OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 227 



Gospel of Peace by murder, rapine, and torture. Of 

 their seamanship little can be said. We do not know 

 much of the polity of those vessels except that the 

 seaman was looked upon as a base mechanical slave, 

 whose duty it was to take the ship wherever the leader 

 willed, that leader being generally entirely ignorant 

 of seamanship or navigation, and dependent upon his 

 pilot or sailing-master for those essentials to making 

 a voyage. It would seem to be a very poor way 

 indeed of making a success of seafaring, but where 

 time was no object and the ascendency of the aristo- 

 cratic leaders of an expedition over their men was 

 so complete, it answered well enough. And, more- 

 over, it must be remembered that at first there was 

 no opposition or competition; the pioneers of those 

 world-encircling voyages had the vast stretches of 

 ocean entirely to themselves. 



That fifteenth century, however, was the era of 

 vast changes for the whole world, as far as the varied 

 Governments and peoples were concerned. The ocean 

 became at last in very deed the universal highway, 

 became so, in fact, almost with a bound after the 

 voyage of Columbus and the Portuguese opening up 

 of India. But it is fairly certain that if it had not 

 been for the advent of Britain and Holland, with their 

 more energetic seamen and their far more business- 

 like ideas, the progress of ocean communication would 

 have made very little headway indeed. It would 

 almost certainly have died out again from sheer lack 

 of energy to carry it on, history repeating itself as in 

 the case of the early Arab or earlier Chinese navigators. 

 The two Northern powers, however, hearing of the 

 great spoils to be won overseas, and impelled to seek 



