13 



SAIL AND THE STREAIM 



IT TOOK nearly two hundred years to stabilize in European 

 minds the picture of the New World. The cloudy but per- 

 sistent rumors of an island paradise, beyond the unexplored 

 waters of Hi-Brazil and St. Brandon's Isle and the Seven 

 Cities of Cibola, gave way to the gentleman explorers and the 

 Italian scientific navigators who pushed through and beyond 

 these dreams to the actual boundaries of a New World. The 

 ambitions of royal governments to settle controlled areas and 

 milk them for the European masters in turn faded out. The 

 strength of European aggression and conquest of the far side 

 of the Ocean River at last fell into the practical and tenacious 

 hands of men bent on bettering their lot by piracy, smuggling, 

 or legitimate trade, which might honestly be summed-up 

 as commerce. Commerce required settlement and develop- 

 ment. Men vigorous enough to exploit a wilderness soon dis- 

 covered to their backers at home that they were also strong 

 enough to set up shop for themselves. Europe in the seven- 

 teenth century extended its power to surround the Atlantic 

 world, and at the same time saw the growing divorce of this 

 new growth from its original European control. 



In the Caribbean, sugar remained as a great colonizing 

 force after the first drain of Indian treasure had flooded 

 Europe, just as tobacco and cotton dominated the economy 



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