his
was only one of a number of eccentricities of government, which
suggested a persistent and inexplicable tendency to discriminate
against Cuba in favor of the other colonies.

Against such purblind policies the ablest administrators and the most
enterprising planters and merchants struggled to little avail. It was a
splendid achievement for the engineer Antonelli in 1586 to tap the
Almendares River, west of Havana, with a system of canals and aqueducts,
and thus bring an abundant supply of fresh water into Havana. In so
doing he not merely provided the capital with one of the prime
necessities of life, but he also made Havana the centre of the sugar
industry. For it was along these artificial watercourses that the first
sugar mills were erected and operated. But this availed little while
there was persistent discrimination against Cuba to a degree that kept
the island without a tithe of the labor which was needed for the
development of its resources. We cannot, of course, approve the slave
trade, or argue that it should have been followed to a greater extent
than it was. But if it was to exist at all, and Spain was willing and
indeed determined that it should, justice and economic reason required
that it should exist as freely in Cuba as in the neighboring colonies.

CHAPTER XXIII

The character of the European nations whose navigators and explorers had
sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and had opened to the bewildered
gaze of the Old World a vista of unlimited possibilities in the New,
underwent a great change during the seventeenth century. Acclaimed as
national achievements, adding new lustre to national glory, these
discoveries at first only stimulated patriotism and became an incentive
to national effort. But as Spain and Portugal which had given to the
world those men with the large vision and the undaunted courage,
awakened to the importance of their exploits and began to see them from
the angles of political and economic advantages, the desire to restrict
those advantages to their own use became so powerful, that consideration
for the interests of other nations was ignored. The spirit of
imperialistic expansion was roused and demanded no less than a monopoly
of the traffic and trade of the world.

With this end in view the two countries adopted a protectionist policy
and imposed restrictions upon mariners and merchants of other nations
that in time became intolerable. The government of Spain for