THE ATLANTIC AND WESTERN MAN 303 



Caribbean or Central and South America. For a while the 

 flood of her conquest swept from Florida to the Mississippi, 

 and from there through New Mexico into California. She 

 introduced sheep, cattle, and the horse to the western conti- 

 nent, and set up a great agrarian domain. But Spain failed 

 to establish new and fresh forms of government to hold this 

 domain. She failed also to hold her communications across 

 the waters, because she could not learn the skills of maritime 

 power. As a result, mixed Spanish-Indian cultures grew to 

 independence on the mainlands. The Caribbean was lost both 

 to other European powers and to the endurance of the im- 

 ported African peoples to survive slavery and outbreed their 

 masters. 



For a while the Dutch made great progress in the Carib- 

 bean, and planted colonies in North America; but the Dutch 

 were weakened by wars at home and by inability to transport 

 and plant their people in sufficient quantity to look out for 

 themselves in the New World. The Dutch were masters of 

 trade for part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 

 with better ships, better sailors, and a better organized and 

 more adaptable commercial system. They prospered finan- 

 cially but failed as colonizers — except in the Far East, where 

 they took over the countries Portugal first opened to trade. 

 Portugal itself, having done more than any other nation to 

 explore and exploit the routes to the East around Africa, was 

 not strong enough to face the competition of her European 

 neighbors. 



France, next to England, had a great opportunity to hold 

 possessions in the west. Her sailors and navigators were native 

 to the Atlantic. She held power for a while from the Grand 

 Banks to the headwaters of the Mississippi, and thence in the 

 western lands southward to Louisiana and New Orleans. But 

 a combination of military exhaustion at home and the inabil- 

 ity to export populations lost her these domains. 



