SAIL AND THE STREAM 277 



of the southern states of North America. In the north, cod 

 was always king, and in itself acted as a lever to pry gold from 

 the Catholic countries of the Mediterranean. The nature of 

 sugar planting in the Caribbean encouraged slavery, which in 

 turn acted as a brake on any healthy development of Euro- 

 pean civilization there. The rugged and resourceful nature of 

 the northern fisheries, coupled with a poor and rocky coastal 

 soil, developed the transplanted Europeans into individual- 

 ists of fresh invention, and kindled a commercial energy that 

 inevitably conquered the initial flood of southern gold. On the 

 codfish was built a new merchant marine; on the codfish the 

 separatist in religion became the new liberal in politics; on 

 the codfish a tough and cantankerous race of transplanted Eng- 

 lish in New England furnished the drive and culture that 

 pushed across the continent to the Pacific coast and united 

 a vast region under free institutions. Men cannot endure the 

 joint rigors of life at sea or the common dangers and sacrifice 

 of settlement in a strange wilderness without hammering 

 into being a common tolerance and respect for each other 

 as men. One might say that democracy is healthier for having 

 one foot in the sea. 



Superficially, there was no obvious reason why the Portu- 

 guese or the Spanish should not have claimed and conquered 

 the lands of the Codfish Frontier. As a matter of fact, the 

 English were the slowest to exploit these difficult riches of 

 the sea; and shortly before Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed 

 Newfoundland and Nova Scotia for his country, the Spanish, 

 Portuguese, and French vessels on the Banks outnumbered 

 the British. Perhaps the ultimate outcome is best hinted by 

 the report in 1524 of the Spaniard Gomez, who sought a 

 northern passage to the Moluccas: "It must be true," he said, 

 ''that animated organized creation is scattered with a sparing 

 hand in these dreary climates." And our old friend Peter 

 Martyr wrote: ''What need have w^ for these things that 



