It may seem strange that in the chains of islands which make up the West Indies there should be no people who developed a civilization like that of the Greeks. As we might expect, maritime conditions were not wholly without effect, for the islands were occupied by at least two races, who passed easily from one island to another; the incursions of the later of these, the Caribs, who gave their name to the sea in which the islands are set, were interrupted by the arrival of the Spaniards. But two conditions were lacking which helped to develop Greek civilization. On the one hand, the inhabitants came from a region where civilization was of a low type; they had originally occupied the forest covered lands between the Orinoco and the Amazon, or even those farther south, and had only been tempted step by step to occupy the islands, because the first, Trinidad, lies within sight of the Orinoco mouth, and some familiarity with navigation had been obtained on that river. On the other hand, the continental shores of the Caribbean Sea and the islands set within it are rainy, and for the most part forest-covered, with just those conditions which lead to little development. The case of the Greeks was very different; the lands round the end of the Mediterranean were the homes of those who had learned how to live well, and,. whatever the origin of the Greeks, they sprang from stocks by which some advance had been made. We have, perhaps, spoken as if the civilization of Egypt developed entirely on the spot, but it must not be forgotten that behind the Egyptians lay long ages of development; The inhabitants of the West Indies came from lands where early development is least to be expected, and even when tempted to cross the sea they had developed little. Further, the islands of the Greeks were not only dry and sunny, with conditions which stimulated develop ment, but the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean were the homes of men who were living well under many different conditions, and to whatever lands they sailed, the Greeks saw men doing things in a different manner from their own ; whilst the Caribs and their prede cessors, except for their sea environment, which did have an effect, were exposed to conditions little different from those on the continent from which they sprang, and on their voyages, such as they were, saw little that was new. Thus in the West Indian islands there was no advance worth considering.
There were, then, two areas and two only in the New World like those of the Old, where men became some thing more than savages, in respect of the facts that life was there comparatively easy, that small communities were protected from savage attack, and yet that there was a stimulus to save energy. That is to say, the lands where advance was made in the New World were like those of the Old in being warm and comparatively dry; yet, because the conditions were not quite so favourable, the advance was not so rapid. It was natural that the peoples of the Old World should discover those of the New rather than the reverse, for the races on the high plateau were the only folk who had advanced much beyond the stage of savagery, and they were out of touch with the ocean. They lived in an environment which was less favourable to early development than was found in Egypt, while it seems to be less favour able still for further expansion. High up on the An dean and Mexican plateaus communication is difficult between several adjacent highland regions, and doubly difficult with the lowlands on either hand and the sea beyond. Of trade there was very little, if any; there was no speculation as to the shape of the earth, much less was there any suggestion that the question had a practical bearing, or that there were other lands possessing riches which might be reached across the ocean by any way.
The ocean had hardly reached the stage of being feared, for it was scarcely known; these heights, isolated and difficult of approach even under modern conditions, were the homes of men who had no stimulus to seek ways to other lands, of whose existence they were absolutely ignorant. Though conditions in other parts of the continent were such that they might have become seats of more advanced civilization, yet the original stimuli which caused the advance in Europe were wanting. Considering the long periods through which human advance has been taking place, and the disadvantages of the New World as compared with the Old, the extraordinary thing is, not that the civilization of the former was behind that of the latter, but that it was so little behind.
The conditions which existed in the New World did not allow of the development of any advanced civilization, yet they were of importance in determining directly and indirectly how the various forms of civiliza tion which had their birth in Europe might develop when transplanted to a new soil ; directly, because con ditions of relief and climate determined where men who had learned to control energy might settle to control more energy, and how they might move with least expenditure of energy, and also indirectly, for it was easier to act in some ways rather than others because of the past history. We have already noted how the discovery of the New World was made under Spanish auspices, and how it was the West Indies, in the latitude of regions from which spices were known to come and to which the trade winds blew from North Africa, that were discovered rather than the lands to the north. Now there is a difference between the West Indies to which the Spaniards came and the East Indies to which they thought they had come, and to which the Portuguese actually did come. The East Indies, because they were inhabited by men in organized communities, though less advanced than those of Europe, were the source of articles of commerce, of things valuable in themselves or thought to be valuable, and the Portuguese at once obtained what they sought, and brought these back in their vessels. The West Indies, inhabited by men on a far lower plane of civilization, had little to supply, and Spanish attempts at colonization made slow progress at first. They probably would have continued to make slow progress, if they did not become a total failure, had it not been for the existence of those communities, somewhat more advanced than the rest, of which we have spoken—on the Mexican highland and the low land of Yucatan, on the Andean plateau and the desert lowland to the west. In each case, discovery of the lowland civilization led to knowledge of that on the plateau, and the Spaniards were able quickly to dominate areas which, if they had been inhabited by savage tribes, would have taken years if not centuries to organize. The essential parts of Spanish dominion in the New World were those lands where civilization had made some progress, and where, though there were no spices, stored gold and silver, the trappings of that civilization, mistakenly by the Spaniards supposed to be wealth, could be obtained. The remaining lands under Spanish dominion in Central America, the North of South America and the West Indies, were just so much as naturally went with the essential parts, but after a hurried search for gold these connecting regions were occupied in a military sense only, and for the most part left for long in their original condition.