6 
VOYAGE OF TYSON. 
‘which she was lawfully and exclusively the mistress. A bull 
of the Roman church, granted by Pope Adrian VI., gave what 
was then esteemed as a sacred recognition of these exclusive 
rights, and the government of Spain determined, that none but 
Spaniards should trade with, or land upon the American conti¬ 
nent, and islands. Such folly must now appear unaccountable 
but it is an historical fact, that the Spaniards at first fancied, 
that they could keep their discoveries in the West Indies a secret 
from the rest of the world, and prevent the ships of other nations 
from finding their way thither. Not all the power of Spain 
however, comparatively great as it then was, nor all the horrid 
cruelty practised in support of her extravagant pretensions, could 
deter the enterprising mariners of England, from attempt¬ 
ing to share in the greatly exaggerated wealth of the new 
world. The spirit of discovery, roused by the successful enter¬ 
prises of Columbus, and Vasco de Gama, spread through all the 
maritime states of Europe, and as early as 1526, being only 34 
years from the discovery of America, one Thomas Tyson, was 
sent by some English merchants to the West Indies, and from 
this expedition arose that formidable body of men, styled the 
Buccaneers, who setting at defiance the authority of the church 
of Rome, and the consequent sovereignty of the Spaniards in the 
West Indies, became the champions of the maritime states of 
Europe, and ultimately led to the expulsion of the Spaniards 
from a great portion of their newly acquired territory. 
It is therefore at once apparent, that the love of science, or the 
solution of any geographical problem, by which the art of naviga¬ 
tion could be improved, had little or no share in the expeditions in 
which the early navigators embarked. A voyage, like that of Capt. 
Cook, for the mere purpose of observing the astronomical pheno¬ 
menon of the transit of Venus over the sun, would in these early 
ages have been met with ridicule and contempt; it would have 
appeared as a project from which no especial benefit was to be 
derived, and not a shilling would have been advanced, by any of the 
maritime powers of Europe, in support of an undertaking so appa¬ 
rently useless and preposterous; for a conquest of territory, which 
was to be accompanied by an accumulation of riches, was the predu- 
