650 THE EVOLUTION OF COMMERCE. 
sailed westward to find the Orient and discovered a new world; Ma- 
gellan cireum-navigated the globe; Balboa crossed the Isthmus of 
Panama, and was the first to see, on the same day, the sun rise out of 
the Atlantic and set in the Pacific; and soon the eastern and western 
coasts of America were explored from Newfoundland to Cape Horn 
and from Cape Horn to Panama. 
Both Portugal and Spain claimed all the New World, and as they 
could not agree upon a division of territory they referred the matter 
to the Pope, who divided the New World between them. The Atlantic 
became the great highway for commerce, while the Mediterranean was 
deserted, and Venice and Genoa existed only in the past. 
The commerce of Portugal was co-extensive with her dominion, which 
extended from Japan and the Spice Islands and India to the Red Sea, 
thence to the Cape of Good Hope; and with their possessions on the 
eastern and western shores of the Atlantic and in Africa and Brazil 
completed their maritime empire, the most extensive the world has ever 
seen. Then a single fleet of one hundred and fifty to two hundred and 
fifty caracks sailed from the port of Goa to Lisbon; now there sails but 
one vessel a year from all India. 
From Spain ships sailed both to the Caribbean Sea and to Cape Horn 
and thence to Chile and Peru, or directly northwestward from Cape 
Horn to the Philippine Islands. Spain conquered Mexico, Central 
America, and all South America except Brazil. The gold and silver of 
Peru and Chile, and the goods of the Orient, were brought to Spain and 
Portugal. As their wealth and power increased the spirit of explora- 
tion decreased, and for nearly two hundred years the Spanish ships 
sailed in a fixed course by the same lanes, exploring the ocean neither 
toward the north nor the south, leaving undiscovered the great conti 
nent of Australia and numerous groups of islands. 
The Spanish and Portuguese leaders were cavaliers, who despised all 
commerce excepting in gold and silver, all kinds of manufactures, all 
manual labor, and the cultivation of the ground. They came not to 
colonize, but to satisfy by the labor of the enslaved aborigines their 
thirst for gold and silver. The whole political power was retained by 
the King of Spain and administered by Spaniards. While the silver 
and gold of America and the wealth of the Indies poured into the 
treasuries of Spain they wanted nothing more. Like ancient Rome, 
they took all the wealth of the conquered countries, making no return; 
but they did not, like Rome, give wise and equitable laws and a stable 
government to the countries they conquered. 
The Netherlands.—The inhabitants of the Netherlands were manu- 
facturers, and supplied the markets of Spain and Portugal and their 
colonies, thus reaping as large profits from their trade with these coun- 
tries as the Spanish and Portuguese from the mines of gold and silver. 
No part of Europe, says Motley, seemed so unlikely to become the 
home of a great nation as the low country on the northwestern coast 
