes, of the Russians. The city of Astracan appeared to him neither strong nor handsome. The ramparts were built of earth: all the houses, except the governor's, were of the meanest description. The only food was fish, especially sturgeon: these were hung up in their streets and houses to dry.

The events which, in the course of the thirteenth century, brought together nations hitherto separated by the whole extent of the old world are almost without example in the history of the human race. The greatness of the Mongols, which seemed to embrace the universe, was created in less time than is ordinarily required to found and people a single city. The chief of a petty tribe, hardly distinguished among the tributaries of the Jou-chi, a principal Mongol nation, courageously resisted the attacks of some neighbours as unimportant as himself. The continuance of these struggles gradually led to bolder efforts directed against his superiors. His good fortune, and indefatigable spirit, made his horde or camp the refuge of every discontented or unquiet character. His rivals are quickly humbled and his enemies destroyed. The country at the sources of the rivers Onon, Keroulan, and Toula, was the first theatre of the revolutions which shortly after spread through all Asia and a part of Europe. At length, in the year 1206, the heroic Mongol prince assumed the title of Chingis or Zingis Khan, and established the centre of his empire at Cara-corum, an ancient city of the Turks, situated between the Toula, the Orgon, and Silinga, nearly in the same latitude as Paris.