ru and the limitless grass plains of what is now the
Argentine Confederation,--all these and the lands lying between them
had been conquered and colonized by the Spaniards before there was a
single English settlement in the New World, and while the fleets of
the Catholic king still held for him the lordship of the ocean. Then
the cumbrous Spanish vessels succumbed to the attacks of the swift
war-ships of Holland and England, and the sun of the Spanish
world-dominion set as quickly as it had risen. Spain at once came to a
standstill; it was only here and there that she even extended her rule
over a few neighboring Indian tribes, while she was utterly unable to
take the offensive against the French, Dutch, and English. But it is a
singular thing that these vigorous and powerful new-comers, who had so
quickly put a stop to her further growth, yet wrested from her very
little of what was already hers. They plundered a great many Spanish
cities and captured a great many Spanish galleons, but they made no
great or lasting conquests of Spanish territory. Their mutual
jealousies, and the fear each felt of the others, were among the main
causes of this state of things; and hence it came about that after the
opening of the seventeenth century the wars they waged against one
another were of far more ultimate consequence than the wars they waged
against the former mistress of the western world. England in the end
drove both France and Holland from the field; but it was under the
banner of the American Republic, not under that of the British
Monarchy, that the English-speaking people first won vast stretches of
land from the descendants of the Spanish conquerors.

The three most powerful of Spain's rivals waged many a long war with
one another to decide which should grasp the sceptre that had slipped
from Spanish hands. The fleets of Holland fought with stubborn
obstinacy to wrest from England her naval supremacy; but they failed,
and in the end the greater portion of the Dutch domains fell to their
foes. The French likewise began a course of conquest and colonization
at the same time the English did, and after a couple of centuries of
rivalry, ending in prolonged warfare, they also succumbed. The close
of the most important colonial contest ever waged left the French
without a foot of soil on the North American mainland; while their
victorious foes had not only obtained the lead in the race for
supremacy on that continent, but had