d--the Isle of Pines--was flashed before the London crowd, and
proved that the flame of quest with danger was still burning. A new
island! The interest was international, for nations had already long
fought over the old discovered lands.

1 The intelligent industry of Mr. Wilberforce Eames has
identified eleven issues of the letter of Columbus, printed
in 1493, in Barcelona, Rome, Basle, Paris, and Antwerp; and
twelve issues of the Novus Mundus of Vespucci us, printed
in 1504, in Augsburg, Paris, Nuremberg, Cologne, Antwerp,
and Venice. An earlier and even more extraordinary
distribution of a letter of news is that of the letter
purporting to be addressed by Prester John to the Emperor
Manuel, which circulated through Europe about 1165. "How
great was the popularity and diffusion of this letter,"
writes Sir Henry Yule, "may be judged in some degree from
the fad that Zarncke in his treatise on Prester John gives a
list of close on 100 mss. of it Of these there are eight in
the British Museum, ten at Vienna, thirteen in the great
Paris Library, and fifteen at Munich. There are also several
renderings in old German verse." The cause of this
popularity was the hope offered by the reported exploits of
Prester John of a counterpoise to the Mohammedan power.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., xxii. 305.

An even greater contest was being waged for commerce, and with the
experience of Spain in gathering the precious metals [12]from new
found lands, every discovery of hitherto uncharted territory opened
the possibility of wealth and an exchange of commodities, if rapine
and piracy could not be practised. The merchant was an adventurer, and
politics, quite as much as trade, controlled his movements; for the line
between trader, buccaneer, and pirate faded away before conditions which
made treaties of no importance and peaceful relations dependent upon an
absence of the hope of gain. A state of war was not necessary to prepare
the way for attack and plunder in those far distant oceans, and the
merchantman sailed armed and ready to inflict as well as to repel
aggression, only too willing to descend upon a weaker vessel or a
helpless settlement of a power which had come to be regarded as a
"natural enemy." So in Holland and in Germany the leaflets containing
the story of the Isle of Pines were received with mingled feelings,
exciting