An even greater contest was being waged for commerce, and with the experience of Spain in gathering the precious metals [12]from new found lands, every discovery of hitherto uncharted territory opened the possibility of wealth and an exchange of commodities, if rapine and piracy could not be practised. The merchant was an adventurer, and politics, quite as much as trade, controlled his movements; for the line between trader, buccaneer, and pirate faded away before conditions which made treaties of no importance and peaceful relations dependent upon an absence of the hope of gain. A state of war was not necessary to prepare the way for attack and plunder in those far distant oceans, and the merchantman sailed armed and ready to inflict as well as to repel aggression, only too willing to descend upon a weaker vessel or a helpless settlement of a power which had come to be regarded as a "natural enemy." So in Holland and in Germany the leaflets containing the story of the Isle of Pines were received with mingled feelings, exciting a desire to share in the possible benefits to be gained or extorted from natives of the new lands, or from those who had the first opportunity to exploit a virgin territory. On the first receipt of those leaflets merchants held back their vessels about to sail, to await more definite information on this fourth island of the Terra Australis incognita. [13]An examination of the known issues of the tract proves this interest and offers an almost unique study in bibliography; for I doubt if any publication made in the second half of the seventeenth century--even a state paper of importance, as a treaty--attained such speedy and widespread recognition. A list of the various issues will be found in an appendix: it only remains to call attention to a few of the many novelties and variant characteristics of the editions. DUTCH EDITIONS In June and July, 1668, four tracts on the Isle of Pines from the same pen were licensed and published in London, which may for convenience be designated the first and second parts of the narrative, and the two parts in continuation. From London the tract soon passed to Holland, which had ever been a greedy consumer of voyages of discovery, for the greatness of that nation depended upon the sea, at once its most potent enemy and friend.{1} Three Dutch editions have been found, the earliest in point of time being that made by Jacob Vinckel, [14]of Amsterdam. 1 Holland was the centre of map publication as the twenty yean before 1668 saw the issue of atlases by Jansson, Blaeu, Mercator, Doncker, Cellarius, Loon, Visscher, and Goos, all published at Amsterdam. Phillips' list for this period gives atlases published elsewhere--those of Boissevin (Paris, 1653), Lubin (Paris, 1659), Nicolosi (Rome, 1660), Dudley (Florence, 1661), Du Val (Paris, 1662), Jollain (Paris 1667), Cluver (Wolfen-bûttel, 1667?) and Ortelius (Venice, 1667).