Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/229

Rh the for the production of which she was soon to be found to have special resources, the  were selling their len and  s, and the  their s, s, and s in all the richer parts of the. It is more commonly, indeed, when commerce is somewhat still, and, finding their means resting within limited bounds, learn to delight in and  for their own sake apart from their immediate s, that the quality of  is improved, and a vantage ground is established for more extended operations, than when commerce is in full career, everything , saleable, and rising in value, and the lust of gain has taken possession of the  spirit. The may be said to have had this result on a large scale. They placed the s of  under a severe discipline, trained them in the most varied branches of, and developed an amount of  and ingenuity which became an always more solid basis for the future. But was too walled in, too much clad in, and too incessantly disturbed by s and tumults, and violations of common  and interest, to exert its full influence over the general , or even to realize its most direct advantages. It wanted especially the and mobility essential to much international increase, and these it was now to receive from a series of the most pregnant events.

The 's had become familiar in the an s about the beginning of the 14th century, and the men of,, , , and entered upon a more enlightened and adventurous course of. The were sighted by a   in 1330, and  in 1418 by the, who two s later landed on. In 1431 the were discovered by a shipmaster of. The was being gradually explored. In 1486,, a , steering his course almost unwittingly along the of , came upon the 's-end of that ; and nine s afterwards , of , not only doubled the , but reached. About the same period a traveller penetrated to  by the old time-honoured way of ; and a, which tradition and imagination had invested with almost  wealth and splendour, was becoming more real to the an world at the moment when the expedition of  had made an ic  to its  distinctly visible. One can hardly now realize the impression made by these discoveries in an age when the s of were awakening out of a long, when the  was disseminating the ancient classical and sacred , and when  and  were subjects of eager study in the seats both of  and of. But their practical effect was seen in swiftly-succeeding events. Before the end of the century had thrice crossed the, touched at , discovered , , and the  of , and had seen the s of the  in. Meanwhile, sent out by , had discovered , planted the  on , , and , and made known the existence of an expanse of  now known as. This tide of discovery by flowed on without intermission. But the opening of a  to  and the discovery of, surprising as these events must have been , were slow in producing the results of which they were a sure prognostic. The established at  the first an  in  a few years after 's expedition, and other   of  traced a similar course. But it was not till 1600 that the  was established, and the opening of the first  of  in  must be dated some ten or eleven s later. So also it was one thing to discover the two, and another, in any real sense, to possess or them, or to bring their productions into the general  and use of the. , following the stroke of the valiant of, found in  and  remarkable remains of an ancient though feeble , and a wealth of  and  , which to ans of  was fascinating from the rarity of the  in their own realms, and consequently gave to the  s and  in  an extraordinary but unsolid prosperity. The value of the in  was  as soon as they began to be more widely distributed, a process in itself  of no small tediousness; and it was discovered further, after a century or two, that the  of  and  is much like the production of other  for which they, viz., limited, and only increased in quantity at a heavier cost, that is only reduced again by greater  and  in the process of production. Many difficulties, in short, had to be overcome, many s to be waged, and many deplorable errors to be committed, in turning the new advantages to account. But given a  to  and the discovery of a new world of  and  in the richest  and subtropical s, it could not be difficult to foresee that the course of  was to be wholly changed as well as vastly extended.

The substantial advantage of the ic passage to by the, as seen at the time, was to enable an with the East to escape from the, , and  who now swarmed round the  of the , and waged a  on s and es which would have been a formidable obstacle even if , after running this danger, had not to be further lost, or filtered into the smallest proportions, in the s of the , and among the  who commanded the  of the  and s.  had already begun to decline in her s with the , and could inadequately protect her own  in the. s sent out in strength from the Western s often fared badly at the hands of the. an with  can scarcely be said, indeed, to have yet come into existence. The  was round about, and it lay on the hitherto almost untrodden, but the  was a safer element than inland s and s infested by the lawlessness and ferocity of hostile  of. In short, the  enabled an rs to see  for themselves, to examine what were its products and its wants, and by what means a able exchange on both sides could be established; and on this basis of knowledge, s could leave the s of their  in  with a reasonable hope, via the, of reaching the places to which they were destined without  or other intermediary obstacle. This is the explanation to be given of the joy with which the  was received in one age, as well as the immense influence it exerted on the future course and extension of, and of the no less apparent satisfaction with which it has been to some extent discarded in favour of the ancient line, via the ,  of , and the  in our own time.

The  to  was the discovery to the an s of a &ldquo;new &rdquo; quite as much as the discovery of  and  and their central  and s. The one was the far, populous Eastern, heard of from time immemorial, but with which there had been no patent lines of. The other was a vast and comparatively unpeopled solitude, 