THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 273 



Aboriginal sea- warfare in the Atlantic was practi- 

 cally confined to the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of 

 Mexico, and never attained such proportions as the 

 savage naval warfare of the Pacific, for the ship- 

 building skill of the American natives of those islands 

 and the shores of the Central American mainland 

 halted at the construction of the dug-out capable of 

 conveying at most a dozen men, and that only for 

 very short distances. In short, they were not a 

 maritime race at all, and when the winged monsters 

 of the East burst upon them they, affrighted, ceased 

 their puny efforts altogether, and never resumed 

 them. 



And now we must return to a consideration of that 

 marvellous era when the bold and adventurous mariners 

 of Spain and Portugal launched out into what to them 

 were previously unknown seas and laid the foundation 

 of that world-wide traffic upon all the seas of all the 

 world of which we to-day are the chief representatives. 

 Fired by tradition concerning the incalculable wealth of 

 the East, accessible as they felt by sailing westward over 

 the unknown ocean, stimulated as well as supported by 

 the full sanction of religion, these bold men launched 

 forth into the deep, their enterprise being as daring 

 as any recorded in the history of the world. It is 

 difficult, nay, almost impossible, for us to realize what 

 these adventurers had to face. The cold recapitulation 

 of their hardships must be supplemented by much 

 imagination in order to gain the faintest idea of what 

 manner of men they must have been. To take, for 

 instance, those domestic and commonplace details of 

 which we get nothing in history, such as the feeding 

 and housing of seamen, and what an enormous sum of 



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