CHAP. XVI. TRADE OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE. 31 



part of a mediator, or an ally to the contending 

 kingdoms. At the conclusion of the fifteenth 

 century, these nations, having before been de- 

 prived of their fisheries, saw, amidst their internal 

 commotions, their commercial navy transferred to 

 the rising independent cities of Lubec, Wismar, 

 Rostock, Stettin, Stralsund, and Dantzick, and 

 their military naval force, if not annihilated, was 

 far inferior to that of the confederacy of the 

 Hanse Tbwns, in their immediate vicinity. 



In this condition, when the mines of silver, if 

 they had been at all worked, yielded but a trifling 

 product, and none but minute particles of gold 

 could be collected from the streams by so thinly 

 spread a population ; whatever may have been the 

 quantity of the precious metals existing in Europe, 

 we can look but for a very small portion of them 

 in these northern kingdoms. The chief product 

 of Norway, its timber, was conveyed to Holland 

 by Lubec or Dutch ships, and to England and 

 Scotland by ships of those nations. The value of 

 timber depends chiefly on the freight, and the 

 amount beyond that charge, small as it must have 

 been, would be needed to pay for the scanty supply 

 of corn which those countries regularly required. 



The view here taken of the state of commerce 

 in Europe, about the period of the discovery of 

 America, tends to show that for the purpose of 

 conducting such a trade a very small portion of 



