Ill 

 Corn Conquers Virginia 



I TELL thee 'tis a goodlie country, not wanting in victuals. 

 On the banks of those rivers are divers fruits good to eat, 

 and game a-plenty. Beside, the natives in those parts have a 

 corne, which yields them bread; and this with little labor and 

 in abundance. Tis called in the Spanish tongue 'mahiz/ 

 Spain . . ." 



Walter Raleigh, recently breveted Captain, by the Queen's 

 graciousness, brought his fist down on the table-board with 

 such vehemence the ale in the pewter tankards leaped over 

 the rims. A murmur ran round the company gathered in The 

 Mermaid's common-room: 



"Spain. . . ." 



The name was spoken like a curse. 



It was a way many Englishmen spoke it in those days when 

 the news was common property that King Philip was out- 

 fitting a fleet the like of which no power yet had ever launched 

 upon the seas, which he purposed to send against England. 



Spain. . . . No longer was Spain a backward country pris- 

 oned between the Pyrenees and the Arabs, and too concerned 

 with her own feudal warfares to take part in European affairs. 

 Spain had leaped over the wall of the Pyrenees. The marriage 

 of poor, half-witted Infanta Juana to the Hapsburg princeling, 

 which had been paid for with the first booty brought from the 

 Americas, had produced a son who wore the title of Emperor, 

 and who had marched across France and Italy and the Low 

 Countries. 



Now, with the tide of wealth pouring into Cadiz from the 

 New World, there was no stopping Spain. And this, so Eng- 



43 



