“ Thus “the main,” the high open sea, is for “main sea,” cf. “mainland,” the principal part of a territory excluding islands and sometimes far-projecting peninsulas. The expression “the Spanish main” properly meant that part of the main land of the N.E. coast of South America stretching from the Orinoco to the Isthmus of Panama, and the former Spanish possessions in Central America bordering on the Caribbean Sea, but it is often loosely used, especially in connexion with the buccaneers, of the Caribbean Sea itself. ”