222 THE OCEAN RIVER 



The downstream conquerors of the Mediterranean were 

 doomed to lose out to the upstream migrations of northern 

 Europe coming the hard way against the currents of the 

 ocean and the rough Atlantic weathers. An occupation of 

 proprietors in the south could never compete with the occu- 

 pation of artisans and workers coming into power in the north. 

 When the first treasure ships from Panama and Mexico 

 reached Spain and their treasure of hard cash was used 

 throughout Europe to carry on the perpetual wars for religious 

 domination then being waged, it was natural that big-time 

 piracy should become attractive to other nationalities under 

 the ready excuse of political or religious enmity toward Spain. 

 We must always bear in mind that antagonism between 

 Protestant and Catholic at the time of the Armada and the 

 Spanish conquest of the low countries was a matter of life 

 and death. European hatreds and rivalries were translated 

 as a matter of course to the New World, and between the 

 upper and nether millstones of this materialistic rivalry for 

 power the gentle pagan world of the native Arawak was ground 

 to nothing in a tragic brevity of time. Peter Martyr says of the 

 native Cubans: 'Tor it is certain that among them the land 

 is common as the sun and water; and that Mine and Thine 

 (the seeds of all mischief) have no place with them. They 

 are content with so little that in so large a country they have 

 superfluity rather than scarceness, so that they seem to live 

 in the Golden World.'' Before the Spaniards came there was 

 no overpopulation and hence little of the hunger and under- 

 nourishment we find todav in the West Indies after three 

 centuries of European civilizing influences. A lost world is 

 now gone which once was free of material ambition and lust 

 for property. We may well wonder how a returned Arawak 

 might analyze the proud boast of the modern western man 

 that his present involvement in mechanical complication is 

 the highest standard of living the world has yet known. 



