ductions into the general traffic and use of the
world. Spain, following the stroke of the valiant oar of Columbus, found
in Mexico and Peru remarkable remains of an ancient though feeble
civilization, and a wealth of gold and silver mines, which to Europeans
of that period was fascinating from the rarity of the precious metals in
their own realms, and consequently gave to the Spanish colonizations and
conquests in South America an extraordinary but unsolid prosperity. The
value of the precious metals in Europe was found to fall as soon as they
began to be more widely distributed, a process in itself at that period
of no small tediousness; and it was discovered further, after a century
or two, that the production of gold and silver is limited like the
production of other commodities for which they exchange, and only
increased in quantity at a heavier cost, that is only reduced again by
greater art and science in the process of production. Many difficulties,
in short, had to be overcome, many wars to be waged, and many deplorable
errors to be committed, in turning the new advantages to account. But
given a maritime route to India and the discovery of a new world of
continent and islands in the richest tropical and sub-tropical
latitudes, it could not be difficult to foresee that the course of trade
was to be wholly changed as well as vastly extended.

Maritime route to India.

The substantial advantage of the oceanic passage to India by the Cape of
Good Hope, as seen at the time, was to enable European trade with the
East to escape from the Moors, Algerines and Turks who now swarmed round
the shores of the Mediterranean, and waged a predatory war on ships and
cargoes which would have been a formidable obstacle even if traffic,
after running this danger, had not to be further lost, or filtered into
the smallest proportions, in the sands of the Isthmus, and among the
Arabs who commanded the navigation of the Red and Arabian Seas. Venice
had already begun to decline in her wars with the Turks, and could
inadequately protect her own trade in the Mediterranean. Armed vessels
sent out in strength from the Western ports often fared badly at the
hands of the pirates. European trade with India can scarcely be said,
indeed, to have yet come into existence. The maritime route was round
about, and it lay on the hitherto almost untrodden ocean, but the ocean
was a safer element than inland seas and deserts infested by the
lawles