Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/13



HEN the New World was disclosed to the Old, the belief of all civilized people was that the heathen had no rights which Christians ought to respect—that he and his country belonged of right to the strongest taker; and it became a curious article of a more curious faith that murder and robbery were efficient means for propagating the faith of Christ and magnifying the glory of God.

The Pope made short work of the whole matter, for he divided the new world east and west by a degree of longitude and made a present of one-half to the Spaniard and the other half to the Portuguese—"Ad majoram gloriam Dei"—to the greater glory of God. This process of simple division was not satisfactory to the fair-haired, blue-eyed race that dominated the island in the North Sea.

Love of enterprise, commercial daring, politics, religious conditions—all contributed to stimulate exploration and investigation. One Englishman spent his life searching for El Dorado—the land where gold abounded; a Spaniard spent his hunting the "Fons Vitæ"—the fountain of perpetual youth, the waters of which renew forever the waning forces of vitality. But while the Spaniard ransacked two continents for silver and gold, found them and ruined his posterity, the French, actuated by no nobler ideals, made settlements in North America, the main inspiration of which was the desire to possess the great fisheries on the north-eastern coast. The English, in the main, had higher aims, and wider, larger aspirations. Political conditions at home exasperated religious