THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



derived/ The pressure put on him to get gold, no 

 matter how, was unremitting. 'With respect to the 

 gold,* he writes again, ' which belongs to Quibian, 

 the cacique of Veragua, and other chiefs in the neigh- 

 bouring country, although it appears by the accounts we 

 have received of it to be very abundant, I do not think it 

 would be well or desirable, on the part of your High- 

 nesses, to take possession of it in the way of plunder : 

 by fair dealing, scandal and disrepute will be avoided, 

 and all the gold will thus reach your Highnesses' treasury 

 without the loss of a grain/ In the same letter, written 

 in 1503, he complains of the class of adventurers whom 

 gold allures, and who make the voyage only for plunder. 

 Yet Columbus, though he was disgusted by the self- 

 interest and narrow outlook of these gold-seekers, did 

 not fail to appreciate the significance and importance of 

 The import- a Store of gold. ' Gold,' he says, ' is the most precious 

 anceofgo . ^f ^j] commodities; gold constitutes treasure, and he who 

 possesses it has all he needs in this world, as also the 

 means of rescuing souls from purgatory, and restoring 

 them to the enjoyment of paradise.' His opinion, so far 

 as it concerns this world, was to be echoed later by many 

 a patriotic Englishman who urged that the strength of the 

 King of Spain lay in his treasure, and that he could be 

 most effectively attacked in the New World. 

 The complex So, as the drama proceeds, the plot thickens. He 

 ^l^Vo^alet ^^^ would make an epic of it must follow a single 

 strand of the twisted yarn. But this is work for the poet 

 rather than the historian. The late Mr. Froude, with a 

 poet's instinct for unity, chose to regard the whole story 

 of the English Voyages as an aspect of the Protestant 

 Reformation. Many other equally promising aspects 



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