chap, XVI. TRADE OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE.

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part of a mediator, or an ally to the contendingkingdoms. At the conclusion of the fifteenthcentury, these nations, having before been de-prived of their fisheries, saw, amidst their internalcommotions, their commercial navy transferred tothe rising independent cities of Lubec, Wismar ,Rostock, Stettin, Stralsund, and Dantzick , andtheir military naval force, if not annihilated, wasfar inferior to that of the confederacy of theHanse Towns , in their immediate vicinity.

In this condition, when the mines of silver, ifthey had been at all worked, yielded but a triflingproduct, and none but minute particles of goldcould be collected from the streams by so thinlyspread a population ; whatever may have been thequantity of the precious metals existing in Europe ,we can look but for a very small portion of themm these northern kingdoms. The chief productof Norway, its timber, was conveyed to Holland hy Lubec or Dutch ships, and to England andScotland by ships of those nations. The value oftimber depends chiefly on the freight, and theamount beyond that charge, small as it must havebeen, would be needed to pay for the scanty supplyof corn which those countries regularly required.

The view here taken of the state of commercem Europe , about the period of the discovery ofAmerica , tends to show that for the purpose ofconducting such a trade a very small portion of