Having mysteriously lost a day by following the sun in his westward course, they did penance for having celebrated the fasts and feasts of the church on the wrong dates.
[Sidenote: Portuguese Exploration] While Spain was extending her dominions westward, little Portugal was building up an even greater empire in both hemispheres.

In the fifteenth century, this hardy people, confined to their coast and without possibility of expanding inwards, had seen that their future lay upon the water.

To the possessor of sea power the ocean makes of every land bordering on it a frontier, vulnerable to them and impervious to the enemy.

The first ventures of the Portuguese were naturally in the lands near by, the North African coast and the islands known as the Madeiras and the Azores.

Feeling their way southward along the African coast they reached the Cape of Good Hope but did not at once go much further.