Page 294 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

272 Strategic Features of the Gulf of

ern oceans. It was, until the close of the
Middle Ages, the one route by which the East
and the West maintained commercial relations;
for, although the trade eastward from the Le-
vant was by long and painful land journeys,
over mountain range and desert plain, water
communication, in part and up to that point,
was afforded by the Mediterranean, and by it
alone. With the discovery of the passage by
the Cape of Good Hope this advantage de-
parted, while at the same instant the discovery
of a New World opened out to the Old new
elements of luxury and a new sphere of am-
bition. Then the Mediterranean, thrown upon
its own productive resources alone, swayed in
the East by the hopeless barbarism of the
Turk, in the West by the decadent despotism
of Spain, and, between the two, divided among
a number of petty states, incapable of united
and consequently of potent action, sank into
a factor of relatively small consequence to the
onward progress of the world. During the
wars of the French Revolution, when the life
of Great Britain, and consequently the issue
of the strife, depended upon the vigor of British
commerce, British merchant shipping was