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highway to a region as vast in extent as the two Americas combined, and containing a population larger than that of all the rest of the world. India had been known as a distant land of semi-fable, China as a still more remote land of mystery, while Japan had not given the Western world a passing thought; but all this was changed when Europe learned that the sea offered a free passage to every adventurer who wished to visit those distant shores, and soon rival nations were hastening to the vast regions which had thus been opened to them as a field of commerce and conquest.

The opening of the sixteenth century was a little too early for enlightened missionary work, but the Roman Catholic leaders of that period were quick to perceive that India presented such a field for the extension of the Pope's authority as had never been seen before. They lost no time in preparing to enter what seemed to them a providential inheritance, and under the leadership of the illustrious Xavier a work of vast proportions was undertaken, but this movement was not very successful. The governments of the day also took an inter-