Excerpt from Personal Reminiscences of the Caribbean Sea and the Spanish Main To111] to this very day, the ships from the Span ish Main have carried to the Old World a constant stream of gold. Of Later years this gold has been more honestly won from the earth' than in the earlier days of plunder, and the never-ceasing stream has been broadened by the products of the fertile lands - sugar, coffee, fruits, rub ber, tobacco. To tell even an outline of the story of the sea fathers of the Carib bean and the struggles of three centuries for the mastery of that sea would take too long. Often the question of peace or war in Europe was determined by the sea fights in the Caribbean. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.