The Fall of the Confederacy. 473 
pered that there was neither pain nor sickness. There 
grew the plant from which might be distilled the long- 
sought elixir vite, the potion that would impart perpetual 
youth and baffle grim death. The women were of exceed- 
ing beauty. The men were warriors. There were dwarfs 
of unheard of smallness. There were giants tall as the 
trees of Europe. There were one-eyed tribes, the single 
eye flaming in the midst of the forehead. There were two- 
headed tribes. There were sorcerers whose fell deeds were 
told with bated breath. There were spell-bound princesses 
whose deliverers would wed a royal maiden and receive an 
empire for dowry. The most heated imagination could not 
conceive a story about the fabled Indian that would have 
seemed incredible to the Columbian age. 
Yet let us beware how we sneer at the credulity of those 
times. Are not the realities of the New World more mar- 
vellous than the wild fairy-like fictions of the adventurers ? 
Is not the story of modern commerce more wonderful than 
the story of silver mountains, of rivers flowing over beds of 
gold, of palaces of ivory, and of priceless gems glittering 
like orient suns? ‘The dreary waste of waters on which 
Columbus sailed has become a frequented highway. Re- 
posing in the depths of the Atlantic are cables by which 
Europe and America are able to speak to one another. It 
is modern commerce that has given.to science the power 
to achieve this and a hundred triumphs by which hereto- 
fore distant countries have been united and become near 
neighbours. Thanks to modern commerce the working 
man of this generation has physical comforts that two cen- 
turies ago wealth could not buy. But grander still are the 
intellectual and moral trophies of modern commerce. .To 
it we owe modern civilisation. It has carried Christianity 
to the uttermost parts of the earth. The political freedom 
of which we boast, the spread of knowledge in which we 
glory, are the offspring of modern commerce. Surely thus 
to raise and exalt mankind are incomparably nobler 
achievements than could have resulted from the discovery 
of a land of gold, silver, and precious stones. 
And what are the chief bases of modern commerce ? 
The trade in cotton, tea, tobacco, and sugar. Now it is 
from America that we get the main supplies of cotton, 
sugar, and tobacco, and it is the cotton of America that has 
opened the tea market of China. Take away the cotton, 
sugar, and tobacco of America and the whole fabric of 
modern commerce would as surely totter as without them 
