rown upon its own productive
resources alone, swayed in the East by the hopeless barbarism of the
Turk, in the West by the decadent despotism of Spain, and, between the
two, divided among a number of petty states, incapable of united and
consequently of potent action, sank into a factor of relatively small
consequence to the onward progress of the world. During the wars of
the French Revolution, when the life of Great Britain, and
consequently the issue of the strife, depended upon the vigor of
British commerce, British merchant shipping was nearly driven from
that sea; and but two per cent of a trade that was increasing mightily
all the time was thence derived. How the Suez Canal and the growth of
the Eastern Question, in its modern form, have changed all that, it is
needless to say. Yet, through all the period of relative
insignificance, the relations of the Mediterranean to the East and to
the West, in the broad sense of those expressions, preserved to it a
political importance to the world at large which rendered it
continuously a scene of great political ambitions and military
enterprise. Since Great Britain first actively intervened in those
waters, two centuries ago, she at no time has surrendered willingly
her pretensions to be a leading Mediterranean Power, although her
possessions there are of purely military, or rather naval, value.

The Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, taken together, form an
inland sea and an archipelago. They too have known those mutabilities
of fortune which receive illustration alike in the history of
countries and in the lives of individuals. The first scene of
discovery and of conquest in the New World, these twin sheets of
water, with their islands and their mainlands, became for many
generations, and nearly to our own time, a veritable El Dorado,--a
land where the least of labor, on the part of its new possessors,
rendered the largest and richest returns. The bounty of nature, and
the ease with which climatic conditions, aided by the unwarlike
character of most of the natives, adapted themselves to the
institution of slavery, insured the cheap and abundant production of
articles which, when once enjoyed, men found indispensable, as they
already had the silks and spices of the East. In Mexico and in Peru
were realized also, in degree, the actual gold-mine sought by the
avarice of the earlier Spanish explorers; while a short though
difficult tropical journey brought the treasures