sailing through the Molucca channel and past the isles which bore the
name of Philip in the Eastern sea, gave the hand at last to his
adventurous comrade, who, starting from the same point, and following
westward in the track of Magellaens and under the Southern Cross, coasted
the shore of Patagonia, and threaded his path through unmapped and
unnumbered clusters of islands in the Western Pacific; and during this
spanning of the earth's whole circumference not an inch of land or water
was traversed that was not the domain of Philip.

For the sea, too, was his as well as the dry land.

From Borneo to California the great ocean was but a Spanish lake, as much
the king's private property as his fish-ponds at the Escorial with their
carp and perch. No subjects but his dared to navigate those sacred
waters. Not a common highway of the world's commerce, but a private path
for the gratification of one human being's vanity, had thus been laid out
by the bold navigators of the sixteenth century.

It was for the Dutch rebels to try conclusions upon this point, as they
had done upon so many others, with the master of the land and sea. The
opening scenes therefore in the great career of maritime adventure and
discovery by which these republicans were to make themselves famous will
soon engage the reader's attention.

Thus the causes of what is called the greatness of Spain are not far to
seek. Spain was not a nation, but a temporary and factitious conjunction
of several nations, which it was impossible to fuse into a permanent
whole, but over whose united resources a single monarch for a time
disposed. And the very concentration of these vast and unlimited,
powers, fortuitous as it was, in this single hand, inspiring the