292 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Portuguese colonies of South America were hardly more exalted in 

 their origin. The Dutch East Indies were colonized by a band of 

 landless resolutes from the Texel — disorderly youths (says the old 

 chronicler), " whose absence was more desired " there " than their 

 presence." Thcjigentlemen adventurers who founded Acadia, like 

 the two La Tours, the renegade Frenchmen (like De Castin and his 

 half-breed son) and the forest rangers who " blazed the track " in 

 Canada for future settlers, Kipling's " gentlemen rovers " and '' lost 

 legion," Mr. Cecil Rhodes himself, when he seized Matabeleland, 

 are types of this class. The Jamieson raid was only the last of the 

 daring burglaries by which ancient and modern colonial empires 

 have been built up.'" 



The toilers who reap the harvest of the sea, half savage as they 

 have always been and often still are, have at least more honest ways. 

 It was mariners from Biscay, and Guipuzcoa, in the beginning of the 

 fourteenth century, who sailed down the African coast as far as the 

 Canaries and led the modern colonizing movement. Basque, Breton, 

 and Norman fishermen were the first authentic visitors to the New 

 World, and they were soon followed by fishermen from the west of 

 England. They did not at first settle. Like the whalers and the 

 Labrador fishermen of to-day, they went home as soon as they had 

 filled their barks, returning each successive season. Their next step 

 was to establish headquarters, as the Newfoundland fishermen at 

 St. John's. Finally, they came for good, as did the English fisher- 

 men who settled on the Plymouth coast. Newfoundland may be 

 described as the fishing colony par excellence. Few of the ancient 

 colonies had a similar origin, but the five Greek colonies in the 

 Gulf of Tarentum, together with Cumse and famous Byzantium, 

 may partly have so begun. 



The establishment of commercial relations with indigenous peo- 

 ples has been at the foundation of a much larger number of colonies. 

 Commerce possibly arose out of fishing. As may still be observed 

 on any seacoast, fishing vessels were converted into merchant ships 

 and fishermen differentiated into seamen, some of whom were spe- 

 cialized into merchants. The first ships were also shops. The poet 

 of the Odyssey describes a Phoenician ship as lying for a whole year 

 off a port in the Grecian archipelago, engaged in constant traffic with 

 the natives, and only departing when she had sold her entire cargo 

 and taken a fresh one on board. Cutters laden with cheap drapery 

 still coast along thinly populated countries, running up rivers and 

 creeks and disposing of their merchandise to visitors conveyed to 



* It is 110 longer the last. The Power that most vigorously protested against the raid — 

 Carlj'le'.- "pious GcrmaDy" — has herself, with a mixture of sanctimcny and effrontery, laid 

 violent hands on the territory of an unoffending people. 



