presented to the UNIVERSITY OF JAU . SAN DIFGO FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY donor PRIMEVAL FOREST IN THE CORDILLERAS MOUNTAINS, SALTA, ARGENTINE REPUBLIC Frontispiect Spanish America. SPANISH AMERICA FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE ILL USTRA TED COPYRIGHT, 1899, BV PETER FENELON COLLIER. CONTENTS PART I. PAVE PREFACE 1 I. ONCE UPON A TIME 5 II. THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 38 in. THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS AND MAGELLAN.. . 70 PART II. I. THE AGE OF CORTES II. PASSING UNDER THE YOKE III. PIZARRO IV. CHILI V. MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 268 VI. THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 305 VII. THE WEST INDIES.. ,. 336 PART III. I. THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 875 II. THE FINAL STRUGGLE. 412 III. PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 450 (iii) LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SPANISH AMERICA Frontispiece Primeval Forest in the Cordilleras Mountains, Salta, Ar- gentine Republic . . .. : Bakairi Youths . South American Indians Bogota, Colombia (From a photograph) The Pampas in the Argentine Republic Guayaquil Harbor, Ecuador . Valparaiso PREFACE THE close of this century witnesses a remarkable dramatic episode in the war between the United States and Spain, which has just been brought to an end. One of the oldest and once most powerful States of Europe, now worn out, and bowed with feebleness, re- linquishes the empire in the west and in the east which it has held during four centuries, and retires within its original boundaries. And into its place, the inheritor of its burdens and responsibilities, steps, the newest and strongest nation of the modern world, erect and confi- dent, with the boundless future lying fair before it. It is a vivid illustration of Tennyson's profound apothegm "The old Order changeth, giving place to new, And God fulfils Himself in many ways.'' It is an opportune moment in which to pass in re- view the history of Spain's acquisition of her colonial empire, of the manner of her administration of it, and of the way she lost it. In the following pages an attempt has been made to throw upon the screen the series of pictures which tell the tale. It is not "a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Sound and fury indeed it contains in abundance; but its significance is deep and tragic, and its moral weighty. It is well that (1) 2 PREFACE we should ponder it, standing as we do on the threshold of our own career. Spain's political deeds have been for the most part evil. Evil deeds, in men and in na- tions, are the result of predisposing conditions and qual- ities. All men inherit the same nature, and are prone to commit, under temptation, the same sins. The United States prides itself on its enlightenment, its civilization, its humanity and its democracy. It has the virtues of its era. But when Spain arose in her northern moun- tains and drove the Moor step by step from her pen- insula, she too was enlightened and civilized; and whatever Christian virtues characterized the eleventh century, Spain possessed. She was religious, learned, artistic, and brave. From the eleventh to the sixteenth century she increased in power and wealth, but in character she became debased and corrupt. Her religion became bigotry, her strength tyranny, her pride nour- ished itself on greed for wealth and for territory which breeds wealth. She perpetrated hideous cruelties in the name of God and of civilization. She became the dead- liest foe of that human liberty which she had cham- pioned so valiantly in her Moorish wars. Every nation of Europe owed her a grudge; she obstructed commerce and industry, and lay sullen and inert before the path of progress. The world, and the spirit of the new ages was against her, and inevitably she fell, contesting every inch with her old stubbornness, but without her old strength. She did not repent; she admitted the commission of no wrong. To-day, crushed without an effort by the Western Republic, she stands bleeding and beggared, and none is so poor to do her rever- ence. But her tragic fate may well teach a lesson to PKEFACE 3 her conqueror. Great opportunities, and with them great temptations, are before us. Spain started with hopes as fair as ours. Let us so act before God and man that we may not end in despair as dark as hers! Already tendencies are visible in our social and indus- trial life which, if indulged, might easily bring us, too, to shame. Of the talents which God has intrusted to us, He will require a strict account. The history of Spanish America could not be other than a record of bloodshed and oppression, which at last becomes monotonous to wearisomeness ; but it is not the less full of romance and interest. There is a rich picturesqueness about it which compels the atten- tion; and striking figures throng its scenes and pro- voke our wonder and occasionally our admiration. It involves the story of the mightiest discovery of medi- eval times the revelation of a new and unsuspected world. It illustrates the marvellous manner in which Providence compels the very selfishness of men to labor and build for others than themselves. "Our foes inherit us." It shows how impotent evil is to turn aside the stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness. In preparing the present volume, no attempt has been made to embody new material. The work is de- signed for the general reader, not for the curious scholar. To Prescott, Fiske, Bandelier, Hancock, Susan Hale, 'Theodore Child, W. H. Bishop, and many more, the author is indebted; and he has found much of value in current magazines and journals. The "Century Dictionary of Names" has proved itself of great use as an accurate and fertile book of reference His own 4 PREFACE part in his volume has been that of an arranger and occasional commentator. Often, too, it has been that of an omitter; for the space at his disposal made a careful selection indispensable; and in Spanish Ameri- can history more than in many histories, events occur which are practically repetitions of one another. The chapter of our administrative experiences with our new "West Indian possessions remains to be written, because the experiences themselves are still to come. One can only wish that, should the chapter in question ever appear, its contents may be such as to make it the brightest and most agreeable of the book. JULIAN HAWTHORNE. HAWTHORNE'S HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA PART I ONCE UPON A TIME TELLERS of mediaeval fairy-tales were wont to be chary of fixing their dates, probably from a feeling that dates were incompatible with the free conditions of fairyland. Therefore they devised that phrase, "Once upon a time," with which all the legitimate stories which enchanted our nursery days begin, and which may mean either any period of the unmeasured past, or else some in- stant of the eternal Now upon which the mysterious ship of Humanity is launched. Traditional usage has conferred upon the quaint form of words a charm of satisfaction which no more definite formula could convey ; we love it because it gives the imagination scope, and takes us out of the iron routine of the material world, where all things must occur in right order and sequence, and one day omitted or out of place upsets the balance of an entire chronology. Anything may have happened "once upon a time"; but at any speci- fied time, only one thing could have happened in any given place ; and the impalpable horizons of fancy become an ada- mantine dome, which fifcs accurately over the landscape, and will not budge a hair-breadth upon any consideration. Man is justified in feeling restive under the tyranny of time; for the soul is immortal, and has no concern with arbitrary meas- urements. And the soul looks forward to a state of freedom (5) 6 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA from material limitations, when past and future shall be fused in an ever abiding present, and the life of the passing instant shall fill t'itt confines of the universe. Upon the relatively vast extent of this planet's duration, the recorded history of mankind makes but a little mark. A few thousand years are set off upon a line of many millions. The times before man are so immeasurable when compared with the time of his existence, that we might regard him, from the chronological standpoint, as the creature of but a moment. It is not until we think of him as a spirit embodied that he assumes his proper stature. All that preceded him was as nothing; "Darkness was upon the face of the Deep." Those semi-infinite geologic epochs lapsed and succeeded one another for his sake ; the blind cells that drifted in the wash of prehistoric oceans; the strange serpent-forms that fought one another in the slime ; the amorphous beasts that roamed the unimagined forests of the Prime, and dragged their pon- derous length along the ghastly coasts, breathing a turgid, torrid atmosphere, through which the images of sun and moon showed dim-red and ominous: all these were but prophetic of the human being to come, and owe to him alone their excuse for being. Vainly do we attempt to conceive of a period when man was not; nor, in truth, has such a period ever existed, for man was ever implied, though not yet actually present. In the incandescent gases revolving in the vast of space were contained the elements destined at last to be fashioned into his body and limbs; and the uncouth and imperfect shapes of geologic animals were the obscure forecast of what he was to be. Mineral, vege- table and animal slowly and unconsciously perfected them- selves while far off his coming shone. When the hour was ripe, and his kingdom ready, the monarch of all appeared, and rose erect upon his feet, with his brow toward heaven, and looked abroad, and gave to each living thing its name. The world the universe, which spread around him, was his, for it was he; he was its epitome, its cause, its end. Nothing in it was alien from him ; no remotest star in the ONCE UPON A TIME 7 firmament but was made of the identical stuff which consti- tuted his body and bones. Time and space, those master twin-illusions of the mortal senses, began with" Mm with the workings of that brain which first perceived the rela- tions of phenomena, and translated the conditions of the immortal spirit into the language of transient matter. All that heretofore had been dead and purportless sprang, be- neath his comprehending glance, into life and meaning. When did man begin? Not when the clay of the earth first assumed the image of the Creator and received into its nostrils the breath of life ; but when the pregnant thought of the human race was launched from the mind of Deity and, guided by eternal law, set forth on its stupendous journey from the whirl of fiery vapors to the shapes of the men and women of to-day. Was it a thousand million years ago, or was it yesterday? It is all one ; since the real man is a spirit, which has no concern with time ; and his experience of mat- ter is but a passing incident of his everlasting development and progress. Let us use again the ancient, homely phrase, and say that it all happened Once upon a time! It seems singular that in accounting for the Western Con- tinent, which we call the New World, we should find our- selves forced back not only into the half -legendary epochs of early Asiatic and European history, but further still toward that dark backward and abysm of time which far antedates all records. Taking the point of view that America was to be discovered, we find the movement toward it beginning at almost any point we please. But by a common agreement we have assumed that the race of man commenced a migra- tion, in a westerly direction, from somewhere in the heart of Asia. A very leisurely migration it was, the stages of which were measured by hundreds or even by thousands of years. It had no defined object, beyond the desire, or the necessity, to escape from a present environment. Of its first movements we know nothing save by inference ; nor can we tell why the movement was westward instead of eastward. Possibly there 8 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA was a vague curiosity in the human mind to find out where the sun went to on his daily journey; his setting was in splendor, and perhaps those who should discover the land of the golden west would meet with glorious experiences. But the rising of the sun is also glorious ; and why should not primitive man have sought fortune in that direction? Perhaps, indeed, he did ; but so long ago that no memory of it remains. For aught we can say, the pressure of popu- lation in the Asiatic valleys may first have sought relief by sending out pioneers toward the rising sun ; and it may be these people who occupied the American continent. At that time it is probable that a man might walk dry-shod from Asia to America, by the northerly route ; there were no straits of Bering in those days. In fact, the geography of the world was doubtless very different then from what it is now. Con- tinents were broader, and islands fewer. Europe extended far into the Atlantic ; and the legend of Atlantis may have better warrant than modern historians and geographers are willing to admit. It was rumored to extend from near the west coast of Africa to the neighborhood of Central America, and to have been inhabited by a powerful and civilized race. But in some mighty convulsion of nature the great island sank beneath the sea, with most of its inhabitants. We might surmise, however, that some of them, forewarned of the de- struction to come, may have succeeded in escaping to the African and American shores, or to one of them. And since imagination is free, we may suppose that the more civilized races of America, of whom at present only a vague tradition remains, such as the Toltecs, and Piruas, may have been the survivors of that appalling catastrophe. There is, to be sure, no foundation for such a hypothesis ; but, on the other hand, the chief reason adduced for disbelieving in Atlantis is the ascertained fact that the Atlantic is two miles deep over the area which the island is said to have occupied. The argu- ment can hardly be considered conclusive; a subsidence of two miles is little more remarkable than one of half a mile. Nevertheless, the existence of Atlantis must be conceded to ONCE UPON A TIME 9 i be very doubtful, to say the most of it; and as for the Tol- tecs and Piruas, there is in their traditions nothing sugges- tive of their having come ashore from a submerged island. When asked their origin, they commonly pointed toward the North ; or to be more precise, those who purported to be their descendants did so. For a time, theories founded upon this hint obtained gen- eral credence with historians. Books have been written to prove that America was settled by the lost tribes of Israel. The lost tribes must have gone somewhere: why not east- ward by way of Siberia? But the enlarged views of later days make it seem probable that the Israelites were still in the womb of time long after America had been settled by the Red Men. It would seem more hopeful to identify our Indians with the Biblical Adam, whose name means red men; and accordingly a recent enthusiast has discovered the site of the Garden of Eden in Central America, and even declares he has found the self -same club with which Cain wreaked his vengeance upon Abel for being more favored by the Almighty than himself. This prompts the reflection that there may be such a thing as discovering too much. Such speculations incline to fade in the light of late geological revelations. These inform us that during the Pleistocene period a large portion of the northern hemisphere of the earth was covered with a thick coat of snow and ice. In America, the limit of the glaciers was as far south as North Carolina. How long ago was this? Obviously there must be a limit, since we know that there was an epoch when the earth was still so hot that such a phenomenon as the freez- ing of water was inconceivable. Experts seem inclined to the opinion that the Glacial epoch was coincident with the last period of high eccentricity of the earth's orbit, which began some two hundred and forty thousand years ago. Our globe swung so far away from the neighborhood of the sun that the climate was profoundly affected ; and vari- ations occurred which it is anything but comfortable even to imagine. Anything beyond imagination will not be required 10 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA of us; since the ice age is well past, and is not scheduled to return until after some eight hundred thousand years hence, more or less. But during its presence, it made its mark, which is still legible. But what relation does the ice age bear to human history? Simply this that many traces of the existence of man on this continent during the last ice age have been discovered. Stone weapons and tools, made by human hands, have been found in the Glacial drift ; stray fragments of the bones of the makers themselves are not unknown; and some five and twenty years ago there was found by Dr. Abbott a number of paleolithic objects in Glacial drift along the banks of the Delaware River. These tools and utensils were last in use about one hundred and fifty thousand years ago. As for the famous Calaveras skull, found in the county of that name in 1866, it has been assigned a date twice as remote as the above ; and there are not wanting persons who affirm that the man who wore it may have lived not less than a million years before this age. Plainly, Science, in this mat- ter, is open to the charge of indulging in a little guess-work. Practically, however, in the present infantine condition of historical knowledge, it can make no difference whether we say that the Calaveras man is one hundred and fifty, or three hundred thousand years old ; or whether we go the full limit of a million. In any case, the gap between him and any- thing relating to mankind that is matter of historic certainty, is so prodigious as to make the hope of ever spanning it seem fantastic. The only assurance to be derived from these dis- coveries is, that man lived here in the west indefinite ages before the earliest traces of him in the written records of Asia and Europe. This, of course, is not to say that pre- historic man in America antedates prehistoric man on the eastern hemisphere. No doubt they were contemporaneous six of one and half a dozen of the other. The real ques- tion of interest is, what was man doing between the time that we find him in geology, and the time that we find him in written records? And the problem is even more puzzling ONCE UPON A TIME 11 in this continent than in the eastern one, for the reason that our red Indians are so nearly primitive a race even yet as scarcely to have emerged above savagery, and still to be in the midst of barbarism. They are to-day in the condition of some of the elder Asiatic peoples before the Egyptian pyra- mids were built. "What is the cause which rendered them so much more backward than their Asiatic contemporaries? To this, as to many a similar query, the Evolutionists are ready with an answer, and a plausible one. These disciples of Darwin have made their views conspicuous of late, and they will by no means be ignored here; though it may as well be stated at the outset that we shall not always accept their conclusions implicitly. The philosophy which they ex- ploit is a new one, and to many minds has the charm of novelty ; it seems to explain so much that they are fain to believe it capable of explaining everything. Their cardinal principle is, that the future is involved in the past. And it is then: leading contention that man was immediately derived from the ape. So positive are their affirmations, and so beguiling their arguments, that persons of culture and prudence are very shy of opposing them. If, for exam- ple, man is not the offspring of the ape, of what is he the offspring? That the connecting link still delays to be dis- covered (in spite of many false alarms) is nothing; he will be discovered some day. That the attempt to generate life from inanimate matter has hitherto failed is nothing ; some- body may so generate it at any moment. Or if you profess a difficulty in comprehending how more can be taken out of the bag than has been put into it in the first place how man can be derived from monkey unless he was previously contained in him how there can be evolution without an- terior involution, in short you get answers which, if not perfectly clear, are at least sufficiently voluble. Meanwhile it is abundantly plain that, even as nature is said to abhor a vacuum, so does the evolutionist abhor the alternative of conceding what he is pleased to term a miraculous creation. If one order of animals does not spontaneously grow out of 12 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA another, in consequence of the law of the survival of the fittest, and of the influence of environment, then, mani- festly, we are driven to assume that God must have cre- ated all creatures in a series, one above another, and yet distinct and independent. Instead of having set Creation going with one initial bang, and ever after taking His ease, He must be supposed to be constantly at work, and to be, if anything, busier now than during the Biblical Seven Days. Instead of deftly sliding the instinct of the last ape into the reason of the first man, He must have endowed the latter with a distinct and unprecedented gift, bearing just enough resemblance to instinct to mislead the impulsive evolutionist. And to revert to the point whence this digression began, He must have delayed the development of the American red men for other reasons, and in other ways, than the ingenious evolutionists imagine. They say that it was simply a matter of the lack of cattle. It is a very shrewd suggestion. But there was once an evolutionist who observed that a dog, before sitting down on the rug before the fire, turned round upon himself twice or thrice as if undetermined which side of his circle should ie fire ward, and which away from it : or perhaps with the hope of getting all sides toward the fire at once. Now why (said the evolutionist to himself) does the dog do this? It must be the survival in him of some ancient habit, when things were different from what they are now. And forth- with he sent his educated intelligence back along the stream of time, until he reached the primal dog, in his primal envi- ronment. That environment, the evolutionist felt safe in assuming, had been partly grass; and, indeed, grass of an unusually tall and stubborn sort. When the primal dog, inexperienced as yet in the luxuries of downy hearthrugs, wished to lie down, he was inconvenienced by this tall grass sticking up all round him, antagonizing his comfort and obstructing his view. But he was equal to the occasion ; he turned himself round and round until the tiresome grass was flattened down into a sort of nest, devoid of sharp upstarting ONCE UPON A TIME 13 points, upon which he could repose in peace and security. How long it took the primal dog to hit upon this clever device we are not informed; but having once hit upon it, he repeated it so often, that even till this day, several hun- dred thousand years later, and upon rugs which are innocent of the discomforts which appertained to the primal grass beds, the habit sticks to him, and round and round needs must he revolve, in unconscious subservience to his own pre- historic ingenuity. Thus, at least, reasoned the evolutionist or so it was pretended by the practical joker who, with satirical intent, invented the illustration. Now, the strange the wellnigh inconceivable feature of this story is, that it was accepted ever since in sad earnest by too credulous evolutionists, who have quoted it with eagerness and applause, and instanced it in their books. The patent and preposterous absurdity of the notion has never once come in contact with their sense of humor ; and it is to be feared that this imbecility on their part has caused widespread distrust in the lay mind as to the soundness of their conclusions in general. For if men could be found who would swallow such a camel as that, how many a gnat might they not have inadvertently assimilated? Of course no dog ever does or ever did turn round in grass in order to make a better lair for himself ; and consequently, no dog turns round on the hearthrug to-day because of the survival in his brain of the habit then acquired. Nor, for that matter, would he do so in any case ; the habits due to environment wear off, when the environment changes, as quickly as they were adopted. Now, as to the assertion that cattle are the first cause of civilization, it is, as has been admitted, a shrewd one; but it is pure assumption. A condition and a relation are found, and an explanation of them is invented. But it is just as reasonable to say that civilization causes cattle, as the re- verse. It is true that the domestication of animals is a con- comitant of civilized life; it is true that cows and horses existed in the eastern hemisphere and not in the western; it is true that civilization in the former greatly antedates it 14 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA in the latter part of the world. But it by no means follows that civilization in America might not have been accom- plished without the cows and horses of Europe and Cathay. There was an epoch when there were no domestic cattle in the old world; but in the course of thousands of years cer- tain animals were caught and tamed, and by and by they appeared as horses, cows and sheep. The cattle did not come ready-made to the savage man, and induce him to be civilized ; but he, feeling within himself the impulse toward civilization, transformed wild beasts into cattle. In other words, civilization began in man, and not outside of him. In America, the animals which we now know as cattle did not exist. But there were other animals, in America, which might have been made-over into cattle, if our red men had felt the disposition to do so. There is the rein- deer, for example, the buffalo, and, in the south, the llama. And, as a matter of fact, the llama was domesticated, after unnumbered ages of training; and so was the reindeer. Did civilization follow? In the case of the Piruas and Incas, a partial civilization did follow (or accompany) the achieve- ment ; in the case of the Esquimaux it did not. Meanwhile it seems evident that the domestication of both llamas and reindeer was the outcome of necessity ; the people needed the creatures in their business ; but there is nothing to show that the llamas civilized the Piruas, while on the other hand it is manifest that the reindeer failed to soften the manners of the Esquimaux. As for the buffalo, they have never been tamed, and the Indian tribes of North America have re- mained barbarians. But will any one assert that it was impossible to tame buffalo? In the course of two hundred and forty thousand years, more or less, might not this feat have been accomplished? Is the wild buffalo any wilder than the primitive llama or reindeer? That they were not domesticated, then, must be owing to the fact that our red men did not care to domesticate them. With the alleged material for civilization at hand, they declined to avail themselves of it. And what judgment can we pronounce ONCE UPON A TIME 15 thereupon, but that the impulse toward civilization did not exist in the Indian's soul? Nor has it been created in him since the advent of civilized Europe four hundred years ago. He is either as wild as he was at first, or he is moribund. Upon the whole, therefore, we must regard the theory that cattle make civilization as not proven, to say the best of it; and consequently we are still in the dark as to the causes which advanced man in the east and kept him in statu quo in the west. But as to the fact itself there is no question. The northern tribes of our continent are wholly uncivilized ; so are those in the extreme south ; but in the semi-tropic regions we find a sort of civilization, conform- able to the leisure which a warm and fertile climate makes possible, and to the sedentary habits which a relaxing tem- perature fosters. It must be borne in mind, too, that the population in the southern regions was denser in the given area than it was further north, compelling the people to ad- just themselves one with another, and thus promoting the development of stable villages or cities. Central America is narrow ; and Peru and Chili are so hemmed in between the Andes and the Pacific as to be practically scamped for room. And it is in the crowded valleys of Mexico and the Isthmus, and along the ocean shores further south, that we find the greatest development in the arts of life among the original denizens of this continent. But are our Indians original denizens of the continent in the full sense of the term? And has there been, in former times, a compara- tively civilized race in the north, which gradually moved southward, whose relics we find among the Aztecs and Incas of a recent day? Do the mounds which are found in many places in the north represent the work of a people possessed of science and power, which disappeared so long ago that no memory of them remains? Is the Cyclopean architecture of Yucatan and Peru the monument of an affluent civilization superior to anything known at the time of the Spanish con- quest, which has left no other record of itself than this? These problems, and cognate ones, have been much dis- 10 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA cussed during the past half century. They are still unsolved ; but the latest investigators incline to the opinion that the red men of North and Central America have always formed sub- stantially one race, which has never undergone any impor- tant changes, other than the variations of custom and con- dition due to environment. Whether or not this race be indigenous is of small moment, provided we assume that their advent from some other place occurred, if at all, be- fore the period of any human records. If the immigration occurred before the time of the man of Calaveras, they are indigenous to all intents and purposes. But may they not have come hither within times much more recent? Attempts have been made, in this connection, to establish points of simi- larity between tribes on the east coasts of Asia, and our In- dians. Similarities have been found to exist? but it is not certain that they may not have been due simply to the fact that any two men are apt to acquire similar habits in like circumstances, no matter how far they may be separated from each other. In other words, mankind has several points of common resemblance; and if you apply a cer- tain stimulus to a man, he is apt to respond with a certain action or state. This explanation is regarded as more plausi- ble than to suppose extensive immigrations, and the preser- vation of customs. But the fact that the faces of some of our Indians bear a likeness to Asiatic peoples on the eastern Pacific coasts is not so easily accounted for; and again there is good ground for the belief that the Esquimaux are the same race as the prehistoric Cave-men of Europe. The Cave-men had the habit of carving on the tusks of certain animals figures and designs of a lifelike and energetic char- acter; and the Esquimaux have precisely the same faculty, and are the only people extant who do have it. This would indicate that the Cave-men are ancestors of the Esquimaux who have remained practically unchanged since that remote era. It would also show, of course, that the Cave-men had a vast range of habitation, far exceeding that of any modern people. Moreover, it is easy for a people to disperse itself ONCE UPON A TIME 17 over the face of the earth nowadays ; but in the Cave-man age there were no ships or railways, and it might take thousands of generations for a journey from England, for instance, to Greenland. We might almost conclude that Cave-men were, in their period, the sole representatives of the human race on this planet. But even this would not help us out of our American difficulty, since the red Indian and the Esquimaux are not the same stock. Ethnologists are seldom wholly discomfited, however; and when asked how it can be maintained that an Algonquin Indian from Maine is of the same race as an Aztec or Peruvian Indian, he escapes from the snare by pointing out that all becomes reasonable if we do but enlarge our definition of the word "race." Make it inclusive enough, and it will include all Indians found on this continent. This is true; yet it is not entirely conclusive as to the matter under discussion. The difference between a Piruan and a Mohawk, great though it be, may not be too great to have been accomplished by gradual modifications taking place within the boundaries of a common racehood ; but to concede that is not to say that they were so accomplished ; and it does not touch the other question, whether, supposing them to have, been originally of the same race, one part of that race may not have re- mained in Europe thousands of years after the other had emigrated to America; and, when the former followed the latter, may not have brought with it a superior culture ac- quired in favorable Asiatic or European environment. But ethnology, and the movements of races, are sciences still in their infancy; and much of what is asserted about such matters is, when investigated, shown to be the merest guess- work. When all has been said, we still do not know where our Indians came from, how long they have been here, or whether they are of one or several races. Nor can we even tell whether they are in the same state of culture now as at their first appearance, whether they have advanced, or whether they have retrograded. Apposite to this inquiry is the subject of the Mounds. 18 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA But in order intelligently to approach that subject, we should clarify our ideas as to what is meant by the words savagery, barbarism, and civilization, as applied to progres- sive stages of human culture. Of course the terms are arbi- trary. He whom we consider a savage would regard a bar- barian as civilized ; and we may presume that the men of a thousand years hence will look upon our present condition as barbarous. Nevertheless, when we are confronted with ambiguities of this kind, the best thing we can do is to insti- tute a rough-and-ready working system, and get whatever practical results from it we may. That useful function has been discharged for us in this case by the late Lewis F. Morgan, whose formulas we shall briefly explain, and make use of under limitations. Mr. Morgan begins by suggesting a dividing line between savages and barbarians; and he draws it at the making of pots and kettles of clay. His reason for this is (as Professor Fiske remarks) that the making of pottery presupposes vil- lage life and some progress in the simpler arts. Food was originally boiled either by putting it in holes in the ground lined with skins, or in clay-coated baskets ; and Mr. Morgan supposes that the savage, noticing that the clay not only pre- vented liquid from escaping, but was hardened by the fire, conceived, in the course of ages, the idea of retaining the clay in his vessel and omitting the basket. At that moment, unknown to himself, he ceased to be a savage and became a barbarian. A barbarian, then, is an uncivilized person who makes vessels of clay. And when does the barbarian become civilized? When, according to Mr. Morgan, he invents a phonetic alphabet and keeps written records. No matter how high his physical or- ganization may be, how delicately perceptive his brain, how comfortable his general condition, he is not civilized until he finds out how to write and how to make libraries. And no doubt Mr. Morgan has fair warrant for his rule. Writing seems very easy after it has been invented ; it is the first thing we teach our children in school, and that child is held ONCE UPON A TIME 19 very stupid who has not mastered the alphabet. But when, in maturer years, we have reviewed the whole process by which men arrived at the conception of representing ideas by marks on skins or other substances, we begin to acquire a respect for the familiar row of letters. First there was the observation of objects; then, the attempt to reproduce them by drawing; then, the conventionalization of certain of these drawings short-hand sketches, so to say, of horses, birds, trees and so forth. Even then our inventor was a long way from giving these marks a phonetic value, and combining them in words. It required a faculty of abstract thinking which belongs to man exclusively, and only to man after a very long apprenticeship and drilling. He must have sat still and used his mind vigorously for a long while before he hit the true conception. Cadmus, whoever he was, de- serves all the credit that has been awarded to him ; and not every "professor" of the present day is intellectually capable of achieving a parallel feat. But it is not merely the invention of phonetic writing that entitles the man to be called civilized ; it is the effect of the invention upon his condition. For he now becomes able to rise above his individual powers, and to avail himself of all the accumulated and aggregated attainments of his race and ancestry. He can refer to records, showing what has been done and thought; and he can stand on these and reach for- ward to further exploits. His single brain is reinforced with the brains of all his predecessors and contemporaries. Thus his power is indefinitely multiplied; and he in turn hands down this multiplied faculty and result to his pos- terity. Nature, instead of being his master, begins now to obey him and to become plastic to his thought; the arts and sciences commence; machinery appears, and, in due course, the Nineteenth Century American. Beyond a doubt, letters are the beginning of material progress. At all events, we know nothing of any marked material prosperity in the past without letters. Of course, we are free to deny the identity of material prosperity and 20 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA true civilization. This, again, is a matter of terms. Homer was the greatest of poets, and letters had not been invented when he sang at least, in Greece. Literature augments the power of the race, and its wealth ; but it may tend to diminish the individual. The faculty of memory is far from being as highly developed as it used to be. Books take the place of thought in a degree, and in other ways impair our independence. Only a minute fraction of what is written is worth reading; much is directly injurious, or wasteful. Men are not happier for their wealth ; and the discrepancy be- tween poor and rich disturbs society. Yet, upon the whole, the path of the race seems to be upward ; and it must lie through material prosperity. Not until we have completed the conquest of nature can we turn our attention to breath- ing a soul into this accumulation of dead things, and so per- haps learn the secret of a new and freer dominion over them. But Mr. Morgan goes further than the fixing of the dis- tinction between savage, barbarian and civilized. There must needs be subdivisions, in order to render the masses less un- wieldy. Accordingly, he specifies three grades of savagery, and three of barbarism. In the lowest savage state man had just begun to talk, but had not yet discovered how to fish or hunt ; he lived on berries, fruits, and raw roots. In this state he could not venture far from the place of his nativity, lest he be cut off from his source of supplies. But the art of fishing, and the discovery of fire, brought him to the second savage state, and gave him courage to wander along coasts or river banks, and thus to overspread the earth. Finally, our savage hits upon the really masterly device of the bow and arrow : suggested, it may be, by the snapping back of branches as he passed through the forest : but, at any rate, evincing the faculty of following out a chain of reasoning. He is now a graduate of savagery, and ready to enter upon his first course of barbarism. This, as we have seen, begins with pottery. From this he goes on to the taming of animals, and thus enables him- self to live without hunting, and consequently in much more ONCE UPON A TIME 21 restricted quarters than formerly. This pastoral state was omitted in America; but, on the other hand, the cultivation of Indian corn, or maize, took its place in a measure, and inasmuch as it could be raised without first clearing and plowing the ground, obviated the need for spades, plows, hoes and rakes, which eastern barbarians required for their crops of wheat. Here, then, we find the spontaneous bounty of nature placing man at an advantage which, otherwise, he could have gained only by dint of many ages of intel- lectual training. Indian corn made Indian villages pos- sible; and Indian villages, with their wigwams, were the beginning, according to Mr. Morgan, of Indian Mounds, and Mexican pueblos and "cities." All this sounds probable and rational, and there are no good grounds for rejecting it. Nearly all the stages of sav- agery and barbarism which Mr. Morgan instances in his analysis are at present in existence in one or another part of the world: only the very lowest has to be supplied by inference. And provided we bear it in mind that the dis- tinctions are inevitably arbitrary, and that there are no known cases of men caught in the act of passing from one grade of culture to a higher one, we shall find the system useful, and tending to clarify materially the subjects with which we have to deal. We know that the civilized man progresses, and why should not the savage and the barbarian? The methods of the cultivation of Indian corn were improved in the more southern parts of North America, coincidently with the increasing pressure of population, irrigation being introduced where rainfall was deficient. Indian corn was the staple as far south as Central Amer- ica ; in Peru, the potato, indigenous there, supplied its place. In the higher grades of American barbarism, houses were made of adobe and stone; weapons and tools were wrought of stone finely chipped or polished, and in some cases of cop- per; but iron was never smelted in the western hemisphere. Consequently Mr. Morgan places the Aztecs and Incas at the 22 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA time of the Spanish conquest lower in the scale of culture than the Greeks at the period of Homer, and the Germans in Caesar's age. But since, if we adhere strictly to his sys- tem, we must deny civilization to the Egyptians, on the ground that they had no phonetic alphabet which would be a manifest absurdity it is plain that all these distinc- tions should be taken with reservations, and only used to avoid confusion. "It will be observed," says Professor Fiske, "that, with one exception, these restrictions leave the area of civilization as wide as that which we are ac- customed to assign to it in our ordinary speaking and think- ing. That exception is the case of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. We have been so long accustomed to gorgeous accounts of the civilization of these countries at the time of their discovery by the Spaniards that it may at first shock our preconceived notions to see them set down as in the 'middle state of barbarism,' one stage higher than the Mo- hawks, and one stage lower than the warriors of the Iliad. This does indeed mark a change since Dr. Draper expressed the opinion that the Mexicans and Peruvians were morally and intellectually superior to the Europeans of the sixteenth century. The reaction from the state of opinion in which such an extravagant remark was even possible has been at- tended with some controversy; but on the whole Mr. Mor- gan's main position has been steadily and rapidly gaining ground, and it is -becoming more and more clear that if we are to use language correctly when we speak of the civiliza- tions of Mexico and Peru, we really mean civilizations of an extremely archaic type, considerably more archaic than that of Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. A 'civilization' like that of the Aztecs, without domestic animals or iron tools, with trade still in the primitive stage of barter, with human sacrifices, and with cannibalism, has certainly some of the most vivid features of barbarism. Along with these primi- tive features, however, there seem to have been after mak- ing all due allowances some features of luxury and splendor such as we are wont to associate with civilization. The ONCE UPON A TIME 23 Aztecs, moreover, though doubtless a full ethnical period behind the ancient Egyptians in general advancement, had worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had begun to put it to some literary use. It would seem that a people may in certain special points reach a level of attainment higher than the level which they occupy on other points. The Cave-men of the Glacial period were ignorant of pot- tery, and thus had not risen above the upper status of savagery; but their artistic talent, upon which we hare remarked, was not such as we are wont to associate with savagery. Other instances will occur to us in the proper place." The fact is if Professor Fiske's infatuation with the letter of evolution would but permit him to see it that Mr. Morgan's theory is not a true theory at all, but only a working hypothesis, good until we discover a closer approxi- mation. We cannot argue from men in prehistoric Europe to men in prehistoric America, or affirm dogmatically that, in all that goes to make a man, an ancient Peruvian or Aztecan was not the peer of an ancient Egyptian or Greek. They did not do quite the same things in the same way, nor employ the same materials or instruments; but they were never under any obligations to conform to Mr. Morgan's rules. Even Professor Fiske is constrained to acknowledge that in certain parts of ancient America, barbarism "ceases to appear otherwise than respectable." The social institutions of our Indians merit some notice ; the most remarkable feature being the general observance of what is called the "mother- right" that is, the system of kinship through mothers only, instead of through the fathers. This mother-right is said to have, everywhere throughout the world, so far as is known, preceded the patriarchal idea ; in- deed, it is surmised that the latter has been attained by the highest races only. The conception of monogamy, and of indissoluble marriage, would seem to be of modern growth. In the original state of man, we are told, the family was indiscoverable, and men lived in hordes like cattle. From this, cases of individual pairing-off occurred, until at length 24: HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA the gens or kin was recognizable; a group of males and females traditionally conscious of their common descent in the female line. The men of a clan were forbidden to marry inside their clan; they must practice "exogamy." The clan persisted even after descent from the father was established ; and a group of clans constituted a "phratry," which, again, were combined in tribes. These primitive societies had small conception of personal property and knew nothing of real estate ; land being merely occupied by the tribe ; but grad- ually, as the tribe became more nearly stationary, property was accumulated by individuals, and as a consequence po- lygamy and monogamy began, and the mother-right fell into desuetude. But this state of things had not been es- tablished in America at the period of the conquest; there might be patriarchal instances, but the mother-right was maintained coincidently. The marriage contract could be dissolved at the will of either party to it. The social unit was not the family but still the clan. And it is thought to be owing to this fact that the architecture of the American building Indians assumed the character that it did. They built their houses to fit their way of living. This way was communal, and all their buildings, in principle, are adapted to the communal system. From the lowest style of savage huts to the wonderful sculptured ruins of Yucatan, the principal is the same. In the "long-houses" of certain North American tribes, the edifice was a structure of poles fixed upright in the ground, with a gabled roof of rafters shingled with bark. The house would be as much as a hundred feet in length, with an opening at each end; and within, compartments eight feet in width opened like stalls upon the central passage. In this passage fire-pits were made at regular intervals; bunks were fixed against the walls of the compartments; corn hung from the ridge-pole; and each house was occupied by related families. The prod- ucts raised by any member of the household were common property; matrons presided over the establishment. Chil- dren were in common, as well as food; the young wife ONCE UPON A TIME 25 brought her husband home with her, and she might exile him thence if he proved lazy and unprofitable. The head of the clan was the sachem, elected by the clan from among its number ; he could be succeeded by a brother but not by a son, and could be deposed upon occasion ; the chiefs were war captains, there being one for each fifty members or thereabout; in a tribe, there might be from three to up- ward of twenty clans, massed in phratries. There were clan councils, from which women were not debarred. Tribes were distinguished by an exclusive dialect ; their government was vested in a council of chiefs and sachems ; sometimes there was a head-chief of a number of tribes, elected by the coun- cil. In Europe such head-chiefs ultimately developed into kings ; but there was nothing exactly answering to the Euro- pean idea of a king in America. Beyond the tribe, or a con- federation of tribes, the American social structure did not go; the modern civilized conception of a nation was never fully attained. But the distinction between a nation and a permanent confederation of tribes is not at first sight very apparent. In the north, the League of the Iroquois was the most conspicuous example; it entailed the imposition of trib- ute, but did not result as in the Old World in the fusing of peoples of different degrees of development. The basis of all combinations was the clan of a common maternal ancestry. The next advance in architecture above the long-house is the circular house of the Mandans. It was forty to sixty feet in diameter, with a conical roof, in the centre of which was the opening for the escape of smoke; the only other opening was a door in the side. The family compartments were of triangular shape, with apexes toward the central fire. A village might contain thirty or more such houses; they were built on easily defensible sites, and surrounded by palisades and bastions. There was also in the village a medicine-lodge or council-house, and an open space for games and dances. The next step is to the Mayas and Peruvians of Yucatan and Peru, and the Toltecs and Aztecans of the Mexican pla- 26 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA teau. "We find clay walls supported by wooden frames, as in the primitive baskets coated with clay already mentioned. These were improved by thickening the clay wall and remov- ing the superfluous framework. Thus we get the terraced pueblo walls of the Zunis, and more southern tribes. After- ward rubble-stone was embedded in the adobe, and finally limestone was shaped with flint chisels and laid in courses with adobe mortar. The typical pueblo is a solid block of buildings surround- ing three sides of a square; the inner side is lowest, whence it ascends by terraces to five or six stories on the outside. On the fourth side of the rectangle is a one-story block of apartments with one or two narrow gateways, constituting the only entrances. Access to the various apartments was gained through skylights reached by portable ladders. Such a structure, accommodating sometimes as many as five thou- sand persons, might be called a fortress town ; or we might compare it with one of our huge modern flat-houses or tene- ments. The pueblo Indians were, like their less advanced brethren, organized in clans, with descent in the female line. They were governed by a council of sachems, with a princi- pal sachem known as cacique. The priesthood was organ- ized, and observed an elaborate ceremonial ; each pueblo had ts estufa or council-house for religious as well as govern- mental transactions. These Indians were advanced in their mythology and picture-writing above their fellows to the north. The pueblos varied somewhat in form, though always constructed on the same principle; the much-discussed cliff- dwellings are pueblos adapted to peculiar local conditions. The pueblo at Zuni is practically a small town of communal houses massed together, with streets and plazas; it much impressed the Spaniards, who compared it with the city of Granada. But, as a matter-of-fact explorer remarks, Span- ish conquerors were more emotional than statistical. They magnified the importance of their acquisitions, because they had acquired them. They estimated the population of a ONCE UPON A TIME 27 Mexican pueblo town at two hundred thousand, for exam- ple, when sober truth should have been content with one- sixth as many. On the other hand, the Aztecans made their stone buildings at least as massive as those of Spain, and the Spaniards' admiration of this feature was well deserved. But they were again astray in their interpretation of Aztecan society, mistaking war-chiefs for emperors and communal houses for palaces. They foresaw nothing of Mr. Morgan and the evolutionists, and fancied that the assembled tribes were organized nations. Between European feudalism and Aztecan gentilism the discrepancy was great, but not out- wardly obvious. It was the discrepancy between territorial and personal ownership of property, or organization. No American tribes had taken the step from the latter to the former. What the Spaniards took to be the empire of Mon- tezuma, therefore, was in fact a confederacy of tribes living in pueblos, governed by a council of chiefs, and exacting tribute from their neighbors. It did not attempt a military occupation of the country, but its chiefs were sent out peri- odically to collect the tribute, and if it was not paid, the recalcitrant pueblo was destroyed, and its inmates taken captive, and most of them sacrificed and often eaten. Mexico City was the Aztecan headquarters, and the four phratries of the great tribe divided it into four quarters. In each quarter was an arsenal, supplied with weapons. The supreme power in the tribe was exercised by tne twenty members of the council, assembling every ten days or oftener; and every three months a sort of senate of older men was convened to reconsider disputed decisions of the council which last, however, could always enforce its will in the last resort. The civil sachem was lieutenant to the head war-chief or "chief -of -men," who, about half a century be- fore the arrival of the Spaniards, was made supreme military commander of the confederated tribes. Had it not been for the civil sachem, who retained the functions of magistrate, and but for the fact that he had no landlord powers, for the reason that there could be no landlordship in Mexico, the 28 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA chief -of -men would have been king indeed ; and hi addition to his leadership in war, he exercised priestly functions. His office, though elective, was restricted to the members of one clan, and some principle of succession seems to have been observed ; but he could be deposed, like all other Indian officials, for cause. Upon the whole, the most advanced advocates of Aztecan barbarism, as against civilization, admit that they were "a full ethnic period" ahead of the northern Indians of the con- tinent. There were regular roads through the province, and markets were periodically held for the exchange of produce. Instead of being wantonly tortured to death, captives were sacrificed with due ceremony to the gods. Slavery, which is regarded as an evidence of approximate civilization, had commenced among the Aztecs. The Aztec clan was exoga- mous, but descent in the male line was recognized, and fam- ilies had come into existence: the wife was the husband's property. There was a visible comprehension of the right of private ownership, the outcome of trade. A kind of paper made of maguey was manufactured, upon which picture- writing was done; and though this writing has remained undecipherable, that does not prevent its claim to be a sort of literature. The city itself was beautiful and luxurious ; "pleasure gardens, menageries and aviaries, fountains and baths, tessellated marble floors, finely wrought pottery, ex- quisite feather-work, brilliant mats and tapestries, silver goblets, dainty spices burning in golden censers, varieties of highly-seasoned dishes, dramatic performances, jugglers and acrobats, ballad-singers and dancing-girls such things were to be seen in this city of snake- worshipping cannibals. It simulated civilization as a tree-fern simulates a tree." Such is Professor Fiske's conclusion, after due study of Morgan and Bandelier. It may be remarked that a tree- fern is very like a tree; and that the difference between a people in the "middle period of barbarism" and in the early stage of civilization might not unfairly be compared, for the most part, to the famous one between Tweedle-dum and ONCE UPON A TIME 29 Tweedle-dee. Or shall we simply say, once more, that America and Europe developed along somewhat different lines, each showing features that were not found in the other? Concerning the ruins of vast so-called cities in the forests of Yucatan and the Isthmus, we can speak only from infer- ence and conjecture. It has been assumed that these were of a piece with the ancient city of Mexico, and might belong to about the same date. They were the work of the Mayas, or of the Toltecs (if the latter people really existed), and the Mayas and the Aztecs in many points were alike, though the former seem superior in several respects. Their system of writing differed from the Aztecan, and is regarded by experts as better than that of the Assyrians at their best. Their im- mense buildings have been called palaces, and have been supposed to be remnants of cities; but their similarity to pueblos cannot be denied, and they may, themselves, have been all the cities there were. That they belong to a very remote antiquity cannot be proved, though the present races profess to know nothing of their origin; this is negative testimony, but, on the other hand, the inscriptions on their walls seem to be in the same characters as those found in extant maguey writings. Stress was laid upon the great age of the mahogany trees found growing within them, which was figured at two thousand years; but it was dis- covered that the rings of trees in this region are produced at the rate of one a month, instead of one a year. The Maya builders did not know the secret of the arch; their walls are filled with mortar and small stones, and the slabs themselves are of a stone originally soft, so as to be readily cut with flint chisels. It is possible, therefore, that these great ruins may not be over seven hundred years old. And yet the opinions of men like Mr. Byron Gordon, who has been one of the most thorough explorers of these ambig- uous ruins, are entitled to great weight. He regards the Mayas and the Aztecs as having had an entirely separate political existence, with radical differences in language and 30 flISTOBY OF SPANISH AMERICA customs, though their legends seem to show a community of origin in some indefinitely remote past. He calls the Maya "civilization" much the older of the two. "Centuries before the kingdom of the Montezumas the curtain had already fallen on another empire's career. At the time of the conquest a number of tribes still haunted the vicinity of the deserted cities; they called themselves Maya people; they doubtless had traditions, some of which have been handed down by the early missionaries, but perverted by the efforts to interpret them in the light of the Holy Scriptures. Full of the fancies and imagery of the East, those who un- dertook to teach the Indians were unable to comprehend a traditional knowledge of institutions more advanced, and an intelligence far more liberal than our own. ' ' It will be noted that Mr. Gordon has not the fear of the evolutionists before his eyes. He goes on to speak of the books of the Mayas, consist- ing of long strips of paper made from the maguey fibre, and folded after the manner of a screen so as to form pages about nine by five inches, covered with hieroglyphic characters neatly drawn in brilliant colors by hand. Boards were fast- ened on the outside pages, making the book look like a large octavo volume. "This system is entirely distinct from the picture-writing of the Aztecs; it was a highly developed system, and embraced a number of phonetic elements. Le- gend ascribes the invention of these characters to Itzamna, the Maya Cadmus, who led his people from the East across the sea. Although nothing has yet been found which enables any man to decipher a single inscription, there is ground for hope in the future. Not only were the Mayas literary, but they attained proficiency in the use of figures. They counted by units and scores. Their chronological scheme embraced two counts: the base of one was the astronomical year of three hundred and sixty-five days, beginning on the day of the transit of the sun by the zenith, and divided into eighteen months of twenty days each ; and they added the five days to complete the solar year at the end of the last OtfCE UPON A TIME 31 month. The years were arranged in twenty-year cycles, called Katimes, of which thirteen made a king katun. In religious matters, however, the Mayas adhered to an older system, a ceremonial year of two hundred and sixty days, derived from mythical notions. Attempts to reconcile these two time-counts led to the development of a capable system of mathematics." Speaking of the ruins of Co-pan, Mr. Gordon says that the city is more ancient than Palenque in Chiapas, and was probably the earlier home of the Maya race. Situated in a beautiful and rarely visited valley of Honduras, Co-pan is one of the greatest of mysteries. "Here are the remains of a city as remarkable as any of the ancient centres of civ- ilization in the Old "World. The area comprised within the old city limits comprises about eight miles in length by two in width. This plain is covered with the remains of stone houses, doubtless the habitations of the wealthy. The streets, squares and courtyards were paved with stone, or with white cement, and drainage was accomplished by cov- ered canals and underground sewers of stone and cement. On the slopes of the mountains are found innumerable ruins, and even on the highest mountain peaks are fallen columns and ruined structures. But on the right bank of the Co-pan River, in the midst of the city, stands the principal group of structures the temples, palaces, and buildings of a public character. A vast, irregular pile rises from the plain in steps and terraces of masonry, and terminating in several pyramidal elevations, each topped by the remains of a tem- ple. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids, this is not the embodi- ment of a definite idea, built on a preconceived plan for a specific purpose, but is the complex result of a long process of development, corresponding to the growth of culture. Its sides face the four cardinal points ; its greatest length from north to south is about eight hundred feet, and nearly as much from west to east. But the swift current of the river has carried away part of this side, exposing the interior in the form of a cliff one hundred and twenty feet high, pre- 32 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA senting a complicated system of buried walls and floors down to the water's edge doubtless the remains of older buildings, abandoned to serve as foundations for later structures. Ex- cavations have also brought to light, beneath the foundations of buildings now occupying the surface, filled chambers and broken walls of older structures, and sculptured monuments. There is just enough difference between these relics and those of later date to indicate a change in style and treat- ment. Lower still I am inclined to expect that the rude beginnings from which sprang the later culture will be found, showing Co-pan to be the oldest Maya city, and the valley to be the cradle of the race. "Within the main structure," continues Mr. Gordon, "at an elevation of sixty feet, is a court one hundred and twenty feet square. It was entered from the south through a pas- sage thirty feet wide, between two high pyramidal founda- tions, each supporting a temple. A thick wall, pierced in its centre by a gateway, guarded this passage to the south. Ranges of steps or seats, as in an amphitheatre, rise to a height of twenty feet, built of great blocks of stone neatly laid without mortar. In the centre of the western side a stairway leads to a broad terrace above the range of seats ; in the midst of these stairs the head of a huge dragon faces the court, holding in its jaws a colossal human head. To the north of the court stood two magnificent temples, like the work of giants. The interior walls were covered with stucco, on which figures and scenes were painted; the horizontal arch was formed by overlapping stones. The outside was profusely ornamented with grotesques at every line." Further on Mr. Gordon describes a superb stairway. "In the centre, at the base, is a throne or pedestal rising to the fifth step and projecting eight feet in front. The design upon its face is rich in sculpture, made up in part of hand- some faces, masks, death-heads, and scrolls, disposed with perfect symmetry; but the ensemble is unintelligible. On the face of each step of the stairway is a row of hieroglyphics running the entire length. At intervals the centre is occu- ONCE UPON A TIME 33 pied by a human figure of noble appearance, arrayed in splendid attire, seated on the steps. On each side was a solid balustrade two feet thick, of curious and complicated design." Mr. Gordon found tombs in strange locations, "beneath the pavement of courtyards and under the floors of houses. They consist of small chambers of excellent masonry; in them one and sometimes two interments have been made. The bodies had been laid at full length on the floor ; the cere- ments had mouldered away and the skeletons were in a crumbling condition. One fact of surpassing interest came to light the custom of adorning the front teeth with gems inlaid with enamel, and by tilling. The stone used in the inlaying was a bright green jadeite. A circular cavity oiie- sixteenth of an inch in diameter was drilled in the enamel of two of the upper front teeth and inlaid with a disk of jadeite, cut to a perfect fit, and secured by a bright red cement. Each tomb also contained earthenware vessels of great beauty of form and workmanship, painted with figures or glazed. Some contained ashes, others beads, ear-orna- ments and other objects, usually of jadeite, skilfully polished and cut; and pearls and trinkets carved from shell, which m ust have been obtained by trade or journeys to the coast. There were also stone knives and flint spear-heads, hatchets and chisels." As to the date when Co-pan was an inhabited city, Mr. Gordon can offer no suggestion. It was in ruins, as to-day, at the time of the Spanish invasion four hundred years ago, and none of the natives could give any account of the people who had lived in it. Nor is there any tradition as to the means or cause of its destruction. Perhaps the occupants were the victims of some fierce war ; perhaps an earthquake overthrew their palaces and destroyed them. At present we can only say that it is "a nameless city with an unknown story.'* These extracts from a work later in date than Professor Fiske's "Discovery of America" show that the same facts 34 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA may be differently interpreted. If these ruins be those of barbarians, then barbarians are civilized enough for most practical purposes. Nevertheless, leaving Co-pan aside, it should be stated that the ruined city of Chichen-Itza, which has been supposed to be of about the same age as any of these mysterious places, is declared, in a document written in 1562 by a native of that time, to have been still inhabited when the Spaniards came to the country. Great importance is attached to this chronicle by the followers of Morgan and Bandelier ; but it is by no means certain that it can be de- pended upon. Collateral evidence is needed ; and meanwhile, the mystery is a mystery still. We now come round again to the question as to the true character of the Mounds which are scattered all over north- ern America. They have been industriously studied by many investigators, and several theories have been formed and aban- doned. At one time the builders were thought to have been highly civilized, and to have belonged to a race quite distinct from the red men. Their culture has been asserted to have been in advance of our own, and their empire to have ex- tended over the greater part of the continent. But, says Professor Fiske, with sturdy incredulity, "the sooner the student of history gets his head cleared of such rubbish, the better. As for the mounds, there are some which have been built by Indians since the arrival of white men in America, and which contain knives and trinkets of Euro- pean manufacture. There are many others which are much older, and in which the genuine remains sometimes indicate a culture like that of the Shawnees or Senecas, and some- times suggest something perhaps a little higher. With the progress of research the vast and vague notions of a distinct race of Mound-Builders became narrowed and defined. It began to seem probable that the builders of the more remark- able mounds were tribes of Indians who had advanced beyond the average level in horticulture, and consequently in density of population, and perhaps in priestly and political organiza- tion. Such a conclusion seemed to be supported by the size ONCE UPON A TIME 35 of some of the ancient garden beds, often covering more than a hundred acres, filled with the low parallel ridges in which corn was planted. The mound people were thus supposed to be semi-civilized red men, like the Aztecs, and some of their elevated earthworks were explained as places for human sacri- fice, like the pyramids of Mexico and Central America. It was thought that the 'civilization' of the Cordilleran peo- ples might formerly have extended northward and eastward into the Mississippi Valley, and might after a while have been pushed back by powerful hordes of more barbarous invaders. A further reduction and modification of the theory likened the mound- builders to the pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Such was the opinion of Mr. Morgan, who offered a very ingenious explanation of the extensive earthworks at High Bank, in Ross County, Ohio, as the fortified site of a pueblo. Although there is no reason for supposing that the mound- builders practiced irrigation (which would not be required in the Mississippi Valley) or used adobe-brick, yet Mr. Morgan was inclined to admit them to his middle status of barbarism because of the copper hatchets and chisels found in some of the mounds, and because of the superiority in horticulture and the increased reliance on it. He suggested that a peo- ple somewhat like the Zunis might have migrated eastward and modified their building habits to suit the altered condi- tions of the Mississippi Valley, where they dwelt for several centuries, until at last, for some unknown reason, they re- tired to the Rocky Mountain region. It seems to me," says our Professor, "that an opinion just the reverse of Mr. Mor- gan's would be more easily defensible namely, that the an- cestors of the pueblo Indians were a people of building habits somewhat similar to the Mandans, and that their habits be- came modified in adaptation to a country which demanded careful irrigation and supplied adobe clay in abundance. If ever they built any of the mounds in the Mississippi Valley, I should be disposed to place their mound-building period before the pueblo period. Recent researches, however, make it more and more improbable that the mound-builders were 36 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA nearly akin to such people as the Zunis or similar to them in grade of culture. Of late years the exploration of the mounds has been carried on with increasing diligence. . . . The net results of all this investigation have been concisely summed up by Dr. Cyrus Thomas. The mounds were not all built by one people, but by different tribes as clearly dis- tinguishable from one another as Algonquins are distinguish- able from Iroquois. These mound-building tribes were not superior in culture to the Iroquois and many of the Algon- quins as first seen by white men. They are not to be classi- fied with the Zunis, still less with the Mexicans or Mayas, in point of culture, but with Shawnees and Cherokees. The Cherokees were probably the builders of the mounds of east- ern Tennessee and western North Carolina. They retained their mound-building habits some time after the white men came upon the scene. On the other hand, the mounds and box-shaped stone graves of Kentucky, Tennessee and north- ern Georgia were probably the work of Shawnees, and the stone graves in the Delaware Valley are to be ascribed to the Lenape. ... If this view, which is steadily gaining ground, be correct, our imaginary race of 'Mound-Builders' is broken up and vanishes, and henceforth we may content ourselves with speaking of the authors of the ancient earth- works as 'Indians.' There were times in the career of sun- dry Indian tribes when circumstances induced them to erect mounds as sites for communal houses or council houses, medi- cine lodges or burial places ; somewhat as there was a period in the history of our own forefathers in England when cir- cumstances led them to build moated castles with draw- bridges and portcullis; and there is no more occasion for assuming a mysterious race of 'Mound-Builders' in America than for assuming a mysterious race of 'Castle-Builders' in England." Thus delivers himself the scornful and even vehement Professor. But we may observe that historians, and men of science generally, are apt to be vehement and scornful just in proportion as they find themselves on an insecure ONCE UPON A TIME 37 footing. "We have just as much right to reject the Pro- fessor's conclusions as to accept them. He does not get above inference and conjecture. And when he likens the communal-house period of his Indians to the castle-building period of England, he gets manifestly off the track. He does not need to be told that the Indians are the most con- servative and unadaptable of beings, whereas a people in the first stages of civilization are just the reverse. Nothing is less probable, on the face of it, than that the builders of the mounds ever ceased building them, so long as they them- selves continued to exist. And if they have disappeared, who were they, and what caused their disappearance? The question is still unanswered. "We have still to investigate the prehistoric conditions in Peru and other parts of South America; but before doing this, we will take a survey of the situation in the Old World which led up to the discovery of the New ; and then follow the Spaniards from Central America southward. We emerge, consequently, from the epoch of "Once upon a time," and come into the definite light of accepted history. 38 II THE UNSUSPECTING EAST BETWEEN the western coasts of Europe and the east- ern shores of America intervene but some two or three thousand miles at most of salt water; and toward the north the approach is much closer. The leap across Bering Straits on the other side of the American con- tinent is to be spanned in a day's boating. The sea is an easy path ; do but spread a sail and fix a rudder, and go ahead : you cannot help arriving ere long. Such being the case, how was it possible that Europe could avoid discover- ing America in the course of the thousands of years of re- corded history? How could those millions of busy and active men on one side of the globe remain for so many ages unsus- picious of the existence of men and broad lands on the other side of it? The thing seems incredible. But facts are facts; and this fact is not without its rea- sons. One of the main difficulties in the way of our compre- hension of what we call ancient history, is that of bearing in mind the extent of ancient ignorance of certain things, which, to us, are matters of such familiar knowledge that they seem next to axiomatic. We move so easily nowadays; the means of universal intercommunication are so well perfected; our information on all subjects connected with the earth we live on is so comprehensive and accurate; our books of history and geography are so innumerable, and our acquaintance with their contents is so early made, that we scarce can conceive of a time when none of these circumstances existed. Such a time there was, however, and compared with the his- torical period of human history to say nothing of the actual sojourn of our race on this planet it is a time only little re- moved from us. Five hundred years ago the mind of Europe ONCE UPON A TIME 39 was a total blank regarding many if not most of the things which our children now learn in their primary schools. What was the shape of the earth, and what its motions? Tell us what you know about the nature, orbits, distances and effects of the sun and moon, and other bodies in our solar system. What is meant by the term gravitation? Is there anything on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean? How far east does Asia extend? How far south can you sail along the west coast of Africa? How far north may you penetrate beyond Norway? Assuming the earth to be a sphere (which is probably absurd) and that people live on the other side of it, how can they remain attached to its surface with their feet above them and their heads pointing downward? and how could a mariner, even were he to succeed in sailing down the awful declivity of the globe's side, hope to succeed in climbing his way up again? What do you know about the bottomless abysses into which the ocean is credibly believed to discharge itself beyond the horizon? These, and a vast number of similar questions, might have been asked of men reputed wise in the fifteenth century, without eliciting replies which contemporary school children could hear without un- seemly laughter. One of the best informed of these wise men, Claudius Ptolemy by name, thought he knew as much as would ever be known about the earth, and in support of his claim made a map of it (about 150 A.D.) which was the stan- dard of geographical knowledge, or surmise, until the time of Columbus, thirteen hundred years later. Ptolemy plotted down a very respectable plan of Europe, the northern parts of Africa, with the Red Sea and Arabia, and by dint of combining vague reports with a creative imagination, he sketched out a not entirely discreditable portrait of Russia and Asia, even beyond the Ganges. He, however, boldly amputated the great peninsula of India, which has since then given England so much trouble and renown, and enor- mously exaggerated the size and importance of the island of Ceylon. His efforts to realize China, which was described in doubtful legends as Sinae and as Seres (the former title 40 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA being supposed to refer to the Tchin dynasty, which at Ptolemy's period governed China), were not very success- ful; all that was really known of it was that silks came from there. But Ptolemy did have the credit of regarding the earth as spherical ; a view which was not indorsed by his geographical successor, four or five hundred years after- ward, the monk Cosmas. Cosmas held that the earth was a rectangle, its four sides being enclosed by blue walls, sup- porting a domed roof in or above which li ved the Creator and his angels. The parts of the earth which were inhabited lay in the central parts of the level floor, with the ocean flowing round them, and separating the sons of sinful Adam from that Paradise whence the latter had been banished for his sins. Cosmas, not to be lacking in astronomical furnishings, erected a tall mountain toward the north, round which he made the sun and stars revolve. All this science he pro- fessed to derive from intelligent study of the Holy Script- ures; and since the monkish and priestly class ruled the mind of Europe during the mediaeval centuries, it was but natural that Cosmas's cosmos was currently accepted as the correct thing for many generations after the worthy sage had had opportunity to correct his errors by personal investi- gation. But in spite of his flat-earth theory, Cosmas did increase human knowledge as to several of the details of the terrestrial floor; he improved the position of China, and called it Chinistan, and spoke of the "Brachmans" of India. But in the seventh century, the Saracens had their day, and interposed a barrier between the extreme east and Europe which brought Chinese exploration to a sudden end. All trade with the Orient was passed through their hands, and up to the tenth century Europe was hemmed in strictly, except in the direction of Constantinople, where the great commercial empire of the Byzantines had its seat. North- ern trade routes remained open through this magnificent city, which, in the twelfth century, was the headquarters of civilization and of Christendom. It was not until the Turks, a savage tribe which had been converted to Moham- THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 41 medanism, came swarming down upon the scene, that this gorgeous empire fell. Meanwhile, geography made no advances. Being shut off to the eastward, whither could it go? Not southward; for no one seriously believed that Africa was circumnaviga- ble; and though ships had coasted along its western shores for some hundreds of miles, the existence of the Cape of Good Hope was not suspected. There was no third alterna- tive ; for who could imagine that the East might be reached by sailing west? Only stupendous gulfs, whirlpools, dark- ness and chimeras dire were to be looked for in that direc- tion. The Mare Tenebrosum, as the Atlantic was called, was a stormy and forbidding barrier, holding out no prom- ises; and Europe, ardently desiring to reach the Orient, stood facing it with arms vainly outstretched, and "with her back to the west," as a modern writer has put it, until Columbus made his seemingly ridiculous guess, and got back- ing to test its accuracy. And yet, there is little doubt that America was discov- ered long before Columbus; only, it was discovered without knowing it, and involuntarily. There were stories to the effect that the Chinese stumbled upon its western coasts, in the persons of certain Buddhist priests who crossed via Kamchatka; or perhaps Chinese junks strayed to California without knowing what they were doing : These tales belong to the fifth century. Later, we hear of -Irish missionaries venturing to Iceland, and even further, also in complete ignorance of the significance of their exploit; for such lands as they may have happened upon were not regarded by them as a new western continent, but merely as extreme northern islands lying off the western coasts of Europe. Finally, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Norsemen, who had settled Iceland, sailed or drifted to lands further west which they called Vinland, because they found the vine growing there; they built a sort of town on Greenland, and seem to have explored as far south as Massachusetts. But all was of no avail ; nobody heard of the adventure till long after- 42 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA ward, and the Norseman's hold upon the new country was not confirmed. The Greenland town was presently aban- doned, and the Vinland adventure was forgotten. In no just sense of the term was America discovered. In fact, Columbus himself did not discover it, except as one might say that a traveller, walking toward a distant light through a dark night, discovers the fence over which he inadvert- ently breaks his shins. He died in the conviction that either America was Cathay, or else a string of outlying islands along the Cathay coast. "With the pre-Columbian voyages, at all events, we have nothing to do; if they touched the continent at all, it was far above the latitude of what is known as Spanish America. Their chief significance is to show how blind men can be un- til the tune arrives for their eyes to be opened. A jewel of inestimable value is thrust into their very hands ; but they are looking tor or thinking of something else, and they let it drop. Our chief excuse for referring to the Norse exploits here is, that a party of them seems to have penetrated south to a place which it is not impossible to conceive may have been Mexico. They did not stay there; most of the party were killed, and the stories of those who got back were gen- erally discredited. They passed into oblivion, until the dis- coveries of much later times caused them to be remembered and overhauled. It is all shadowy; what degree of reality there may have been behind the shadow we shall never know. The adventures of the Venetian, Zeno, in the first years of the fifteenth century, indicate that he too landed on Greenland ; but his story was laid away in the rubbish of a Venetian attic for over a century, and was only rescued thence by a descendant of his after Columbus had made his voyage. It was in a dilapidated condition ; and the pious grandson's attempts to restore the missing portions resulted in creating much confusion as to what the elder Zeno act- ually did accomplish. His "map" is better calculated to darken counsel than to enlighten it. But even had the geographical knowledge of the pre- THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 43 Columbian times sufficed to apprise Europe of what lay beyond the Atlantic, she was too busy with matters near home to pay any heed to the fact. Europe did desire more of the Orient during the Dark Ages; but she would have had no use for America, had that country been introduced to her. Europe, in those days, was a scene of apparently hopeless confusion. The belief was general that the end of the world, as foretold in the prophetical writings of the Bible, was at hand. It was all Europe could do to hold her own against Saracens and other wild barbarian hordes ; she had no stomach for colonizing. She had no ships to voyage withal, and no intellectual curiosity such as might result in the undertaking of exploration. Asia, which had always been regarded as hostile to the west, had been over- run to some extent by Alexander ; but since then it had been constantly threatening to return the compliment. When, at last, the Moors fastened the grip on Spain, and held the Mediterranean in awe, the outlook was dark indeed. Never- theless, trade never entirely ceased between Europe and the East. And as the twelfth century approached, the grand conception of the Crusades was developed by the Pope of Rome ; and their effect was in all respects bracing and bene- ficial. They compelled the eastern hordes to halt in their advance for two hundred years ; but the destruction of Con- stantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusaders was an inex- cusable playing into the enemy's hands. Then Venice and Genoa arose, and their Oriental trade made them wealthy and powerful. This prosperity was felt throughout Europe, and there was a revival of learning and culture, which was stimulated rather than checked by the career of Jenghis Khan in the first quarter of the thirteenth century ; for the Mongolians invited commerce and intercourse, and opened China to the west to a degree hitherto unknown. Mission- aries and travellers visited the great Khan, and brought the news that the world did not end with Cathay, as Ptolemy had supposed; but that the latters "reedy and impenetrable swamps" were resolved into a navigable ocean. Here was 3 44 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA the first hint which could be of use to the coming Columbus ; if there was an ocean east of Cathay and west of Europe, why might not the two be one and the same? This infer- ence was not-, indeed, drawn at that time; but it was liable to be seized upon by some one when the right moment came. Philosophers plight canvass it in their studies; but it had to make the transit from philosophers to sailors; and that required tune. Meanwhile, Marco Polo was to make his journeys and recite his adventures. The foundation for these was laid in the middle of the thirteenth century, when the brothers Nocolo and Maffeo Polo, cultivated Venetians, wandered into the court of Kublai Khan and won his favor. They visited him again some years later, taking with them No- colo's son Marco. The latter entered the Khan's service, and made many journeys in lands hitherto unknown. The three Polos did not get home for four and twenty years, when they turned up in a ragged and unpromising condi- tion, to the outward view, and found themselves forgotten by their friends ; but after they had ripped open their rags and disclosed jewels of fabulous value, they became objects of profound interest and high honor, and lived in wealth and credit ever after. Marco had some naval adventures afterward, which resulted in his captivity; but he was set free, and occupied his leisure in writing his book, which has since then been much criticised by unbelievers, but has finally taken its place as a remarkably trustworthy narrative. The trouble with Marco was, that he knew and told too much ; the culture of Europe at his epoch was not large enough to accommodate his information. He was looked upon as a yarn-spinner, a successor of Scheherezade. It was where he most trusted to his imagination that he was most be- lieved; and the confirmation which he gave to the legends of "Prester John," the alleged great Christian potentate of the East, was one of his chief contemporary titles to fame. Other travellers followed him, and published their findings and theories; and Sir John Mandeville, whoever he may THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 45 have been, perpetrated his ingenious and amusing fraud upon the credulity of Europe. But in 1368 the Chinese overthrew the Mongolian dynasty, and with that came the end of western invasions of Cathay. Out of the mass of strange and conflicting testimony which the "open season" had begotten, one fact stood out clear that the eastern shores of Asia were accessible by sea. Japan also loomed upon the horizon, and other islands rich in spices and costly produce. And since the Chinese barred the overland route to these desirable places, Europe natu- rally was set to wondering whether a sea-going route might not be practicable. Between the wondering and the at- tempting there was a considerable interval; for the idea was too novel to be digested at once. But it was an age of unbridled license of imagination, and of desperate courage; the mere possibility of encountering perils never till now conceived of, was allurement enough to some persons; and in addition there were the fabulous rewards which success seemed to promise. Let us picture to ourselves our own state of mind, were an expedition fitting out to voyage to Mars, with a fighting chance of getting there. There is no stronger magnet to draw men than that of the Unknown. To do something to see something which has never before been done or seen who can resist that seduction? Even to- day, our young adventurers go forth to die on the ice fields of the North and South Poles, or in the mysterious heart of savage Africa, or the ghastly plateaux of Thibet and Chinese Tartary, and the world follows them with eyes of hope and curiosity. But the new Columbus will have problems more difficult than these to solve; as difficult, probably, relatively to our vastly superior facilities, as those which the Columbus of 1492 encountered with his caravels and his erroneous notions as to the true locality of the Indies. But the plan of sailing west could not be considered or proposed, until the more feasible scheme of attempting the circumnavigation of Africa should have been tried. The possibility of this had been asserted by some writers of the 46 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA old Greek and Roman times. The Atlantic and the Indian Oceans were surmised to be connected. But Ptolemy, writ- ing later, denied this, and he maintained that Africa ex- tended southward indefinitely. Herodotus had a story of some Phoenician ships which had in three years sailed down the Red Sea, and reappeared at the Pillars of Hercules of the Mediterranean. Herodotus himself disbelieved the yarn; but it seems now not unlikely that it was true. It did not recommend itself as plausible to the men of that age, and consequently produced little or no effect upon men's opin- ions or theories. On the other hand, there have been many accounts of early voyages down the west coast of Africa. Cadiz and Lisbon were founded more than a thousand years before Christ, and fishing excursions were pushed thence along the African shore. Hanno, the Carthaginian, about five hundred years before Christ, sailed as far south as Sierra Leone. One philosophical mariner by the name of Eudoxus picked up some fragments of a vessel on the east African coast, and noted down some words spoken there by the na- tives; and later, on the west coast, he heard similar words pronounced by the local tribes there. Hence he drew the inference that Africa was circumnavigable. This was less than a hundred years before our era. Whether he proved his theory by himself performing the voyage, is uncertain. A map of the world made at about this time shows Africa as an irregular triangle extending not further south than about the tenth degree of north latitude, and with a huge, sausage-shaped continent or overgrown island lying along below it, reaching from the western boundary of Africa to the extreme eastern promontory of Asia; to which purely imaginary region is given the name of Antichthone. The advantage of this map was, that it could do no harm, like that of Ptolemy, by making men believe that Asia could not be reached by water. The land of the Antichthones did not bar the way; it only prevented mariners from being blown into transcendental regions still further south. This huge, ambiguous Antichthone (Anti-Earth) made a deep THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 47 impression on thinkers and navigators, and they were com- ing upon traces of it in the most unlikely places ; now it was Ceylon, and anon, at the time of the Vespuccian voyages, it might be South America. The map was plastic, and accom- modated itself without remonstrance to the most irreconcila- ble notions. Meanwhile an apprehension prevailed in some quarters that the equator could not be passed without peril of being consumed by fire. One writer declared that the last safe point southward was just below the Tropic of Can- cer. Again, the idea that ships going too far south would be sailing down hill, and could never make their way up again, added to the dangers of the route. This theory as- sumed that the earth was a cone, standing on its base, which, in turn, might stand on anything one pleased; but, at all events, no prudent person would venture too far in that direction. Besides, the vessels of those days afforded no reasonable security to the sailor; they were crazy little cockleshells, in which one would be chary of crossing an inland sound to-day. They could not hold food enough for a prolonged voyage out of sight of land. And until the twelfth century after Christ, the compass was not known to European sailors; it was communicated to them from China, by way of Arabia. It was in the middle of the thirteenth century that Roger Bacon showed a visitor a needle suspended horizontally, which always pointed toward the north star, having been first rubbed against a certain black stone. But as this was thought to be black magic, sailors were shy of employing it, lest bad spirits lead them astray. But these prejudices had mostly been surmounted before the beginning of the fourteenth century; and some progress had also been made toward calculating latitude. Longitude was not so readily determined, and the device was employed of first sailing to the parallel of the place of destination, and then proceeding straight toward it by dead reckoning. But dead reckoning is of course an uncertain quantity, and great errors were often made. When, early in the fourteenth century, the time came 48 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA for a serious attempt to reach Asia by water, the man to attempt it appeared in the person of a prince of Portugal, by the name of Henry, surnamed the Navigator. He was the son of John I. of Portugal, was born in 1394, and flour- ished during the golden age of his country. After some youthful experience in fighting the Moors, during which he gathered some useful geographical data, which led him to think that he could get round Africa, enter the Indies in the rear of the Moslem, and not only bring therefrom treas- ures of earth to enrich his country, but also win to the Chris- tian fold the innumerable heathen who were now struggling in the darkness of paganism. For the proselytizing spirit was rampant in those days, and Europeans had persuaded themselves that the motive of Christianizing populations outside the realm of the Church would excuse any meth- ods which might be employed, to effect that object. "For Christ and Portugal," or "For Christ and Spain," were battle cries which stimulated adventurers quite as much (in some cases) as the prospect of gold. Spiritual pride and aggrandizement were potent factors in the history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; and men's consciences permitted wholesale slaughter of infidels, on the plea that it was better for them to die at once than to go on piling up iniquity by continuing to live unrepentant. A murderer was able to regard himself as an apostle, and if his operations were only sweeping enough, he might confidently look for- ward to being canonized by a grateful Church after his death. Prince Henry, who was really an enlightened and worthy man, was consequently full of energy and enthusi- asm in his project, and set to work forthwith to equip himself for the adventure. He retired from the splendors of the Lisbon court, and applied himself to grave studies in the retreat on the prom- ontory of Sagres, in the south of Portugal: a place which had been regarded by Classical writers as the limit in that direction of the habitable globe. He erected an astronomical observatory there, extended the hospitalities of the place to THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 49 all the wise men he knew, and there did he remain, faithful to his purpose, for the better part of his life ; sending forth thence expedition after expedition to search for the promised land. He had all the money he wanted ; and though, for a while, the world looked with some doubt upon his efforts, he finally began to show results which brought his critics round to the position of advocates. After rediscovering the Madeiras, he aimed at Cape Bajador, a stormy spot, which had hitherto baffled ex- plorers; but in 1435 Captain Gil Eannes succeeded in get- ting past it, and pushing a couple of hundred miles beyond. The Cape is a few degrees south of the Canaries, and its conquest still left a terrible extent of coast to be overcome ; but the mariners had the advantage of not knowing how large a job confronted them. Eannes's exploit was the rec- ord for some seven years; after which Antonio Gongalves went two hundred miles further, and brought back gold and slaves. Here, then, was the beginning of the modern slave- trade ; for Prince Henry was far from regarding the enslav- ing of benighted blacks as a crime; on the contrary, how could the cause of Christ be better advanced than by bring- ing these poor creatures into contact with Christian masters? And not only did Prince Henry take this view, but the Pope of Rome, and his successors, granted to the Prince all heathen lands discovered beyond Bajador Cape. In those generous times, people got the earth for little more than the asking, if giving it on the part of those who did not own it was any guarantee of possession. But Prince Henry de- serves all the credit that has been conceded to him. He sent out many able seamen, and they brought back good measure. Nevertheless, at the time of his death at a good age, in 1463, he had not succeeded in getting further than had the old Carthaginian Hanno centuries before. But the work had received an impetus which led to its prosecution long after the Prince had gone to his reward. The Congo was reached in 1484, and the Hottentots were discovered the year after. As they were far south of the equator, the 50 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA theory of a fiery zone was exploded. But it also proved that Africa was alarmingly large, and fears were entertained that it might, after all, turn out to have no end at all. And if this were so, either the Indies must be given up, or some third way of reaching them must be discovered. And what could this third way be, unless it were the route across the Atlantic? About 1471, news came to Portugal of a potentate far east of Benin, whose badge was a brazen cross. This, it was inferred, might be the famous Prester John, whom we last heard of from Marco Polo. Hereupon the king of Portugal sent out two expeditions in opposite directions, one west, the other east ; Covilham commanding the latter and Bartholomew Dias the former. Covilham, after visiting Hindustan, returned by way of Abyssinia or, rather, he stopped there, and never got any further, but dwelt there thirty years, and sent home news now and then concerning eastern Africa. Dias, meanwhile, actually passed the Cape of Good Hope without being aware of it ; but made land, at last, two hundred miles up the east coast, north of it. But at this stage of the enterprise he was obliged by the condi- tion of his crew to turn back; and there still remained a doubt whether Africa had really been sailed round or not. Be that as it may, geographical theories were overturned; and since, among Dias's men, there happened to be a brother of Christopher Columbus, Bartholomew by name, we see that the way was opened for the discoverer of America to develop his mighty scheme. Christopher, in fact, had already been trying to enlist support for this scheme ; and now his brother went to England to talk over Henry VII. into backing it. That monarch thought there might be something in it, but delayed about investing money on so debatable a contin- gency; and before he had made up his mind, events had taken the matter out of his hands, and given the glory and the empire not to England, but to Spain. Henry VII. had leisure for repentance. What a different place the New World would have been, had Englishmen been the first to THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 51 land in the West Indies! It has taken four centuries to finally oust Spain from the lands she cursed with her pres- ence; and yet many years must pass before her former colonies are made safe and agreeable for civilized occu- pation. Columbus is so inevitable a figure in any account of the Americas that it is impossible to avoid giving him a some- what formal introduction, as he steps on the stage. He has had biographers without end, nearly all of whom have also been eulogists ; for his misfortunes were for the most part confined to his own lifetime, before his biographies began. And yet the facts of his life, and the true lines of his char- acter have never, perhaps, been fully given; though the opinions concerning these points are not as diverse and ir- reconcilable as his actual portraits are, they are wide enough apart to afford us liberty to erect whatever type of figure best suits our private predilection. Among those who wrote of him with knowledge at first hand were his friend Las Casas, himself an admirable character; and his son Ferdi- nand, who was also a commendable and certainly a pious personage. Better authorities could not be asked; but the trouble is that they are chiefly concerned to describe their subject after he became famous; whereas we are anxious to learn what he was like previous to that period, and, as it were, unofficially. The figure of Columbus detaches itself from an obscure and doubtful background, at a period of life comparatively late; he advances with abruptness into the most dazzling light of history ; and then is eclipsed for- ever by shadows of mishap, neglect, and soon of death. Now, a man is hardly ever his natural self when he is the most con- spicuous person of his day ; and we are not satisfied that the Columbus who handed over a new Continent to the Spanish king and queen shows quite the same traits as he who had fought his way through the world during the previous forty or fifty years. At all events, we could see him more clearly in his greatness, had we been intimate with him in his ob- scurity. But we must make the best of what we can get. 52 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA "There is scarcely a date or a fact relating to Columbus be- fore 1492," remarks Professor Fiske, who shall be our guide through this wilderness, "but has been made the subject of hot dispute; and some pretty wholesale reconstructions of his biography have been attempted." Whether the discoverer was born in 1436 or ten years later is undetermined. All evidence is of an inferential character. The more plausible conclusion is for the earlier date. The place in which he was born was either Genoa itself, or some village within the boundaries of the Genoese Republic. His family followed the trade of weavers. His father, Domenico, had three other sons, younger than Christopher, and one daughter; Giovanni, the second son, died young; Bartholo- mew, the third, was associated with Christopher in his ca- reer. The latter and Christopher early removed to Portugal. All the family were poor, and the father died, at a great age, in debt, seven or eight years after his famous son's discovery of what was supposed to be "the Indies." Christopher's childhood is a closed book to investigators ; and the first we know of him is that he studied at the Uni- versity of Pavia, and, like Shakespeare, got some Latin. He also obtained some notions of geography, astronomy and draughtsmanship. He sailed and fought the Moors before his twenties, turning up in Genoa between whiles; and he acquired some repute as a good map-maker. He took part in one or more of Prince Henry's expeditions down the Afri- can coast; and in 1473 he married a pretty girl, above him in station, the daughter of Governor Perestrelo of Porto Santo. Columbus at this time was a young man of strik- ing aspect, tall, powerful and dignified, with hair prema- turely white, and sharp blue eyes. In fact, if we are to believe all we hear, he was a natural prince, to look at, "with that divine spark of religious enthusiasm which makes true genius." He and his wife went to live on the island of Porto Santo, which is three hundred miles oft the coast ; and there he may have found leisure to think over his dreams of discovery. THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 53 But about a year after his marriage, he sent an inquiry to the famous astronomer Toscanelli, asking his opinion as to the feasibility of getting to the Spice Islands by sea, and the astronomer, who was a genial and open-hearted as well as learned man, wrote him an answer, containing a copy of another letter which he had shortly before written to King Alfonso of Portugal on the same subject. In this letter he says: "I have formerly spoken of a shorter route to the places of Spices than you are pursuing by Guinea. Al- though I am well aware that this can be proved from the spherical shape of the earth, in order to make the point clearer I have decided to exhibit that route by means of a sailing chart, made by my own hands, upon which are laid down your coasts, and the islands from which you must be- gin to shape your course steadily westward, and the places at which you are bound to arrive, and how far from the pole or equator you ought to keep away ; and through how many miles you are to arrive at the places most fertile in spices and gems; and do not wonder at my calling west the parts where spices are, whereas they are commonly called east, because to persons persistently sailing westward, these parts will be found on the under side of the earth. I have drawn upon the map various places upon which you may come, in order that the navigators may be able to show the inhabitants that they have some knowledge of their country, which is surely a pleasant thing." Here follows a description of the places in question, derived from Marco Polo, and then the writer concludes, addressing Columbus, as follows: "From the city of Lisbon as far as the very great and splendid city of Quin- say" (Pekin) "are twenty-six spaces marked on the map, each of two hundred and fifty miles. This space is about a third part of the whole sphere. But from the island of Antilia, which you know, to the very splendid island of Cipango" (Japan) "there are ten spaces. So through the unknown parts of the route the stretches of sea are not great. Many things might have been stated more clearly, but one who duly considers what I have said will be able to work out the 54 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA rest for himself . Farewell, most esteemed one.** And the map is enclosed. Columbus replied again, drawing another letter from the ardent old gentleman, who now congratulated him on hav- ing undertaken the great enterprise, "fraught with honor as it must be, and inestimable gain, and most lofty fame among all Christian peoples. It will be a voyage to powerful king- doms, and to cities and provinces most wealthy and noble; it will also be advantageous to those kings and princes who are eager to have dealings and make alliances with the Chris- tians of other countries. For these and many other reasons I do not wonder that you, who are of great courage, and the whole Portuguese nation, which has always had men distin- guished in such enterprises, are now inflamed with a desire to execute the said voyage." Poor old Toscanelli would have had to wait eighteen years to see his hopes verified, even to the extent and in the man- ner they were ; but, as a matter of fact, he died eight years before Columbus's voyage. The question of interest is, did he, or did Columbus, first conceive the grand idea of sailing westward to the East? "We may suppose that Columbus sug- gested it to Alfonso, and that the latter, knowing of Tosca- nelli's eminence in science, had written asking him his views upon it ; or we may suppose that the astronomer himself origi- nated it. The reasonable probability is that Toscanelli de- serves the credit, and the lustre with which we are anxious to invest Columbus must be in so far dimmed. Be that as it may, he cannot be deprived of the honor of having per- sonally put the idea to the proof. Aristotle had said in the early ages that "those who connect the region in the neigh- borhood of the Pillars of Hercules with that toward India, and assert that in this way the sea is one, do not assert things very improbable." Aristotle, then, might have discovered America ; but he did not do so. Seneca, too, prophesied that Ocean would loose the bonds by which we have been confined, when an immense land shall be revealed, and Thule will no longer be most remote of countries. And many similar hints THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 55 are to be found in the writings of antiquity; but still Colum- bus was the one man who finally did what the others had so long been talking about. But the distance from Lisbon to Cathay is some twelve or thirteen thousand miles, including the trip across the Isth- mus of Panama ; and had Columbus suspected this fact, he would never have embarked upon the voyage, for no ships then built could have accomplished it. But he was encour- aged by several valuable pieces of ignorance. In the first place, he supposed the circumference of the globe to be about twenty thousand miles ; and then he calculated that Asia ex- tended east some thousands of miles further than is really the case. Upon the whole, he estimated that he would have little more than two thousand five hundred miles to go before reaching port; besides which, there was Toscanelli's island of Antilia (wholly imaginary) to serve as a half-way house on the route. By all parties concerned, the continent of America was quietly wiped off the planet; it had kept its secret well for a million years more or less ; and whether or not stray cast- aways had ever landed upon its shores, they had not known what they were doing; and the aboriginal Americans, un- like us, their modern representatives, had never evinced the slightest curiosity as to what might lie east or west of them, or had fitted out any expeditions to investigate. Certainly Columbus is not to be blamed for never having suspected the existence of that world which it is his title to fame to have discovered ; but there is undeniably something comic in the situation. The proverb says that the world knows nothing of its greatest men ; and it appears, likewise, that it was able to get along for many ages without knowing anything of what we must maintain to be its greatest country. And when, at last, it stretched out its hands in the dark, intend- ing to grasp its own back parts, the thing with which its fingers really came in contact, which it assumed to be this portion of itself, ultimately turned out to be a perfect stranger, to whom nobody had been introduced. Wars prevented anything being done in Columbus's line 56 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA between 1474 and 1480. He wrote a book, which has been lost, and made several voyages, the details of which are lacking. But he seems to have visited England, and per- haps Iceland. If he went to Iceland, why did he not learn there that America had been found four centuries before? As has already been intimated, he might have heard about Greenland and Vinland, and yet have inferred nothing as to the existence of a continent over yonder, or have reasoned that the outlying places in question had any connection with his "Indies." Moreover, if he had so inferred or reasoned, of course he would have made this his staple argument when urging the kings of Europe to fit him out for the voyage. As to the objection that he might have wanted to keep the credit of discovering America for himself, it falls to the ground when we remember that he never was aware from first to last that there was any America to be discovered. So far from wish- ing to conceal the legend of Vinland, Columbus would have given nearly anything to have had it at his command. The argumentum ad Vinland would have outweighed, in the minds of dubious kings with money in their pockets, all the ingenious theories extant. And that he did not use that argument is nearly proof positive that he did not have it to use. And that the Scandinavians themselves failed to con- nect the discoveries of Columbus with their own antiquated exploits is sufficiently established by the fact that, from be- ginning to end, they never made any such claim. No: Columbus owed nothing to the Norsemen. There was the need of a route shorter than that round Africa, and more practicable than the overland one; and, as usually happens, with the need came the man to fulfil it. But even then the junto of cosmographers rejected the scheme as visionary, and though the king of Portugal had a hankering to try conclusions with the vision, material ob- stacles intervened and held him back. Besides, Columbus demanded great rewards; not only a good fitting-out, but all manner of contingent recompense in the way of domin- ions and governorships. King John, one regrets to record, THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 57 tried to betray his ambitious suitor by secretly sending a little ship of his own to try the experiment; but the sailors were appalled by the sight of the boundless Atlantic, and turned back without having tempted its waves. Columbus, upon hearing of this trick, took offence, and departed to Cas- tile, to try the scheme on Ferdinand and Isabella, and perhaps on the rulers of Genoa likewise. But he met with nothing but ridicule he had by this time deserted his wife and chil- dren, and the former had died and up to 1487 all went con- trary with him. To console himself he "made a connection" with a Spanish lady of noble birth, and had a son by her, the same Ferdinand who was later his biographer. Meeting Bar- tholomew on the latter's return from his Cape of Good Hope voyage, he joined him in trying to interest England and France in his project; but -in 1489 he was in Cordova, with nothing accomplished. By this time, Isabella was begin- ning to take some interest in the matter; but the siege of Granada, in 1491, again deferred Columbus's hopes. He was wellnigh in despair, not foreseeing how close he was to the fruition of his hopes. Setting out for Huelva, he stQpped by the way at the monastery of La Rabida near Palos. Here a conversation sprung up between himself and the prior, and the cosmog- rapher Garcia Fernandez, and the mariner Pinzon. Pinzon was captivated, and wanted to go on the voyage himself. The prior wrote to Isabella, who summoned him to Granada, whence he returned with about two thousand dollars, which Columbus expended on new clothes, and started for the camp. The issue of his conference there with the queen was a prom- ise on her part to take up the matter as soon as Granada had surrendered. This event took place in the following Janu- ary ; but now once more he nearly wrecked his chances by insisting upon what the queen regarded as extravagant emol- uments. The man, in fact, had become a sort of semi-relig- ious fanatic ; nothing could be done with him ; it was take or leave. Negotiations were broken off and Columbus set out once more for France ; but before he had gone six miles 58 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA the queen relented, sent a messenger after him, and an agree- ment was at last drawn up in accordance with his ideas. It was signed on April 17, 1492, and Columbus, who already had ulterior views, vowed to devote all the proceeds of the adventure to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. Some difficulties were encountered in getting crews for the caravels; and it was necessary to pardon a number of malefactors, in order to fill out the quota; but at length the three ships the "Santa Maria," the "Pinta," and the "Nina" were made fit and ready, and with crews aggre- gating ninety all told, they set sail from Palos on the 3d of August, 1492. They stood for the Canaries. Columbus sailed with Toscanelli's map before him, and his objective point was Cipango, which we now call Japan. Had he been in a dirigible balloon, he might have had some chance of reaching it. Having got on the twenty-eighth parallel, he meant to sail straight ahead until he sighted the island. But at this early stage the "Pinta's" rudder was in difficulties, and there was a volcanic eruption on Teneriff e ; and it was plain that the crews of the caravels had no heart for their job. But Colunibus, being at last embarked upon the adventure to which he had been for twenty years look- jig forward, was resolved to carry it through at all hazards ; and he began a systematic course of lying about the distance run each day, in order to persuade his men that it was only a little excursion after all. The Sargasso Sea was a new source of misgiving ; but after a few days- they had safely left this in their wake. The next trouble was furnished by the trade winds; if they always blew in this one direction, now were the ships ever to get back again? Then there were mirages, and the sailors made sure that they were in a region of enchantments. By October 4th, mutiny was not far off. They had already overrun the distance on which the admiral had been calculating; but he had understated it five hun- dred miles, so they had, apparently, still something in hand. Flights of birds led him to believe that land was southwest of his course, which he accordingly altered a few points, and THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 59 thus missed Florida, and finally on October 12th hit the island which is generallysupposed to have been Watkins'. The great voyage had lasted ten weeks. It was two in the morning. With dawn, boats were low- ered and they rowed ashore. The scenery was beautiful, especially to men who had given themselves up for lost ; and the crews were transported with joy and glorious anticipa- tions, while the native savages, crowding down to the beach, were quite as much excited at the aspect of their strange visitors. Supernatural beings they made sure they must be, and acted accordingly; but presently gained assurance enough to enter into conversation with them in the universal sign language. The natives wore gold ornaments, and it was not long before Columbus was asking them whence they obtained this metal ; upon which they pointed to the south. Columbus inferred that Cipango must be in that direction, and close at hand. During the next ten days he cruised about the archipelago, and was persuaded that he was among the spice islands west of Cathay. On the 25th of October he steered for Cipango, meaning to get information there, and then keep on to Cathay, exchange compliments with the Great Khan, and so home again in triumph. And all the while Cathay was ten thousand miles due west. Ere long he stumbled upon Cuba, which he of course assumed to be Cipango; but though he found pearl-shells there, and pretty villages, cities there were none, and such information as he was able to elicit seemed to indicate that the king of the country was at war with the Khan, and that it was a part of the mainland of Asia. If this were so, where was Cipango? He kept along the coast toward the south, and, on reaching Cape Maisi, took it to be the end of Asia. Sailing across the strait to Haiti, which he named Hispaniola, he was again directed south to a land of gold which the natives named Cibao; and this, surely, must be the fugitive Cipango caught at last. But ere this Pinzon had deserted, to sneak away to Spain to anticipate the com- mander's glory; and now the flagship struck a sand-spit and 60 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA was knocked to pieces by the surf. He was left, therefore, with the "Nina" only, an open boat of about the size of a man-of-war's gig. How was he to get home? The problem was solved by the desire of forty of the mariners to stay where they were, in the soft climate, and among the still softer natives; so a block-house was built for them out of the wreck of the flagship, and the rest set out on the "Nina" for home. On the way they picked up Pinzon, who had delayed to do a little trading, and had sprung his foremast. His excuses were somewhat awkward; but in the circum- stances they had to serve. Columbus, opposed by the trade winds, ran north about twenty degrees, and then squared off for Spain ; he was nearly destroyed in a gale, and was driven to one of the Azores, from which he narrowly es- caped, only to be hurried by another tempest into the port of Lisbon. The news of his exploit set all Portugal afire ; and the king was urged to have Columbus run through the body, and to appropriate his discovery. But John II. per- ceived that there was more peril than profit in such a scheme ; and he invited him to court and made much of him. In due time he resumed his voyage, and reached Palos on the loth of March. This was Columbus's apogee; everything came his way. He was called to Barcelona and welcomed with triumph. He was even allowed to sit down in the august presence of Fer- dinand and Isabella. He had brought half a dozen Caribs with him; they were assumed to be "Indians," and the Ad- miral's interpretation of his discoveries was accepted without question. The little detail that nothing of Oriental magnifi- cence no Great Khans and mighty cities had as yet been revealed, was passed over ; they would turn up upon further investigation. Land had been found; and it could be noth- ing but Cipango and Cathay, and the demesnes that there adjacent lie, for the simple reason that it could be nothing else; there was nothing else for it to be. The short route to the Indies had been discovered for Spain. On September 25, 1493, Columbus set out on his second THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 61 voyage, with seventeen ships and fifteen hundred men ; for there was no lack of volunteers and money this time. "Their dreams were of the marble palaces of Quinsay, of isles of spices, and the treasures of Prester John. The sovereigns wept for joy as they thought that such untold riches were vouchsafed them by special decree of Providence, as a re- ward for having overcome the Moor at Granada and ban- ished the Jews from Spain. Columbus shared these views and regarded himself as a special instrument for executing the Divine decrees. He renewed his vow to rescue the Holy Sepulchre, promising within seven years to equip at his own expense a crusading army of fifty thousand foot and four thousand horse ; within five years thereafter he would follow this with a second army of like dimensions. Thus nobody had the faintest suspicion of what had been done. The grandeur of the achievement was quite beyond the ken of the generation that witnessed it. For we have since come to learn that in 1492 the contact between the eastern and western halves of our planet was first really begun, and the two streams of life which had flowed on for countless ages apart were thenceforth to mingle together. The first voy- age of Columbus was thus a unique event in the history of mankind. Nothing like it was ever done before, and noth- ing like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for future Columbuses to conquer. The era of which this great Italian was the most illustrious representative had closed forever." Thus declaims the eloquent Professor Fiske. How sur- prised the great Oriental potentates would have been had they been informed that their dominions were thus threat- ened, and that out of Caribs and cocoanuts an army of a hundred thousand men was to be raised to snatch away the Holy Sepulchre from them! How dumfounded Columbus would have been, could he have known that he was never destined to come within ten thousand miles of the domains which he fancied himself to have annexed to Spain ! How foolish all these good folks look in the light of Nineteenth 62 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Century knowledge : and how natural it all is ! How blind a tool is man in the hands of the Almighty, and how self- complacent ! The absolute lack of suspicion that a new world, or any- thing new, had been found by Columbus except the new way of reaching what were assumed to be old places must be borne in mind while reading the sequel. America was discovered, not in 1492, but by degrees during the next cent- ury or so. Columbus made four voyages thither in all, and then died, without any misgivings on the subject. The world in general, so far as it was heard from, shared his views; indeed, only the inhabitants of Cipango and Cathay could have called them in question. A fierce rivalry be- tween Spain and Portugal sprang up, and the pope was asked to confirm the discoveries to the former. On May 3, 1493, this pontiff (Alexander VI.) issued a bull giving to Spain all lands then or thereafter to be discovered in the western sea ; and he followed this by a second decree, to the effect that all lands to the west of a meridian one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands should belong to the Spaniards. The Portuguese were left free to pursue their researches by way of Africa. The Portuguese wished to have the Line of Demarcation further west, and finally Spain agreed to advance it three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This change gave (as afterward appeared) the coast of Brazil to the Portu- guese, and had important bearing on the subsequent fame of Amerigo Vespucci. Meanwhile a Spanish department of Indian affairs was created, with Fonseca at the head of it; and he remained dictator for thirty years, much to the injury of all that was desirable and of good repute in the new dominions. He was such an arbitrary and merciless scoundrel as only Spain can produce; he was of the type familiar to our day in the per- son of General Weyler. He was also an archdeacon, and was exalted to be a bishop. Under him began the famous colonial policy which has enabled Spain to confer more THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 63 misery on the human race than any other nation, and has finally resulted in her overthrow and disgrace by a war beginning in the very spot which saw the first crimes of her career. A Franciscan monk, Bernardino Boyle, was appointed superintendent of the missionary work, which was to con- sist chiefly in baptizing or burning the natives, as conven- ience might require. In the course of the preparations, Columbus and Fonseca quarrelled, and Columbus was backed by the sovereigns, which insured the enmity of the bishop during the remainder of the admiral's career. On the new expedition sailed many aristocratic young men of Spain, and also Columbus's own younger brother Diego, and Ponce de Leon, afterward of Florida. Las Casas likewise embarked, and the pilot La Cosa, a skilled mariner and chart-maker. The trip was easy and they arrived out on November 3d. They cruised about for a while, finding new islands, and cannibals, who slew some of them with poisoned arrows. At length Columbus sailed into the harbor on the Haitian coast where he had left his little colony; but they had all been killed and the fort torn to pieces. The occasion of the massacre had been the outrageous conduct of the Spaniards toward the native women. A new settlement, called Isa- bella, was founded; gold was found in the neighborhood, and twelve ships were sent back to Spain for more men and supplies. A march of exploration was undertaken, and the natives were frightened almost to death by the horses which the explorers bestrode, which they supposed to be part and parcel of the riders. After studying the habits of the tribes, which did not well agree with what he had been led to ex- pect of Asiatics, Columbus left affairs in charge of one of his subordinates, Margarita (another scoundrel), and of Diego, and went on a further cruise of discovery with three caravels. Sighting Cape Maisi once more he kept to the south, and skirted the coast of Cuba in a westerly direction. But ere- long, influenced by the natives, he bore away to the south, 64 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and stumbled upon Jamaica. Here he was fiercely attacked, but put tbe natives to flight with a bloodhound. He returned to the Cuban coast, which he still imagined to be that of Cathay, and was confirmed in this belief by several acci- dental topographical features, and by the ill-comprehended tales of the Indians. Columbus finally arrived at the con- clusion that he was not very far from the mouths of the Ganges; and he projected a voyage across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope, thus circumnavigating the earth. It is conceivable that he might have coasted round South America, and come up along the shores of Peru, looking for the Pillars of Hercules ! But this crowning ab- surdity was spared him. He did not continue to the end of Cuba and beyond, which might have brought him to Yucatan and the splendid cities of Uxmal and Campeche; and the condition of his ships did not permit of his attempt- ing the longer voyage. He returned for the time to His- paniola. There, after having taken a vote from all hands, confirming the claim that the land they had found was Asia, and that one might walk on it dry-shod to Spain, he set out on another exploring trip, and, without knowing it, circum- navigated Hispaniola (Haiti), which he had supposed to be Cipango. The trip made it plain that Cipango it was not ; and Columbus fell into a swoon, the result of his fatigue and mystification. "What was the matter with geography? It might have made a stronger head than that of Columbus swim, to try to identify west with east. At this juncture, Bartholomew Columbus appeared at the admiral's bedside, in good season ; for the island was going to the dogs. Diego had been unable to keep the rapacious and dissolute dons in order. Boyle and Margarita were among the worst offenders. They finally seized some of the ships, returned to Spain, and denounced the brothers Colum- bus ; and when they got the ear of the arch-scoundrel, Fon- seca, there was trouble ahead. There was no real ground for complaint. The Columbuses were none too strict in their government of the mutinous colony, and hanged only a few THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 05 of them; but they were perhaps indiscreet in their plan of levying tribute from the natives, thereby driving them into open war, and paving the way for the slavery which later exterminated the native tribes. The situation was one of extreme difficulty. At last Spain sent over an official to investigate the reports ; and the complaints which he received on all sides influenced him against Columbus, who, when the emissary returned to Spain, thought it prudent to go with him. Just before starting, gold was found near the present town of San Domingo, and the headquarters were removed to that place ; while Columbus became convinced that he had found, if not Cipango, at any rate Solomon's long-lost Ophir. We do not yet know precisely where Ophir is ; but we are not ready to admit that Solomon can have brought his treas- ures all the way from the West Indies to Jerusalem. Columbus had a bad voyage to Spain, and arrived in poor condition. But he was well received, and promised ships for a third voyage. The sovereigns, however, were violating their contract with him, in allowing private adventurers to fit out expeditions to the Indies. After much delay, owing to the machinations of Fonseca, Columbus sailed for the third time on the 30th of May, 1498, with six vessels. He divided this fleet into two parts, sending one division to His- paniola, while with the other he steered a southerly course, which brought him near the equator, where he hoped to find the mother-lode of the gold which was the object of his special ambition. He got into the calm-belt just north of the equator, and all the horrors described by "The Ancient Mariner" were around him. Luckily, he was in the equa- torial current, which presently carried him into the trade wind, before which he finished his voyage at the island which he named Trinidad, just off the delta of the Orinoco. The volume of fresh water discharging thence admonished him that he must be in presence of a continent; and how to make this continent fit into Toscanelli's map was more than the much-bewildered Columbus could imagine. He finally hit upon the notion that the world was shaped like 60 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA a pear; that he was near the stem-end, and that the river poured down thence. And were he to ascend this stream, there was little doubt but that he would reach the Garden of Eden. Such was the imagination of the Fifteenth Century ! Revolving these discoveries, Columbus sailed along the Pearl Coast, mistaking everything he saw for something else. But finally, feeling ill, he bore away for Hispaniola, meaning to take a rest while his brother Bartholomew pur- sued his researches along the Pearl Coast. But during the two years of Cohimbus's absence, things had gone badly in the colony; civil war and war with the natives had brought all to ruin. The malcontents had com- municated with Fonseca, and the latter was sending out a judge to investigate. To add to Columbus's discomfiture, his exploit had been rivalled if not obscured by the great voyage of Vasco da Gama, who had doubled the Cape of Good Hope and reached the coast of Hindustan. Gama was a Portuguese ; and he had really seen the cities and the Isles of Spice which had so unaccountably escaped Columbus. This was a heavy blow both to the latter and to Spam ; and to make matters worse, Bobadilla, the judge from Fonseca, turned up in Hispaniola and at once proceeded to undo all the good work which the Columbuses had been doing in the way of suppressing the insurrection. Diego was put in jail ; and Christopher and Bartholomew were sent after him. Bobadilla's pretext for these enormities was, that he had proof that the three brothers were inciting the Indians to rebel against the Spanish king! And he sent them forth- with to Spain, with their chains upon them which Chris- topher would not permit to be removed. If this was the way Spanish viceroys were to be treated, he intended that the king and queen should have ocular proof of the fact. To Cadiz, therefore, the poor old man came, in his unmerited disgrace, and aroused an outburst of popular sympathy and indignation. The queen sent a courier to him, with a cor- dial invitation to the Alhambra, where she met him with tears and apologies. Bobadilla was disowned, and Colum- THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 67 bus was promised the return of his honors and repayment of his losses which last, however, the Spanish sovereigns characteristically omitted to perform. Ovando, another of Fonseca's creatures, and a priest, was sent to restore order in Hispaniola. He went out with thirty ships and two thousand "five hundred men. Columbus was flattered with the command of another voyage of discov- ery, as a reply to the recent exploit of Da Gama. By this time, Amerigo Vespucci had already made his trip along the South American northern coast as far as Maracaibo. Colum- bus was to return to the Cuban which he imagined to be the Cochin-China coast, in quest of a passage between the *'Eden" continent and Malacca. Thus would he come upon the coast of Hindustan which Da Gama had just left. Co- lumbus was full of hope, and renewed once more his threats against the heathen holders of the Holy Sepulchre; it is probable that his mind was somewhat impaired, and his insanity took the form of religious mysticism. His fleet comprised four caravels and one hundred and fifty men. Bartholomew and his son Ferdinand (the bastard) went with him. He put in at San Domingo in order to get a fresh ves- sel ; but was ordered out of the harbor by Ovando, who was just sending out a fleet of twenty-six ships laden with gold wrung from the natives, and carrying Bobadilla and others of Columbus's chief foes. In spite of the warning of an ap- proaching hurricane, given by Columbus, the fleet set sail, and very soon twenty of the ships were at the bottom of the Caribbean. Only one ship reached Spain ; but on that one, by a curious chance, was a sum of gold destined for Colum- bus himself. Meanwhile Columbus had ridden out the hurri- cane in safety, and now proceeded along the south of Cuba to Cape Honduras. Here he fancied himself to be close to the Ganges ; and was much inspirited by the evidences of semi-civ- ilization which he encountered. Running along the sixteenth parallel eastward, he finally turned Cape Gracias a Dios, and to his joy found the coast trending due south. Exploring par- ties sent ashore found stone houses, mummies, carvings, and A 68 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA gold in abundance. Columbus also got news, which he mis- understood of course, of the proximity of the Pacific Ocean ; he mistook the description of the "narrow place" between these two seas for a strait, instead of an isthmus. But the strait did not materialize, and presently his crews forced him to turn back. In spite of an allowance of many leagues, the westerly current pushed him so far that, instead of making Hispaniola, he brought up on the south coast of Cuba, where he was nearly wrecked; and it was June 23, 1503, when he at last got ashore on the north coast of Jamaica. He built a shelter of his wrecked vessel, and sent to Ovando for aid ; but was kept waiting for a whole year, during which he suffered much, both from mutinies and native onslaughts. It was not until June, 1504, that Ovando, yielding to pop- ular clamor, sent two ships to bring Columbus thence. Ovando had meanwhile perpetrated the most hideous out- rages in Hispaniola, as we shall presently see. On Novem- ber 7th, Columbus started for Spain; Isabella was on her death-bed when he arrived at Seville. She was his last pro- tector against his enemy Fonseca. He survived but eighteen months, in poverty and sickness. On the 20th of May, 1506, he died at Valladolid. He was buried, without notice or respect, in the Franciscan monastery there; was removed seven years later to Seville, and finally, in 1536, to San Domingo. The current belief is that the remains were after- ward taken to Havana; but the recent brazen act of Spain in claiming them has opened inquiries which make it doubt- ful if any one really knows where the body of Columbus is. He died neglected and dishonored ; and at the time of his death no one knew that it was a new world that he had found. No sailor or writer had surmised it. A new route to the Indies he was believed to have opened; but the voy- age of Da Gama had taken much of the bloom off this achievement in the popular mind. The unanswered ques- tion was, are his discoveries commercially valuable? If not, let him be anathema ! and not for years did their commercial value appear. Yet Columbus cannot be considered an un- THE UNSUSPECTING EAST 69 fortunate .man. Men are only happy in looking forward to success, not in achieving it; for they ever stand on what they have gained, and reach after more. This Genoese mariner came upward from nothing to the most conspicuous and honored position among his contemporaries; for a time he was almost on equal terms with the monarchs of Spain, and was allowed to quarter his arms with theirs. No further rewards that he might have won would have made him happier; and had he lived to learn that his plan of conquer- ing Jerusalem from the Infidel was apocryphal, he would have been overwhelmed with mortification. The trouble with him was that he had been only too fortunate, and that nothing he could have accomplished after his first great suc- cess could have stood on an equality with it. And although his end was unhappy, he has had a revival of honor since his death which surpasses the posthumous lot of most other men. The world insists upon being grateful to him, not for what he believed himself to have done, but for what he act- ually did. His immortality is secure; and his shortcomings and follies are forgotten in the splendor of his glory. 70 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA III TBB CABOT8, VESPUCIU8, AND MAGELLAN THE mariners of England probably heard something about the attempt of the Columbuses to induce the English king to furnish them with means to reach India by crossing the Atlantic; and there is reason to believe that expeditions were sent out from the port of Bristol, prior to Columbus's voyage, with a view of finding out what lay be- yond the western horizons. The supposed "Island of Brazil" was one of the places they looked for; but they met with no success. Among the promoters of these enterprises was one John Cabot, born, like Columbus, in Genoa, and admitted to citizenship in Venice. He married there and had three sons; was a merchant, trading with the East, and was curi- ous as to Oriental countries. In 1490 he moved to England and lived in Bristol ; he was much interested in the reports of Columbus's voyage, and in 1496 or 1497 Henry VII. issued letters patent to sail to, the east, west or north, with five ships carrying the English flag, to seek and discover all the islands, countries, regions, or provinces of pagans in whatever part of the world. It was to the Cabots that this permission was given ; and the remonstrances of Spain were met by omitting the southern direction from the instructions. Only one ship, the "Matthew," sailed, with a crew of eigh- teen; the start was in May, 1497, and on the 24th of June they discovered what was assumed to be "the territory of the Grand Cham. " A month later they were back in Bristol, and King Henry made them a present of ten pounds sterling. Various honors of less substantial nature were conferred upon John Cabot, and by degrees the story circulated that he had discovered the Island of Brazil and the Seven Cities. He made another voyage in 1498, and that is the last we THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 71 hear of the elder Cabot. But his son Sebastian entered the 23rvice of Ferdinand of Aragon about fifteen years later, received honors from that monarch, and between 1526 and 1530 was involved in an expedition to La Plata which turned out badly. In 1548 he was back in England, and was instru- mental in opening a trade with Russia by way of the White Sea. He died in London about 1557. During these sixty years following Columbus's first voyage, geography had been growing faster than the comprehension of its revela- tions; and in the confusion of discoveries mistakes were often made as to who should have the credit for them. One of the absurdities perpetrated by subsequent historians of these stirring times was, that John Cabot's voyage of 1498 had been undertaken with a view of finding a northwest passage to Asia; although it had not been suspected in 1498 that there was any America across or around which a pas- sage, northwest or otherwise, could be made. On the con- trary, the coast which Cabot found was supposed by him to be Asia itself. As a matter of fact, he probably discovered Newfoundland. In the first years of the sixteenth century, the brothers Cortereal made several voyages to Labrador, or places in that region, and raised question as to whether the Portuguese were not transcending the Papal Meridian already alluded to. A more serious cause of dispute might have arisen with England, which claimed these lands through the Cabots ; but Portugal was presently conquered by Spain, and was thereby disabled from pushing her side of the case. Neither the Cabots nor the Cortereals are in the first class of discoverers; they but adopted the initiative of Columbus. But there was a certain famous Florentine who holds a high part in this age of new things, and whose true merits as a discoverer and explorer are matter of legitimate interest to the world, and to Americans especially. His name was Amerigo Vespucci, or Americus Vespucius, according as we adopt the Italian or the Latin way of spell- ing. He came of an ancient and honorable family, which had been wealthy and remained respectable. Amerigo was 72 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA fairly well educated, and was fond of making Latin quota- tions an accomplishment less readily practiced then, than in these days of appendices to lexicons. But his favorite study, and one in which he achieved eminence, was practical astronomy ; no one could surpass him in fixing a latitude or longitude. Geography was also one of his hobbies; and it seems plain that his natural bent was toward travel and exploration. But in his early youth he was taken into the commercial establishment of the Medicis, and that came near being the end of him. He was not heard of, to any effect, until he had nearly reached his fortieth year : he was born in March, 1452, and was therefore at least six and prob- ably sixteen years Columbus's junior. He was agreeable in manner and conversation, keen witted, humorous, and self- contained. His face was dark and aquiline, and his body strong, and of middle height. Had the Medicis happened to retain this gentleman at "office- work," it is certain that the world would never have heard of him. Salaried positions are apt to be fatal to gen- ius. But they were engaged in widespread commercial dealings, and about 1490 they selected Amerigo to act as confidential agent for them in Spain. Amerigo took with him his nephew Juan, who subsequently also attained dis- tinction as a map-maker and navigator. "While hi Barce- lona, Amerigo took occasion to engage in some commercial ventures of his own ; in 1495 he contracted to furnish cargo for four or five ships for the Atlantic trade. He probably was acquainted with Columbus before this date, and the friendship between the two men was always cordial. Two letters of his, written between 1496 and 1504, to one of the Medicis, and to his friend Soderini, inform us as to his doings during that interval. The letters were published (as was the custom of the day) and were widely read ; but, owing to some mistakes in proof-reading and interpretation, have oc- casioned much trouble to historical investigators. Amerigo himself never bothered his head about them ; and he knew no more of the existence of "America" than did Columbus. THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 73 The letters were unstudied and informal communications of facts, and nothing more ; they were never meant as histori- cal documents, and lacked the completeness and explicitness which they would in the latter event have possessed. The Soderini letter tells about four voyages of the writer, two for Spain, and two for Portugal. In these voyages, Amerigo was not the commander, but the astronomer, or scientific navigator a necessary office in those days, though sometimes combined with that of commander. The first voyage took place from May 10, 1497, to October 15, 1498; a certain line of coast was explored which was thought, from its length, to be continental. A mistake in transcrib- ing or translating a name afterward led to this voyage being confounded with the second voyage, with the result of much darkening of counsel. The second voyage, with Ojeda and La Cosa, started May 20, 1499, and returned in June, 1500. It followed the north coast of Brazil as far as the Pearl Coast (visited the year before by Columbus) and then on to the Gulf of Maracaibo. The third voyage set out from Lisbon on May 14, 1501, under Portuguese auspices, and returned on September 15, 1502. On this occasion they ran down the Brazilian coast to latitude thirty-four degrees south, and then turned southeast and came upon the island of South Georgia. This voyage aroused -attention, for it was in a part of the world hitherto unknown, and the land it discov- ered was fitted into existing maps with more difficulty than the Indies of Columbus. A fourth voyage attempted to reach the. southern end of the South American coast line, but met with disasters, and returned in 1504. In the au- tumn of this year Amerigo returned to the Spanish service with the rank of captain and a good salary. Two more voy- ages he made, exploring the Gulf of Uraba ; then he married and settled down; being raised in 1508 to the rank of Pilot Major. He died 1512. Such are the leading incidents of Amerigo's career, in which, certainly, appears nothing discreditable or treacher- ous. Nevertheless, he has long suffered from posthumous 7* HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA reproach, which is based upon inferences drawn from his own letters above-mentioned or, to be more exact, from Latin translations of the Italian originals, which were lost. Lost, also, and probably destroyed, is the manuscript of a work which he had in hand, comprising a detailed and scien- tific account of the same voyages which he described conver- sationally and informally in the letters. But the Italian text of one of the most important letters to Soderini has lately been recovered ; and a perusal of that clears up much which had hitherto been obscure and which led to the charges of bad faith and treachery alluded to. The Latin version of the letter in question was published from a Lorraine press in 1507. The Italian original was found only in 1873. Comparing the two texts, we find that the name of an Indian place mentioned by the writer has been changed in the Latin to quite a different name. Why was this done? Apparently because the transcriber failed to make out the original name, and therefore substituted for it one which he thought better fitted the context. In the Ital- ian, the name is Lariab ; in the Latin, it has been changed to Farias. In making this alteration, the Latin transcriber had not been aware that in the language of the Huastecas names of places often end in ab. On the other hand, Farias was already known as the native name of a region on the western Atlantic coast, about two thousand miles distant from the Lariab referred to by Amerigo; and the conse- quence of the alteration was, of course, to shift the scene of this first voyage beyond recognition. To confirm the error, Vespucci had described a little village built on piles, like "a little Venice " in the Tabasco region; but there was also a village called Venezuela in the Gulf of Maracaibo ; and upon the assumption (wholly contrary to the facts) that there could be but one village built on piles after the fashion of a little Venice, the locality of the voyage was violently removed from the Gulf of Mexico, where he placed it by latitude and longitude, and carried to the northern coast of South America. Moreover, Amerigo did, in his second voy- THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 75 age, sail along the northern coast of South America, in 1499 : and Columbus had been in the same place the year previous. Thus did it happen long after the death of both the parties concerned that Amerigo was accused of having "faked" the story of his rst voyage, and made it a false duplicate of the second, for no other reason than that he might be credited with the discovery of a continent one year before his friend Columbus, who was there in 1498. The preposterousness of the charge becomes evident upon examination. In 1504, when the letter was written, neither Amerigo nor any one else suspected that a new continent had been discovered. He supposed that it was Asia which he was coasting ; and that he did visit this coast before Co- lumbus the dates prove. Again, when an inquiry was insti- tuted, in 1515, to determine just what lands Columbus had discovered, in order to settle what revenues his son Diego was entitled to, it was established at this inquiry, beyond doubt, that Amerigo neither made, nor professed to have made, any exploration of the Maracaibo coast prior to 1498. As a matter of fact and record, Amerigo, on his first voy- age, sailed for Cape Honduras, and round Yucatan, and found his "little Venice" on the Tabasco shore. This was in 1497. Thence he went by Tampico (which he understood to be called Lariab) to the Huasteca country ; and after some stay there, he continued north and west for eight hundred and seventy leagues, and refitted in a fine harbor, which may have been the Chesapeake. Sailing eastward there- from, he saw the Bermudas, and so returned home. The coast of Florida was visited by Spaniards before 1502, but the peninsula was confounded by geographers with the island of Cuba in many of their maps. This visit to Florida could only have been made by Amerigo, and, if before 1502, could only have been in 1497, the date he him- self assigns to it. The second voyage of Amerigo, as we have seen, was concerned with the Brazilian coast. He was followed, in 1499, by Pinzon, who discovered the mouth of the Amazon. 76 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA In the next year De Cabral, intending to go round Africa to Hindustan, was blown across the Atlantic and came unawares upon the Brazilian coast thus discovering America anew, and involuntarily. He took possession of it for Portugal, as- suming that it must lie east of the Papal Meridian. In 1501, Vespucci started on his third voyage, which brought him to the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, and ultimately to South Georgia. This voyage first established the existence of antarctic cold. But the most interesting feature of the voyage, to contempo- raries, was the unlooked-for continent below the equator. It was on no ancient maps. Amerigo himself called it a "New "World," though he obviously does not connect it with the coast of Florida and beyond, along which he had sailed in his voyage of 1497. "For," says he, in his letter, "it tran- scends the ideas of the ancients, since most of them say that beyond the equator to the south there is no continent, but only the sea which they call the Atlantic. But this last voyage of mine has proved that this opinion of theirs was erroneous, since in these southern regions I have found a continent more thickly inhabited by peoples and animals than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and moreover a cli- mate more temperate and agreeable than in any region known to us." The term "New World" caught the public attention, and the more because a Latin translation of the letter in which it occurred was published in 1504, with the title "Mundus Novus." With this, of course, Amerigo had nothing to do, nor was he at that time in Europe. But it was a long step toward that final naming of the Continent of America, which has since then occasioned so much criti- cism adverse to the eminent navigator. The matter was taken up by map-makers and geograph- ical commentators from that time on, and until long after Amerigo's death. They had supreme difficulty in getting into their heads the conception of a Pacific Ocean, and made frantic efforts to accommodate the stories of new lands west of the Atlantic with supposed developments of the Asiatic coasts. The discoveries of Amerigo on his third voyage are THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 77 sometimes represented as a huge island below the equator, somewhat answering in position to Australia; and some- times as a monstrous projection of the Asiatic continent. Occasionally it would be regarded as connected in some way with southern Africa; anything, in short, rather than sup- pose a stretch of clear water separating Asia from the new- found lands. Thus in the maps of Ruysch, published 1508, and the Lenox Globe, dated two years later, we have Novus Mundus as an Australia ; and in the map of Orontius, made in 1531, we find North and South America drawn as a huge promontory thrusting forth in a general southeasterly di- rection from Cathay, and merging into unknown antarctic regions, after Ptolemy's old suggestion of a southern Terra Incognita. In this map we behold the name America tak- ing the place of the Novus Mundus which has hitherto been applied to this region, whether continent or island. It prop- erly stood for what we now know as Brazil ; but Brazil had been accepted as the same with the entire new discovery be- low the equator, and was not thought to have any necessary connection with the Indies of Columbus. In 1507 was pub- lished a small book written by "Waldseemuller, proposing that the " Fourth Part' ' of the globe, discovered by Amerigo, should be called Amerige, or America the land of Americus. The reason why a distinct name was proposed for this Fourth Part was, because it was distinctly new; and the reason why the lands discovered by Columbus were not at the same time called Columbia was, because they were believed to be already named Cathay. And it was not until, years later, the con- ception began to dawn in men's minds that the new south- ern island or continent was of one piece with the Columbian Indies, that the name already bestowed on the former came insensibly to be applied to the whole. No disrespect was intended to Columbus; it was simply a question of express- ing the unity of the north and south portions, so tardily real- ized. And that Amerigo could have had any part in the proceeding is manifestly impossible. He had no sinister ambition to immortalize his name at the expense of his 78 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA friend Columbus; he was simply anxious to fulfil commis- sions intrusted to him with all the energy and ambition he had ; and was as fond of exploration as he was well qualified for it. But he was fated to suffer malignment. If it had come before his death, he could easily have cleared himself; as it came posthumously, he was debarred from this, but, on the other hand, it never hurt his feelings. He has had to wait to the present decade for vindication, which must like- wise be a matter of indifference to him ; but it is pleasant for Americans to know that their country does not bear the pat- ronymic of a swindler and villain. Amerigo was attacked by Scandinavian commentators, and by Las Casas, the biographer of Columbus, all owing to a misunderstanding of the documentary evidence. It is not the first time that the truth has been illustrated that the most bitter quarrels are those which turn out to have been due to some mistake. People are always ready to denounce an in- justice even readier than to take the pains to make sure that an injustice has been committed. But they are hardly less willing to do justice to those who have been wronged, when the wrong has been made plain ; and the time may come when we shall celebrate the birthday of Amerigo Ves- pucci with as much goodwill as we now give to the magnifi- cation of Christopher Columbus. After the existence of a continuous stretch of land across the Atlantic had been discovered; and after it had been made tolerably clear that these strange coasts did not answer to the anticipations of those who assumed them to be Asiatic ; the next step in the evolution of the conception of America as a thing by itself was to realize the existence of a vast ocean on the further side of it. Rumors of this had been heard, or glimpses of it caught, perhaps, at one time or another, be- fore the actual fact was understood ; the persuasion against it was so strong, and involved so much, that it would only be accepted when the last possibility of questioning it was gone. Meanwhile Spain was very anxious to get through or round this singular barrier of islands, or whatever it was, THE CABOT8, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 79 that was keeping her from sharing the profits which Da Gama had brought to Portugal from Hindustan; and she repeatedly sent out expeditions with the view of accomplish- ing this. The fourth voyage of Amerigo was made in the Portuguese interest, and, as we have already observed, it met with mishaps ; one of the six ships was sunk, and the others were separated. Amerigo, in his ships, proceeded to Cape Frio, where, he says, "we stayed five months, building a block-house and loading our ships with dye-wood. We could get no further for want of men and equipments. So after finishing this work we decided to return to Portugal, leaving twenty-four men in the fortress, with twelve pieces of cannon, a good outfit of small-arms, and provisions for six months. We made peace with all the natives in the neighborhood, whom I have not mentioned in this voyage, but not because we did not see and have dealings with great numbers of them. As many as thirty of us went forty leagues inland, where we saw so many things that I omit to relate them, reserving them for my book, 'The Four Journeys.' " This voyage had been made in the Portuguese service; but Amerigo now returned to the flag of Spain ; apprehend- ing, probably, that the Papal Meridian would invalidate whatever he might accomplish for the other Power. An- other voyage to the Brazilian coast was planned, which was to determine finally where its turning-point (if any there were) was placed; but circumstances prevented this enter- prise from being performed. Portugal raised objections; and it was held prudent to defer the matter for the time. But in 1505 Amerigo, with La Cosa, explored the Gulf of Darien, and penetrated two hundred miles up the river Atrato. They had thought this might prove a strait lead- ing to Asiatic waters ; in this they were disappointed, but were comforted with grains of gold in the sands of the stream, and with these, and pearls, they returned home with a good grace. Another voyage, commercial in its purpose as well as in its issue, was made in 1507. Later still, another voyage, though without Amerigo, was under- 80 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA taken to extreme southern waters, the dispute with Portu- gal having been adjusted ; but the captains disagreed, and came back in October, 1509. Amerigo died in 1513; in 1515, Solis explored La Plata ; but was there captured and eaten by the natives. Before this time the idea that there might be a body of water west of the Novus Mundus had been ad- umbrated in a map drawn by Stobnicza; and in 1513 this surmise was supported by the discovery of the Pacific by Nunez de Balboa; though, of course, Balboa had no realiza- tion that the expanse he looked upon stretched thousands of miles beyond the reach of his wondering eyes. It was reserved for Magellan to force the conviction of that great fact upon mankind. The Portuguese were chiefly instrumental in preparing the way for this. Their voyages round Africa had brought them in warlike contact with the Arabs, or Moors, and they had seen the necessity of seizing upon points of vantage to secure their trade in eastern waters. Incidentally, they proved that the Asiatic coast had not so great an easterly extension as had been asserted by early geographers. Be- tween the longitude of Brazil and that of the Moluccas there was manifestly a vast expanse, which must be filled up by something. What that something was, Ferdinand Magellan (or Fernao da Magalhaes, as his countrymen called him) was now to demonstrate. He was born, about 1480, of an old and aristocratic fam- ily, in the wild region of Sabrosa. He was sturdy, keen and brave, with glowing dark eyes under great, arching brows, and the bony, bearded jaws of a man fashioned for conflicts. "Withal, he was kind of heart, ready to risk his life for oth- ers. He was brought up in the court at Lisbon, served in the navy in its exploits in the East, and at all times kept in the van of danger and adventure. At Malacca, in 1508, an event occurred which is well described by Professor Fiske. "While they were preparing to take in a cargo of pepper and ginger, the astute Malay king had plotted their destruction. His friendly overtures deceived the frank and somewhat too THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 81 unsuspicious Sequeira. Malay sailors and traders were al- lowed to come on board the four ships, and all but one of the boats were sent to the beach, under command of Fran- cisco Serrano, to hasten the bringing of the cargo. Upon the quarter-deck of his flagship Sequeira sat absorbed in a game of chess, with half a dozen dark faces intently watch- ing him, their deadly purposes veiled with polite words and smiles. Ashore the houses rose terrace-like upon the hillside, while in the foreground the tall tower of the citadel square, with pyramidal apex, like an Italian bell-tower glistened in the September sunshine. The parties of Malays on the ships, and down on the bustling beach, cast furtive glances at this summit, from which a puff of smoke was presently to announce the fatal moment. The captains and principal officers on shipboard were to be at once stabbed and their vessels seized, while the white men ashore were to be mas- sacred. But a Persian woman in love with one of the offi- cers had given tardy warning, so that just before the firing of the signal the Portuguese sailors began chasing the Ma- lays from the decks, while Magellan, in the only boat, rowed for the flagship, and his stentorian shout of 'Treason!' came just in time to save Sequeira. Then in wild confusion, as wreaths of smoke curled about the fatal tower, Serrano and a few of his party sprang upon their boats and pushed out to sea. Most of their comrades, less fortunate, were sur- rounded and slaughtered on the beach. Nimble Malay skiffs pursued and engaged Serrano, and while he was struggling against overwhelming odds, Magellan rowed up and joined battle with such desperate fury that Serrano wassaved. No sooner were all the surviving Portuguese brought together on shipboard than the Malays attacked in full force, but European guns were too much for them, and after several of their craft had been sent to the bottom, they withdrew. This affair was the beginning of a devoted friendship be- tween Magellan and Serrano, sealed by many touching and romantic incidents, like the friendship between Gerard and Denys, in 'The Cloister and the Hearth'; and it was out 82 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA of that friendship that in great measure grew the most wonderful voyage recorded in history." In 1511 Serrano was wrecked on a pirate island near the Moluccas; the pirates returned while he was there, and, while they were ashore, Serrano seized their ship and went back to the Moluccas, where he remained for the rest of his life. He wrote to Magellan, and the latter resolved to join him. Not realizing the breadth of the Pacific, however, he thought that the antipodal Papal Meridian must fall west of the Moluccas, and that, consequently, Serrano must be on Spanish ground. This delayed him in his purpose ; and meanwhile he got out of favor with Portugal. In 1515, or earlier, he had persuaded himself that there must be a passage through the coast-line of Novus Mundus, and he was anxious to discover it. Emanuel of Portugal having refused to assist him, he turned to the king of Spain, then but a boy; here he found favor, and on September 20, 1519, he sailed with five ships from the Guadalquivir. His vessels were named "Trinidad," "San Antonio," "Concepcion," "Victoria," and "Santiago"; the largest was of one hundred and twenty tons burden, the smallest of seventy- five; all were old and hardly seaworthy. The crews, a motley company, numbered two hundred and eighty men all told. Emanuel of Portugal was all the while doing his utmost to destroy the expedition, sowing seeds of mutiny in the crew, and sending word to his commanders in Asiatic stations to arrest the ships should they arrive there. Of the four subordinate captains of Magellan's fleet, one only, Juan Serrano, brother of the man he saved, remained faithful to him in the sequel. After experience of calms, storms, and incipient mutiny, the ships reached Pernambuco on November 29th. Thence they went to the La Plata, and satisfied themselves that it was not the strait they sought. Running down the Patago- nian coast, through stormy weather, they found shelter in the harbor of Port St. Julian ; and there the mutiny broke out in earnest. It was Easter Sunday. The voyage, in fact, had been a hard one, and the chances THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 83 of finding a strait were slim. But Magellan would listen to no suggestions of returning ; he would go on until the strait was found or the end of the continent reached. Here, then, they were to remain until the antarctic winter was over six months of enforced idleness and discomfort. The mutinous captains felt that their time to strike had come; and on Easter Sunday night they boarded the "Antonio," put her captain in irons, and mastered the crew. They now had three of the five ships in their power, and the game seemed theirs. On Monday morning the situation was revealed to Magellan. Instead of succumbing, he at once took meas- ures, and very radical ones, to turn the tables on the muti- neers. He sent a boat with some half dozen trusty men to the "Victoria' ' ; so small a number was permitted by the trai- tor captain Mendoza to come aboard ; and upon the latter's refusal to come to the flagship, Espinosa, the alguazil, leaped upon him and struck a dagger through his throat. Before the crew could recover from their surprise, another boatload of men, which had been kept in readiness by Magellan, and was led by his brother-in-law Barbosa, came swarming over the ship's side and captured her. The odds were now in Magellan's favor; and by night he had fought and captured the "San Antonio"; whereupon the "Concepcion" surren- dered. Quesada, the chief ringleader, was relieved of his head forthwith, and two others were kept in irons till the fleet sailed. Such a man was Magellan. During the last week of August, spring began, and the fleet, less the "Santiago," which had been wrecked, set out southward. After much bad weather, they made Cape Vir- gins on October 21st, and soon entered a large bay. It was the opening of what is now known as Magellan's Strait ; high mountains covered with snow surrounded it on both sides ; it was in some places of great width, in others narrow. At this point the "San Antonio" took the opportunity to desert, and returned to Spain. For five weeks the remaining three ships wound along through the tortuous channel. Provisions were running short; but Magellan would not turn back, even if 84 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA "he had to eat the leather off the ship's yards." At length his persistency was rewarded by the sight of the open sea. "When," to quote Richard Eden, "the capitayne was past the strayght and saw the way open to the other mayne sea, he was so gladde thereof that for joy the teares fell from his eyes, and named the poynt of the lande from whense he first sawe that sea Capo Desiderate. ' ' And the broad ocean which lay before him was so calm, after his many stormful days, that he called it the Pacific. But months of a voyage as trying as any they had encountered still lay before them. Could the planet be so vast? Till December they kept a northerly course; then they struck out boldly across the un- known waste. They ran across one or two islands ; but ere long they were swaUowed up in the seemingly endless im- mensity of ocean. For yet five thousand miles they were to see nothing of land. They were reduced to the utmost extremities for food and water. Scurvy, of course, broke out. Nineteen men died, and thirty more were too ill to work. Had not the weather been on the whole fair, they would doubtless never again have been heard of. But finally, on the 6th of March, they reached the La- drone Islands, so named on account of the thievishness of the natives; here they got fruit and other food, and the worst was over. Ten days later the Philippines were sighted, and Magellan knew the extent of his achievement. He had sailed round the world. The Philippines were on the Span- ish side of the Papal Meridian, and he believed (mistakenly) that the Moluccas were so likewise. And now, and perhaps as well as at any other imaginable time, came, for him, the end. In a fight with the natives, the occasion of which is unknown, the great sailor was killed. Happier than Colum- bus, he did not survive the mightiest exploit of his time. Barbosa and Serrano, and thirty other Spaniards, were also slain; and the native king Sebu, who had embraced Christianity under the impression that it would give him the victory over his hereditary enemy the king of Matan, now renounced it and returned to the gods of his fathers. The THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 85 survivors of the massacre set sail, one hundred and fifteen out of the original two hundred and eighty; and the "Con- cepcion" was destroyed as unseaworthy. Only the "Vic- toria" and the "Trinidad" remained to round the Cape of Good Hope on the homeward voyage. The "Trinidad" met with new misfortunes, and the little "Victoria" alone kept on. She reached the Cape Verde Islands on July 13th, but would have been arrested there by. the Portuguese au- thorities had she not spread her sails and run for it. Finally, on September 6th, she entered the Guadalquivir, with but eighteen survivors of "the greatest feat of navigation that has ever been performed ; and nothing can be imagined that would surpass it except a journey to some other planet." What a picture those eighteen sea-worn mariners, in their battered craft ! what a poem .is their story ! what an event in the history of mankind! What reward did Magellan have? None that mortal hands could bestow. He was dead; and his wife* and son had also died. Elcano, one of the ship's company, was given a crest with the legend on a terrestrial globe, "Primus cir- cumdedisti me," together with a pension of five hundred ducats; and Espinosa was likewise pensioned and ennobled. But every mariner who sails the seas knows the name of Magellan, and the story of his exploit ; and mankind accords him the honor which Spain could not bestow. Of all the great explorers, he is perhaps the one whose character and deeds we can contemplate with the most unalloyed satis- faction. Even yet the true magnitude of the Pacific was not comprehended. In 1533 Schoner, the geographer, placed Florida and Newfoundland in Asia, and called the city of Mexico Quinsay. The longitude of the Moluccas was un- certain; some fixed it in one place; others, at a thousand miles' distance therefrom. The "Congress of Badajos," con- sisting of geographers and other experts, convened to settle the Meridian dispute, but parted after two months' acri- monious debate without settling anything. But Charles 86 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA V. at length cut the Gordian Knot by selling his Molucca claim to Portugal for three hundred and fifty thousand gold ducats. The Portuguese were in the custom of using the African route to their possessions in the East, so that the Magellan route was for a long time disused. In fact, the first sailor to revisit the southern extremity of South America was Sir Francis Drake, in 1578, and Cape Horn was not doubled until 1616. The voyage across the Pacific was held to be too long for practical purposes. Attempts were now begun to find a passage by the northwest. This search was kept up for more than three centuries, though all likely rivers along the American coast-line, south or north, were carefully explored in the hope of finding some way through. An overland journey would have shown, of course, that the expectation was vain; and such journeys, as we shall see, were soon to be made. In 1524, D'Ayllon tried the James River and the Chesapeake, and made a settlement near the present site of Jamestown. In 1528, Montesino went to Venezuela, and was never again heard of; it was assumed that the Indians killed him. Gomez, and after him Florin, sailed along the North American coasts in subsequent years. In 1529, a map was published show- ing a sea separated from the Atlantic by only a very narrow width of land. In 1536, Agnese's map shears off a great breadth of terra firma on the west coast of South America. In 1548, Gastaldi made Florida and Mexico parts of Asia, after the theory of Orontius. Other maps made other errors, and it was evident that imagination would not solve the problem. In 1528, Narvaez headed an expedition into Mexico; they were lost there, and a remnant of them reached the mouths of the Mississippi, and were afterward handed about by In- dians in the wilds of Louisiana and Texas. FinaUy, they came out on the Gulf of California and descended to Culiacan in 1536, after a land journey of two thousand miles. Cortes had at this time already explored Lower California. This led to further trips into the interior country ; and the legend THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 87 of the Seven Cities of Antilia was made to do duty for cer- tain hypothetical cities in the interior of the continent. It became mixed with a Nahuatl story of Seven Caves, whence they believed their ancestors had issued. Fray Marco, a Franciscan monk of experience in travel, was selected to go in quest of these cities. He was accompanied by a negro, Estevanico, and some Indians, and they were well received by the natives in the early part of their journey. Marco's instructions, sent him by Mendoza, were to the effect that he should insist upon the Spaniards treating the Indians well, and not subjecting them to slavery ; that he should observe every precaution in venturing into the interior, avoid all personal danger, and that if he arrived at the shore of the "Southern Sea" he should cut a cross on the trunk of some conspicuous tree and bury records at the foot of it, for the information of coastwise explorers. There was at this time a settlement of Spaniards at Culiacan, on the Mexican coast, opposite the lower extremity of Lower California ; and it was from this place that the expedition took its departure. The negro, Estevanico, was one of those who had been with the Narvaez party years before. They went north toward Sonora. The Indians accom- panying them were of the Pima tribe. The party kept as near the coast as possible ; but, after progressing some four hundred miles, halted at Bacapa, near the present Arizona boundary, and the town of Metape. This was in Easter, 1539, about a mouth after the start. From Bacapa, Marco sent Estevanico forward, with orders to go fifty or sixty leagues north, sending him back messengers from time to time with information of his progress. With each despatch was to be sent a cross of white wood, and the more favor- able his progress was, the larger the cross should be. The first messenger returned in four days, bearing a cross six feet in height, and "telling of such wonderful things that I would not believe them unless I saw the things myself," says Marco. "The Indian told me that it was thirty days' journey from the place where Estevanico was, to the first 88 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA city of the country, which was called Cibola. He affirmed and maintained that this first province contained seven very large cities which were all subject to one lord. In them were large houses of stone and mortar, the smallest of which were one story high, with a terrace, and there were besides two and three story buildings. The chief's house was of four stories. There were many decorations at the entrance of the principal houses, and turquoises, which were very plentiful in that country. The people of these cities were very well clothed." Marco seems to have had some doubts of the negro's veracity; but when the tales were confirmed by Indians from the coast, he determined to set out, and two days after Easter he was on his way to the "Seven Cities." The word Cibola, or words resembling it, are found in both the Pima and the Opata languages. In the idiom of the northern Pimas the ruins on the southern bank of the Rio Gila, generally known as Casa Grande, are called Civano-qi the house of Civano. Before the coming of the Spaniards, the Pimas lived in permanent houses grouped in small villages on the banks of the middle Giia. Casa Grande is the ruins of the best-known of these villages. The ruins lie a hundred miles west of San Carlos ; and the above estimate of "thirty days' journey" may therefore fit them, for the country is mountainous and broken. But the first description of Cibola given by the Indians does not fit the stair-like style of building of the pueblos, but such architect- are as that of Casa Grande and elsewhere. The principal building of Casa Grande is not stone, but adobe; three stories are still visible, and smaller houses of one story are scattered about. Similar buildings existed in Sonora, of which the Jesuit de Ribas wrote, "Their houses were better and more solidly built than those of other nations, for the walls consisted of large air-dried bricks of clay, with flat roofs and balconies. Some they built much larger, and inth loopholes, in order to take refuge in them as in a for- tress in case of a hostile attack, and to defend themselves THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 89 with bows and arrows." Such a place seems to have been Casa Grande. But at the time of the expedition of Marco, Casa Grande must have been a ruin; yet the reports which Estevanico sent referred to a still-inhabited Indian settlement. Mr. Bandelier made a journey to the region a few years ago to resolve this difficulty. He found that none of the so-called pueblos corresponds with what is known to us of Cibola. Therefore he concludes that Cibola should be looked for to the north, either in Arizona or New Mexico. All this region was in the sixteenth century controlled by a single linguistic stock that of the Apaches. But the Apaches being a wan- dering tribe, which builds huts of branches plastered with mud, gives no color to the story of such a place as Cibola. The areas further east were uninhabited. But about thirty miles from the borders of Arizona a small river flowing from east to west enters a wide and treeless intervale, fifteen miles long and not more than twelve miles wide. This is the plain of Zuni. On the southeastern side rises an isolated table mountain to a height of over a thousand feet; and rocks everywhere stand wall-like over the valley and only a few dizzy paths lead to the summit. Similar colossal rocks tower upon the north side. The name of Zuni belongs to the idiom of the Queres of the Rio Grande. The Zunis call themselves Shiuano, which bears analogy to Cibola. But Marco's ac- count is deficient in geographical data; it does not specify the number of the rivers, or their volume, nor does it afford particulars concerning the inhabitants. It is possible that he continued always within the territory of the Pimas. Estevanico kept sending back the cross signs, thus encour- aging the monk to keep on, and the natives described Cibola in ever more brilliant colors. They spoke of provinces, cities and kingdoms; told of green stones that adorned the door- posts of houses, of skins of a large cow-like animal; and altogether gave the impression that there was a great and thriving settlement ahead. Estevanico, meanwhile, was making a reputation for himself as a medicine-man, by dint 90 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA of a gourd-rattle that he carried; but he was imprudent in his eagerness for precious metals and green stones, and in the requisitions he made for women. But he obtained numerous guides and leaders, and his progress was rapid. Having crossed the Gila, Marco found himself entering an uninhabited country, beyond which lay Cibola. By mid- summer, the Indians assured him that his goal was but a few days distant. But immediately after Indians who had been with Estevanico came running into camp, with tattered garments and evidences of fatigue and starvation. Some serious calamity had occurred. The people of Cibola had killed the negro, and were even now approaching with hos- tile intent. Marco questioned the fugitives as to what they had seen in Cibola, and they confirmed what he had already heard of it. They said the city in which the negro had been killed was only one, and not the most populous, of the seven cities. Marco determined to steal forward with a few at- tendants to some place where he could see with his own eyes what manner of place it truly was. He reached a hill whence they could look down into a valley where lay sev- eral villages, with unusually large houses of several stories, built of clay and stone. The nearest village, seeming as large as the city of Mexico, was pointed out as that in which the negro had been killed. The inhabitants appeared to be clad in cotton. After setting up a cross on the spot where he had made these observations, Marco returned to his camp, and the retreat was forthwith begun. He arrived in Culia- can September 2, 1539, and sent his report to the viceroy. Doubts have been expressed as to whether Marco ever really saw what he describes. No one had ever come upon any tradition among the Indians of such a march as Marco made, or of the death of the negro, until, in 1884, Mr. Gush- ing, after several years' residence among the Zunis, found traces of a story which may refer to Marco's expedition. The Zunis told him that a "black Mexican" had once come to O'aquima and had been hospitably received; but he soon incurred mortal hatred by his behavior toward the women THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 91 and girls of the pueblo, and the men had finally killed him. This is important evidence. The hill from which Marco says that he looked down on Cibola could have been nowhere but in the southern border of the Zuni plain, for it is only from there that the pueblo of O'aquima can be seen, at a distance of about two miles. And on this hill, till a few years ago, were visible the remains of a wooden cross. Mr. Gushing also discovered that the openings in the roofs of the houses in Zuni used formerly to be decorated with green stones, such as malachite, and turquoise. Some of the names of kingdoms and provinces which Marco gives have also been identified by Gushing. Upon the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that Marco gave a true report of his adventures, and that they occurred in the valley of the Zuni. At all events, his story satisfied Mendoza that the matter was worth following up, and he organized, a new expedition, to the leadership of which he appointed Francisco Vasquez Coronado. This expedition had the bulk and power of an army; it comprised three hundred Spaniards and eight hundred In- dians. They visited the Zuni and Moqui pueblos, discovered the Canon of the Colorado, and penetrated as far north as to Quivira, as to the site of which there is some doubt. But wherever it was, it disappointed its discoverers, who had expected a splendid city, and found only a village of wig- wams. Making headquarters here, parties were sent out in all directions; but nothing worth noting was found; and in 1542 the army marched back to the Spanish settlement whence they had set out in Mexico, with hard feelings against Marco, who had inveigled them into working so hard for no profit. But Marco was not to blame; he did not make America, and merely told his impressions of what he saw, which the ardent imagination of his countrymen, insatiable for gold, had colored to suit their hopes. Coronado, indeed, had offered to undertake the expedition at his own expense. Ho was then a young man, though he had filled important offices in Mexico. Mendoza agreed to 5 92 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA despatch a contemporary expedition by sea from Natividad, to explore the northern coast and the interior of the Cali- fornia gulf, keeping in touch with Coronado's expedition by land. The cost of the two expeditions amounted to what, in present money values, would be some two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. For this sum, Coronado went in debt ; Mendoza limited his co-operation in the matter to appointing the higher officers. Meanwhile, a supplementary expedition under Captain Melc.hior Diaz was sent over the trail made by Marco, with orders to get as near as possible to Cibola. But Diaz did not get further than the borders of that unin- habited region, on the further side of which lay the Seven Cities. The name of the place where he halted is translated as "Red House." It is described as being over two hundred miles south of Cibola. This has been identified with the ruins of Casa Grande ; but, according to Mr. Bandelier, with- out due foundation. He concludes, by a process of exclu- sion, that the Red House was situated in the southeastern corner of Arizona, and within a quadrangle which is bounded on the east by New Mexico, on the west by the Rio San Pedro, on the south by Sonora, and on the north by the Gila River. As to Coronado, after reaching Culiacan, he divided his force, and with a small party set out toward the north. He moved rapidly through the valley of the Sonora River, his relations with the natives being amicable. His precise course is not certainly ascertained ; but in due time he arrived at what was doubtless the plain of Zufii. At Cibola he arrived on the 12th of July. The inhabitants of the towns were assembled to prevent his further passage, and returned a threatening reply to his friendly messages. But the Indians fled from the charge of the Spanish horse, and the pueblo was captured in an hour. Thus, with about a fifth part of the forces which he had raised, Coronado conquered the Seven Cities of Cibola. But when the value of their prize came to be examined, it was found to be not worth the sweat, still less the blood, which it had cost. Marco, who SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS Spanish America. THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 93 had accompanied the expedition, was in danger of his life from the Spanish soldiers; he returned with the messenger whom Coronado sent back, and died in Mexico in 1558. While these things were going on, Maldonado, who was in command of a part of the bulk of the army, went down to the coast to look up the ships, but failed to find them. Two hundred and seventy men in all went forward to join Coronado, and it was with this force that his subsequent operations were conducted. Diaz, who had been left with the rearguard, took twenty-six men and discovered the great Colorado River, but no details of his adventure are forthcoming. Coronado had to do something, and the accountb he re- ceived from the country further north made him hope that perhaps the wealth he had missed in Cibola might await him there. The consequence of this persuasion was the exploration of New Mexico. Alvarado was sent forward to the Pecos country, where he met a strange Indian whom the Spaniards called a "Turk" on account of his strange appearance. He was a native of the Mississippi Valley; and he informed the Spaniards that gold was to be found in abundance toward the east. Alvarado communicated this news to his commander; but in the sequel it proved false; and the "Turk" had perhaps given it out in order to secure his own return to his native country. Still, it is possible that he may have told what he meant to be sub- stantially the truth, but the Spaniards misunderstood him. Through his means, Coronado became embroiled with the Tigua Indians, and lost several men and horses in the little war which followed. In return, he massacred the prisoners whom he captured in the pueblos. His situation became in consequence somewhat critical; but he managed to retain the friendship of the Pecos. He continued his explorations of central New Mexico, but his attention was fixed upon the east. New Mexico, whatever might be its possibilities under systematic development, was evidently not likely to afford any immediate returns; while the "Turk" continued to talk 94 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA of a river six miles wide, with fish as large as a horse, and of canoes with forty rowers, their bows adorned with gold, and he declared that the vessels of that country were made of silver and gold. Quivira, he said, was the headquarters of all these riches, and he offered to conduct the Spaniards thither. Coronado accepted his offer. It was in May, 1541, that the Spaniards began their march. But they had to pass over boundless plains, with no landmarks; and what happens to individual travellers in such circumstances happened to them ; they described a wide circle, and after several months' toil found themselves back at the point whence they started. On this journey they saw for the first time herds of buffalo. It was seven- teen days after leaving the Pecos that they came upon the Indians of the plains, living in tents of buffalo hide and dressing in the same ; probably these were Apaches. They could give no information of Quivira. Further along an- other tribe was encountered, perhaps Utes. They had some- thing to tell of Quivira, but knew nothing of the gold and other riches which the Turk had described. The Turk fi- nally admitted that he had lied about the stone houses, but adhered to his assertion concerning the gold. He was put in chains, and continued the march in that condition. Thirst attacked the expedition ; men were daily lost by wandering from the camp; and Quivira, according to the Indians, vras still forty days distant. Coronado, however, was unwilling to turn back without having made a final effort to find the place, and leaving the bulk of his command behind, he, with some thirty horsemen, set forward in the specified direction. The Turk accompanied him. Arrelano was left in charge of the main body ; but after fifteen days he began a retreat. Meanwhile Coronado went directly north for thirty days, until they came to a river which seems to have been the Arkansas, at the point called the Great Bend. This would indicate that Quivira must have been about a hundred miles north of the Arkansas. Coronado arrived there on the 21st of August. "I had been told," he says, "that the houses THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 95 were made of stone and several storeyed ; they are only made of straw, and the inhabitants are as savage as any I have seen. They have no clothes, nor cotton to make them of; they simply tan the hides of cows which they hunt, and which pasture around their village. " There were no signs of gold or silver; only a few iron pyrites and bits of copper. The Turk now confessed that the Pueblo In'dians had en- gaged him to draw the Spaniards into the plains, that they might perish there. He attempted to stir up the people of Quivira against the Spaniards; upon which the latter seized and hanged him. Such was the end of this singular and still somewhat questionable being. Coronado found the country of Quivira fertile; but win- ter was at hand, and he must retreat. They accomplished the return journey without accident in forty days, reach- ing the Pecos Valley late in October. Thence Coronado continued on to Bernalillo, whence he wrote his report to Charles V. In spite of his account of the failure to find gold, the Spaniards could not believe but that wealth lay somewhere in the further interior; and a new expedition, not entirely to Coronado's satisfaction, was planned in that direction. But shortly before it was ready to start, Coronado was in- jured while jousting, by a fall from his horse; and before he had recovered, news came of the massacre of a nearby Spanish settlement. Coronado now wished to return to Mexico, and, though not without disagreements, it was finally decided to do so. A few priests only, desirous of winning souls rather than gold, were left behind. Of these, Fray Juan de Padilla was afterward murdered by the In- dians, and joined the army of martyrs. Coronado, who seems to have lost the power of command which had dis- tinguished him before his accident, moved constantly south- ward, suffering from Indian attacks, and from internal quar- rels. By the time Mexico was reached, hardly a hundred soldiers remained with their leader ; all the rest had either been killed or had dropped away. Mendoza received Coro- 96 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA nado with hard words, and the latter retired to Cuernavaca, and there died in retirement. It was a sad ending of a ca- reer which had opened brilliantly. "The conception which has been formed of Coronado as a wicked adventurer is un- just," says Bandelier. "Equally wrong and unfounded are the accusations which Mendoza formulated against him, and on the ground of which he treated the knight so severely. The following are the reasons which are assigned by which the action of the viceroy was determined : first, while Alar - con wrote with the fullest detail in his reports, the letters of Coronado were short, and therefore unsatisfactory; second, Coronado also wrote directly to the emperor and king (Charles V.), which the viceroy considered a presumption on his part, and even as bordering on treason; third, his evacuation of New Mexico and return seemed at least a gross violation of duty, for it was ascribed to disobedience, incapacity, and cowardice. But Mendoza understood none of the conditions; with all the traits for which he was dis- tinguished, he was first of all a European officer, who, how- ever ably he could direct from his desk, had no comprehen- sion of American camp-life. . . . Respecting the evacuation of New Mexico, there was no cowardice. Coronado's words, and the result of the expedition to Quivira, with homesick- ness and a weakened bodily condition, probably contributed much to a discouragement which was based on the convic- tion that the country was not worth the effort which its control would cost." It may be added that it has always been the policy of Spain to cast the blame for inevitable misfortunes on the men whom she had put forward to carry out impossible schemes. And when we consider what might have been the results to the continent had the Spaniards found it expedient to continue the conquest of the northern parts of America, we may believe that it was a beneficent Providence which prevented Coronado from obey- ing the wishes of his superior. It is true, nevertheless, that the legend of Quivira continued for a long time to exercise fascination over the Spanish mind, and other expeditions THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 97 were sent out from time to time, with no better success than that of Coronado. Spanish missions gradually were scattered over the southwestern country, and Spaniards thinly settled the great expanses; but the gold which they sought was hidden from them, and not until after our Mexi- can war did the discovery of the precious metal in California prove that the wildest dreams of the Spaniards were sur- passed by the actual facts. There was no golden city of Quivira, and no wealthy Seven Cities of Cibola ; but under the soil of that western land lay concealed such riches as would have made Spain the terror and tyrant of the world, instead of lapsing, as she has done, into the lowest place in the scale of European nations. In tracing the course of the Spaniards north of the Gulf of Mexico and westward to the Pacific, we have far outrun the chronological sequence of our history ; but before turn- ing back to consider the conquests of Mexico and Peru, and the occupation of the Central American region, we will briefly follow the progress of events in the peninsula of Florida. In 1537, Fernando de Soto, who had already served in Peru under Pizarro (as we shall see hereafter), was made governor of Cuba, and two years afterward he set out, with nine ships, containing five hundred and seventy men and two hundred and twenty-three horses, to conquer and occupy the country under the patent of Narvaez. He landed near the bay of Juan Ponce, and marched in a northerly direction, through the region now occupied by the States of Alabama and Georgia, toward the Savannah River. Thence he turned westward, finding no gold, but plenty of hostile Indians. Near Mobile, in 1541, he lost one hundred and seventy men in a fight. He wintered on the Yazoo River in Mississippi, crossing the Mississippi River in the spring, and going up its western bank for some distance. Finding nothing, he turned south again, and De Soto died in M.ay and was buried in the river. His men. coasted along the shores of the gulf, reaching Tampico, about three hundred strong, in September, 1543. Three 9b HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA years later, an attempt by Barbastro to found a missionary settlement in Florida resulted in a massacre by the Indians. Others renewed the effort with little better success; and in 1561, Philip II. announced that there must be no further attempts to colonize that country. Nevertheless, the Span- iards were compelled to reconsider this decision by the atti- tude of the French. Coligny, in 1555, sent out a Protestant colony under Villegagnon to Brazil, which landed at Rio de Janeiro, and was reinforced two years later. But internal dissensions ruined the*enterprise, and the Portuguese slaugh- tered the remnant of the colonists. Coligny now decided to try the coast of Florida, and in 1562 Ribaut, a Huguenot, came to the St. John's River, and finally settled at Port Royal. The Indians were at first friendly, and supplied them with food, and Ribaut went back to France for more settlers, leaving thirty men in the fort. The Indians ceased after a while to feed them, they mutinied, and killed theii commander; and, after much suffering, built a boat and set out for France. They ran out of provisions, and had eaten one of their own number before they were picked up by an English vessel. In spite of these discouragements, a new expedition started in 1563, under Laudonniere, a kinsman of Coligny. This colony was large and well supplied. But there were no farmers in the company, though there were plenty of aristocrats and some mechanics. They built a fort at the mouth of the St. John's, and called it Fort Caroline. They -searched for gold, intrigued with Indian chiefs, be- came mutinous, and at last took to buccaneering. Some of them were captured by Spaniards and taken to Havana, where they revealed the existence of the Fort Caroline set- tlement. Menendez, a typical Spanish butcher, was sent by Philip II. to uproot these heretical interlopers, though there was at that time peace between France and Spain. He left Cadiz with eleven ships and over one thousand men. Before he could reach Fort Caroline, however, Ribaut got there with seven ships, three hundred men, and supplies. A week afterward appeared Menendez with his fleet, or with THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 99 what was left of it, for several ships had been wrecked. The Spaniard decided not to risk an attack at once, and went down the coast to St. Augustine. His presence there being communicated to the French, they sent their whole fleet after him to surprise him; but a storm arose, and before it sub- sided all the ships had been wrecked. Meanwhile, Menendez assumed the offensive; .he made a forced march along the coast with five hundred cutthroats, and, in spite of a furious storm, forced his way through swamp and forest, for two and seventy hours, till the fort lay before him. In the dim of the rainy dawn, down upon it they came; the defences were too weak to withstand them, and though Laudonniere and a few others escaped, one hundred and forty-two men, women and children were slaughtered in cold blood on the spot. Meanwhile two hundred survivors of Ribaut's ship- wrecked crews collected on the beach, and marched for the fort. Menendez spoke them fair, inveigled them across the river, told them that the fort had been captured, and pre- vailed on them to surrender. Having delivered up their arms upon promise of clemency, they were led out behind a sand-hill, and all murdered. A few days later came Ribaut himself with the remainder of his men, one hundred and fifty of whom were seduced to their death in the same way, Ribaut among them ; the others took to the woods. The survivors, or some of them, returned to France and told their story; Menendez told his to King Philip, and the two were substan- tially the same. Philip thanked and rewarded his butcher, only blaming him for having been too humane. It is from examples like these that the Spanish captains of to-day learn their trade. The river or inlet where the massacre occurred was called Matanzas, which in Spanish means Slaughtering. There were no further attempts to colonize Florida with Huguenots. But the incident did not go entirely unavenged, though it was a private gentleman, and not the French gov- ernment, who inflicted the punishment. Dominique de Gourgues was a Gascon gentleman of dis- tinction in the wars; he bore a grudge against Spaniards, 100 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA owing to their having at one time made him a galley-slave. "When he heard of the massacre by Menendez, he bethought himself that here was a good opportunity to pay off his own score and that of France at the same time. He raised what money he could by selling and borrowing, bought three ships, and with two hundred men sailed, first, on a slave-hunting expedition to the Guinea coast. This was a feint on his part. It was not until he was near Cuba with his cargo that he acquainted his men with the true purpose he had in view; which they indorsed with enthusiasm. They anchored off the Florida coast a few miles above the fort; and were re- ceived by the Indians, who had become hostile to Menendez, with delight ; and Gourgues found himself with so large a force at his disposal that he resolved to put his little plan in execution at once. The Spaniards, little thinking that there was an enemy within three thousand miles of them, were taking things easy, in child-like confidence. There were four hundred of them. At noon, having finished their din- ner, they were expanding themselves as good men will after having done their duty by their stomachs, when suddenly, from all sides at once, at them came shouting and shooting innumerable Indians and, terrible to behold! Frenchmen! Wild panic followed, amid which the enemy poured over the fortifications, killing as they came. Not a man escaped alive except some fifteen, who were reserved by Gourgues for a bonne bouche. He conducted them to certain trees, on which, after the Menendez massacre, sundry surviving French prisoners had been hanged, with an inscription above them, "Not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans." While his followers were tying slip-knots in fifteen ropes, the worthy Gascon talked severely to his captives, pointing out the errors of which they had been guilty; then the rope collars were fitted snugly to the Spanish necks, and at the word of com- mand upward into the air they all rose, sprawling amain. The trees bowed under their welcome fruit; and over the heads of the now quiescent warriors the Frenchman affixed a shingle bearing the legend, "Not as to Spaniards, but as THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 101 to liars and murderers. ' ' The affair would have been poeti- cally cerf ect but for one omission Menendez himself was not among the danglers. He had gone back to Spain on a visit, and did not return till two years later, when he rebuilt his fort and, as Professor Fiske has it, went on "converting the Indians. " But the Spaniards never tried to go beyond Florida in their subsequent American settlements. With the French and English exploring achievements on the North Atlantic coasts, and up the shores of California and Oregon; and with the discovery by Bering the Dane of the Strait between Alaska and Siberia which bears his name; and with the settlement of the Mississippi Valley, we have nothing to do in this history. It was these things which finally, after the doubts of two centuries, determined America to be a distinct continent. But Spain kept to the south ; the northern regions were spared from her pernicious influence. Up to 1570 her colonizing energy was unremit- ting; but after that date she undertook to supplement the work of massacre and robbery in America, by destroying the liberties of man in Europe; and her preoccupation with the United Netherlands forced her to relinquish her godly efforts in the New World. The French seized Hispaniola, the English, Jamaica, and other West Indian islands were otherwise distributed. The long struggle with the Nether- lands ended with the defeat of Spain ; but all these reverses failed to teach the Spaniards civilization. They had been a rude and semi-barbarous people before the Moors conquered them in the eighth century; and the eight hundred years of desultory warfare which followed made them a nation of instinctive murderers and robbers. The Catholic re- ligion became in their hands a pretext for further indul- gence in these characteristic practices. Labor and industry were almost unknown in the peninsula. Their isolated po- sition prevented the refining influences of the rest of Europe from reaching them. The destruction of the Armada "by England, in 1588, was the beginning of the ruin of Spain. Portugal had been subjected to Spain some years 102 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA before this, and the Dutch, who were at war with Spain, were consequently free to attack the Portuguese colonies in the East Indies, and to take possession of the best of them. The expulsion from Spain of the only decent and industrious classes there the Moriscoes and Jews additionally injured the doomed nation, making impossible the recuperation which might otherwise have set in. The Inquisition burned at the stake about eight hundred persons a year, for three hundred years. As Professor Fiske remarks, "We sometimes hear it said that persecution cannot kill a good cause, but that 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.' This is apt to be true, because it is seldom that sufficient unanimity of public opinion is enlisted in support of persecution to make it thorough. It was not true in Spain. The Inquisition there did suppress free thought most effectually. It \vas a machine for winnowing out and destroying all such in- dividuals as surpassed the average in quickness of wit, ear- nestness of purpose, and strength of character, in so far as to entertain opinions of their own and boldly declare them. The more closely people approached an elevated standard of intelligence and moral courage, the more likely was the machine to reach them. It worked with such fiendish effi- ciency that it was next to impossible for such people to escape it ; they were strangled and burned by tens of thou- sands, and as the inevitable result, the average character of the Spanish people was lowered. The brightest and boldest were cut off in their early prime, while duller and weaker ones were spared to propagate the race ; until the Spaniard of the eighteenth century was a much less intelligent and less enterprising person than the Spaniard of the sixteenth. Ideas and methods which other nations were devising to meet the new exigencies of modern life were denied admis- sion to this unfortunate country. Spain was soon left be- hind by nations in which the popular intelligence was more flexibly wielded. It was not in religious matters only, but in all the affairs of life. Amid the general stagnation, the stream of gold and silver poured into Spain from the New THE CABOTS, VESPUCIUS, AND MAGELLAN 103 World did more harm than good, inasmuch as its chief effect was to diminish the purchasing power of the precious metals. Spanish expenditure was not productive but unproductive, and not simply unproductive but destructive. It was devoted to checking the activities of the human mind, to doing pre- cisely the reverse of what we are trying to do in these days with books and newspapers, schools and lectures, copyrights and patents. . . . When we contrast the elastic buoy- ancy of spirit in Shakespeare's England with the gloom and heaviness that were then creeping over Spain, we find noth- ing strange in the fact that the most populous and powerful nations of the New World speak English and not Spanish. Not the least interesting circumstance connected with the discovery of this broad continent is the fact that the struggle for the possession of it has revealed the superior vitality of institutions and methods that first came to maturity in England and now seem destined to shape the future of the world." Recent events have but added weight to the Professor's judgments. Spain no longer exists in the Western Hemi- sphere; and with her departure begins the era of hope and progress for the colonies which she created and cursed. Whether they will be able to work out their salvation re- mains to be proved. So far, it must be admitted that the signs of success are few and doubtful. The Spanish- Ameri- can peoples are still men of Spanish blood; this strain has been admixed with negro and Indian races; but though these are superior, in themselves, to the Spanish, they seem to have suffered from the mingling. The little nations of the Isthmus and of South America grasp at the name of liberty and independence, but all they have so far obtained (with insignificant and temporary exceptions) has been tyranny and license. Perhaps the best sign of all is, that the breed does not seem to increase, and may gradually die out, and leave its inheritance to men who will know how to ad- minister it wisely and profitably. "The horse is his who rides it." 104 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA We are now to turn back on our tracks, and recount the events which domiciled the Spaniards in the New World, and ushered in her colonial empire. We left her beginning the wholesale massacres of the natives of the West India islands, and groping along the coasts for gold. Adventures occurred, and adventurers played their parts, in a manner which yields brilliant and dramatic material for the histo- rian, and affords a useful lesson in the science of what to avoid. There is little danger, indeed, that any nation here- after will be tempted to follow the example of Spain ; but the story of great crimes may serve to warn the unwary from the commission of the little ones which belong to the same family, and might possibly bloom unawares into a sinister and rank luxuriance. PART II THE AGE OF CORTES THE most conspicuous and one of the typical acts of Spain in the New World was the conquest of Mexico by Cortes. When we have mastered what is known about that and the information is voluminous and particu- lar we have little to learn as to the mutual relations and conduct of the two races involved. The Mexican Aztecs were the most powerful and advanced people in America at that time, and their subjugation by the conquerors brings out every feature of significance that belongs to any of the contests between Europeans and barbarians in that age, and many, of course, which are lacking in the narratives of wars with less powerful American races. Something has already been said about the kind of civili- zation practiced by the Aztecs in the sixteenth century. In Mexico, as elsewhere among American Indians, the tribe was the political integer. The tribe was composed of clans and phratries. But there was none of that coalescence of the com- munity which obtains in European civilized nations. Aztec clans lived in precincts, or adjacent communal houses. Land was in common ; there was no real estate, but mere occupancy. Government was carried on by councils named by the clans, and above these councils was the grand tribal council com- posed of delegates from the clans. Two executive chiefs, a head war-chief and a tribal sachem, were in the position of rulers of the tribe, and when the Spaniards came, they re- garded the then head war-chief, Montezuma II. , as the king or emperor of the Aztecs. This was not precisely accurate, (105) 106 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA because there was no Aztecan empire in the sense of Euro- pean empires, and the head war-chief, or Chief -of -men, did not possess precisely the power, or exercise all the functions, of a king. But the differences do not seem so vital as some modern commentators try to make us believe. The Mexican chief was not supposed to be divinely destined to the throne ; he could be deposed for cause, and though he was military leader in war, and head priest at all times, he was not the maker of laws and imposer of taxes. Some principle of succession seems to have been observed in the choice of the Chief -of-men, but it was not the principle of heredity, as in Europe. The practice of exogamy would of itself bar such a system. But one or other of four officials, three phratry captains and a priest, were liable to assume the reins of power upon the death or deposition of the reigning chief. One result of this Mexican system was, that the capture or killing of the Chief by an enemy would not cripple the execu- tive functions of government as it might do under a differ- ent arrangement. Cortes discovered this fact by experience before he had got the final mastery over the inhabitants of Mexico. There was no regular taxation of the inhabitants of the country under Aztecan dominion; but men were sent out periodically to collect tribute from Pueblos which had been worsted in battle by the confederation of Aztec tribes. They got as much tribute as they could; sometimes more, some- times less ; or if the payers of tribute declined to liquidate the claims made upon them, the confederacy swooped down on them and slaughtered them, reserving prisoners enough to feed their sacrificial altars. Consequently, it would have been very difficult for an Aztec chancellor of the exchequer to make up a financial budget for an ensuing year. There was a romantic uncertainty about the financial future; but upon the whole they might reasonably calculate upon mak- ing the ends meet on the average. And incidentally there would be enough "life" and death going on to keep things interesting. THE AGE OF CORTES 107 Among the Aztecs at the time of the Conquest, descent in the male line was recognized, though in the opinion of students it had been introduced but a short time, and was in the feeble state which belongs to infancy. But the wife was now regarded as the personal property of her husband. There does not seem to have been much of what we call love-making, as a preliminary to marriage, however; con- jugal unions were arranged by the clan ; and no man or woman of a tribe was permitted, under penalties, to remain unwed. Infidelity was punished. Thus the family was fairly started as an institution in Mexico, and that, and the further development of real kingship, and of empire, would no doubt have been finally worked out by the Aztecs, had not Cortes put a stop to all natural development by his sanguinary proceedings. And inasmuch as a wife, in a house, is pretty certain to acquire a conception of the prin- ciple of private ownership in things household things to begin with it is probable that the communistic idea would gradually have given way to that of individual property holding. But the sword of Spam cut all this growing or- ganization asunder, and destroyed it forever. Concerning the political history of Mexico in the pre- Columbian ages we cannot dogmatize successfully. Strenu- ous and even violent efforts are made by strict evolutionists to crush down the persistent suspicion that there may be some direct relation between Asia and Mexico of which, though there is no positive evidence, traditions may be found hi abundance. This suspicion is based upon the architectural and other remains which have been unearthed from time to time in Mexico and Yucatan, and in other places as well; for these bear more or less apparent kinship to ancient ruins in Asia; and again, they seem quite unaccountable if we regard the present races inhabiting these regions as direct descendants of the ancient builders. No modern Indian of Central America could construct such works as we find in the old tropic forests ; and when asked concerning these, the reply is that they were the work of some former race, now 108 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA vanished ; but whence that race came, or how long ago they were in their prime, there is none to declare. Unless, then, we suppose that such a race did exist and vanish, we are driven to assume that the present Indians must be the pos- terity of the builders, and have forgotten all about it. That is the evolutionists' position; and it is not devoid of awk- wardness. It is not a matter of common experience that men who could erect such buildings as those of Uxmal, for example, should suddenly lose not ODly the knowledge and skill which Uxmal implies, but also all recollection that such science ever had been exercised by them. It certainly does not seem more difficult to imagine that these builders came from afar, and in the course of many ages disappeared, as powerful races will, give them only time enough. The simi- larity which undeniably exists between these American ruins and some types of Asiatic architecture adds plausibility to this view. Besides, remains of a similar kind are found on Pacific islands between Asia and America, and of these, too, there is no explanation ; the natives of the islands in question can give no account of them, and are quite incapable of con- structing the like themselves. How shall this gap between the ancient and the more recent be bridged over? We must be credulous one or the other way either with the evolution- ists or against them. And since the latter course involves by far the more romantic possibilities, to say nothing more of it, it will always receive the wider popular support, until or unless definite and irrefragable testimony is forthcoming to disprove it. Leaving these interesting matters to one side, let us re- mark that Mexican history as accepted by conservative his- torians begins in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. Of course even the latter concede that events of great mo- ment must have happened before that; but who is to disen- tangle mere poetic tradition from the annals of reality? Here is a country, and here is a people ; how did they come together, and what was their mutual effect upon each other? It is sup- posed that the Mexican plateau may have been occupied as THE AGE OF CORTES 109 early as the seventh century by tribes of the Nahua group. The country was called Anahuac; but the name is said to mean, merely, land contiguous to water ; in this case, a lake country. The Nahuas are supposed to have been in various stages of barbarism or even savagery; but, domiciled in these limited and fertile valleys, they multiplied and throve, learned horticulture and other kinds of culture, and built houses of ever-increasing solidity and architectural preten- sion. We are further told that "Toltec" means Builder; and these Nahuas thus got the name of Builders, or Tol- tecs, par excellence; and their domain came to be called, by people who knew no better, the Toltec Empire. The headquarters of these more or less discredited Toltecs seems to have been, upon a time, at a place called Tollan, near the present town of Tula, which is about forty miles northwest from Mexico City. It was on one of the old roads or Indian trails from North to South a sort of natural gateway, im- portant as a defensive position, and presumably occupied for that reason. The occupation may have taken place in the seventh century; the story being that the Toltecs arrived there from a northern region known as Huehuetlapallan. After settling there, they were ruled over by a line of six or seven kings (so called) ; and it was during this time that they built the pyramid of Cholula, the pueblo or city of Teotihuacan, and other places. After about four hundred years, their power was overthrown, and they migrated in a southerly direction, and disappeared; but, about the same period, what is termed the Maya empire rose to prominence in Yucatan; and the inference is natural that the Toltecs were identical with the Mayas. Obviously there ought to be a great deal more than this to learn about the Toltecs ; but that is all we know. Their language, if they had a separate language, is totally lost. Perhaps if we knew the key to the Aztec picture-writing we might be in a better position for guessing, if nothing more; but the ingenuity of students still halts baffled before these monuments, and there is nothing for it but to be patient, and remember that 110 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA students are, after all, just as far from being infallible, not to say omniscient, as anybody else. The Toltecs were associated with a couple of notable gods, one of good, the other of evil, named, respectively, Quetzal- coatl and Tezcatlipoca. The former, whom we may as well call the Fair God, since that is what he stands for, is an example of what the evolutionists delight to call a "culture hero," and to explain by reference to solar myths. This same solar-myth theory has indeed been worked wellnigh to death; but its devotees are faithful beyond the wont of human nature, and revert to it on all possible occasions. Anything rather than concede that a culture hero may have been a real man, endowed with superior mind and broader nature than his contemporaries ; or that he may have been a visitor from another and higher race, who taught an un- developed people how to live to better advantage. Christ is a flagrant example of the scientific culture hero, and will no doubt be relegated to that category by them as soon as they are sufficiently far removed from him in time to do it safely always assuming that by that time there will be any evolutionary scientists left in the world. Be that as it may, they have poor Quetzalcoatl entirely at their mercy, and they show him none. There is nothing that he can do, say or be that is not promptly explained as solar mythical, and com- pared with other solar myths all over the known world. How it happens that the peoples of the earth should all have passed through this solar-myth period of culture, and yet have left no record to show how they came to get into it, or to get out of it, we are not informed. It would seem to require a fine imagination to create the fable that the sun and moon were human beings, and that their light signifies intelligence and the overcoming of the darkness of ignorance. Yet this is assumed to have been the inveterate habit of races who in other respects are mere savages, hardly able to invent the bow and arrow. It might be suggested that it would be more in accord with what we know of the processes of the human mind, if we supposed that some remarkable human THE AGE OF CORTES 111 being, after his death, was likened to the sun and moon, and that the benefits the latter confer upon mankind were com- pared with the concrete or spiritual good this man had done. But the scientists prefer to put the cart before the horse ; and as no proof is possible either way, we must admit that possi- bly they are right. The Fair God, at all events, appears to have been a deity of great distinction and wide influence. He brought on storms and wielded lightning, and, like Eolus, held the strings of the wind-bags. His name means Bird-Serpent, and he is repre- sented with snakes round his waist. He is credited with the invention of the calendar of the Aztecs; and sterile women addressed their vows to him, as in India to the god Krishna. He was at the same time the patron of virgins and asceticism. As in Persia we hear of the titanic conflict between Ormuzd and Ahriman, so in Mexico we are told of the enmity between the Fair God and his foe Tezcatlipoca. First one and then the other was the sun, and the vicissitudes of their battles were innumerable. But Quetzalcoatl was at length worsted, and took his departure from his people, promising, however, to return to them at some future time, bringing with him companions with white faces and beards like his own. Ac- cordingly, the Aztecs expected his arrival; and this, as we shall see, had a singular bearing upon the capture of Mexico by Cortes. Contemporary with the alleged Toltecs were the Chichi mecs, though what precisely they were no one ventures dogmatically to affirm. They were perhaps barbarians; but on the other hand they may just as well have been Toltecs who received the title in compliment for having re- pelled a barbarian attack. Either way, we are fairly safe in presuming that there were in Mexico people of inferior condition, whom the Toltecs opposed or oppressed. But it does not appear that it was these people who finally drove the Toltecs out; that was more probably accomplished by the Nahua tribes from the north, afterward known as Aztecs. They came in a series of migrations, very much 112 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA as the eastern races came to Europe; and like them, the Nahuas became divided and hostile one to another. Some entered the Mexican valley, while others fortified them- selves on the Serpent Hill and worshipped the war-god, Huitzilopochtli. The latter division of the race held this hill or town of Tollan until circumstances drove them on- ward to the valley, where they finally built the city which we know as Mexico, but which they also called Tenochtitlan. The name Mexico is derived from one of the titles of Huitzi- lopochtli Mexitl. It would be well if all Mexican or Aztecan names had so merciful an alias. Dates are scarce in these periods ; but we are allowed to believe that Tollan was abandoned in 1168, and that Mexico was founded about 1325. The spot they selected for their pueblo was not at first sight an attractive one; it was in the midst of some marshes, to which they must have fled for refuge, just as negroes and criminals a hundred years ago used to take to the Dismal Swamp when too hard- pressed by their pursuers. But there were hummocks of dry ground in this marsh of the Aztecs; and they had a story that they found in it an eagle sitting on a cactus which grew from the crevice of a sacrificial stone on which, years before, they had offered up the body of a captive. The eagle held in his beak a serpent; and the omen, or symbol, was held to be favorable, and indicative of victory. Here and not elsewhere then must be their stronghold; and the eagle and his appurtenances should be their coat of arms or totem. They reformed their marsh by constructing dikes and cause- ways, and leading the water into canals; and ere long the swamp was inwardly a very agreeable dwelling-place, and outwardly an impregnable fortress. Having thus secured themselves, they proceeded to look about them to see whether they could not attack some one else. There was a formidable tribe called the Tecpanecas, living in the pueblo Azcaputzalco on the west shore of the lake; the Aztecs lacked strength to subdue them, so they became their allies. They went on gaining power for fifty years, after which they had their THE AGE OF CORTES 113 first chief -of -men, and began to build their houses of solid stone. A number of chiefs succeeded one another for more than fifty years longer, when, on occasion of a quarrel be- tween their allies and another pueblo, Tezcuco, the Aztecs joined the latter in overthrowing Azcaputzalco. They thus secured, among other advantages, control of a supply of water sufficient for all their needs. Another pueblo, Tlaco- pan, was at the same time made tributary to Tenochtitlan. The three pueblos now formed a confederacy, with the Aztecs as the chief partner. Four more chief s-of -men suc- ceeded to the throne of Mexico, and quite a large extent of country was overrun by their warriors, and made tributary to the confederacy. But they did not occupy the country in a military sense, and not a few large pueblos remained inde- pendent. The pueblo of Tlascala, in particular, defeated many attempts to subdue them. Thus we are brought to the year 1502, when Montezuma II. was elected chief -of-men at the age of four and thirty. He it was whom we know as the "emperor" of Cortes's time. His first exploit was an unsuccessful attack upon the Tlascalans; but he had better fortune in the east, where he subdued several minor towns, earning thereby their bit- ter hostility. This he would carefully have avoided doing had he been able to look but a little way into the future ; for it was by way of these towns that Cortes was to advance. For the next few years the air was full of omens and por- tents, foreshadowing war and calamity; and in 1518 the troubles began. A tax-gatherer in the employ of Monte- zuma, Pinotl by name, and incidentally a spy at one of the tributary pueblos near the coast, was one day informed by an Indian from a coast town that there were towers with white wings walking about over the waters of the bay. These towers brought forth small canoes which moved swiftly to and fro; and in them were creatures resem- bling men, though their faces carried thick beards, and their clothing shone and darted rays in the sun. These accounts seemed passing strange to the tax-gatherer, and 114 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA he betook himself coastward forthwith, to see with his own eyes, if indeed there were such marvels to be seen. Sure enough, the report was true; there were the towers, with wings which they could expand or fold together at will; and the inhabitants they were certainly men, albeit of a fashion hitherto unknown to the deponent. As the chief representative of America present in that place, the worthy Pinotl took it upon himself to go forth and greet these singular strangers, and was admitted by them to climb up the side of one of their towers and hold converse with its commander who, in truth, was none other than Juan de Grijalva, making his first reconnoissance of the "Spanish Main" (as it was presently to be). Grijalva, communicating with the Aztec by whatever species of pigeon-Spanish had been developed in these re- gions during the past five and twenty years, asked many questions, and perhaps answered a few, as prudence might dictate. Poor Pinotl, though with the Aztec empire at his back, was quietly but inevitably reduced to the attitude of playing second or even third or fourth fiddle in the confer- ence ; these shining strangers had a masterful and confident way with them ; and what was Pinotl after all but a mere tax-gatherer and incidental spy? Pinotl found himself an- swering more questions than he asked; and he told much about the riches and possessions of his august master up in Tenochtitlan yonder. At the name of "gold," the shining strangers pricked up their ears, and smiled agreeably; it would please them, they observed, to drop in on the august Montezuma one of these fine days, and pay their compli- ments to so wealthy and powerful a monarch. Meanwhile they presented the agitated Pinotl with certain gifts, receiv- ing gifts in return from him ; and so bowed him courteously, but always with that masterful air, over the bulwarks of the white- winged tower, and ashore again. Hardly pausing to regain his breath after contact with such marvels, and possibly with deity itself, Pinotl girded up his lean loins and made all possible speed up the mountain trails and over THE AGE OF CORTES 115 hill and dale to the fair city of Mexico, doomed, though he knew it not then, to such a baptism of blood as even the Aztec priests in their most sanguinary enthusiasm had never seen or imagined. Admitted to audience with the august chief-of-men, he unfolded his wondrous news, supplementing the word of mouth by appeal to the eye in the shape of sketches on maguey paper of the towers and the shining strangers them- selves. Hereupon Montezuma, moved beyond his wont, per- ceived that this was a matter which even the chief-of-men was not, alone, competent to deal with ; and he convened the tribal council in a hurry. God-like strangers were come, in walking or flying towers, from the east, the abode of Quet- zalcoatl ; precisely, to all seeming, as the old prophecies and later signs and omens had foretold. Now, since the Fair God's departure in the dim past ages, the Aztecs, like the sensible people they were, had given their homage to his enemy and conqueror Tezcatlipoca, and to the latter's friend and ally the war-god, Huitzilopochtli. All religious arrange- ments were established with a view to pleasing these person- ages ; for them did the victims bleed on the altars, and their images grinned, horrible, in the temples. The entire social and political economy of the state was based upon worship of these deities; Montezuma himself was their priest, and held his power in a manner through their favor. All this had been well; but now there arose a perplexhy, which might easily bear a worse name. For did not legend assert that the Fair God would one day return with power, to re- sume his ancient sovereignty, and consequently to hurl from their thrones and temples the usurpers, his old enemies? And if the gods of Montezuma were to suffer destruction, what might be expected to happen to Montezuma himself, and all his following? This was the question which shaped itself in ominous lineaments before the senses of the tribal council ; which their sagacity hardly felt itself able to cope withal. Perhaps there were some who had secretly disbelieved 6 116 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA that Quetzalcoatl would ever return even that he had ever existed. They had taken it for an old- wives' tale, useful to subdue the vulgar, but to be smiled at by men of higher intelligence. But here, at the doors, and emerging from that very east whence the Fair God had promised to re- turn, were fair-faced strangers of undoubtedly superhuman powers; and Aztec incredulity durst not go so far as to deny that they must be come in fulfilment of prophecy. It is all very well to talk about coincidences; but to call an event like this a mere coincidence was to push scepticism to the limit of folly, and beyond it. The Fair God had come back ; and since prophec}^ had proved true so far, with what face could one question that prophecy would go on to fulfil itself to the final letter? In short, the astounding and formidable probability stared in the distended eyes of Montezuma and his tribal council, that they were in desperate difficulties. To see one's gods threatened with prompt extinction by better or stronger gods is a serious matter; we can partly understand how the council and the chief felt, by imagining the sudden irruption of a hostile political party into the com- fortable circles of a Washington Administration in the full tide of its enjoyment of the offices and perquisites : a Coxey army, say, with power to enforce its will. Whether or not the Aztec populace was as much in love with human sacri- fices and the continuance of the existing political regime, as were the members of that regime themselves, cannot cer- tainly be known to us; perhaps it was not known to the council. But there will generally be found in any commu- nity a considerable body who are "agin the government," be it what it may; and then, beyond any doubt at all, there were those pueblos to the east which were of late so severely disciplined; they would be sure to welcome anybody who showed disposition and ability to destroy Tenochtitlan. In emergencies like these, one counts his friends, and finds them much less numerous than he would have wished. The Az- tecan confederacy had esteemed itself powerful; but when one's enemies are reinforced by the gods, the outlook is dark. THE AGE OF CORTES 117 Upon the whole, the tribal council and their chief must have had an interesting and emotional sitting ; a sitting, as it were, upon the thin crust of a volcano, which promised at any mo- ment to send them into infinite space in the shape of cosmic grains of dust. How much the Spaniards, therefore, were indebted to prophecies of which they had never heard, there is no telling ; but it is not unlikely that if they had attempted to invade Mexico on their private merits alone, they would have found a very different reception, and perhaps met a dif- ferent fate. But the stars in their courses fought for them, and their sharp swcrds were made sharper yet by the grind- stone of the supernatural. How happened the Spaniards to visit Mexico just at this time? We have seen that the island of Hispaniola, or Haiti, was the centre whence radiated all lines of Spanish explora- tion and conquest. Diego Columbus assumed governorship there in 1509, and despatched Velasquez to conquer Cuba in 1511. Concerning the details of that conquest we know not much; it was accomplished promptly enough at all events, and for many generations was administered in the true Spanish style; the inhabitants were reduced to slavery, and worked to death in the mines or otherwise, with cir- cumstances of cruelty which would be incredible were they not paralleled hi recent years in the same island. The col- ony founded in Darien by Ojeda, in spite of its misfortunes, and of the miserable death of its founder, was kept alive by hook or by crook, and was the base whence Balboa made his discovery of the Pacific in 1513. It was in the same year that Ponce de Leon, then governor of Porto Rico, explored Florida. Tn 1516, food being scarce in Darien, Berual Diaz and a hundred other colonists crossed to Cuba, and set up a slave-catching business from a point on the southern coast, cruising in the Bay of Honduras. Governor Velasquez (though the business was illegal) added a ship fitted out by himself to the corsair fleet, and gave the command to Hernandez de Cordova. There were about a hundred sol- diers in the company ; and after they had sailed from San- 118 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA tiago by the "Windward Passage to get supplies, the pilot, Alaminos, an old sailor under Columbus, remembered that the great Admiral had once told him something of rich countries to the west. Cordova was interested, and with permission of Velasquez to act as lieutenant in whatever new lands were found, off bore the fleet for Yucatan. A first glimpse of the coast was more suggestive of the real thing the Oriental civilization than anything they had stumbled upon yet. Here were people clad in jerkins of quilted cloth with feather cloaks and caps of the most bril- liant hues ; on shore were soen strange tower-like edifices of pyramidal form, with carvings and statues. But the people in the quilted doublets were not friendly; they were much the contrarj r ; for they had heard of these sea-rovers before by reports from Cuban fugitives. They did not wish to be enslaved and slaughtered; and when the Spaniards came ashore, they ambushed and killed some of them. Coasting along, the visitors arrived at Campeche, where they were allowed to land by the Maya inhabitants, and saw the tem- ples of stone and the great fortresses, the sculptured snakes, and the altars glistening with blood. Men and women mean- while, laughing and curious, pressed forward to look upon the strangers; but later came priests who requested them, with more or less politeness, to get off that part of the earth without delay ; which hint they took ; for the enterprise of conquering this country with a hundred men did not look promising. Landing once more further along the coast, not for conquest but for water, they were fiercely attacked and nearly exterminated; all who were not slain outright were wounded. Cordova himself died of his injuries soon after getting back to Cuba. Evidently the Mayas had not the fear of Quetzalcoatl before their eyes. Velasquez heard their story, and his desire to see more of these rich temples was stronger than his apprehensions of disaster; he fitted out four caravels, put two hundred and fifty soldiers aboard, gave Grijalva, his nephew, the com- mand, and sent them on their way. They found their way THE AGE OF CORTES 119 to that watering-place which had proved so fatal to Cor- dova; but this time the Spaniards had the best of the en- counter. Touching at Tabasco, where they were well received by the chief of that name, they went on to where the pueblo of Mictlan-Quauhtla looked out over the bay; and there it was that they were boarded and interviewed by the startled Pinotl whom they also interviewed. The living people whom they saw were amicable and smiling; but their sensibilities were somewhat shocked by the omni- present dead and disembowelled bodies and fearfully glaring heads on poles which everywhere encountered them. Span- iards love blood ; but they prefer to shed it themselves, and in their own way. What -if this amicably smiling people were to take a fancy, still smiling, to remove Spanish heads from the shoulders on which they grew, to these poles? Yon- der idols had a bloodthirsty look, albeit their jaws were already adrip with gore ; it was not altogether a sinless Eden to which they were come. But then, there was gold, and also souls to be won to Christ; let us not despair! From a place which they named St. John de Ulloa they sent back their sick to Cuba, and asked for reinforcements. In November, Grijalva, after some further coasting, which showed nothing better than what had already been seen, returned to Cuba and told the story, which sounded well. Cathay, it seemed, had been found after all. But poor Grijalva, in the midst of his anticipations, was deposed from his command by his stern uncle, whose mind had in the meanwhile been poisoned against him; and, instead of him, Hernando Cortes was raised to the leadership of the new expedition. This man was born in Medellin, Estrama- dura, in 1485, and was therefore at this time about three and thirty years of age. He had come to Hispaniola in 1504; after some years he moved to Cuba and married. He presents a queer mixture of traits and qualities. Daring and unscrupulous he was, crafty and relentless; but strictly religious (in the Spanish way), enduring, and honorable after the manner of chivalric honor. He was born both a 120 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA soldier and a statesman, with a mind to plan and ability to execute. He was just the man to conquer Mexico; in- deed, he was so well-fitted for that job that Velasquez, after appointing him to the command, began to have misgivings lest he prove only too well qualified, and liable, upon oppor- tunity, to take matters in his own hands. Velasquez was a true Spaniard, and therefore would rather see Spain dis- honored than forego his own private advantage ; so he sent after Cortes, who had started, to call him back and send him somewhere else. But Cortes believed in the saying that possession is nine-tenths of the law ; he was in possession of the command of a sturdy troop of soldiers, and had no inten- tion of resigning it in response to the second thoughts of Gov- ernor Velasquez. He sailed on cheerfully, and in the first days of March had a brush with the Tabasco people, and helped himself to some provisions that he found there. From St. John de Ulloa he sent forward messengers with gifts and polite speeches to Montezuma, already shivering in his cap- ital; and by careful inquiries he began to comprehend how matters stood in the Confederacy, and out of it. It became evident that there were disagreements and enmities in this pleasant land among the various inhabitants of it; and it became of course the policy of a sage invader to take ad- vantage of these to advance his own designs. But first it was necessary to discover which of the native parties was the stronger; meanwhile it would be well to seem to favor both of them. In pursuance of this plan, this astute young man abetted the tributary pueblos in arresting Montezuma's tax- gatherers; but after this had been done, and the pueblos thus assured of his support, he secretly summoned the forlorn tax- gatherers before him, and despatched them home in freedom, to carry to Montezuma the news that the mysterious invader was his ally, whatever appearance to the contrary he might occasionally be constrained to assume. But a successful invader and conqueror has no end of things to consider; in the first place there is the people whose land he is invading, with their as yet unknown ways and THE AGE OF COKTES 121 resources ; then, there is the army he is leading to the inva- sion, many or most members of which may lose heart at the wrong moment, and by flinching or deserting upset all pre- arranged plans. The rank and file of the Spanish army were doubtless better soldiers, man for man, than they are now ; but there was nevertheless in them that quality, or absence of quality, which makes it imperative upon their officers to drive them with whips of some sort against the enemy. To-day, we see a leader shooting down some two score of his men with his revolver, in order to persuade them to serve the guns; in ]519, in Mexico, Cortes had not army enough to afford this costly luxury; but he was not at a loss for other means. He had come hither in ships; and what was to prevent his army, or too large a part of it, from re-em- barking on these ships, if they became frightened or home- sick, and scuttling off back to Cuba? The best way to pre- vent it, said Cortes, in his deep-revolving mind, is to scuttle the ships themselves. Several of the vessels were accord- ingly treated in this way, secretly; the leakage being dis- covered, question arose as to how it happened; and answer was made that it must have been worms. But if, argued Cortes, so many ships are thus rendered unseaworthy, would it not be wise to scuttle the rest of them, and so set free some scores of sailor-men, who can take arms and accompany us on our glorious march into the golden interior of the coun- try? So said, so done; until there was but one ship left. At this stage, certain suspicious and prying persons had made it out that the whole transaction was what we would term a put-up job; and accused Cortes thereof. A lesser man would have denied the charge; but Cortes knew his human nature better. If there be in this noble army (says he) any individuals so faint-hearted and craven as to shrink from the path of glory and honor that lies before us across yonder mountains, let those persons, in God's name, step out now from our ranks, throw down their swords, and skulk back to the remaining ship which lies ready to convey the cowards home again. But let those who have hearts in 122 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA their bosoms, and ambition in their souls to become rich, and famous, follow me ; for I will lead them to such fortune as never yet the mind of mortal man conceived. Such was the argument of the deep-designing Cortes. Men and soldiers are vain ; they dread finding themselves in a minority ; they are avaricious, and let us not deny that they may be fired with a not ungenerous enthusiasm. Cortes prevailed. His little speech was received with shouts ; amid which he failed not to suggest that the one remaining temp- tation to infidelity should forthwith be removed. Renewed cheers ; and with a rush the final caravel is sent to the bot- tom, and the army of invasion stands on the coast, literally between the devil and the deep sea, with nothing for it but to conquer or die. In such a predicament, men may be trusted to do their best. Cortes could afford to have them do no less; for should he fail to make good his hold upon the land of gold, he needed no soothsayer to tell him that his friend the governor of Cuba had a headsman's axe sharp- ened for his neck. It was conquer or die for him too. Cortes had meanwhile laid the foundations of the town of Vera Cruz, and had sagaciously resigned the commission given him by Velasquez, calculating that he would be chosen captain-general by his men, as in fact he immediately was. All being ready, the famous march from the sea began. As modern travellers know, there is no more picturesque bit of country in the world than that which lies between Vera Cruz and the city of Mexico. To pass through it is an in- spiration ; but what must it have been to those who traversed it for the first time, with such perils before and around them, and such possibilities of wealth and glory? They were see- ing things which mortal European eyes had never till now beheld. Heaven-scaling mountains; awful ravines; deli- cious valleys; wondrous plains; the gorgeous vegetation of the semi-tropics. In one valley there was a continuous line of houses for some dozen miles, with walled and robust fortresses such as one might scarce find in Spain itself. And there was a population numerous in proportion, though not, THE AGE OF CORTES 123 fortunately for the invaders, clad in steel and armed with guns. Darts and spears they had, and clubs studded over with sharp outjutting points of stone destructive even to steel headpieces should the blow come down unobstructed. Such weapons, were there but men enough to use them, might finally prove a serious obstacle to the ambition of young Cortes; and certainly there were men in abundance. But, as Cortes had already surmised, these men were not all of one mind in their attitude toward the invaders ; for if some would oppose them at all hazards, others would incline to welcome them as deities returning to claim their own. Be- sides, these folk in brilliant feathers and quilted cotton had many internal jealousies and revenges to satisfy, and, after the manner of men, would be willing to see their country fall, if only they could get even thereby with their own private foes. The pueblos hitherto tributary to Tenochtitlan would join the invader in suppressing that arrogant oligarchy, upon whose altars so many thousand of them had bled. We can hardly blame them for that; the firmament of tyranny, be it never so high and bright, is always bounded on all sides by the horizon of black revenge. This, then, was a strong support for Cortes's adventure; and, in addition, there was the excellent deadliness of his weapons, and the overmaster- ing dread inspired by his horses. One horse, with a man on him, or even unmounted, could be trusted to put to flight an army of Aztecs. With his fifteen horses, his six cannon, and his four hundred and fifty armor-clad men-at-arms, girded about with their supernatural reputation, Cortes might bid defiance to a myriad; and if half that myriad could be seduced to fight on his side, he might master the whole country. In spite of first appearances, in short, the odds were in favor of the Spaniards; nevertheless, it was a wonderful spectacle, that of the handful of iron warriors from across the ocean, winding up those narrow mountain trails, to subdue a nation of millions. The spectacle of Alex- ander conquering Asia was hardly so wonderful. Before the invaders, as they came on, fled a scurrying 124 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA multitude of couriers, bearing on to Montezuma the items of the march, and illustrating their reports with drawings and writings on maguey paper, just as, to-day, we have the photograph of our famous man or criminal served up each morning in our newspaper along with his eulogy or the story of his crime. Cortes was not long in realizing that the role attributed to him was that of a god, and he acted up to its requirements. Since he was Quetzalcoatl, obviously it be- hooved him to discomfit upon all occasions the worship and the priests of his rivals. Accordingly, upon arriving at the town of Cempoala, where numberless honest persons were awaiting their turn upon the altars, and the idols were open- ing their horrid mouths to quaff the hot blood of the same, Cortes, to the stupefaction of all, to the rage of many, but to the joy of some, had the supreme audacity to set the cap- tives free, to smash the idols, and to seize the persons of the chiefs. Did he execute the chiefs? No; for he knew the ways of the natives. Had he slain them, new chiefs would at once have been elected, and the day might have gone against him; but by keeping them alive, he retained them in their official positions, and no successors could be chosen. With chiefs who, though impotent, were alive and could not be superseded, the people were leaderless, and all action on their part paralyzed. They were fain to stand as idle spectators while their temples were purified according to Roman Catholic notions, and the cross of Christ (which also, by an odd coincidence, happened to be one of the emblems of Quetzalcoatl) was set up over them. What could any- body do? Quetzalcoatl was perfectly justified in substituting his cult for that of Texcatlipoca ; and even if the partisans of the latter had heart to resist the new-comer, they could do nothing without a chief to head them. Upward toward the empyrean and Mexico climbed Cortes and his men; they were more than a mile above the sea. They passed towns with strange names Xicochimalco, Teoxihuacan, Texotla, Xocotlan. In the matter of names, assuredly, if in nothing else, the ancient Aztecs could claim THE AGE OF CORTES 125 originality; we find nothing in the Old World to compare with them in this respect. Xocotlan was a place of some importance, with thirteen pyramid temples; and here the inhabitants, by way of a graceful courtesy, instead of send- ing forward their mayor to read an address and invite the distinguished strangers to a dinner, got up a little sacrifice of fifty victims, in whose blood they dipped cakes, and offered them to the Spaniards as refreshment. The upland air is bracing, and breeds appetite; but it may be doubted whether the Spaniards lunched heartily on these viands. They kept on their way to a place baptized Iztacmixtitlan, a resting-place before advancing to Tlascala, one of the most powerful and formidable of the pueblos. It was here that they were to meet the first open resistance; and upon the issue of the contest would hang the fortunes of Cortes. The crisis had come. : . The pueblo had two war-chiefs ; and they were diametri- cally opposed in their views as to what should be done. One of them was for regarding the Spaniards as manifest gods, to contend against whom were worse than vain; as well try to make fire burn downward, or water run up hill. The other chieftain was wedded to his ancestral idols; he was a conservative in politics and religion, and a disciple of materialism into the bargain. It might be that the strangers were gods; their arrogance, however, was the only godly attribute they had thus far displayed. But gods or not, there were very few of them; whereas the Tlascalans were innumerable, and they had never been defeated. There was at least a fair chance that the in- vaders might be overwhelmed; and even if the attempt should fail, it would not be the end of all things; a few thousand warriors slain, that was all ; and the general situ- ation no worse than it was before; since, if they did not fight, they would be subjugated anyway. In short, the ad- vocates of battle carried the day, and the Tlascalan army took the field. How many of them there were we cannot say ; some writers put it at one hundred and fifty thousand ; 126 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Professor Fiske, who will not be stampeded, does not believe there were more than five thousand at most, and thinks the result of the battle is quite as wonderful as is decent, even then. The Tlascalans, be their number what it may, were brought to battle in great divisions, probably phratries, which were distinguished one from another by the color of the paint with which they beautified themselves. For armor they put on their quilted cotton doublets, grasped their hide shields with feather trimmings, and fastened leather caps on their heads, also adorned with featherwork in such a manner as to simulate snakes and jaguars. For weapons of offence they carried bows and arrows, lances with copper heads, slings and javelins, and swords of heavy and hard wood, reinforced with sharp edges of obsidian. Had the Spaniards been similarly equipped, this narrative would never have been written; but of what avail were such toys against firearms and steel? Moreover, in the fighting which followed during the next two days, and was of a desultory character, the Tlascalans were greatly hampered by their invincible desire to capture their foes instead of merely killing them off-hand ; they wished to kill and eat them according to the laws of religion and gastronomy after the battle was over. Thus they would die by dozens (or by thousands, if we please) in the effort to surround and capture a single Spanish horse- man. The effort was fruitless. Not a man of the invaders was captured, though one or two were killed (but were buried by their comrades, in the interests of their alleged deityship), and several were wounded. After the two days were over, therefore, the Tlascalans could only suppose that mortal Aztec could make no impression on the steel hides of these supernatural invaders. One hope, however, remained, in the opinion of the soothsaj^ers : allowing that these people were children of the sun, might it not be that the light of that star was essential to their invulnerability? In that case, all one had to do was to attack them after dark. In order to make assurance doubly sure, and to be on the safe side in case the reasoning of the soothsayers should prove faulty, THE AGE O* CORTES 127 spies were sent to the Spanish camp to lull the suspicions of the enemy asleep with soothing words; some of them were to report back with whatever information they could gather, the rest to set fire to the effects of the invaders at a pre- arranged signal. But Cortes was a natural soothsayer himself, and could see quite as far into a millstone as the acutest of the Tlas- calans. No sooner had the spies entered the camp, with an assumed meekness of demeanor which they were persuaded was impenetrable, than they found themselves seized, bound, and dragged before the terrible white captain for examina- tion. His eyes, sternly regarding them, made their bosoms feel like translucent glass, and turned their bowels to water within them. The secret must out; they collapsed and con- fessed. Cortes, after the sun had set, sent back the spies whence they came (retaining only their thumbs) with the information that the children of the sun were just as invin- cible after dark as at noonday. And without undue delay, he followed up the messengers with a cavalry charge; the helpless Tlascalans, distilled almost to a jelly with the act of fear, flying before the man-monsters, ventre a terre. But many of them were slain ; and those who escaped sought the only solace possible in the circumstances ; they caught and cooked the soothsayers, and put them where they could cause no worse evil than an indigestion. "Whether indigestion in- deed supervened, we know not; but the next morning the chiefs of Tlascala saw a new light, and besought their con- querors to accept them as allies in whatever further exploits they might be contemplating. The proffer was accepted; and the race of the Aztecs admitted that the combination must prove irresistible. Nobody, till now, had been able to overcome the Tlascalans; the sun-children had beaten them without an effort; who then should stand against the twain united? The doom of Tenochtitlan was at hand, and the march against it was already begun, the steel invaders marching first, while the cotton-quilted but formidable Tlas- calans followed cloud-like in their rear. The latter were 128 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA presently to realize that the Spaniards were not altogether so god-like as they had pretended; but the alliance held, nevertheless, for the interests of the two parties to it were at first identical. The first step toward Tenochtitlan was the great pueblo of Cholula, a member of the confederacy, and vowed to the service of Quetzalcoatl. Yet although the Fair God was their especial god, their hobby-god, as it were, they do not appear to have had any very realizing sense of him, as of a deity likely to reappear in human incarnation from the region of the rising sun, about this time. They paid his image conventional respect, as an image; but did not look for him to get down from his pedestal, and come riding into their pueblo in steel armor, with other bearded deities in his train. In fact, the Cholulans seem to have been of a more sceptical complexion, in regard to these sun-children, than any others of the dwellers of the plateau ; that the Spanish were dangerous and objectionable persons they admitted ; but that they were supernatural, they implicitly questioned. And even with the example of the hitherto redoubtable Tlascalans before their eyes, these Cholulans flattered them- selves that they would teach the sun men a lesson. They thought to make a ragout of Cortes and his men and horses ; instead of which occurred the Massacre of Cholula, famous hi history, but not so abominable a matter as many other transactions in which Spaniards, before and since, have been agents. Cortes behaved very much as the cogency of circum- stances compelled him; with resolution, sagacity and courage into the bargain. But the tale is a little complicated. We have said that the Cholulans were members of the confederacy; but this should be explained. Properly, the confederacy, as we have seen, consisted of but three Te- nochtitlan, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan. But when the rumor of the invincible strangers began to come from the coast, the minds of the local statesmen became occupied with ways and means of encountering them to the best advantage ; and Tenochtitlan, remembering *he Tlascalans and the disgrun- THE AGE OF CORTES 129 tied eastern towns, cast about for some fresh ally or buffer nearer home to obstruct the advance of the enemy withal. Now the Cholulans had until lately been hostile to Mexico, and either party was more prone to kill and eat the other, upon opportunity, than to exchange the offices of friendship. But in the shadow of a peril so exceptional as now threat- ened, these hereditary foes felt inclined to make common cause, if only to insure each other the privilege of mutual cannibalism hereafter; and messengers were sent from Mex- ico to Cholula, offering some such proposition, and making suggestions as to what should be done. For the time being, then, and subject to conditions and precautions, a sort of al- liance was concluded between the two ; and a plot to destroy the invaders partly devised. The road to Mexico lay through Cholula; but there was also an alternative route, through another pueblo; and at first blush one would expect that the invaders would be persuaded to go by that route rather than Cholula way. But it so happened that this other pueblo was not only an enemy of Mexico, but an irreconcilable one; and it was considered that should the Spaniards enter that town, the result would be that it, as well as the Tlascalans, would enlist under their banner. Consequently prudence dictated that Cortes must be invited to visit Cholula ; and, once with- in their gates, care must be taken that he did not emerge thence alive. In studying the details of this affair, one is struck with the looseness of the strategy, and the many and fatal loop- holes left by the plotters for being found out and countered. For even could they hoodwink Cortes not a hopeful under- taking how could they expect to deceive his Tlascalan al- lies, who were acquainted of course with all native devices, and would not fail to put the stranger upon his guard? Be- sides, what other interpretation could one put upon trenches and ditches cut across the main street of the pueblo, than that they were designed to obstruct the movements of men and horses in combat or charge? and the piles of sling-stones on the flat roofs of the houses along the way, though it might 130 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA be "the custom" to keep them there, were at the juncture not reassuring. Moreover, here seemed to be a wondrous multitude of people assembled ; hundreds of thousands, ap- parently; they lined the road for miles and thronged the roofs. It is true, as scrupulous Mr. Bandelier and others remark, that this multitude was enormously exaggerated by the Spanish narrators, on the same principle that a modern theatre audience is expected to be so obliging as to believe that the squad of six men-at-arms which continually passes and repasses across the stage, is in fact an innumerable host ; in short, this endless crowd of Cholulans were continually the same crowd reproduced in successive places along the Spanish line of march: whether with malice aforethought to deceive, or as simply anxious to observe the queer strangers as often as possible. Mr. Bandelier will not admit that there were more than twenty-five thousand Cholulans at that time extant, though a superficial glance at the town or pueblo might easily lead one to imagine that there might be more. Houses were indeed distributed over a large area ; but in the first place not more than two-thirds or three-fourths of them were inhabited; and then there were larger vacant places between the several constitutive settle- ments or hamlets than would be the case in Europe. The houses were of one story, flat-roofed ; and in the centre of the town rose a high, artificial hill, or ruined pyramid per- haps, now overgrown with vegetation, and surmounted by small temples. It was in these temples that the sacrifices were performed. In addition to the private houses, there were also larger composite buildings, enclosing square courts with thick walls, and consisting of numerous private dwell- ings joined together. One of these was quite large enough to accommodate the entire Spanish army, and in such a one they were in fact domiciled. Two invitations to visit Cholula were sent to Cortes by the council ; but it is open to us to believe that the first one was not official in the full sense, but was put forth by cer- tain chiefs who were disposed really to secure the friendship THE AGE OF CORTES 131 of the Spaniards. But Cortes seems to have been dissatisfied with its informal character, and sent the emissaries back with a demand that he receive an invitation with all the honors. Accordingly, a second and much larger deputation was de- spatched to meet him, with gifts and polite assurances; and Cortes for his part instituted ceremonies with a view to re- ceiving Cholula as vassal of the Spanish crown. But the chiefs who took the prescribed oaths did so with a light heart, inasmuch as they could not be binding on them in the first place (they not having been empowered by the tribe to enter into any such compact) ; and, in the second place, they did not rightly comprehend what the object of the ceremony was. Only, if it led the Spaniards to imagine that they were safe, so much the better. Thus there was, to a degree, a game of cross-purposes ; but practically neither side trusted the other ; and the Tlascalans did not fail to warn Cortes that he would be betrayed. Cortes was already of the same way of thinking ; but it would not do for him to show misgiving at this stage; he must on, and deal with the crisis when it came as best he might. On the outskirts of the town, the Tlascalans were obliged to halt, as being heredi- tary enemies of the Cholulans, who could not enter their pueblo. But Cortes was able to maintain communication with them; and it was understood between them and him that when the guns were heard they should rush in and take a hand in the battle. Forward now went the compact mass of the four hundred and fifty Spaniards, alone, wedged in between the thousands of their treacherous hosts. Mr. Bandelier, who has made a study of Cholula, gives us a good picture of this barbarous assemblage. "Women in their ancient dress, with their hair done up in the style of a turban ; the short upil or sleeveless waistcoat, made of cotton cloth and embroidered with red, black and white figures, through which the head and neck projected, and beneath it a skirt, girt round the body. The men, except the officers, bareheaded, in white robes, and also embroidered jackets; on the heads of the principal offi- 132 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA cers, the half-mitre, adorned with colored feathers, colored stones, and shells; the priests in black; all the faces painted in festive style, that is, hideously striped, those of the com- mon people with cochineal on the cheeks and forehead, and those of higher chiefs with green, blue and yellow; and the faces of the priests black, with white rings round the eyes and mouth. Added to these features were the noise of large and small drums, the squeaking of pipes, the roaring, thump- ing sound of the 'Tozacatl, ' and the clattering of many rattles. The Spaniards marched slowly along in the midst of this uproar, while the horses walked under their armored riders. ... A festival less formal and ceremonious than historians have represented it, but still extraordinary, gor- geous, and strange enough." They marched, as the Cholulans believed and intended, to their doom; as they themselves felt, to a battle; and Cortes also believed, though as it proves without good grounds, that the Cholulans were supported by ten or twenty thousand soldiers from Tenochtitlan. He noted, too, that all the women and children were being withdrawn from the town, which indicated, of course, that fisticuffs were in the wind. That he was very fully informed of all that was planning for his destruction is certain ; and if other means of informing himself had been lacking, he could rely upon the Tabasco girl, Malina, his interpreter and mistress, a clever and faithful wench, proficient in both the Maya and Nahuatl languages, who probably saved her lover's life sev- eral times over in the exciting days and months that fol- lowed. Her importance to the cavalier was recognized by the Aztecs, who called Cortes himself Malinche the master (or appurtenance) of Malina. She imports into the story of the conquest of Mexico the single thread of love romance which it contains; though of the other kinds of romance there is enough. It must be admitted, too, that Cortes ap- pears in the attitude of the beneficiary throughout; Malina does everything for him ; he does nothing for Malina, except let her do everything. THE AGE OF CORTES 133 As an illustration of the barbaric child-likeness of the Aztecs, the incident of Malina and the "old woman" is per- tinent. Malina was regarded by the natives as a Nahuatl girl, and as secretly friendly to their cause; moreover, she was obviously rich, for she carried much of her eleemosynary wealth exposed about her person. She was therefore a desir- able match; and the "old woman" had marked her down as such ; and while the Spaniards were iii Cholula, she secretly opened negotiations with her in the interest of her son. As an argument in favor of the latter, she disclosed to Malina the fact that the annihilation of the Spaniards was intended, and pointed out the peril in which Malina stood, unless she severed herself from them betimes. Malina was not scared, but she seemed to be deeply interested, and besought the old woman to give her all the details of the plot ; which the poor lady, nothing doubting, did. From this conference Malina went light-footed to Cortes, and imparted the facts, which tallied with information which Cortes had already derived from certain priests whom he had put to the question. The old woman and her son, the prospective rival of Cortes in Malina's affections, were promptly secured, and it is to be feared the} r were treated with true Spanish gallantry. Cortes was now ready to act. In order to throw the Cholulans off their guard, Cortes had already taken measures to convince their chiefs that he was off his guard entirely ; he had courteously chided them for giving him so little of their society during his stay, and had requested them to furnish him with a military escort and porters for his march to Mexico, which he would begin the next morning. The poor chiefs, hugely tickled at the seeming success of their own treachery, were quite blind to that of the Spaniard, and there was a sort of love-feast between these two parties who were longing to be at each other's throats. The morning came. The Spanish soldiers were drawn up in order, the guns were loaded, Cortes was on his horse, with Malina by his side; all was ready. The guards now admitted the smiling Cholulans into the court, 134 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and in they thronged by hundreds, wedging themselves tightly round that steel-clad band who stood so grim in the midst, with their fierce eyes bent on their leader, who, with a serene countenance, intimated that, before setting out, it would gratify him to have speech with the chiefs, some thirty in number, who had been chiefly in evidence during his stay ; he wished to bid them farewell and to beseech their blessing. Now these chiefs or some of them ; for there were still two parties in Cholula, one intending the massacre of the Spaniards, the other advising alliance with them some of these chiefs were so certain that, within a few hours, they would be dining off their visitors on the summit of the sacri- ficial hill, that they accepted Cortes's polite invitation with alacrity. With them, Cortes withdrew into a private place, and there, with the calmness and lack of passion which it was his pleasure to show in such crises, regaled them with a minute account of their plot from beginning to end ; and 'even went so far as to pick out from the thirty those chiefs who had been most active in it. One can see the eyes of these unfortunates dilate, and their jaws relax, as they lis- tened to words which proved to them that the sun-people were gods, and omniscient, after all. Cortes added that it had been suggested to him that Montezuma was privy to the plot; but such a charge he refused to credit; he was too well assured of the noble character of that prince. This remark was thrown in to keep the Mexican envoys quiet; for the far-seeing Spaniard knew that he would need all his sagac- ity, as well as all his strength, in dealing with Teuochtitlan hereafter. The interview over, the signal for slaughter was given, the cannon belched fire, and the shot tore through the wedged masses in the square. The noise itself was fearful enough; it had never before been heard in Cholula; but the deadly effect was beyond all forecast. The great square soon became a frightful shambles of dead and dying, wading amid which the Spanish soldiers soon became painted with hot blood; and upon it all the clear October suii looked THE AGE OF CORTES 135 down, as if in approval of his children's action. Hither and thither, without and within the court of death, charged the steel-clad horsemen, and at every leap their swords rose and fell, and another Aztec life went out. Meanwhile the Tlas- calans, taking their cue from the uproar, rushed into the town, and began a slaughter on their own account. It was warm work, but pleasant to all save the Cholulans; and it lasted five hours. The main body of the natives fled to the mound now called Cerro de la Cruz, more than half a mile from the court ; and made their last stand there ; when they were dead, the resistance ended. The doomed chiefs were now brought forth, and, as an artistic climax, burned at the stake, to encourage the others. How many Cholulans were slain, in all? No one knows; Las Casas says, six thousand; Professor Fiske will not believe in more than five hundred; others split the difference. We are absolutely at liberty to take our choice, according to our temperament and preju- dices. The more pertinent question is, Were the Spaniards justified in what they did? and the verdict of the most con- siderate seems to say that they were. "When it comes to a choice between massacring and being massacred, few persons will hesitate in making their selection. It is true that we have only Spanish sources of information as to the prelimi- naries which introduced the event; it is conceivable that the story about the Cholulan plot may have been manufactured to suit the occasion. But this is far from likely; and we are pretty safe in concluding that this was an instance of being hoist with one's own petard. Besides, Cortes displayed his clemency by releasing the many persons who were being fattened in cages by the Cholulans for future sacrifices; he had no use for them himself, and did not see why he should omit so good a chance of making native friends. From Cholula the Spaniards continued their march, their baptism of blood having been thoroughly performed. Pass- ing several pueblos, some of which, built in the Venetian style with canals for streets, and with sparkling buildings of white gypsum, gratified their love of the picturesque, they 136 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA arrived on the 7th of November, 1519, at Ixtapalapan, on the border of the lake amid which stood Tenochtitlan. The sight was impressive and beautiful, and stimulated the annalist of the march, Bernal Diaz, to expressions of admiration. Says he, "When we beheld so many cities and towns rising up from the water, and other populous places standing on terra firma, and that causeway, straight as a level, which led into Mexico, we remained astonished, and said one to another that it was like the enchanted castles of Amadis, by reason of the great towers, temples and edifices which were in the water, all of them the work of masonry. Some of our soldiers asked if what they saw were not the fabric of a dream." "It may well be called," comments Professor Fiske, per- mitting himself one of his rare seizures of enthusiasm, "the most romantic moment in all history, this moment when Eu- ropean eyes first rested upon that city of wonders, the chief ornament of a stage of social evolution two full ethnic periods behind their own. To say that it was like stepping back across the centuries to visit the Nineveh of Sennacherib or hundred- gated Thebes is but inadequately to depict the situation, for it was a longer step than that. Such chances do not come twice to mankind, for when two grades of culture so widely separated are brought into contact, the stronger is apt to blight and crush the weaker where it does not amend and transform it. In spite of its foul abominations, one some- times feels that one would like to recall that extinct state of society in order to study it. The devoted lover of his- tory, who ransacks all sciences for aid toward understanding the course of human events, who knows in what unexpected ways one stage of progress often illustrates other stages, will sometimes wish it were possible to resuscitate, even for one brief year, the vanished City of the Cactus Rock. Could such a work of enchantment be performed, however, our first feeling would doubtless be one of ineffable horror and disgust, like that of the knight in the old English ballad, who, folding in his arms a damsel of radiant beauty, finds himself in the embrace of a loathsome fiend!" THE AGE OF CORTES 137 After such an excursion into the realms of imagination, our Professor takes himself severely in hand, and tells us just what the magic city of Mexico actually was; and in this masterly analysis of evidence we cannot do better than accept most of his conclusions. The city stood at a distance from the shores of the lake of nowhere less than three miles ; access was had to it by means of three causeways, from four to six miles in length, and about twenty-five feet wide. The causeways were inter- rupted, near the city, by wooden drawbridges, which could be raised at a minute's warning; and any one walking on them would of course be exposed to attacks from canoes on the water. Entering the city, the causeways became streets, which met in the centre, where, surrounded by a massive stone wall eight feet in height, was a vast court, containing some twenty truncated pyramids, for the sacrifices. The largest of these was not less tban one hundred feet in height. It was ascended by steps; but the total ascent was divided into five stages, each stage affording a platform or terrace entirely encircling the pyramid, so that the sacrificial pro- cessions, going up the first flight of steps, could then turn to the right, and go up the steps on the next adjoining side; on the second terrace another partial circumvagation would be made, until, by the time the summit was reached, the entire pyramid had been environed; with great enhancement of the scenic effect. Whether the latter was the object of the builders, remarks Professor Fiske, we cannot determine; but at all events that was the result. The mountain of Chapultepec, afterward famous as the scene of a battle between antagonists very different from those we are at present considering, rose close to the south- west margin of the lake ; and from it an aqueduct was built to the city ; which, inasmuch as the waters of the lake itself were salt, was an important element in the situation. The streets of the city, other than the causeway continuations, were generally canals, crowded with canoes, and bearing a strong resemblance, of course, to the canals of Venice, which 138 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA were then famous all over the civilized world. But the ca- noes of the Aztecs, instead of being black, like the Venetian gondolas, were brightly decorated with paint and feathers; and the buildings which looked down upon them were as lustrous, in the sunshine, as the palaces of the Queen of the Adriatic, though of course entirely lacking in the beauty of Italian architecture. These buildings were uniformly of vast size, containing, each of them, at least as many as two hundred inhabitants; they were built of blocks of red stone, generally overlaid with white cement ; the height was never more than two stories, and they enclosed spacious courts. The windows on the outside were mere loopholes; the flat roofs were surrounded by low stone parapets, interrupted occasionally by towers; all with a view to defence. Con- sidering that the inhabitants of the city were much scamped for room, their scheme of building does not seem economical ; but in that warm climate it was probably the only feasible one for decent comfort. Yet it seems as if a third story might have been added; and if we are to believe the as- sertion that most of the houses were surrounded by gardens containing flowers, we can only suppose that the inhabitants preferred such gardens to living-room. Flowers certainly were the favorite luxury of this people; besides these exter- nal flower-gardens, the roofs were often covered with them ; and in the lake, round about the city, were moored immense rafts, or floating gardens, covered with black loam, on which plants and vegetables were grown. Flowers were used for ceremonial and sacrificial purposes, but they were also loved for their own sake; and there is extant a native poem to prove it. "They led me within a valley to a fertile spot," sings the poet, "a flowery spot, where the dew spread out a glittering splendor, where I saw various lovely fragrant flowers, lovely odorous flowers, clothed with dew, scattered around in rainbow glory; there they said to me, 'Pluck the flowers, whichever thou wishest, mayest thou the singer be glad, and give them to thy friends, to the chiefs, that they may rejoice on the earth.' " Of the houses there are sup- THE AGE OF CORTES 139 posed to have been about three hundred, containing an ag- gregate of sixty thousand people. Doors there were none ; for doors are an appanage of civilization, and had therefore not yet been invented in Mexico; though one might surmise that no doors, or portieres of cotton or bamboo, might be more comfortable there than doors with latches and locks which last, again, would hardly be worth while in a society where the right of private property was so imperfectly rec- ognized. The doorways could be barricaded at need, how- ever; and cotton and feathered screens or hangings were common. Birds of brilliant plumage abounded in the coun- try, and the people were as fond of them as of flowers, and used their feathers constantly in decoration and adornment. Truly, with the flowers and the feathers, the canoes and the white cement, the moving crowds and the sunshine, Tenoch- titlan must have showed a splendid front to the Spanish invaders ! Mexico and the adjoining countries afford many varieties of ornamental woods, and these were employed for the inte- rior fittings of the houses, cedar predominating. The walls were hung with tapestries woven of humming-bird skins, parrots, pheasants, cardinal-birds; there was little furniture,, beyond low tables and stools; beds consisted of palm-leaf mats laid one on another on the floor. Cushions, in the Oriental fashion, were used to sit on at meals, the dining- tables being set round the room, and the guests reclining or sitting with their backs against the wall. In the middle of the room, at meal-times, stood a burning brazier, into which, before eating anything, each guest threw a portion of food for the benefit of the always hungry fire-god. The food was various and well-cooked. Of vegetables there was a good choice; Indian meal was employed in divers ways beaten up with eggs, baked as bread, and covering pies as crust. Pungent sauces were used in the stews and ragouts. There was plenty of fish, and animal foods to which our menus are strangers were eaten by the epicures with a freedom from prejudice which reminds one of the Chinese 140 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Ants and frog-spawn were favorites, and "a fricassee of very young children" was much fancied; it was held superior to any other preparations of human flesh. Next to human babies, turkey was best liked; the turkey being indigenous to Mexico, whence, in the course of centuries, it has spread over civilization. The bird, owing to the popular error as to the geographical location of America, was called turkey to indicate its supposed Oriental origin. In serving the viands, chafing dishes were employed; the bowls and plates were made of native earthenware; there were no forks or spoons except those which nature has provided in the shape of thumbs and fingers. For drink, there was chocolate fla- vored with vanilla, and, as an intoxicant, pulque, made from maguey juice. This was drunk after the meal, ac- companied by pipes and tobacco. Upon the whole, the Aztecs seem to have been by no means averse from in- dulgence in the pleasures of the table. There were no shops in Mexico, but fairs were held in two large market-places twice in ten days, trade being con- ducted mainly by barter, though there was a rudimentary currency in the form of quills filled with gold dust, and bags of cocoa seed ; also bits of copper. The wares were brought to town on litters, the only Mexican vehicle except canoes. All manner of goods were offered; building-tools and ma- terials, weapons, mats, stools, cloths, dyestuffs, ornaments, pottery. On market days booths were erected for the trial of criminals, and the operations of justice were quick and severe. Barbers' shops also abounded, and the Aztec could get his thin beard shaved with razors of obsidian. One can easily picture the lively and picturesque scene; a strange, bloody-minded, beauty-loving, fierce, self-indulgent people, "half devil and half child." As has already been mentioned, the staple article of clothing was the cotton cloak and doublet for the men, and long robe for the women; they were dyed, fringed and embroidered, and sashes confined them at the waist. In cold weather capes and jackets of fur or feathers were THE AGE OF CORTES 141 worn ; the feet were shod with sandals, and instead of hats there were hoods of white cotton. Gold and silver brace- lets, anklets, earrings, nose rings and finger rings jingled and shone, as to-day in India ; the hair was worn long, and was dyed purple by the women ; while the tawny faces were painted red or yellow, and the teeth stained with cochineal. A crowd of Mexicans must have somewhat resembled a throng of glittering birds and insects. The chief festival and ceremony of the Mexicans, and of the most frequent recurrence, was the human sacrifice. After the victims had been fattened, and led to the summit of the pyramid, they were stretched face upward on a large convex block of jasper, which caused the chest to be thrown upward, thereby rendering it easy for the priest, with his sharp stone knife, to divide it with a slashing blow, and snatch out the still beating heart, which was the especial tid-bit for the god. After the work had been going on for a while, hearts were in evidence everywhere, smoking on the various altars; while the rest of the corpse was sent to the kitchens below, to be cooked for the feast. Hearts were also, occasionally, put between the god's lips with a gold spoon; or the mouth of the idol was merely smeared with blood. The entrails were given to the rattlesnakes, which were kept in enclosures in great quantity, being re- garded as sacred, and other refuse parts of the bodies were fed to a menagerie of beasts kept for that purpose. Every part of the sacred buildings was drenched and painted with fresh blood ; and as if this was not enough, there was close by a structure called tzompantli, which is described by Ban- croft as "an oblong sloping parallelogram of earth and ma- sonry, one hundred and fifty-four feet at the base, ascended by thirty steps, on each of which were skulls. Round the summit were upward of seventy raised poles about four feet apart, connected by numerous rows of cross poles passed through holes in the masts, on each of which five skulls were filed, the sticks being passed through the temples. In the centre stood two towers or columns made of skulls and 142 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA lime, the face, of each skull being turned outward, giving a horrible appearance to the whole. This effect was height- ened by leaving the heads of distinguished captives in their natural state, with hair and skin on. As the skulls decayed, or fell from the towers or poles, they were replaced by oth- ers, so that no vacant place was left." Decidedly it is diffi- cult to sympathize with the predilections and practices of some of our American aborigines. But people get accus- tomed to things which seem at first revolting; and just as the Roman populace enjoyed the scenes of the amphitheatre in the days of the emperors, and as contemporary Spanish men and women flock with enthusiasm to bull-fights, so no doubt did our Aztec predecessors find their human sacrifices pleasant and appetizing; while the priests who did the butchering were perhaps ennuied, and needed the applause of the spectators in order to perform their functions with spirit and zest. The work must really have been arduous, if we are to believe the statement of a native historian, who asserts that on one occasion the number of victims footed up to eighty thousand. Montezuma, awed by the supernatural reputation of his visitors, refurbished by their late Cholulan exploit, was in an uncertain frame of mind when they appeared at the bor- ders of his domain, and requested safe-conduct into the city. That he did not want them under his roof may be taken for granted ; but it is no less plain that he disliked to assume the responsibility of sending word that he was "not at home." For aught any could tell, they might thereupon rise into the air, and swoop down upon him thence ; or cause their father the sun to shed a pestilence upon the city, or burn it up with fire. There was no time to spend in debating the matter; it had already been debated again and again, and the result had always been that, as in Cempoala, two opposite opin- ions had been developed, one for resistance at all hazards, the other for submission. That the priests of the gods hostile to Quetzal coatl belonged to the former party may be safely assumed; since the advent of the Spanish must be THE AGE OF CORTES 143 equally objectionable to them, whether they were gods or simply human adventurers; and the possibility that resist- ance to them might ultimately lead to their appearance on the jasper block was too alluring to be contemplated with equanimity. Nevertheless, the counsels of the temporizers prevailed ; Cortes was waiting, and if he were kept waiting he would get angry; let him be admitted! Accordingly courteous messages were sent him, and the steel-clad army with its thousand Tlascalan allies entered the causeway ad- joining Ixtapalapan, and began their march across it. And if Montezuma watched their approach with mixed feelings, we may suppose that Cortes was hardly less a prey to anx- iety. Seldom has it fallen to the lot of a soldier to embark upon so hazardous an enterprise. Indeed it was as nearly certain as anything in the future can be, that the Spaniards would not see the end of the ad- venture without fighting; and it required a sanguine and dauntless temper to anticipate a favorable issue to Buch a fight. The Aztecs outnumbered them at least a hundred to one, and after making all allowances for the Spanish superiority of arms and armor, the mere brute force of numbers was enough to decide the victory. Besides, fight- ing in a city can never be to the advantage of the stranger party; in a hundred ways the inhabitants have the better of it. The Spaniards could be hemmed in within a certain area, or building, and prevented from getting out until they were either starved to death, or gradually destroyed in de- tail. Moreover, the supernatural prestige which they at first enjoyed could not fail to be dissipated in time, and when the persuasion that resistance to them was impossible or impious was gone, the revulsion of feeling would make their situation more precarious than if they had confessed their mortal state at first. No : unless in the event of some almost inconceivable good fortune, the only way to subdue Mexico would be, in the end, to do it by force; in other words, each individual Spanish soldier must face the pos- sibility of having to kill with his own hand from fifty to 144 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA a hundred of the enemy. It was a desperate chance; but Cortes was just the man to accept it. In fact, now that he had gone so far, there could be no turning back. Meanwhile, all was politeness on both sides, and assur- ances of mutual esteem. The strangers entered the city, between the gazing, fluttering, glittering, painted crowds of curious and excited Aztecs who thronged the narrow streets and overflowed on the roofs of the great houses; staring with such consuming interest as the spectacle of creatures more than mortal might be expected to inspire, yet with their awe mingled with distrust and animosity, and with the characteristic longing to see these white-faced and long-bearded tyrants brought to submission and slaughter on the sacrificial block. With murmurings, shouts, callings, pressings forward, shiftings, stragglings, gesticulations, the many-hued throng heaved and swayed to give them passage, and closed upon them as they passed. Onward rolled the great procession, Cortes and the other officers visible above the rest on their terrible horses, the cannon trundling heavily along the cemented streets, the men-at-arms marching rigidly aligned, their swords clanking at their thighs, the sun glitter- ing on their head-pieces and breast-plates. Rank after rank passed on, each marching within a sword's length of its predecessor, and extending perhaps three-quarters of a mile in all; then followed the Tlascalans, twice as numerous, but pushing forward irregularly, and eyed with hardly disguised hostility by their hereditary enemies. One fancies that, since Cortes must be so bold, he might better have been yet a little bolder, and have left these native allies of his behind. When the crisis came, their help could not be decisive ; and mean- while, their presence could but inflame the feeling against both them and the Spaniards, and support the suspicion that gods who accepted mortal allies might not be such redoubt- able gods after all. Certainly, the Tlascalans could have been more easily spared than Malina, whose knowledge, penetration and faithfulness were of a value which it would be difficult to overestimate. THE AGE OF CORTES 145 One of the large council-houses or Tecpans had been assigned as the lodging place of the visitors ; there was ample room in it for not the Spaniards only, but for the Tlascalans likewise. It was defensible of course; but it would be just as difficult to break out of it, should the Mexicans close it in, as to break into it, if the Spaniards stood a siege. There was, in short, no such thing as safety to be looked for, save in the courage and resources of the invaders themselves. Sixty thousand savage hearts were longing for the destruction of the white men, and as many insatiable stomachs were yearning to entomb them. What- ever Cortes did must be done without delay, while the coun- sels of the enemy were still unsettled. The experience gained on the journey to Mexico here stood the captain in good stead ; and the information imparted by Malina supplemented it. There was only one way to disarm, for a time at least, overt hostilities ; and that was to effect the capture of the chief -of -men. For it was by the latter alone that the taking of the auspices before fighting could be performed ; and without taking these auspices no Mexi- can would venture to begin a battle, inasmuch as the gods would be thereby set against them from the start. Monte- zuma, as chief-of-men, was Lord Priest of Huitzilopochtli, and in the dance of ceremony he was clad in the garment made of human skin sacred to that office. He was also the living representative of the same deity, and as such wore blue garments and a necklace and crown of turquoises. Upon his forehead was a gold clasp shaped like the beak of a humming-bird, which identified him with the war-god himself, and which none other could wear without sacrilege. If, therefore, Cortes could secure his person, he would have the whip-hand over all true Aztec believers, so long as Mou- tezuma remained alive. It was a desperate expedient, but there was no alternative ; and before the Spaniards had been a week in the city, an incident occurred which precipitated the stroke. The small Spanish garrison left at Vera Cruz on the 4 coast had got into a fight with some of Montezuma's 146 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA tax-gatherers, and though the latter had been defeated, sev- eral of the alleged divine white men had been killed which of course pricked the bubble of their invulnerability on the spot. Upon learning of this mishap, the pious leader sum- moned his officers to prayer, and the next day, with Malina and Alvarado (one of his captains, with the red hair and herculean figure of a Scandinavian Berserker), he went forth and made a call upon the chief -of -men. The subject brought up for discussion was the affair at Vera Cruz, which, Cortes intimated, had been described to him as due to the secret influence or orders of Montezuma. Montezuma denied the imputation, and sent a messenger after the delin- quent. Cortes assured him that he did not doubt his word, but suggested that, while the matter was being adjusted, it would gratify him to have Montezuma take up his quarters at the Spanish lodgings as a formal guarantee of good faith ; the councils could meet there, and the despatch of routine public business need be in no respect interrupted. Monte- zuma had no liking at all for the scheme, but he was unable to find sound arguments with which to combat it ; and he felt the hand of steel within the Spaniard's velvet glove. There was a fatal weakness in the Aztec's character which made him no match for one of the strongest and most subtle minds of that age. He finally accepted the unwelcome but always courteous invitation, and was domiciled in the Span- ish headquarters, where he was treated "with the most dis- tinguished consideration, ' ' and was allowed to hold as many councils as he pleased, and even to attend ceremonies in the temple once hi a while, though never without a strong guard of heavily armed Spaniards. It was not easy for any one to pick technical flaws in this procedure, though it was plain enough that Cortes had made himself the real ruler of Te- nochtitlan, with Montezuma as his helpless tool. When the offending chief of tax-gatherers arrived from Vera Cruz, it was by Cortes that he was tried and condemned, the sen- tence being that he be burned alive in the public square; and upon the pyre, at Cortes's order, were heaped up a vast THE AGE OF CORTES 147 quantity of darts and arrows collected from the Aztec ar- senal, which were thus burned up out of harm's way along with the ill-starred official. This incident shows to what an extent the Aztecs were hypnotized by the tactics of Cortes, and the want of some one with authority to tell them what to do. The institutions of barbarians are not flexible, and they die of strangulation by red-tape even more unresistingly than do we heirs of modern civilization. But Montezuma had a brother, Cuitlahuatzin by name, who allied himself with the tribal chiefs of Tezcuco and Tlacopan to release him from his Spanish captors. It was a crude conspiracy, useful only to the romancers of a long subsequent age as material for dramatic intrigue. Cortes had foreseen attempts of that kind, and was forewarned by Malina of its progress, so that he was ready to scotch it when the time came. He took his measures so well that he presently had the three conspiring chiefs in his power, and added them to his collection in the chambers of the tecpan. By thus imprisoning the successor of Montezuma he greatly strengthened his control over the situation ; and his next step was to do away with the images of the gods in the temples and on the pyramids. After denuding one of the latter of its sacred accessories, he had its altar washed clean of the accumulated blood of years, sprinkled it with holy water, and erected upon it a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary ; then causing the populace to assemble in the square, he had mass performed in their presence, which they doubtless supposed to be a new rite in the worship of Quetzalcoatl. Contrary to all reasonable expectation, at all events, they did not explode in wrathful rebellion at all this audacious impudence, but let it go on in a sullen mood of toleration all that winter. In April, however, danger came from the quarter where it had least been looked for, and once again the generalship and presence of mind of Cortes was put to a test which few besides himself could have survived. It appears that Velasquez, governor of Cuba, had not remained quiescent under the tacit defiance of his commands 148 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA by Cortes, but had spent his time in providing means to re- duce him to obedience, and to inflict upon him a suitable Spanish punishment. He had raised an army of twelve hundred men, and had embarked them on eighteen ships, the entire expedition being intrusted to the leadership of Pamfilo de Narvaez ; whose orders were to pursue the too independent captain, arrest him, and produce him, body and bones, before the offended majesty of the governor. Narvaez had set sail accordingly, and was even now ashore at San Juan de Ulloa, ready to march for Tenoch- titlan. This news was brought by the Aztec couriers in picture writing, and was made known to Cortes as promptly as to Montezuma. What was to be done? It was all very well to bamboozle superstitious natives armed only with bows and arrows and protected by cotton doublets; but an army of twelve hun- dred Spanish soldiers was not to be subdued by a third as many men of their own kith and kin. What another man might have done we may easily surmise; but Cortes was in a class by himself. He made up his mind, on the spot, to turn one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to him into a means of securing his position. He would prove once more that he understood human nature better than did Velasquez, or most other people before the era of Shakespeare. This was the time that either was to make him, or undo him quite. Without losing a moment, he called his Berserker Alva- rado, and appointed him deputy-ruler of Tenochtitlan in his place. He left with him one hundred and fifty of his Span- ish soldiers, and the Tlascalans; with the remaining three hundred he set out by forced marches for the coast. Nar- vaez, who seems to have observed the Spanish policy of "manana," was looking for anything rather than Cortes; and was amusing himself in innocent security with reviews and preparations for the easy campaign which he imagined lay before him. Upon him thus agreeably preoccupied came down Cortes like a thunderbolt from blue sky, attacked and THE AGE OF CORTES 149 captured him without a word of warning or the least pre- tence of ceremony ; and having got the leader himself safely in his pocket, proceeded to exercise his powers of persuasion upon his army. He called them together, and unfolded a picture of the delights of Tenochtitlan and the boundless fortunes to be made there by all honest and self-respecting Spaniards, in such colors as proved not only seductive but irresistible. His own men, mingling with their brethren, supported his every assertion, and as earnest of the truth of the tale displayed the glittering trinkets which they had gathered during their sojourn. Flesh and blood could not withstand it; and without so much as a kick or a blush, the whole twelve hundred accepted the situation, chose Cortes as the general, and were ready to be led by him to gold and glory. The priests who had accompanied the expedition were captivated by the vast and inviting field for missionary labor which was disclosed to them by the great soldier, and cast in their lot with the rest. Cortes had triumphed; and, in the very midnight of blackest disaster, had caused to arise the noonday sun of prosperity. He did not give his new converts time to reconsider their determination, but started at once on his return march, at the head of fifteen hundred men. To be great is always money in a man's pocket, as the phrase runs. But the greatest men are after all but human and finite; and one of the things they cannot do is to make their lieuten- ants as great as themselves. Cortes's lieutenant Alvarado was brave enough, but lacked the saving prudence and self-com- mand of a Ulysses which, in the circumstances, was quite as desirable as the audacity of Achilles. After Cortes had taken his departure, rumors came to Alvarado's ears that certain chiefs were stirring up rebellion against his rule; his nerves were not steady enough to sit still and wait for the alleged plot to mature, and he made up his mind to quell it by taking the initiative himself. As it happened, the natu- ral progress of affairs afforded him what he deemed to be an. admirable opportunity to carry out his plan. 150 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA There was a certain great Aztec religious festival each year, in celebrating which they laid aside all preparations for war, and other business, and gave themselves wholly up to the service of the gods. This was the May festival, in honor of the annual return of green grass and tinted flow- ers ; and the god Tezcatlipoca was the central figure- of the ceremonies. Twenty days before the culminating event, a young man was selected from among the inhabitants of the pueblo, distinguished above others for his manly beauty and prowess ; and to him were assigned four lovely girls as brides. During twenty days this youth was kept in apartments fitted up with every luxury that Aztec resources could provide, and was made the object of divine honors; for he was indeed re- garded as the physical incarnation of the god. Every sense was flattered, every desire gratified unless, to be sure, he should happen to desire freedom to go about his business; but it is improbable that in that age and environment any petty frailty of that kind would invade the religious exalta- tion which must be assumed to have possessed him. It is comparatively easy to submit even to have one's breast cut open, and the heart snatched thence, if such has been the custom of the time -during unknown ages. We know that people did not seem to mind being burned at the stake in early Christian days, or suffering the torments of the In- quisition at the hands of Spain ; they smiled and sometimes jested with their executioners; and no better reason for this ghastly indifference is conceivable than that they were vica- riously used to it. What so many others had undergone and were undergoing, they too could undergo. On the one and twentieth day the crowning ceremony took place. Now must the divine youth leave his flowery apart- ments, his dainty banquets and the tender embraces of his brides, and walk in solemn procession to the sacrificial altar, stepping on fragrant flowers, surrounded and followed by many youths and maidens, chanting his praises, and paying him divine homage. Onward must he fare, amid the white- clad throng, welcomed with the plaudits and reverence of THE AGE OF CORTES 151 the great populace, to where, at the end of the journey, the wolfish priests waited for him at the summit of the pyramid. Arrived there, he looked his last upon the clear blue heavens and the white city and the green earth and rippling waters; he heard for the last time the murmuring voices of the spec- tators massed on all sides around him, filling the court, the streets, the roofs ; he felt against his shoulders the pressure of the jasper stone; he felt the priest snatch away the vest- ment from his hosom, and saw, with swimming eyes, the knife rushing downward at his life. All was then over for him; but his body was severed into scores of fragments, which the leading chiefs came forward to claim, and which they duly and piously devoured for supper. It was this day which Alvarado selected as the fitting juncture for his attack. Alvarado took the view of the ordinary soldier or fighter, who, when he sees, or thinks he sees, his adversary aiming a blow at him, tries to neutralize it by knocking his man down first. Alvarado also had acquired the notion that the Aztecs were incorrigible cowards ; basing this opinion, plaus- ibly enough, on the fact that, hitherto, they had put up with conduct on the part of the Spaniards which no self-respecting European would endure for a moment. He did not have penetration enough to see, as Cortes probably did, that they feared not man but the gods ; that it was religious scruples, not dread of death in battle, that had kept them quiet so far. Accordingly he believed that if he fell upon them unawares and cut a few hundred of them to pieces, they would become quieter than ever. Watching his opportunity, then, he sallied out of the. tecpan with a squad of his men, and began slashing and shooting at the passing procession with much fury, and with such good effect that some six hundred of the unarmed fes- tival-makers, including many of the chiefs, were then and there murdered; possibly the divine youth escaped in the confusion, but as to that the testimony is not conclusive. Before the Aztecs had got their wits together, their assail- ants were back in their fortress; but instead of enduring the 152 outrage quietly, the infuriated Mexicans swarmed around the massive walls, and began a determined effort to tear them down or undermine them. Alvarado realized his error; if those walls fell, the fate of himself and his companions was certain; every mother's son of them would be stewing in the kettle before night. In this emergency it occurred to him to use his captive as a safeguard ; and by dint of dire threats he prevailed upon Montezuma to mount the battle- ment, and plead with the people to desist. The unfortunate chief must have been thoroughly cowed ; but his appeal was successful for the time being, and the besiegers sullenly retired; but they relieved their feelings in some degree by setting fire to the brigantines which the Spaniards had been constructing during the winter, designing them as a means of escaping from the city, should the worst come to the worst, otherwise than by the causeways. The Spaniards were only saved from dying by hunger and thirst by the extraordinary good luck of finding a spring of fresh water inside the tecpan, and by the foresight of Cortes, who had caused corn enough to be stored away to last them some months. But even so, the predicament was irksome enough ; and for aught Alvarado could tell, Cortes might have been worsted by Narvaez, and the latter be on his way to inflict condign penalties upon himself likewise. But Cortes was on the high wave of prosperity; and by the last week in June he came in sight of the great pueblo. It did not take him long to see that all was not well ; there was no polite deputation at the entrance of the causeway to greet him; everything was grim, silent and deserted; the drawbridges were up, the streets empty, and the few people who showed themselves wore a very sour and menacing expression. It was not until he arrived at the tecpan that Cortes ceased to fear the worst, and met with a greeting, the genuine delight of which was obviously not assumed. Alvarado told his tale, and was soundly rated by Cortes for his suicidal folly; all the diplomacy of the latter was thrown away ; there was nothing for it now but to prepare for blows. THE AGE OF CORTES 153 But, as a last expedient to avert the trouble, Cortes took a step which was if possible even more foolish than Alvarado's massacre. It seems hardly credible that, with Malina and the Tlascalans to advise him, he should not have known that it would be throwing away his trump card to let Mon- tezuma's brother and legal successor, Cuitlahuatzin, get out of his grasp ; nevertheless, this is what he did. It was true that while a chief-of-men remained alive it was not custom- ary for him to be deposed and his successor elected; yet, in great emergencies, this act was within the powers of the tribal council; and the only reason they had not exercised this power after Alvarado's escapade was because Cuitlahuat- zin was a prisoner with Montezuma. But now Cortes, realiz- ing that his twelve hundred new men were making terrible inroads upon his provisions, bade Cuitlahuatzin go forth and command the people to reopen the markets (which had been closed), in order that the supplies of the Spanish might be replenished. Inwardly rejoicing at this good fortune, the young man betook himself to the chiefs, convened the tribal council, stated the case to them, and was by them imme- diately elected to be chief-of-men, Montezuma being deposed. Now the long repressed fury of revenge burst forth among the Mexicans in a terrible storm. The night passed with ominous forebodings; with dawn the Spaniards saw the whole city changed into a camp of raging warriors. With mingled outcries that roared like an angry sea, they filled the streets, the roofs, the pyramids, and every coign of van- tage whence an arrow could fly, or a spear be hurled, or a stone slung. The bombardment from the summit of the high pyramid was especially galling; and arrows carrying fire were shot in through the loopholes, and set the interior woodwork in a blaze. Cortes replied with his cannon, and scores fell in the thronged streets at each discharge; but the frenzied Indians were not dismayed, but charged more fiercely than ever; and the number of killed and wounded Spaniards began to be greater than could by any means be afforded. Finally poor Montezuma was again sent up on 154 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA the roof to make another attempt at pacification; but his hour of influence was gone. His appearance was greeted with yells of reproach and menace; his words fell on deaf ears; his sanctity and authority were no more. On the con- trary he was made the target of the Aztec marksmen ; and while he stood there before them, too miserable to care to escape, a heavy stone struck him ill the forehead, and he fell. The Spaniards took him under shelter; but he had received his death- wound, though no doubt anguish of mind hastened the end. Seeing this last means of pacification had failed, Cortes became the savage soldier, and ordered a sortie to capture the great temple, where the chief idols were, and from which the most dangerous attacks had been delivered. Collecting a band of men ready to dare all hazards, he burst forth with them upon the howling street, and hewed his way through solid walls of struggling human bodies to his goal. The fighting of that day could be described only by a Homer; the air was full of missiles, many of which found their way through the joints of the Spanish armor, and their wearers fell, to be trampled by their own desperate comrades, or to be shredded to pieces by the frantic barbarians. And all the while the sword arms rose and fell, and blood spurted and gushed upon the cemented pavements, and heads and limbs were sheared away, and through many a furious heart the thirsty Toledo blade rushed to the hilt. Cuitlahuatzin cheered on his warriors by words and example, and they flung them- selves against those rigid ranks of steel with terrible despe- ration. But Cortes would not be defeated; all the tiger in him was aroused and he fought with a cool and deadly feroc- ity which nothing could withstand. Slowly but irresistibly the Spanish line was advanced, plunging through parapets of writhing carnage; beat upon from all sides, but uncon- querable. At last the temple was reached, and up the sides of the great pyramid swarmed the soldiers, drenched with blood, while the Aztecs, not venturing to follow them, swarmed beneath. A few priests, perhaps, dared to remain to die upon their sacred domain ; but their shrift was short. Death to the pagans and annihilation to their gods! And down came the grinning idols from their lofty perches, crash- ing down, shattered, among their worshippers, dashing out once more the human life which had so often been offered up hi their honor. And fire was set to the blood-stained shrines, and all trace of the hideous worship of the Aztec gods was burned away. It was a deed of wild reckless- ness, yet it was a deed of policy too; for the Aztecs were appalled by the monstrous sacrilege, and stood aloof, while the men or demons who had perpetrated it came down from their work and began the retreat to their stronghold. Surely the outraged gods themselves would avenge the act ! But the gods lay broken where they were hurled, and no light- ning from heaven or earthquake from below came to blast or devour their desecrators. Back along the gory road which they had come went the Spaniards, weary but more than ever formidable ; and the huge walls of the tecpan received them. The day was done. The next day Montezuma breathed his last, and Cortes saw that nothing was left for him but to evacuate the city. Were he to remain, it could only be a question of time when he woull be destroyed; his men would be picked off one by one; his provisions would fail, his ammunition be exhausted; and when defence was no longer possible, the survivors would be dragged to the sacrificial block. It was the first day of July wnen he gave the order to march, and out upon the deserted street filed in serried ranks the grim invaders. They had expected to be attacked at once ; but their approach to the causeway was almost unopposed. Cuitlahuatzin, how- ever, was far from intending to let his hated enemies escape. He fully understood the advantage which the retreat of the Spaniards along the five miles of narrow causeway would give him; and he improved it to the utmost. No sooner had the first drawbridge been passed than the attack began. The whole male population of the confederacy flung themselves upon the foe. All retreat was shut off; and it was impos- sible for the Spaniards to mass themselves for resistance 156 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA upon the causeway. On both sides of them swarmed canoes filled with warriors; from behind and in front the headlong charges were delivered; every moment a Spaniard fell; and though the slaughter they inflicted was greater than on the day of the sortie, the effect upon the Aztecs was impercep- tible. The long causeway was divided by three drawbridges, all of which had been removed. Cortes had provided pon- toons, but in attempting to use them they were all but anni- hilated. Night fell while the battle was still in its early stages. It would be hard to conceive of a conflict waged under conditions more terrific. The Aztecs, swarming up the wall on both sides, hurled the Spaniards over, or dragged them down into the water, careless of their own lives, if only they might taste the delight of knowing that the men they hated must die. Scores of maddened savages flung them- selves upon each man ; the useless cannon were sunk in the lake, and awful struggles took place at every step in the bloody waters. Hour after hour of hellish conflict went by, every moment of which seemed an age, and in the brooding darkness none might know how many still lived to fight. What noises struck the ear in that bloody gloom: what dim masses of intertwined humanity went down to death upon the slippery stones, or sank bubbling and strangling beneath the waters ! Hour after hour of night, of struggle, of agony, of uncertainty, of despair and of death, and still the dark and savage horde raged round the long-drawn line. Never, perhaps, in the history of mankind, has there been known a more hideous battle than that which lasted through the endless noche triste of that 1st of July, 1520. But even that night passed, and the sun rose in the cloud- less east, and the birds of bright plumage fluttered among the trees as the remnant of the Spanish army reached the end of the causeway, and set foot at last on solid earth. A remnant only. Of the fifteen hundred men-at-arms who, first and last, had landed at Vera Cruz with such high hopes, a bare five hundred saw the sun arise that morning; and of these, forty had been captured by the enemy, and THE AGE OF CORTES 157 were already on their way to the most revolting of imagi- nable fates. Of the six thousand Tlascalans, but two thou- sand survived ; .forty horses lived of eighty ; and all the can- non were at the bottom of the lake. But Cortes lived ; and though, beholding the ruin wrought upon his followers, his iron soul was melted within him, and he shed bitter tears, sitting on a rock beside the bloody lake, yet his spirit and resolve were undismayed. More than ever was he deter- mined to conquer these desperate barbarians, and give their land to Spain, though every foot of it should be wet with blood. But it is not necessary to follow him through every sub- sequent step of his terrible campaign. After a few days he was forced to sustain the attack of the combined tribes of the region, which hoped to overwhelm his depleted army while it was still staggering from the effects of the night upon the causeway; but Cortes grimly arose, and inflicted upon them so fearful a defeat that even their wild courage was appalled. Nor did this success come a day too soon; for the Tlascalans had been wavering in their fealty, and were all but ready to unite themselves with the Confederacy. But when the news of this battle reached them, they decided that such a man as Cortes, mortal or divine, was not a man to abandon ; better be with him against the world, than with the world against him. Tlascalan patriots there were who warned their comrades that slavery to the Spanish must be their final fate, unless they improved this opportunity to aid in the destruction of the invaders; fear of him, and heredi- tary hatred of the Confederacy, overpowered such argu- ments. So, once more, in the moment of deadliest peril, Cortes was saved. He spent the autumn in making good his foothold in the country, crushing such pueblos as opposed him, and allying himself with those which were willing to join him in the overthrow of Tenochtitlan. Meanwhile he sent the ships of Narvaez back to Hispaniola for more men and horses ; and on the eve of Christmas he found himself at the head of a new army of more than nine hundred men, 158 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA with twelve cannon, ample cavalry, and many thousand native allies. His first move was against Tezcuco; for until this pueblo was subdued, the enemy would have control of the lake. But Tezcuco fell into his arms without a struggle ; its chiefs had quarrelled with Tenochtitlan, and welcomed the enemy of the latter as friends of their own. The Confederacy being thus broken, the campaign became comparatively simple. Cortes built a new fleet of brigantines, which was supple- mented by innumerable native canoes; and succeeded in shutting off the water supply of Tenochtitlan by cutting the aqueduct from Chapultepec. In the spring, the siege began in earnest; and the unfortunate Aztecs were handi- capped near the start by the death by smallpox of their chief-of-men Cuitlahuatzin. The latter, however, had a nephew, Guatemotzin, who was a man of mettle, and left a high reputation as a warrior behind him. He was chosen to fill Cuitlahuatzin's place. But the fate of the great pueblo was fixed from the beginning. The Spaniards and their allies gradually fastened their grasp upon one after another of the causeways, and approached closer and closer to their antag- onists. The latter fought with the courage of their despair, but they increased the already hopeless odds against them- selves by their attempts (occasionally successful) to capture Spaniards alive; when this occurred, Cortes and his men were able to see the victims carried up the steps of the pyramid and sacrificed thereon, while the barbaric music rolled triumphantly across the waters of the lake. The Aztecs made a good fight, and it was not until near the middle of August that they ceased the struggle; at that time the city was in ruins, and filled with bodies of the dead. Cortes at once proceeded to extirpate the old relig- ion and social customs, and in their stead established Ca- tholicism and the Spanish ways and laws. The present cathedral was erected in 1573 on the site of the bloodstained temple. Having made the city his own, he turned to the conquest of the country surrounding it, far and wide; no THE AGE OF CORTES 159 serious resistance was met with, for the other pueblos could contend with little hope of success against an enemy who had already defeated the strongest and fiercest of them. Many cruel atrocities were perpetrated; and it is open to question whether the Spanish regime was better in any es- sential respect than that which it supplanted. But Cortes, though stern, was less bloody-minded and wantonly cruel than many of his peers, contemporary and subsequent. It is not a pleasant thing to crush a nation ; and the Conquest of Mexico takes its place with other similar conquests, neither much worse nor much superior to them in atrocity and injus- tice. Our own record of dealings with the American abo- rigines may serve to soften the asperity of our criticisms of the procedure of Spain. 160 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA II PASSING UNDER THE YOKE BY the time the first half of the sixteenth century was past, Spain had fixed her talons on all of Central and South America, as well as eaten her way far to the north. These vast and fertile regions were the scene, during fifty or sixty years, of incredible barbarities, ending in the partial or total extermination of whole races; from which they never recovered. Spain and death ruled them jointly. And for more than two centuries and a half this joint reign continued, and no progress was made in civiliza- tion ; so that at the beginning of this era the entire extent of Spanish America was practically in the same condition as in 1560. But in the meantime, a breed had come into exist- ence, consisting partly of Spaniards born in America, who, though often rich and sometimes intelligent, had always been treated as inferiors by the Spaniards born in Spain who were sent out to rule them; and partly of a mixture of Spanish with Indian blood, who inherited the bad qualities of both sides of their ancestry. The remnants of the pure Indian races which had survived lived side by side with these, but of course had no voice in the affairs of the countries which had been theirs. But finally, about 1810, when the over- throw by Napoleon of the Spanish dynasty had also deprived her colonies of their so-called legitimate ruler, the colonies attempted a revolt; for the foreign-born sons of Spain had long groaned under the despotism which their own fore- fathers had inflicted upon the Indians. After a decade or so, the strangling grasp of the old tyrant, now in her dotage (though venomous as ever in purpose and principle), was thrown off; but, as might have been expected, the revolu- tionists had no skill in self-government; and most of the PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 161 states began that series of internal struggles and bloody in- surrections which have continued with few intermissions up to the present day. Upon the whole, one perceives a grad- ual amelioration. The immense advance in social and polit- ical culture and intelligence of Europe and America (the United States) has not been without its effect upon these benighted and half -savage countries; and by bitter and san- guinary experience they are beginning to learn what liberty really is. Whether they will ever fully acquire the lesson, or whether it will be necessary for the United States to take them in charge, and administer them in the interests of decency and economy, are questions which the near future is likely to answer. The immediate occasion of the invasion of the Isthmus by Spaniards was to obtain slaves to replace those which had been murdered in the West Indian islands. Slavery, as we know, had existed in the Old World from the earliest historical times. There, tribe conquered tribe, and nation possessed itself of the domain of nation; and the subjected people became the unpaid and involuntary servants of the subjugators. But in this slavery, the slaves were often near in blood to the masters, or at any rate were not so different from them as are negroes from white men. Their servitude was often severe, but it was not so unrestrainedly and wan- tonly inhuman as was the slavery instituted in the sixteenth century, or a little earlier, by Spain. Its tendency, also, was to become progressively milder; so that, at the epoch of the discovery of America, it had almost died away in its old form the form in which it was handed down by the Romans. Between this classic slavery, as we may call it, passing into the feudal system, and so into the birth of the "common people" of our own day between this and modern slavery there are a distinction and a difference. The inhabitants of the West Indies were of several races; but they were alike in this, that they made poor slaves. Some of them were meek enough, others were irreclaimably fierce; but neither sort lived well in captivity. To endure 162 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Spanish cruelties and survive required stronger constitutions than the native races possessed. At first, the Spaniards cared little how fast they died, since there seemed to be an inex- haustible supply to draw upon ; and it was easier to get a slave to supply the place of one who had perished, than to take care of the health or welfare of the latter. But in His- paniola and in Cuba the natives died by hundreds, and it was plain that stouter stock must be got if possible, other- wise how were the mines to be worked? Incursions to Terra Firma were made, and natives were kidnapped thence ; but there was always a fight to get them, and often the kidnap- pers were met in such force that they were unable to effect their purpose. Now, as has been recorded above, Prince John of Portugal, fifty years before, had collected negro slaves on the African coast; and these men, who had been slaves in their own country, were a much hardier and more serviceable race than the West Indians; and were scarcely regarded as human beings by their owners. It is true that Prince John had pleaded in his own justification that he had imported them with a view to saving their souls; but that was one of his amiable eccentricities, not shared by the ma- jority of his contemporaries, though they might take advan- tage of his argument to clear their own skirts of reproach. At all events, when this difficulty about procuring slaves in Spanish America arose, it was recalled that the African article had shown many advantages, and the suggestion was made that the illimitable resources of the African con- tinent should be drawn upon to meet all requirements. It so happened that this suggestion emanated from the man who stands out in beautiful distinction from the other Span- iards of his time, in his humane attitude toward slaves both "West Indian and African. This singularity will be shortly explained. The suggestion of Las Casas was adopted, and thus began the descent upon this country of that sable and sinister avalanche which continued (thanks to our own in- dustry among others) until the middle of the present cent- ury, and the consequences of which are very far from being PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 163 disposed of. It is to the negro that the West Indian owes it that his race was not utterly extirpated ; and he is the sole gainer by the transaction such gain as it is! It is now to be observed that the enslaving of the West Indians was done contrary to the laws and regulations made and provided by the Spanish government. Ferdinand and Isabella did not intend their slavery, and eyen forbade it; but under conditions which made their order of no effect. The trouble had originated with Columbus, in the following manner. On his second voyage he found difficulties existing between the Spanish colonists and the Indians, owing to the latter's conduct in objecting to being robbed by the former. He wished to live in peace with his native neighbors, and cast about for some means of placating them. He discov- ered that they were subject to incursions of the Caribs, a race unlike the other inhabitants of Hispaniola; being fierce and warlike, and confirmed cannibals; and these evil-minded Caribs, it appeared, were in the habit of landing in Hispan- iola and carrying off its denizens for dinner. Columbus therefore gave permission to his men to make war upon the Caribs, and, if possible, to capture them ; and such captives might legally be held as slaves. Columbus reasoned that in delivering man-eaters to Christian slavery, he was not only supplying a crying deficiency in the labor-market, but was doing what he could to save the Caribs from perdition ; since it was assumed that the Spaniards would not only work their slaves to death, but convert them into the bargain. The colonists accepted the arrangement amiably enough; because they perceived that, when they wanted slaves, it was only necessary to go and get natives, and then to declare that they were Caribs taken in battle. Anything would answer for a Carib, when a slave was required. But the matter did not stop here ; not only slaves were wanted, but food also ; and this food could be had only by taking it from the na- tives. To stop the foraging expeditions, Columbus ordained that every native should pay tribute to the colony in some small amount ; a bit of gold or of cotton ; the aggregate of HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA which, from a large population, would amount to enough for the needs of the white men. Upon payment of his tribute, each native was to receive a brass token as a receipt, and by showing this was relieved of further liabilities till pay day came round again. But should it happen that the tribute- payer was short of funds, or for any other reason did not settle up on time, he was to be mulcted a few days' labor on the plantations or in the mines of his white creditors. Could anything be more moderate and reasonable? Nevertheless, within a couple of years this personal service seemed, some- how or other, to have taken the place of every other means of paying tribute; and not only individuals, but entire vil- lages were set to work at once. Next, the island was divided into shares repartimientos each of which was assigned to a Spaniard or party of Spaniards, and an adequate number of villages was told off to cultivate it, under the immediate supervision of their chiefs. This was feudal villeinage, and might have done well enough, had the feudal chiefs not been Spaniards, and had not Columbus, about that time, been superseded in his government of the colony. In 1502 a gentle little blond governor was sent out, named Ovando; not only was he gentle, but he was a knight of a religious order ; as nearly an angel in short as a Spanish gov- ernor could be. And in fact the Spanish regard him as an almost ideal figure; for in spite of his gentleness, he was strict and prompt in discipline. He had a low voice, mild blue eyes, and a well-bred, unobtrusive bearing. His court- esy was unfailing; even if his duty forced him to order a gentleman to be hanged, or a native to be lopped to pieces, he would express his pleasure in so winning a way that it ought to have reconciled the culprit to his fate. He ruled the roost in Hispaniola for seven years, the record of which is extant, and is heavenly reading indeed. We must be brief in our excerpts from it here. There was (for example) a tribe whose chief had been one of those who accepted Columbus's invitation, pressingly urged, to accompany him on his return to Spain. This chief left behind him a wife, Anacaona, who PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 165 turned out to be a notable woman, and made fame for her- self. She went so far as to object to the domination of her spiritual friends, the Spaniards, and was suspected of coun- selling her tribe to resist, or even to attack them. Ovando was too conscientious a governor and too true a soldier of Christ to tolerate such a state of affairs. Hispaniola is a warm place; its topography is characterized by mountains and ravines, and these are clothed with a vegetation which must be seen to be believed ; barbed- wire fence is not more difficult. But an earnest Christian like Ovando is not to be deterred by any merely tropical obstacles. The village of Anacaona was two hundred miles distant from his own head- quarters at San Domingo ; he set out for it with a force of three hundred and seventy men, a fifth of them mounted. A long and hot march it was, and Ovando might have been par- doned had he arrived in rather a heated condition of temper as well as of body. But he was just as cool, bland and suave when he rode into the astonished village as when he set out from San Domingo. He was like one of those schoolmasters who always wait to chastise a refractory scholar until the next day, in order to prove that he does it, not from temper, but from dissembled love. He greeted the villagers in the most friendly manner; and they, not being prepared for such an invasion, and perceiving that the number of their unex- pected guests was so large, made the best of the situation, and were friendly also. They entertained the gentle gov- ernor with feasting and games; and he, to requite their courtesy, proposed to show them a Spanish tournament. This gratified them hugely; and at Ovando's invitation all the chief personages of the neighborhood assembled in a large wooden hut, where he was at the pains to address them, giving, in a sort of lecture, an explanation of the interesting entertainment which they were (supposed to be about) to witness. He wore on this occasion a tunic on the breast of which was an image of God the Father, the badge of his religious order. While he was in the thick of his ex- planations, his prayerful comrades surrounded the house in 166 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA which the exercises were being held ; and when the lecturer raised his right hand and laid it upon the holy symbol, the Spaniards rushed in and bound the audience hand and foot this signal having been concerted beforehand. Then, leaving the now enlightened natives on their backs on the floor, they retired with the governor, and set fire to the building; which burned up, and consumed the Indians at the same time. Anacaona herself, however, was not in- cluded in this holocaust; she was taken to a conspicuous tree, a rope placed round her neck, and up into the air she went, kicking and strangling, but preserved henceforth from the sin of plotting against her spiritual guardians. Ovando now intimated his desire that several hundred Indians who had been witnesses of this "tournament" should be forth- with put to the test of having their throats cut, which was enthusiastically performed by the soldiers, and not one of the subjects of the experiment survived. The little blond governor looked upon his work, and pronounced it good; and in testimony that his only object was the benefit of all concerned, he founded a town upon the ashes and blood of the late inhabitants of the village, named it the City of Peace, and bestowed upon it a seal bearing the device of a dove with an olive branch in its bill. Returning home with peace in his wake, the gentle knight next proceeded to improve the arrangements instituted by Co- lumbus. He obtained from the Spanish sovereigns permis- sion to make the Indians work for wages of course ; and to take measures to have them instructed hi the Christian faith, while at the same time taking pains to prevent any violence being used in bringing them to mass. Mass and massacre seem to have been convertible terms in Ovando's vocabulary. He gave to each of his followers a lot of Indians from fifty to five hundred according to circumstances with instructions that they were to be employed as free servants, and taught the holy Catholic religion. Each owner took his squad off in the bush, and that was the last that was seen of the squads; but in a short time the owner called for a fresh PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 167 supply. His servants had been used partly for agricultural purposes; at first, we may suppose, to hoe the soil, after- ward to manure it, the manure being supplied by their own corpses. Others of them had been employed in the mines ; but these never lasted long, and they choked up the mines with their bones. The owners worked too, but their only tools were the whip, the running noose, and various cutting and penetrating instruments. Sometimes the Indians would je assembled in groups of a hundred or more, and cut to pieces; sometimes bloodhounds were set upon them, and tore them into fragments; sometimes they were broiled over fires, or again they would be impaled on stakes, and left to expire at their leisure. If one of them chanced to be so un- grateful as to offend his master, some fifty of his fellows (after he himself had been disposed of) would be brought up and required to lay their right and then their left hands on the block ; after the hands had been chopped off with a hatchet, they were allowed to go about their business. These misguided natives occasionally brought forth babies; but the Spaniards had no use for babies, and had the habit of throw- ing all they could lay hands on into the water to drown. These diversions were varied in many ways. Once in a while a specially religious fit would seize upon the opera- tors, as when, in honor of Christ and his twelve apostles (as they averred), they hanged thirteen Indians in a row, the ropes being of such a length that each suspended figure was barely able to touch the ground with his toes. Dancing thus, with little satisfactory ground of support, their religious instructors animated them by prickings with their sword- points, taking care to give them as much time as possible to die in. Such was the Spanish idea of doing honor to Him who bade us love one another, and do to others as we would that they should do unto us. There is no record, however, that any of these obstinate Indians caused Spaniards to dance after this fashion. But that is not the Spaniards' fault. Let us conclude our selections with the tale of the gentleman who made himself a sort of gigantic basket of metal strips, in 168 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA which he placed some half-dozen natives, tied so that they might not be tempted to spoil the game by getting out. Having suspended his basket, with its contents, at a proper height from the ground, the ingenious experimenter brought together a supply of firewood, and kindled a fire underneath. The hard green boughs burned slowly, but the heat thereof rose upward, and soon began to produce a gentle broiling effect upon the basketed natives. Hereupon they gave voice, and, to the intense satisfaction of him who fed the fire, filled the forest with their outcries. He calculated that they would last all night; all he had to do was to sit in pleased contemplation, adding a fagot to the flames once in a while ; dozing off ever and anon, to be brought sweetly back to consciousness by a louder caterwauling than usual . Unfortunately a Spanish officer happened to be sleeping near by, and was awakened by the noise: "In the devil's name, kill the beasts," he called out, "and let me have my nap out!" The experimenter was equal to the emergency; in- stead of brutally stabbing his broilers, he simply gagged them; the captain slept, the cooking proceeded, and the cook had his pleasure. Next morning the fire was out, the basket contained a queer-looking mass of charred and black- ened objects, and the peaceful snores of the captain and the cook mingled in the holy stillness of the tropic dawn. Such were the pioneers of civilization in this country; and such they remained up to the time when at the request of our government they evacuated the last remaining of their pos- sessions in the western hemisphere. They have not improved in four hundred years ; they have only grown feebler. Such was Hispaniola under the administration of Ovando; but if any one supposes that he was not a person above re- proach, or that, in his conduct as governor, he was actuated by aught save zeal for Christ and civil order, he has only to remember that he went back to Spain a poor man or rich only in his reminiscences and that the greater part of such property as he had was bequeathed to found a hospital for needy Spaniards. What the Spaniards may have been in PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 169 need of, unless it were more broilers, we are not informed. Diego Columbus succeeded him, but could not rival his rec- ord. By this time native slaves had assumed the dignified condition of "vested rights," not to be ravished away from their fond proprietors. But in 1511 one Father Antonio Montesino, a Dominican monk, preached a couple of ser- mons which greatly scandalized the resident Spaniards. In the first sermon he informed his congregation that they were living in mortal sin and had no better chance of Heaven than so many Moors or Turks. He was warned not to repeat such an outrage; but the next week he followed up his first de- nunciation with a second which was, if anything, yet more uncompromising. Slave torturers, he averred, were destined to boiling pitch and eternal fire and brimstone, and not a monk in the West Indies should grant absolution to a moth- er's son of them. Had the congregation been as expert in logic as they were ingenious in devising torments, they would have given Father Antonio a dose of the medicine which he denounced ; but it does not seem to have occurred to them that killing him could not make them any worse off than they were at any rate; and they contented themselves with appealing to the home government. Antonio himself, how- ever, went to Spain to plead his side of the case; and the king favored him, and discussed various plans of reform; but nothing was done for some years. This was a case in which not the paper orders of a government three thousand miles away, but only the personal efforts of a champion on the ground, could be of avail. Such a champion happened to be present in the person of Las Casas. Who was Las Casas? We cannot do better than to ab- stract from Professor Fiske's story the facts of his career, and the estimate which the Professor gives of his character. It certainly is not lacking on the score of cordiality; but in- asmuch as we. seldom find anything Spanish that can be regarded as unexceptionably charming, we gladly place it upon record. "Las Casas," says the historian, "was born in Seville in 1474. His family, one of the noblest in Spain, 170 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA was of French origin, descended from the viscounts of Li- moges. They were already in Spain before the thirteenth century. . . . By birth and training Las Casas was an aristocrat to the very tips of his fingers. His father accom- panied Columbus on the second voyage, and . . . retained an estate in Hispaniola; the son came out with Ovando hi 1502 and settled in that island. He was then twenty-eight years old. Little is known of his first occupations there, except that he seems to have been more or less concerned in money-making, like all the other settlers. But about 1510 he was ordained as a priest. He was a person of such im- mense ability and strength of character that in whatever age of the world he had lived he would undoubtedly have been one of its foremost men. As a man of business he had rare executive power; he was a great diplomatist and an eloquent preacher, a man of titanic energy, ardent but self-controlled, of unconquerable tenacity, warm-hearted and tender, calm in his judgments, shrewdly humorous, abso- lutely fearless, and absolutely true." (Really, Professor!) "He made many and bitter enemies, and some of them un- scrupulous enough; but I believe no one has ever accused him of any worse sin than extreme fervor of temperament. His wrath could rise to a white heat, and indeed there was occasion enough for it. He was also very apt to call a spade a spade, and to proclaim unpleasant truths with pungent emphasis. But his justice is conspicuously displayed in his voluminous writings. He was one of the best historians of his time, and wrote a most attractive Spanish style, quaint, pithy, nervous a style which goes straight to the mark and rings like true metal. . . . His perfect sincerity is allied with a judgment so sane and a charity so broad as to con- strain our assent. He is almost always ready to make allow- ances, and very rarely lets his hatred of sin blind him to any redeeming qualities there may be in the sinner. It was he that said of Ovando that he was a good governor but not for Indians. . . . Las Casas was by natural endowment a many-sided man, who looked at human affairs from various PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 171 points of view. Under other circumstances he need not nec- essarily have developed into a philanthropist, though any career into which he might have been drawn could not have failed to be honorable and noble. At first he seems to have been what one might call worldly-minded. But the most interesting thing about him we shall find to be his steady intellectual and spiritual development; from year to year he rose to higher and higher planes of thought and feeling. He was at first a slave owner like the rest, and had seen no harm in it. But from the first his kindly sympathetic nature asserted itself, and his treatment of his slaves was such that they loved him. He was a man of striking and easily distin- guishable aspect, and the Indians in general, who fled from the sight of white men, came soon to trust him as a friend. At the same time, however, he was a good man of business, disposed to make money, and, as he tells us, 'took no more heed than the other Spaniards to bethink himself that his Indians were unbelievers, and of the duty there was on his part to give them instruction, and to bring them to the bosom of the Church of Christ. ' He sympathized with much that was said by Montesino, but thought at first that in his un- qualified condemnation of the whole system of slavery that great preacher was going too far. The heart of Las Casas, however, was deeply stirred by Montesino, and he pondered much upon his words. . . . 'Platitudes' about universal rights were far enough from being self-evident in the six- teenth century. On the contrary, they were extremely un- familiar and abstruse conceptions, toward which the most enlightened minds could only grope by slow degrees. In Las Casas it is interesting to trace such a development. . . . When the work of Las Casas is deeply considered, we can- not make him anything else but an antagonist of human slavery in all its forms, and the mightiest and most effective antagonist, withal, that has ever lived." (Oh, Professor!) "Subtract his glorious life from the history of the past, and we might still be waiting, sick with hope deferred, for a Wilberforce, a Garrison, and a Lincoln. ... In contem- 172 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA plating such a life as that of Las Casas, all words of eulogy seem weak and frivolous. The historian can only bow in reverent awe before a figure which is in some respects the most sublime and beautiful in the annals of Christianity since the Apostolic age. When now and then in the course of the centuries God's Providence brings such a life into this world, the memory of it must be cherished by man- kind as one of its most precious and sacred possessions. For the thoughts, the words, the deeds of such a man there is no death. The sphere of their influence goes on widening forever. They bud, they blossom, they bear fruit, from age to age." Let us now inquire what it was, as a matter of fact, that this really good man did accomplish. Las Casas had listened to the sermons of Father Antonio Montesino, and his words had sunk into his mind, but with- out as yet producing an active effect upon him. In the same year Diego Columbus sent Velasquez, whose acquaintance we have already made, to conquer and settle Cuba; and to Cuba did Las Casas shortly repair. Things were proceeding in that island according to the precedents set in Hispaniola ; Las Casas did what he could to mitigate the horrors. Velas- quez gave to him and another Pedro de Renteria, also a good man a village of natives, to whom it became the duty of Las Casas, as a priest, to preach every Sunday. Looking one day for a text, he came upon a verse in Ecclesiastes, "He that taketh away his neighbor's living slayeth him; and he that defraudeth the laborer of his hire is a shedder of blood." This carried him further toward the root of the matter than he had yet reached. There must be no slavery at all; whether the slave was well or ill treated made no differ- ence. In consequence of this new light, he gave up his own slaves, and De Renteria was persuaded to do the same. From the pulpit he preached the strange doctrine of emanci- pation to his congregation. The idea was variously received, but the general attitude was, naturally, hostile to it. Per- ceiving that mere words would not produce the effect he PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 173 aimed at, Las Casas sold out his possessions and went back to Spain to win over the king. But Ferdinand died just before he reached Seville. Ximenes, a cardinal, was regent, and he at once espoused Las Casas's cause. He appointed him Protector of the Indians, with authority to impeach judges; it was decreed that Indians must be paid wages, kindly treated, and taught Christianity. But the necessity of getting men to work in the mines was undeniable; and if the Indians would not voluntarily work, what was to be done? It was at this juncture that Las Casas suggested that the enslavement of negroes would be preferable to that of Indians; and thereby did he, who more than any other man of his age was instrumental in discrediting and abating slavery, give the signal for the introduction of negro slavery into the New World. Looking too earnestly in one direc- tion, he failed to see what impended in another. It is true, of course, as his apologists contend, that negro slaves had been brought to the West Indies before Las Casas made his remark ; and that it was not until some years after that re- mark that the trade assumed large proportions. But in truth Las Casas does not need defending; he acted as he thought best at the time ; later he saw clearer and improved his action accordingly. But the knowledge that a man of his force and eminence had at any time admitted that negro slavery was not so intolerable after all, was certain to be quoted by those in quest of justification for their flagrant sins. Confronted with the alternative that either the mines (and consequently the West Indies themselves) must be given up, or else there must be slaves to work in them, Las Casas, at this undeveloped period of his moral stature, allowed him- self to concede that negro slaves would not be inadmissible. That is all there was to it, and it was not anything repre- hensible, all things considered. The moral to be drawn from the incident is, that eminent men must be very care- ful what they say. And if it be answered that Las Casas was not so very eminent at that particular time, then we can only rejoin that he ought to have known he was going 174 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA to be eminent, and have governed his tongue in reference thereto which is rather absurd. Meanwhile the effort to save the West Indians continued, Bishop Fonseca, that impenitent old sinner, obstructing it in every way he could; and Cardinal Ximenes dying at an inopportune juncture. But to compensate for these mis- fortunes, young Charles V. turned out to be a very decent person, and he took a fancy to Las Casas. A plan was set on foot to raise a company of Spaniards with a couple of hundred ducats each to join Las Casas in founding a colony on the Isthmus; they were to be distinguished from unre- generate Spaniards by white uniforms with crosses on them, and if all went well with the colony, they were to be made a religious fraternity by the Pope. This organization was intended by Las Casas to be not only a civilizing agency for the Indians, but a sound business enterprise as well ; it would convert the Indians by other means than the stake and the gibbet; it would pay a good revenue to the king, and it would serve as a pattern to all present and future Spanish emigrants. Three years were needed to arrange the pre- liminaries of this affair; a grant of land on the Pearl Coast had to be obtained from Charles; and it was not until 1521 that Las Casas was ready. And then happened a crushing calamity. It seems that a certain Ojeda son, perhaps, of an earlier rascal of the same name had shortly before this wanted slaves, and had gone to the Isthmus to get some. As a matter of form, it was expedient to make it appear that his captives were cannibals ; and he therefore took along a notary to question the chiefs and draw up a document to damn them withal. Having no paper, they stopped in at a local monas- tery of Dominicans and borrowed some from the monks. Thus armed Ojeda went forth, and, falling in with some Indians, forgot about his catechism, in the enthusiasm of the moment, entrapped the unfortunate natives by treach- ery, killed all he did not want, and carried the rest to His- paniola. The news of this coup was circulated among the PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 175 local tribes, and made them indignant; so the next time Ojeda came slave-hunting he was himself captured and slain ; and perhaps eaten one does not much care. Grati- fied by this success, the Indians now repaired to the monas- tery and slew the innocent monks; their reason being that they had seen the monks give Ojeda a paper "charm," which had doubtless enabled him to deceive and outrage their fellow-tribesmen. Las Casas, meantime, was inno- cently domiciling his moralized settlers on his grant at Cumana; but while he was absent in Hispaniola to attend to some Providential business there, down swooped the still enraged natives upon his flock of sheep, and annihilated the entire colony. Thus did the wicked Ojeda contrive to perpetrate mischief even after he was dead. This blow, as we have said, was a crushing one; it crushed Las Casas for seven years or more. During that period he remained in the quiet monastery of the Domini- cans in Hispaniola, plunged in despondency. For hours he would sit motionless, perplexed at the ways of Providence. It was his forty days in the wilderness a kind of experience not unknown to great men before and after him. How to reconcile what the Infinite God does, with our finite concep- tion of what He is ! Small natures end their wondering by pique and revolt; great natures end theirs by humility and surrender. Las Casas belonged to the latter category ; and while his spiritual lesson was learning, he educated himself in the lore of the world and of the Church; studied theology and logic, and took the vows .of the Dominican order. When, with his shaven scalp, he came out of his long retirement in 1530, the Spanish- American world had altered a good deal. Cortes had conquered Mexico, Alvarado the Berserker had done as much for Guatemala, and an ancient reprobate by the name of Pedrarias, whom we shall know better before long, was just dead at the age of two and ninety, after a career of almost unexampled and wholly unpunished in- iquity, in the once happy and blameless province known as Nicaragua. Peru had already been sought for once or 176 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA twice, and a final and successful expedition was just set- ting forth under Pizarro and Almagro. Upon this changed scene appeared Las Casas, like a hero of fairy-tale after his enchanted sleep ; stretched his limbs and found them sound ; took a view of the situation, and decided that the first thing to be done was to get a decree from Charles prohibiting slavery in the regions for which Pizarro and his fellow free- booter were bound. To Spain he went therefore (during his life he crossed the Atlantic no less than fourteen times, which was as much as to voyage to the moon and back would be nowadays), got the decree, and was commissioned to carry it to Peru and there proclaim it. Had he done this, Peru- vian history might have been different ; but he was detained in Nicaragua, and the decree proclaimed itself without him and was not enforced. Nicaragua, after all, was almost as much in need of Las Casas as Peru could be. It was a shambles and a torture-pen, the new governor making ear- nest efforts to equal the matchless record of old Pedrarias. In 1536 he went to Guatemala, where was an unoccupied Dominican monastery, and in that he housed himself with three fellow monks, and all bent their energies to learning the local or Quiche language. Ere long they had mastered it, and thereby acquired a precious weapon in their Christian warfare in behalf of the heathen. North of Guatemala was a region called by a name which means the "Land of "War," because its inhabitants were exceptionally bloody-minded and given up to human stews and curries. The country itself was difficult, being a riot of "beetling crags, abysmal gorges, raging torrents, and impenetrable forests." It was just the place for the Dominicans; and its final charm was found in the fact that three Spanish expeditions had already been violently repulsed from the country, leaving not a few individuals to simmer hi the native pots. Before starting on his crusade, Las Casas had a chat with Governor Alvarado or his lieutenant, and came to an understanding with them. No lay Spaniard was to be per- mitted to set foot in the Land of War for the ensuing five PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 177 years, and in case Las Casas succeeded in making respect- able neighbors out of the inhabitants, there was never to be any farming-out of villages to Spanish taskmasters. These precautions gave the monks a chance; but even so, the ad- venture seemed almost desperate. But they proceeded with patience and sagacity. First they made friends with certain Indian traders who were bound for the Land of War, taught them a version of the Scriptures which they had translated into Quiche and set to music, and then sent them on to the cacique of the country, with knickknacks in their packs to tickle the savages while their souls were being awakened. The traders did their work well, and gave such a good ac- count of the tonsured white men that the cacique sent his brother to Guatemala to investigate them. The monks soon won over the brother, and the latter took one of the monks back with him, who was not long in converting the cacique himself and a number of chiefs. Las Casas soon followed, and in spite of the angry opposition of the native priests, who even went so far as to picture the appetizing dishes that the white men would make, the Indians finally re- nounced their idols and their cannibalism, and promised not to fight unless they were attacked. They acknowledged Charles V., paid a small tribute, and Las Casas had won his victory. When he returned to Guatemala with the cacique, the formidable Alvarado doffed his hat to him, as being a better and wiser soldier than himself. The king confirming the terms of the capitulation, the Land of War became the typical Land of Peace, and the headquarters of missionary enterprise in the Isthmus. The new Pope (Paul III.) issued orders forbidding further enslavement of Indians under pen- alty of anathema. These orders had some effect in stopping the spread of slavery ; but when it came to abolishing slavery already existing (vested rights) they could not be success- fully enforced. The attempt to enforce them in Peru was the proximate cause of the rebellion there, which brought Gonzalo Pizarro to his not unmerited appearance on the scaffold. Compromises were adopted, and in form at least 178 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA slavery gradually gave place to villeinage. The name did not matter; resident Spaniards would not have objected to Paradise, provided they might continue their trades of rob- bery and murder with impunity. Las Casas returned to Spain, and stayed five years there, writing valuable historical records; he was afterward bishop of Chiapa, near Guatemala, for some years more; in 1547 he left America for the last time, and took up his final residence at the Dominican college in Valladolid. Here he brought to an end his historical labors ; and he died peacefully and holily in 1566, having lived the most honorable and useful life of any Spaniard thus far known to the world. After the Conquest of Mexico, that of Peru was the next great achievement of the Spaniards; the invasion was made by way of the Pacific Ocean, and the names of the four Pizarros Francisco, Gonzales, Pedro and Hernando, half brothers or cousins of one another are inseparably connected with the event. Their operations extended over about a quarter of a century. The regions between Peru and Cen- tral America were subdued incidentally. There is little of importance to tell about the minor provinces of Central America at this time; but some allusion to the condition of things there may be permissible. The Maya race inhabited the peninsula of Yucatan, and at the period of the conquest they were divided up into vari- ous tribes, such as the Acalans, Tipuans, Cocames, Itzaecs, etc., which were often engaged in intertribal wars. All southeastern Mexico and Central America were more or less under the dominion of this great Maya stock ; and we find such strange names among their constituents as Tzen- dals, Chinantecs, Cakchiquels, Ixils, Mames, Quiches, and Huastecs, whose abode was north of Vera Cruz. Traces of them are found in Honduras. All were idolaters; never- theless they seem to have placed some credence in the ex- istence of a supreme being whom they called Hunab-ku. Chief tainship was generally hereditary; they had a system of laws, which is complicated to our ideas, and was enforced PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 179 with great severity. They possessed a calendar, modelled, apparently, after that of the Nahuas. Some of the tribes kept pictographic or hieroglyphic records, painted on bark, or sculptured on stone, the key to none of which has been discovered; but the natives themselves asserted that the Maya race was at some unknown past time united and powerful, and was governed by a single ruler who lived at Mayapen. They also declared that they had originally come from the north, about two thousand years ago; but the attempt to fix dates in their history is at present hope- less. They were about on a par in civilization with the Aztecs, and may possibly have been the superiors of the lat- ter in some respects. They lived in large and populous towns or pueblos, such as Copan, Palenque, Peten, Uxmal, Kabah, Chichen-Itza, Ake. Many of their strongholds, especially in Guatemala, were chosen and fortified with great skill. Uxmal is about seventy miles north of Merida, and the ruins are scattered over several square miles ; but most of the great walls have been overthrown. They were raised on terraced foundations, and the masonry is Cyclopean, and faced with dressed stone, often with elaborate sculptures, as we have already seen in the descriptions of Mr. Gordon, in our first chapter. One of the Uxmal buildings, known as the Casa de las Monjas, surrounds a court two hundred and fifty-eight feet long by two hundred and fourteen wide; there are here no idols or stucco work, as at other pueblos. Chichen-Itza is in northern Yucatan, near Valladolid, and the ruins in- clude a pyramid five hundred and fifty feet on a side; the original height can only be conjectured, but it still ascends seventy feet. Here Mr. Le Plongeon discovered a remark- able statue which he called Chacmool, identifying it with an ancient chief of the Mayas, though it appears to be of the Mexican rather than the Yucetec type. There is a notable pyramid at Ake, thirty miles east of Merida. The latter town, founded on the ruins of an ancient Maya pueblo in 1542, is the present capital of Yucatan. Topographically, Mexico is a table land traversed by 180 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA high mountains. Guatemala shows a diversified moun- tainous surface of a particularly rugged character. Hon- duras (the name means Deep-Bottom) has high mountain chains to the west with high open valleys and plateaus ; on the north coast are great forest-grown alluvions; the valleys are very fertile, and the high plains afford good grazing for cattle. But the lands along the coasts are hot and unhealthy. The chief feature of Nicaragua is the great depression which traverses it from southeast to northwest, including the river San Juan and the lakes Nicaragua and Managua, which constitute the route of the proposed canal. Most of the east coast is low; there are numerous volcanoes, and frequent and violent earthquakes. All these regions produce gold, silver, copper and lead, and among the plants cultivated are sugar, maize, tobacco, hemp, coffee, rubber, fruits, and cab- inet woods; cattle are "raised, and hides are exported. But owing to political complications, the wealth of these coun- tries has never been developed, and none can tell of what they are capable. Under a steadfast and truly economic administration they would probably astonish the world. Passing southward from Central America, we find traces of a culture in some degrees more advanced than that of other parts of the New World. At Chiriqui, between Costa Rica and Veragua, in the narrow part of the Isthmus, are artistic remains similar to those further north. The people to whom they are assigned were the Chibchas, whose central habitat was near the present Bogota, among the Colombian mountains. The Chibchas were of many tribes, and spoke many dialects of a single stock language. They had no means of recording events, and their only way of writing was by rough pictographs. Kinship was through the female line, and the family idea was consequently undeveloped; they had human sacrifices, but seem to have advanced be- yond cannibalism. Their burial customs mark a difference from the northern peoples; they embalmed the bodies of their chiefs and wrapped them in cloths, after the fashion of Egyptian mummies. Their houses were large, and of PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 181 pyramidal or conical shape, with the apex left off. They were made of adobe clay applied to timber-work. Cotton cloth was manufactured ; their vehicles were wooden litters ; their bridges were made of ropes, but there were no regular roads, as in Peru. There were periodical fairs hi all the towns, where goods were sold by measure only, and a cur- rency existed consisting of round tiles of unstamped gold, or of salt, if the gold should run short. The culture of the Chibchas was of a piece with that which prevailed all over the region of the Andes for unnumbered centuries before the rise of the Incas. It was sustained on the eastern slopes of the great mountain range against the incursions and attacks of a multitudinous savage population, concerning whose ethnology very little is known ; these savages remain to-day much in the same condition as when first seen by the Span- iards. They have been provisionally classified in four groups : the Caribs, occupying Venezuela, Guiana, and some of the "West Indian islands, and the Maypures, from the sources of the Orinoco into Bolivia, constitute the Orinoco group: the Amazonians dwell along the Amazon River and its affluents ; the Tupi-Quarani group extends from the Amazon to La Plata ; and the fourth group is found south of these, and comprises very diverse tribes. Over against these sav- ages are the Quichua-Aymara tribes, known to us as Pe- ruvians, who lived on the Pacific slope from the present Colombia to Patagonia. They are of a higher type, and enlightenment superior to any other American races, north or south; and where they came from, if they are immigrants, or how they attained so admirable a culture, if they are in- digenous, we do not know. The only historical mysteries which have thus far not only been unsolved, but which seem insoluble, are those attaching to the races of this western continent; which seemed at first a virgin country. What is one to do with no historical records to study over? The Aztecs did have some sort of writing ; and though we have not yet learned how to read it, we may solace our- selves with the hope that enlightenment may some time come. 182 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA But the people of the Andes did not even use hieroglyphics; their sole documents were knotted strings. These strings, which they called quipus, were of course merely aids to memory, in the same way that a knot in a handkerchief enables a husband to remember the instructions which his wife gave him when he set out for the city which could not be written down in many pages. The memory of mod- ern civilized people seems to be greatly inferior to that of more primitive races; and no doubt the ancient Peruvians were highly cultivated in this respect, and needed but a hint to recollect whole libraries of information. But this fact does not help our contemporary historians and archeologists, because, though the quipus may remain, the people to inter- pret them are no more, and the tradition of their knowledge is lost. There are, however, some stray traditions and remi- niscences on the subject, which have been collected by Mr. Tylor in his "Researches into the Early History of Man- kind." "It is so simple a device," he observes, "that it may have been invented again and again. It has been found in Asia, in Africa, in Mexico, among the North American Indians ; but its greatest development was in South America." The Peruvian quipu "consists of a thick main cord, with thinner cords tied on it at certain distances, in which the knots are tied. The cords are often of various colors, each with its own proper meaning; red for soldiers, yellow for gold, white for silver, green for corn, and so on. This knot- writing was especially suited for reckonings and statistical tables; a single knot meant ten, a double one a hundred, a triple one a thousand, two singles side by side twenty, two doubles two hundred. The distances of the knots from the main cord were of great importance, as was the sequence of the branches, for the principal objects were placed on the first branches and near the trunk, and so in decreasing order. This art of reckoning is still in use among the herdsmen of the Puna (the high mountain plateau of Peru). On the first branch they usually register the bulls, on the second the PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 183 cows, these again they divide into milch cows and those that are dry; the next branches contain the calves, according to age and sex, then the sheep in several subdivisions, the num- ber of foxes killed, the quantity of salt used, and lastly, the particulars of the cattle that have died. On other quipus is set down the produce of the herd in milk, cheese, wool, etc. Each heading is indicated by a special color or a differently twined knot. It was in the same way that in old times the army registers were kept ; on one cord the slingers were set down, on another the spearmen, on a third those with clubs, etc., with their officers; and thus also the accounts of battles were drawn up. In each town were special functionaries whose duty it was to tie and inspect the quipus ; they were called quipucamayocuna, or 'knot-officers. ' They were sel- dom able to read a quipu without the aid of an oral com- mentary; when one came from a distant province, it was necessary to give notice whether it referred to census, trib- ute, war, etc. They carefully kept the quipus in their proper departments, so as not, for instance, to mistake a tribute cord for one relating to a census. In modern times all the at- tempts to read the ancient quipus have been in vain. The difficulty in deciphering them is very great, since every knot indicates an idea, and a number of intermediate notions is left out. But the principal impediment is the want of oral information as to their subject-matter, which was needful even to the most learned decipherers. Quipus are found in the Eastern Archipelago and in Polynesia proper, and they were in use in Hawaii forty years ago, in a form seemingly not inferior to the most elaborate Peruvian examples. The fate of the quipus has been everywhere to be superseded, more or less entirely, by the art of writing." Enough con- cerning these literary cats-o'-nine-tails; it is evident that a British Museum Library full of them would not advance us an inch in our investigation of the obscure past of the Peruvians. Nevertheless we have traditions in plenty on such points, of which we can believe what we please. Starting with the 184 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA reasonable assumption that there must have been a very considerable past before the Spaniards appeared, we may -construct various more or less plausible surmises based on the Cyclopean architectural ruins which are distributed about the country. Marvellous works they are, though their form, and the carvings with which they are decorated, are less impressive than their mere size and weight. The labor of moving such masses must have been enormous, while on the other hand the mechanical means at the disposal of the an- cient builders are not known to have been other than primi- tive. The most striking of them are found at a place called Tiahuanucu, near Lake Titicaca; and there have not been wanting students who declare that such structures were probably erected by builders from the Old World. But there is little or no resemblance between them and the remains of Egyptian or Hindu architecture; these are big enough, but they are rude and barbarous in design ; one sees huge mono- liths cut into the rude semblance of human figures, or de- moniac shapes, sometimes thirty or more feet in height; sometimes hardly distinguishable from native rocks, whose accidental similitude to the forms of men may have prompted the old carvers to increase it by chipping and cutting. The Peruvians of Pizarro's time sometimes asserted that these figures were those of men who had been turned into stone by the gods for some sin of commission or omission which they were supposed to have perpetrated. But it has been very generally thought that they were the handiwork of the prehistoric Piruas. Since the Piruas were prehistoric, it is not to be expected that much historic information concerning them is obtain- able. They are even more ambiguous than the Toltecs of Mexico, concerning whom we have heard Professor Fiske express such emphatic doubts. According to Markham, however, who is of a more credulous disposition, we learn that "the Piruas governed a vast empire, erected imperish- able Cyclopean edifices, and developed a complicated civiliza- tion, which is dimly indicated to us by the numerous sym- PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 185 bolical sculptures on the monolith at Tiahuanucu. They also, in a long course of years, brought wild plants under cultivation, and domesticated the animals of the lofty An- dean plateau. But it is remarkable," continues the his- torian, "that the shores of Lake Titicaca, which are almost treeless, and where corn will not ripen, should have been chosen as the centre of this most ancient civilization. Yet the ruins of Tiahuanucu conclusively establish the fact that the capital of the Piruas was on the loftiest site ever selected for the seat of a great empire." More conservative com- mentators speak of the Piruas as the traditional name of a very ancient people, the Hatun Runas, who occupied the highlands of Peru and Bolivia previous to the rise of the Inca dynasty. "That such a people existed is evident from the remains of Cyclopean architecture of a type different from and older than the Inca edifices. Tiahuanucu, which is twelve miles from the southern end of Lake Titicaca, in western Bolivia, near the border of Peru, and about twelve thousand nine hundred feet above the sea, includes remains of several very large quadrilateral buildings, monolithic door- ways, broken statues, etc. The material is generally hard sandstone or trachyte, often in immense blocks, and it must have been transported twenty-five miles by water and fifteen by land. The blocks were cut and fitted together with great skill, the joining being by mortices and bolts. Many of them are elaborately sculptured. The largest and most remark- able of the monolithic doorways is thirteen feet wide, with a present height above the ground of over seven feet, and nearly three feet thick ; above the level of the door it is cov- ered with sculptures in low relief, consisting of a central human figure and four rows of smaller figures, some with condor's heads, and all with crowns and sceptres. The structure called the fortress is an artificial mound or trun- cated pyramid, six hundred and twenty feet long, by four hundred and fifty wide and fifty feet high, originally formed with terraces which were faced with blocks of cut stone. The style of architecture and sculpture are absolutely unique, 186 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and the exactness of the squaring and joining are unsur- passed even by the most noted ancient and modern works of the Old World. The ruins had been abandoned long before the Spaniards came, and the Indians knew nothing of their origin. As the cold and sterile region round the lake is unfitted to support a large population, it is conject- ured that the buildings had a religious or ceremonial object." Almost or quite as remarkable are the ruins of Sacsa- huana, which are by some ascribed to the Piruas, though others contend that they may have been built by the Incas as late as the fifteenth century. The building overlooks the present town of Cuzco in Peru. The hill on which it stands is a terrace of higher mountains, and is so steep as to be practically unassailable on the side toward the city, which is but slightly defended. The principal works of the forti- fication (for such it seems to be) face the other way, enclos- ing a projecting portion of the terrace. They consist of three walls, each eighteen hundred feet long, rising one behind another and supporting artificial terraces, which were de- fended by parapets. The walls are built with salient and re-entering angles, thus embodying a principle of modern fortification. They are formed of immense irregular lime- stone blocks, fitted together with great skill and accuracy ; some of these were evidently taken from the quarry three- quarters of a mile distant. There are also subsidiary struct- ures; and the place was artificially supplied with water. Most modern archeologists now assign these vast ruins to the pre-Incarial period; but others, such as Squier, Garci- lasso, and our own Fiske, urge us to regard them as much more recent work. All parties are at one as to the astonish- ing character of the edifice. "The heaviest work of the for- tress," says Squier, "remains substantially perfect, and will remain so as long as the Pyramid shall last, or Stonehenge and the Coliseum endure. The work is without doubt the grandest specimen of the style called Cyclopean extant in America. The outer wall is the heaviest. Each salient terminates hi an immense block of stone, sometimes as high PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 187 as the terrace which it supports, but generally sustaining one or more great stones only less in 'size than itself. One of these stones is twenty-seven feet high, fourteen broad, and twelve in thickness. Stones of fifteen feet in length, -twelve in width, and ten in thickness are common in the outer walls." Verily, the builders of our modern "sky-scrapers" may hide their diminished heads before exploits such as this ! It might almost seem as if the faith that moves mountains had been operating here. As we might anticipate, Professor Fiske is among the doubters, and will have it that the mighty fortress was built by the Incas "in order to show that they could equal or sur- pass the mighty works of bygone ages" assuredly the most singular reason for undertaking so stupendous an enterprise that ever was put forward. "There is no occasion," he goes on, "to suppose any serious break in the continuity of events in prehistoric Peru. It is not necessary to suppose that the semi-civilization of the Incas was preceded by some other semi-civilization distinct from it in character. As for the Pirua dynasty of sixty-five kings, covering a period of thir- teen centuries, it does not seem likely that the 'wise men' of Cieza's time, with their knotted strings, could have preserved any trustworthy testimony as to it." He is fain to admit, however, that a long time must have elapsed to enable the ancient people occupying this region to attain the command over nature which they possessed; and whether we name that people Piruas or incipient subjects of the Iccas does not appear vital ; we are reminded of the man who did not believe that certain plays were written by Shakespeare, but "by some other man of the same name." It is indisputable that in Peru the grade of culture found in Mexico at the time of the Conquest must have been reached and passed many ages earlier. In proof of this we have the fact that the Peruvians alone had succeeded in domesticating animals; only the dog had been adapted to man's service in other parts of America. The domestic llama, for instance, was derived from the wild huanacu; and the alpaca from the 9 188 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA vicuna. Many centuries would be required in order to bring about these results. Several varieties of maize were also produced under cultivation; and the Peruvian species of cotton plant is known to exist only as it appears under cul- tivation. Wild tubers are found in Peru, from which the potato was educed. Now it has been proved by experiment that wild potatoes require a very long time to put on a civil- ized complexion. It was in Peru that the potato as we know it was first discovered. It was not cultivated north of Darien ; Raleigh brought the first specimens to Ireland in 1586; but it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that they came into general use in Europe. The Peruvians practiced irrigation, and manured their crops with guano. Thus in one way and another they had reached what Mr. Morgan would call the upper state of barbarism hundreds of years before the Aztecs did so; and during those centuries they naturally made great strides toward a higher level of cult- ure. If they had only invented something better than quipus for keeping their records, they would no doubt have been actually civilized according to Morgan standards. They might in that case have been led to discover the uses of iron, which was present in the ground in unlimited quantities; bronze instruments they did possess, but no blacksmith's appliances. Again, the absence of any other cattle than the llamas and alpacas kept the Peruvians in the rear of progress; there were no wild animals in South America out of which horses and cows could be developed; nor did the wild slopes of the Andes afford fitting opportunity for a pastoral life. Agriculturists the Peruvians could be, and were; but the patriarchal form of existence was unknown fco them. They were a nation, but the manner in which they came to be a nation differed from the manner in which nationality was attained in the Old World. The materials for this nation were provided by the four tribes Quichuas, Incas, Canas and Cauchis scattered over the northwest of South America. They were all mountain- eers, short but active and strong, with soft brown skins, PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 189 black hair, and arched noses. At first the tribes were com- posed of clans; bat the Incas settled in the lofty valley of Cuzco, and from that coign of vantage gradually subdued the other tribes. Unlike the Aztecs, they confirmed their conquests not by exacting tributes, but by military occupa- tion of the subject territory. The town of Cuzco was built about the end of the thirteenth century, and the work of in- ternal organization was begun. It is at this point that solid historical information first comes to hand. A succession of head chiefs or kings had already been instituted, and these monarchs were called Incas par excellence the Inca of all other minor Incas. To this general name, nicknames were added, by way of distinguishing them. Finally, the eighth in the line was called Viracocha, which means sun-god, and indicated that by that epoch the Incas had acquired some- thing of the divinity which doth hedge a king. Viracocha annexed the land of the Aymaras, who are suspected of de- scent from the builders of Tiahuanucu. In the next reign the strong tribe of the Chancas, living close to the equator, resisted the march of conquest, but were finally defeated un- der the walls of Cuzco, and their country was afterward annexed. The Chimus, who gave its name to Chimborazo, were the next victims of the Incas, who now ruled the region from Lake Titicaca to the equator, and from the Andes to the sea. It was under the Inca Yupanqui that this conquest took place, and he is regarded as the great hero of Peruvian history. To him was applied the surname Pachacutec Changer of the World. The successor of this champion extended the dominion of his people so much further that it became necessary to found the city of Quito to keep watch over the southern portion of the empire. He brought in the valley of Pachacamac, where there was an ancient and desirable temple; and also pene- trated far into Chili. His son and successor, Huayiia Capac, defeated a rebellion of some tribes near Quito, and it was plain that the empire was of such length that while it was being kept in order at one end it was liable to break loose at the 190 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA other. Huayna Capac died in 1523 ; his son Huascar became involved in civil war with his bastard brother Atahualpa, and this war was in progress at the time of Pizarro's invasion. Peru was then twenty-seven hundred miles in length and about three hundred wide. And this enormous area of eight hundred thousand square miles was not merely conquered but, occupied and assimilated, and governed from an admin- istrative centre. The Inca language was spoken through- out the empire, though of course the several languages of the component tribes were not obliterated. Cannibalism was abolished or discouraged ; garrisons were distributed through- out the empire at strategic points, and were connected by the famous roads which have been the wonder and admiration of the world. They started from Cuzco as a centre and di- verged to all parts of the country. Their average width was about twenty-five feet, and they were almost as level as rail- roads, which is saying a great deal when one remembers the rugged and rocky topography of the Incas's dominions. There was a central highway from Quito to Cuzco and thence south- ward which is thus described by the historian Cieza: "1 be- lieve that since the history of man has been recorded, there has been no account of such grandeur as is to be seen in this road, which passes over deep valleys and lofty mountains, by snowy heights, over falls of water, through live rocks, and along the edges of furious torrents. In all these places it is level and paved, along mountain slopes well excavated, by the mountains well terraced, through the living rock cut, along the river bank supported by walls, in the snowy heights with steps and resting-places, in all parts clean-swept, clear of stones, with post and store houses and temples of the Sun at intervals. Oh ! what greater things can be said of Alex- ander or of any of the powerful kings that have ruled in the world, than that they had made such a road as this and con- ceived the works that were required for it ! The roads con- structed by the Romans in Spain are not to be compared with it." The post-houses were some four or five miles apart, and in each were two Indians, who carried messages to and from PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 191 the next house in line, whereby the government was kept constantly informed of what was going on in all parts of its dominions. In this way messages could travel at the rate of nearly a hundred and fifty miles a day. The only weak point about the Inca roads was the crossing of streams or abysses. They .did not know the secret of the arch, and were not skilled enough joiners to make bridges of wood. Transverse planks were laid upon osier ropes thrown across the chasm, and the passenger was steadied on his precari- ous transit by a rope railing. It is a pity ; an Inca bridge of Cyclopean masonry, spanning some enormous ravine of the Andes, would have been a fine spectacle for future generations ! Meanwhile, those future generations, now the present ones, have constructed bridges and roads railroads of their own; and there is a description of one by Theodore Child which is worth reproducing. "Our descent from Chicla to Lima" (Chicla is over twelve thousand feet above sea level) "was accomplished by means of two hand-cars coupled together and each provided with a brake; they are run by gravitation alone all the way to Lima, interrupted only by the gap due to the destruc- tion of the Verrugas viaduct. At certain moments the speed was alarming, and had the brakes given way we should have been inevitably launched into eternity down one of the many precipices which we skirted. As we passed through one long, dark tunnel the men on the first seat of the forward car received on their laps a young jackass that had strayed on the track. So we sped along, admiring the scenery, and noting the rare incidents of the landscape a waterfall, a bridge, an artificial tunnel cut through the rock so as to divert the Rimac torrent from its old bed in which the rails are now laid; a tunnel high up above our heads through which we came a few moments ago; a condor soar- ing across the sky ; a train of pack-mules and donkeys wind- ing along at the bottom of a ravine a thousand feet below us, under charge of Indians ; a Cholita standing to watch us 192 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA shoot past, her long black hair bedecked with large passion- flowers; the green mountain -sides terraced to an incredible height by the old Incas; here, an Inca acqueia running sinu- ously along a steep slope hundreds of feet above the torrent; there, a brown mass of Inca ruins. And so we reach the lower valley, and enter Lima just as the late afternoon sun is gilding the stucco towers and casting long purple shadows over the Cerro of San Cristobel. "The Oroya road," he continues, "is a remarkable piece of engineering work, executed perhaps not wisely but too well. The difficulties surmounted are enormous. The con- structor, an American, Henry Meiggs, used to say at certain arduous points, 'The line has to go there, and if we can't find a road for it, we'll hang the track from balloons. ' This illus- trates how boldly and almost recklessly the line has been built ; and even now, fine as the work is, it is in constant danger of destruction in many parts. Every year sections of the line, bridges, and viaducts are swept away by floods and landslips which cannot be foreseen. A waterspout bursts on a mountain peak, an immense volume of mud, water and bowlders dashes down, and half an hour later all is calm again ; but the railway track has disappeared, or one of the bridges will be found twisted into a knot half a mile away from its proper place. The working of the line is also very expensive on account of the high price of coal and the quan- tity wasted by the continuous firing required to force the train up the steep gradients. The number of bridges is six- teen, the longest being the 174-metre viaduct of Verrugas, now destroyed. The Oroya line, on which the Peruvian loan of 5,520,000 sterling was spent, was not finished for want of funds, and the completed portion has never paid. The original idea was to carry the line to Oroya in the transandine province of Junin, and the survey and much of the work was done before the money gave out in 1873. The summit tunnel through the Paso de Galera, about twelve hundred metres long, is open, and from the plains it seems to be an interesting piece of work, being on a vertical curve PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 193 with slight gradients. It is 15,700 feet above the level of the sea." If Mr. Henry Meiggs, with all the resources of the nine- teenth century at his back, met with such difficulties, we may estimate what the ancient Incas had to overcome seven or eight hundred years before, without iron or coal or any horse-power to help them. And it does not appear that the roads they built were at the mercy of landslips, floods or waterspouts. In order to preserve order among their subjects, the Incas had the habit like the English in the case of the Acadians, and the old Asiatic monarchs of Nineveh and Babylon of transferring populations from their original habitat to some distant place. Such was the fate that befell the inhabitants of Lake Titicaca; Quito was peopled from the region near Cuzco, and the same practice was observed in Chili. All this tended to break down the primitive tribal institutions. There was no conception of representative government, but only a military despotism, exercised by a royal family which belonged to a ruling caste. It is stated by a native historian that the "Incas were free from such temptations as passion for women, envy, and covetousness, because if they desired beautiful women it was lawful for them to have as many as they liked. The same thing might be said of their prop- erty ; for as they never could feel the want of anything, they had no reason to covet the goods of others ; while as gover- nors they had command over all the property of the Sun and of the Inca. They likewise had no temptation to kill either for revenge or passion, for no one ever offended them. On the contrary, they received adoration, and if any one, no matter how high, had enraged an Inca, it would have been looked upon as sacrilege and severely punished." These remarks, it will be observed, appty not to the Inca sover- eigns, but to the whole Inca tribe ; and one can only envy their Paradisiacal state. The earth was theirs and the full- ness thereof, and consequently they were sinless. "The King can do no wrong" was a dogma which the Peruvians accepted au pied de la lettre. 194 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA The king had powers which for ordinary purposes were absolute ; he was chief in war, and head priest, and the keys of heaven and earth were in his hands. Yet there was a council, which he might consult upon occasion, and which seems sometimes to have deposed unsuitable monarchs. The religipn of the country was a combination of Sun and An- cestor worship, with a sort of monotheism in the background ; they perceived that things must have been made by some superior being, and they called him Pachacamac; but they did not attempt to lift their minds to supernatural concep- tions. There was a single oracular temple of Pachacamac, near the site of the present Lima, very old, and built of adobe brick. Pilgrims came thither, as do the Mohamme- dans to Mecca. But the general popular worship was Sun worship, with incidental courtesies paid to the moon, the chief planets, and the Pleiades. There were four great fes- tivals, with sacrifices of llamas and other animals and of vegetables, with beer and fine cloths. No human sacrifices were tolerated by the Incas. The hierarchy which officiated at these ceremonies presented several similitudes to those in the Old World, as did the mortuary practices. At each autumnal equinox a new fire was kindled by collecting the sun's rays on a burnished mirror, and this fire was kept alive throughout the year by consecrated maidens, who lived in convents. If one of these maidens broke her vow she was buried alive. There were about fifteen hundred of these vestals; and as they were vowed to the Sun, and as the Inca was the earthly representative of that divine luminary, it followed that these vestals were concubines of the mon- arch. Every reigning Inca had several hundred recognized children, and how many others no man can tell. In spite of this, the Inca could have but one wife, and she must be his full sister. The eldest son of this incestuous mar- riage was the heir-apparent to the throne. If there were no children by a first sister- wife, the Inca married the next sister, and so on until the required heir was born : his other hundreds of offspring were legitimate, but could not ascend the throne. PASSING UNDER THE YOKE 195 As regards the ownership of land in Peru, the inhabitants of a village, as a community, owned the land adjoining their settlement; and it was divided up into small parcels of the same size, each of which could support a man and his wife; and for each child born to the pair, another tupu was added. At intervals there was a general redistribution. The prod- uce of the land was divided in three parts, one for the Inca, one for the priesthood, and one for the cultivator. If a vil- lage had been impoverished by war, it was helped out by assessing its neighbors. There was little division of labor, but each man could turn himself to any employment; thus was military organization applied to industrial purposes. The state was based on the principle of communistic despot- ism. The members of the Inca tribe, and the priests, were non-producers, and lived in luxury and innocence, without labor. Gold in abundance was found in the river sands, but it was not used as currency, but only as ornaments for the Inca and for decorative purposes. All trade was barter. Weapons of war and agriculture were of bronze. Pottery was pro- duced in great quantities, but was not superior to that of Mexico. Upon the whole, the Peruvian empire was far in advance in most practical respects to the Aztecs, but was rendered somewhat rigid and spiritless by the despotic form of the government. The social customs were comparatively gentle and humane. Their literature is necessarily not ex- tensive, at least in accessible form, for knots in strings are an untoward vehicle of poetry and romance ; but some poems and plays of Incarial times are extant, having been taken down from oral tradition. It seems strange to us that a people so intellectual as the Incas must have been, could have got along without literature in the shape of books ; but they do not seem to have noted the deficiency themselves, and we can but conclude that there are more ways than one of keeping the soul alive. 196 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA III PIZARRO SUCH were the inhabitants of Peru at the time Pizarro made his first attempt to explore their country, con- cerning the wealth of which interesting reports had long been coming to Spanish ears. We are now ready to examine the circumstances under which this attempt was made. If the number of the invaders seems ridiculously inadequate, we must remember that in spite of the power and wealth of the Incas, and their success in subjecting tribes inferior to themselves, they yet were wholly incom- petent to resist men disciplined and armed as were the Span- iards. They had already begun to be softened by luxury and the long exercise of powers almost undisputed ; and had the Spaniards not attacked them, it is probable that they might ere long have fallen victims to the various savage tribes of the lowlands, or to the invincible Araucanians, who dwelt on the southern confines of the empire, and had not only never been conquered by the Incas, but who resisted the utmost efforts of the Spaniards themselves during hun- dreds of years, and are unconquered even to this day though, to be sure, it might prove a difficult task to discover the tribe in their ancient domain. The invaders were also helped by the fact that the despotic form of the Inca govern- ment had slowly robbed the people of all spirit and initiative ; their minds were not in a condition to grasp new ideas or meet novel emergencies; and inasmuch as the Spaniards were altogether novel to them, and mysterious and fearful, and capital fighters into the bargain it is no marvel that the conquest was no harder than it was. In fact, one need hardly have been surprised had it been easier. The first movements leading up to the invasion took place PIZARRO 197 soon after the entrance upon the viceroyalty of Diego Colum- bus. Two men, Ojeda (the first of that name) and Nicuesa, were appointed by the Spanish crown to the governorships of the regions between the gulfs of Darien and Maracaibo, for the former; and of the Veragua and Honduras coasts for the latter. Diego Columbus regarded these appointments as trenching upon his preserves, and the consequence was that he and these rivals of his were by no means in harmony with one another. Ojeda and Nicuesa also quarrelled be- tween themselves as to the boundaries of their domains ; and their attempt to secure Jamaica as their base of supplies was defeated by Columbus. They set out, however, Ojeda getting off first ; he met with disaster immediately, and his life was narrowly saved by Nicuesa. Ojeda went back to Hispaniola for supplies, but never returned. All this was about 1509. An expedition under Enciso was sent out meanwhile, accompanied by Nunez de Balboa as a stowaway ; but this irregularity on his part was compensated by the fact that he was the only man on board who had visited the Isthmus before. At his suggestion, they landed on the west shore of the Gulf of Uraba, and began the building of a town ; and question arose as to whether Enciso, Balboa, or Nicuesa (in: whose province they were) should be their leader. Nicuesa, however, was speedily put out of consideration by death; he had met with every sort of misfortune, and out of seven hundred men in his party only seventy remained alive. Enciso was unpopular, and Balboa the stowaway was elected chief. He promptly made the mistake of antagonizing En- ciso, who thereupon sailed for Spain with revenge in his heart and complaints on his lips. When these Spaniards were not murdering natives they were trying to destroy one another. Balboa made an alliance with the local chief, and mar- ried his daughter; nothing had at this time (1512) been sus- pected of the existence of Mexico, but evidences of superior culture were already forthcoming. The chief presented the strangers with various things, among others with a quantity 198 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA of gold, which was not valued by the natives except for ornamental purposes. Perceiving the sacra fames in the Spanish faces at the sight of this treasure, the chief remarked that if they really cared for the stuff, they had better go west and south, where dwelt a nation that used gold for pottery and building material. This was the first hint of Peru, and tiie death warrant of that country was signed on that day, though some years were to elapse before her head was struck off. It was also revealed by this too loqua- cious chief that the kingdom of the Incas was bordered by a mighty ocean. Balboa despatched the news, together with the king's fifth of the gold, to Spain; but the ship was wrecked in the Caribbean, and this anchor-to-windward therefore failed to connect. The treasure still lies at the bottom of the sea, for lucky fishermen to haul up. Balboa now received from Hispaniola his commission as governor of Darien ; but his pleasure in this advancement was dashed by the news that legal proceedings were taken against him in Spain, at Enciso's instance. He must confirm his position by some striking achievement. With a squad of two hun- dred men he started westward in 1513, and climbing the sierra, he and his men saw the vast of the Pacific spread mistily in unknown distances at their feet. Four days later on September 29th he reached the shore and put out on the ocean in a boat, by way of annexing it to Spain. The natives on the coast confirmed the report that there was a land of gold further south. Returning now to Darien he found that the news of wealth which had reached Spain had had an enormous effect. No less than fifteen hundred men were headed for the promised land, provided with a governor in the shape of Pedrarias Davila, seventy years old, but des- tined during the remaining twenty years of his career to accomplish the death (according to the Spanish chronicler Oviedo) of some two million persons. He was a favorite of Fonseca, as might be expected. Oviedo was inspector-general of the new colony, Espinosa was chief judge, and Balboa's enemy Enciso was chief con- PIZARRO 199 stable; and the first person he arrested was naturally Balboa himself. He was released, however, and for two years kept out of jail. But Pedrarias was his enemy; the latter's In- dian policy was murder and robbery, which Balboa was too humane and sagacious to support. Finally, by a sort of compromise, Balboa was commissioned to make a voyage down the Pacific coast and find out about that golden king- dom. He took four ships to pieces on the Atlantic coast, carried them across the Isthmus, and rebuilt and launched them on the other side; and only needed a little pitch and iron to set sail. Meantime the rumor went that Pedrarias was to be supplanted by one Lope de Sosa. Now Balboa had reason to wish Pedrarias out of the way, but was not sure that Sosa might not countermand the expedition; so he arranged to send a trusty messenger back to see just how the land lay. Some conversation relative to this point was over- heard by a sentry, and by him interpreted as treason; and he, co-operating with a man who had incurred Balboa's enmity by making advances to his Indian wife, plotted to ruin him. Pedrarias was but too ready to listen to their tales, and smoothly invited Balboa to step over to Acla to attend to a little matter of some importance. An astrologer had once told Balboa that should he ever behold a certain planet in a particular place in the sky, it would bode him desperate danger, which if he should evade he would become the greatest lord in the Indies. At this juncture, the star appeared; but Balboa was not feeling superstitious just then, and accepted Pedrarias's invitation in good faith. Before he had got to Acla there came a band of soldiers to arrest him, commanded by one Francisco Pizarro, who had for- merly been a subaltern under Balboa. Balboa made no re- sistance, but when told that he was charged with treason, remarked that a man guilty of that crime would not have been likely to return to the lion's den to be devoured. No matter; justice was not what Pedrarias wanted but simply Balboa's head; which he received the same evening. Balboa was forty-two years old when thus untimely cut short, and 200 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA would undoubtedly have conquered Peru, and administered it to much better advantage than Pizarro, but for this irre- mediable mishap. It was seven years before the adventure of Peru was again undertaken, and during that interval occurred the Conquest of Mexico. By way of a set-off against this brilliant feat of Cortes, Pizarro was sent against the Incas. ^ Pizarro was the illegitimate child of an officer of good family, was wholly illiterate, and began the world as a keeper of pigs. He first appears in history as a member of Ojeda's expedition, was with Balboa when he gazed on the Pacific, and later was the agent of his arrest. He had been con- cerned in some expeditions down the southwest coast, pene- trating, perhaps, as far as the junction of the Isthmus with the main of South America. They called this country Biru or Peru, and thus did the land of the Incas acquire its Span- ish title. It was now designed to proceed further in this direction. Matters were delayed however by the despatch of a new governor, Lope de Sosa, to replace the blood- encrusted Pedrarias; but this dreaded successor obliged the old demon by dying just as he came ashore, thereby giving Pedrarias seven years more of power. A southern ex- ploring expedition had been authorized by the Spanish gov- ernment, under command of Gil Gonzales Davila, an able man, who accordingly appeared in Acla and demanded the ships which had been built by Balboa. This was in 1520, the year after Magellan had set out on his epoch-making voyage through the Straits. Pedrarias refused to let Gil Gonzalez have the ships, who thereupon built a fleet for him self. It was destroyed by worms and weather, and he built a second. With these four ships he started, as he supposed, for the Moluccas ; but instead he got to the coast of Nicara- gua, where he found gold, and returned across the Isthmus. Evading Pedrarias, who sent to arrest him, he got his treas- ure to Hispaniola, and then set out again. Meanwhile Pe- drarias had sent Hernandez de Cordova to occupy Nicara- gua, with De Soto as second in command. They defeated PIZARRO 201 Gil Gonzales ; Cordova then threw off allegiance to Pedrari- as, but was by that able sinner arrested and beheaded. Gil Gonzales died in 152B at Seville. It was now that Pizarro, with his two allies, Almagro and Luque, was despatched by Pedrarias for the Inca kingdom. The first essay brought him only as far as the Gulf of San Juan, just below the fifth meridian. The second, after reaching San Juan, sent a couple of ships onward, and they got as far as the equator, and saw Chimborazo. They brought confirmatory news as to the wealth of the Inca country. The ancient Pedrarias died a natural death in 1530, and was succeeded by Pedro de los Rios, who gave fresh supplies to Almagro. Pizarro then once more started south, and this time landed on the small island of Gallo, whence Almagro was again sent back for supplies. But the governor detained him, and sent a ship to recall Pizarro. He refused to return, and sixteen men cast in their lot with him. After seven months Los Rios again sent a ship to look up the stubborn adventurer, who had been living meanwhile on snails and clams; but he persuaded Ruiz, the pilot, to help him explore the coast; and they edged along as far south as Truxillo, in latitude 6 south. What they saw fully confirmed the golden voices of rumor. They brought back gold, silver, and vicuna wool, and Pizarro sailed for Spain to get independent powers from the king. The king en- nobled him, and made him captain-general and adelantado, with orders to conquer Peru. He returned with his brothers and a small but ardent following. Of these brothers Fernando was the eldest and the only legitimate one; he was also the ablest and best educated. All were brave soldiers. Almagro was taken aback by this irruption of so many Pizarros, and was not long in recog- nizing Fernando as his most dangerous rival. The feud between these two men was ended only by Almagro's death 011 the scaffold seven or eight years afterward. The Pizar- ros, with two hundred men and fifty horses, landed at Tum- brez, on the south side of the Gulf of Guayaquil, in the last 202 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA month of 1531. At that time civil war was distracting the country, the contestants being the legitimate Inca, Huascar, and his half-brother by a concubine, Atahualpa. The latter overcame his antagonist, massacred his family, and ascended his throne; but kept Huascar himself alive from policy. Just at this time came news that a band of miraculous and terrific strangers had landed on the coast. Atahualpa's troubles were beginning early. He sent his brother Titu to welcome the visitors, which Titu seems to have done with a good deal of servility, bowing before Pizarro as the representative of deity. This reception gave the keynote to much that followed. Pi- zarro sent him back with indulgent words and pushed on to Caxamarca, an adobe and stone town of two thousand inhab- itants, with a temple of the Sun and a circular, defensive tower. The army of the Inca was drawn up, many thou- sands strong, on a ridge two miles away, clad in the usual armor of quilted cotton. The situation was very critical for the Spaniards. If their merely human and mortal character were suspected, they would have short shrift. But they took their cue from the conduct of Cortes years before, and kept a stiff front. They invited Atahualpa to a conference. He came next day, strongly escorted, to the market-place. A single priest, Valverde, came forward to meet him ; Pizarro was keeping the rest of his force out of sight. The priest presented the Inca with a Bible and read him a long lecture on Christian theology, concluding with a command to obey and worship the Pope. The Inca threw the Bible on the ground, with an expression of natural resentment; upon which out rushed Pizarro and his men, captured the Inca, and slaughtered the rest of the party. The population, be- lieving this to be an act of the gods, offered no opposition. Atahualpa was confined in a room "twenty-two feet in length by seventeen in width" and perhaps eight or ten feet high. Reaching up to the extent of his arm, he made a mark upon the wall, and agreed to fill the room with gold as high as that mark, for his ransom. Pizarro promptly ac- cepted the offer, and thereupon the gold jars and ornaments PIZARRO 203 began to pour in from all quarters. While this was going on Fernando Pizarro with some five and twenty companions rode about the country, and smashed the images of the gods in the temple of Pachacamac, to the huge dismay of the Indians, who concluded that he must be a greater god than any other. Returning in the autumn of 1533 to Caxamarca, he was joined by Almagro with reinforcements. By this time there was no less than fifteen million dollars' worth of gold collected as ran- som, and this sum was divided among the invaders; but Al- magro and his party got much less than the others. Fernando Pizarro went to Spain with the king's share. Meanwhile Huascar offered the Spaniards a larger amount of gold than Atahualpa had given them, if they would set him free; Atahualpa heard of this, and procured Huascar's murder. This indication of the former's power made the Spaniards suspect that he might be able to arouse the people against them ; and it became expedient, in their opinion, to make an example of him. Though he had bought his immunity at the price of fifteen millions, and paid the money, he was brought to trial for conspiracy, condemned, and sentenced to be burned alive; but, in consideration of his adopting Christianity, he was indulged with a bowstring instead. This act was unquestionably bad in morals, but probably sound in policy. If a few hundred men are going to con- quer a country of many millions, the only way to do it is to take the high hand. The softer Christian virtues will not aid them. By destroying the Inca, Pizarro demonstrated to the multitude that he was stronger than the Inca; and it also happened, to his advantage, that this particular Inca was an usurper, who, by a large part of the multitude, was thought to be deserving of just what Pizarro gave him. In order to emphasize this point, the shrewd Pizarro (though in general he was but a brutal and rather stupid ruffian) gave it out that he had been on the brink of recalling the fugitive Huascar and reinstating him in his dignities, when this ill-conditioned Atahualpa had had him killed. But there must be an Inca of some sort, to act as Pizarro's 204 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA puppet ; and there being no possible lack of sons of Incas, one of these was selected, a sickly boy, and propped up on the blood-stained throne, where he died in a few weeks. Here and there throughout the country there were disor- ders and rumors of disorders; it was uncertain footing; one knew not how soon the illusion would vanish, and the Span- iards be discerned for the impudent cormorants which they really were. The greater the peril, the greater must be the impudence. On a march to Cuzco five hundred Spaniards were attacked by six thousand Indians, who were beaten off ; but this was the first attack that the invaders had sus- tained, and in order to intimate that they did not wish to be put to the trouble of killing Peruvians except in the ordinary way of massacre, they charged a certain chief who was ac- companying their march with having incited the attack, and burned him at the stake by way of rebuke. Once more, im- pudence won. The legitimate successor of Huascar, Manco Capac Yupanqui, came to Pizarro's camp and did homage to the vulgar, intrepid adventurer. It was a timely act; Pizarro took him under protection, brought him ceremoni- ously into Cuzco, and there placed him upon that shaky and gory throne with all the honors. It was November 15, 1533, just a year since Pizarro's entry into Caxamarca. When one considers the astonishing and quite unparalleled fortune which these bearded interlopers had met with during those twelve months, one seems to be reading an Arabian fairy- tale. But it is pathetic to reflect that it was religious rever- ence, sorely misguided, which led the unhappy Peruvians into these desperate scrapes. Such reverence is a most amiable and commendable quality; yet, perhaps, a people whose ideas of deity were so unsettled that they had become capa- ble of believing that Spaniards could be gods, deserved no less than they got. Pizarro, presuming upon his success, established a municipal government in Cuzco, and made over the Temple of the Sun into a Dominican monastery. A supporter of the extinct Atahualpa having the effrontery to raise a standard of rebellion on the Quito border, Almagro PIZARRO 205 was sent against him and extinguished him likewise. Anon, our old friend Alvarado of Mexico and Guatemala, to whom report had come of the golden riot going on in the south, marched thither with five hundred men, losing over a hun- dred men on the way. When at last he met Almagro, his own followers showed symptoms of mutiny and desertion; so that Alvarado, who had acquired prudence with years, made up his mind to be bought off, instead of pressing his enterprise further. He was paid a sum of gold in considera- tion of his quitting the premises, and so returned to Guate- mala not much better off, upon the whole, than he would have been had he stayed at home. The greater part of his men remained in Peru. Gold is a beautiful and useful creat- ure, while men keep the upper hand of it; but when it gets the upper hand of men, it robs them of every quality which makes manhood honorable. While Francisco Pizarro and his lieutenants had been cut- ting these broad swaths in the new country, the authorities in Spain had been arranging the titles and possessions of the conquerors : Francisco was now a marquis ; Almagro a mar- shal ; the former was to have a territory running south from Santiago River some eight hundred miles; Almagro's do- main began where Pizarro's left off, and continued south- ward indefinitely; the trouble with it was, it had not yet been reduced to subjection. New Castile, and New Toledo, were the names given, respectively, to these great principali- ties. Almagro was none too well pleased. For aught he knew, or that any one could tell him, his New Toledo might turn out, after he had conquered it, to contain no gold at all ; it was fairly certain to contain a good many people who would oppose his authority, and cause him a great deal of annoyance, if nothing worse. And why should these Pi- zarros have all the pickings, when he, who had labored as hard as they, was waved off to the unknown south in this airy fashion? Who were the Pizarros but a parcel of scurvy bastards, who should be in the stocks, or broiling at the stake, if justice were done? Emphatically disgruntled was 206 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Almagro, and nearly ripe for mischief. His claim that Cuzco lay within his boundary was disallowed, and when at last he disappeared into the wilds of Chili with his two hundred men, it was with the half-formed purpose in his mind to come back and make it hot for the Pizarros, unless Chili turned out much better than he feared. By this time Fernando Pizarro was back from Spain ; and in his wake was a great and ever-increasing number of gold- hungry and more or less worthless Spaniards, eager for pick- ings. Lima was founded in 1525, ships plied to and fro, and the work of settlement went on, while natives, pushed to the wall and disregarded, tried to look pleasant and think that it was all as it should be. But* the time could not be much longer delayed when the true character of the invaders would be recognized, and that preposterous bubble of divine author- ity be pricked. The Spanish recognized this, and their policy was to intrench themselves as firmly as possible before the eruption took place. But the departure of Almagro for the south weakened the forces in Peru, and the Peruvians could not help perceiving that here was an opportunity to test what their uninvited guests were really made of. The Inca had no doubt laid his plans carefully beforehand. He escaped from Cuzco, and joined himself with his people; as if at a signal, the rebellion if rebellion is a right name to apply to the concerted effort of a nation to gain possession of their own country broke out on all sides like the crash of a thun- derstorm. Each body of Spaniards, in different parts of the country, was cut off from the rest, and had to trust to its imagination as to what might be happening elsewhere. Dread fell upon them, and they set up a wail for succor from the north. Fernando was in Cuzco, but the Inca held the great fortress of Sacsahuaman which commanded the town, and laid strict siege to the latter. The firearms of the Spaniards gave them a great advantage, in spite of their small numbers; a few pieces of artillery would have been worth the world to the Inca. For six months the struggle continued, with no decisive success on either side; there PIZARRO 207 were many stirring combats which are duly chronicled in the books; and we may be sure that the Spaniards have been given, by their historians, quite as much credit for valor as is their due. We have seen, in very recent times, what relation exists between the things that happen in a war in which they take part, and their report of the same. Making all proper deductions, however, we may still believe that they fought with desperate courage; not a few of them were slain, including one of the redundant Pizarro brothers ; but every Spanish life was sold for ten or twenty times its value in the lives of Indians. At length the autumn came, and with it the necessity, for the major part of the Inca's army, to go home and attend to their crops ; else there was a famine in prospect. Meanwhile, with the remnant, the Inca fell back to the Yucay Valley, where he met with a fatal misfortune. Almagro had marched three hundred miles down into Chili, and had found it a very disappointing place. His worst fears were confirmed. The climate was cold and try- ing, and the golden cities were conspicuous by their absence. To be immersed in a region where no pillage was to be had was intolerable to the Spanish spirit, and the discontent of the army rose to such a pitch that Almagro could not have disregarded it, even had he not shared it himself. "Let us go back to Cuzco," said they, "and give those Pizarros good cause for admitting that it is our city after all." They faced about, accordingly, and marched northward once more; and in due season arrived at a place where they found the Inca with his army, depleted as aforesaid, drawn up to receive them. A battle took place, and the Inca was overthrown, and his men were slaughtered by thousands. Encouraged by this success, Almagro proceeded onward to Cuzco, and made his demand for control of it. But Fernando Pizarro had not stood a siege for six months, for the sake of handing over his hardly-preserved stronghold to an unruly claimant from the wilds of Chili at last ; and he told Almagro that he must stay where he was. Almagro insisted that the city 208 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA was his by reason of the established boundary; this Pizarro disputed; and it was finally agreed that Almagro should remain outside until the question could be settled by au- thority. Almagro went into camp therefore, though with no good grace; and when, in the ensuing spring, he discov- ered that Pizarro was secretly strengthening the fortifications against him, his patience gave out altogether. He watched his opportunity, caught the guards napping, entered the city by surprise, and took Fernando Pizarro and his brother Gon- zalo prisoners. Had he cut off the heads of both of these gentlemen on the spot, he would have saved himself years of struggle, with a death on the scaffold at the end of them. But he was not of the right fibre for the work that was laid upon him. He was not what the English would call "thorough" ; he hacked and foined, instead of fetching a good backhand stroke and making an end of it. Civil disturbances went on for eleven years, "in the course of which," as Professor Fiske remarks, "all the principal actors were swept off the stage, as in some cheap blood-and-thunder tragedy. It is not worth while to recount the petty incidents of the struggle: how Almagro was at one moment ready to submit to arbitration, and the next moment refused to abide by the decision ; how Fernando was set at liberty and Gonzalo escaped; how Almagro's able lieutenant, Rodrigo de Orgonez, won a victory over Pizarro's men at Abangay, but was totally defeated by Fernando Pizarro at Las Salinas and perished on the field; how at last Fernando had Almagro tried for sedition and summarily executed. On which side was the more violence and treach- ery it would be hard to say. Indeed, as Sir Arthur Helps observes, 'in this melancholy story it is difficult to find any- body whom the reader can sympathize much with.' After his victory at Abangay, Orgonez completed the overthrow of the Inca Manco, scattered his army, and drove him to an inaccessible fastness of the mountains." After Almagro's execution in July, 1538, Fernando thought it expedient to go to Spain and explain himself j PIZARRO 209 but a friend of Almagro's had got there before him, and Fernando, let him explain himself never so nimbly, could get nothing better than a "surveillance" at Medina del Campo, which lasted no less than twenty years, during which time the only memorable thing he did was to marry his own bastard niece (daughter of his brother Francisco). Being relieved from his confinement in 1560, he repaired to his estate in Estramadura, where he was born, and fourteen years later he died there, as it was high time he should, for he was one hundred and four years old. Old age and wealth are two things which are seldom bestowed by Providence where, according to our conception of morality and utility, we should expect. The only conclusion seems to be that Providence does not attach so much importance to these two things as we do. Keats died in his twenties ; Shakespeare but just past fifty; Alexander in his boyhood; but Pizarro lived four years more than a century. As for the enjoyers of ill-gotten wealth circumspice! Francisco Pizarro continued to order things in Peru, which was now pretty nearly hi subjection; though the Inca still had his abode in the mountains, and made occa- sional incursions, which the Spaniards did not have great difficulty in repulsing. The roads which the Incas had made did excellent service for the invaders, who were able to maintain communications with all parts of the country. The Marquis amused himself with market gardening, and succeeded in acclimatizing various European vegetables in his new dominions. But while he was thus innocently engaged, his enemies, who were the adherents of the late Ahnagro, were laying plots against him. The Marquis, whenever he noticed them at all, behaved with such plen- tiful lack of tact and courtesy as to keep alive the flame of their hatred, if it were in any danger of dying out. Finally, in June, 1541, a number of cavaliers who had been very cavalierly treated by Pizarro, made up their minds to kill him. The affair occurred in Lima, just after the Marquis had finished dinner. One Juan de Rada led the conspira- 210 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA tors, of whom there were in all nineteen ; but one of them, Gomez Perez by name, as the party were crossing the great square of the city, stepped aside to avoid a puddle that lay in his path. Rada, whose soul was bent on direful deeds, happened to notice this, and it seemed to him to harmonize so ill with the business on which they were bound, that he became angry. "What! here are we about to wade knee- deep in blood, and you hop to save your shoes from a pud- dle! Imbecile dandy! go home: you are no comrade for men!" Gomez Perez may or may not have been a handy man with his rapier; at all events, the assassins managed their job without him. They attacked Pizarro with great fury; and his defence was highly creditable; but the odds were too great, and they stabbed both him and a half-brother of his named Alcantara, and a few chance adherents of theirs into the bargain. Having thus overthrown the reigning dy- nasty, the next step was to found a new one. Almagro had begotten an illegitimate son by a connection with an Indian woman; he was known as Almagro the Lad, and this prom- ising youth was forthwith named governor of Peru. Mean- while, as luck would have it, Charles V. had sent Vaca de Castro to Peru, to take counsel with the Marquis as to the administration of the province; and, being by long experi- ence familiar with the ways of his subjects, especially of those who adventured in foreign parts, his majesty bade his emissary, in case anything should have happened to Pizarro, to assume the reins of government himself. The first thing De Castro learned on disembarking was that something had happened to Pizarro, sure enough; whereby, ipso facto, he, De Castro, became governor. Making due inquiry, he further learned that there were plenty of Pizarro men in the coun- try. He therefore proclaimed his succession; marched to meet the foredoomed Almagro, and in the battle of Chupas, in September, 1542, defeated and captured him, and cele- brated his victory by conducting the young man to the public square of Cuzco, and there cutting off his head. Brother Gonzalo Pizarro was still in the flesh, and in PIZARRO 211 Peru; but instead of stirring up a revolt against the new governor, he gave in his adherence to him, and then wisely retired to his private estate in Charcas, near Lake Titicaca. It was at just about this time, however, that Las Casas had succeeded in getting passed his laws for the abolition of slavery in South America ; and these laws demanded imme- diate abolition. The execution of them would have worked prompt disaster to every Spaniard in the province, for all of them depended upon the labor of their slaves. Las Casas, as we have seen, did not come out to enforce the laws in person ; and the opposition they aroused was universal and violent. A wise diplomatist might, nevertheless, have made headway, in time; but no such person was provided. On the contrary, the king sent out a man specially unfitted for the work; one Blasco Nunez Vela, who appeared in 1544, with the rank of viceroy, and set to work with head- long zeal to carry out his orders by all means fair or foul. Naturally, the foul means were those which he most inclined to employ; he imprisoned all and sundry right and left; and that measure not seeming drastic enough, he murdered rather than executed any person who crossed his path. In fact, in- dulgent historians intimate that perhaps this Vela was hardly in his right mind; at all events he does not seem to have fully realized that, if killing was the word, there were gen- tlemen in Peru who were as conversant with its meaning as himself. In short, the resident Spaniards revolted, and called brother Gonzalo out of his retirement to lead them. Out he came ; and after a year of skirmishing, with nothing decisive done by either party, the opposing forces met near Quito, and down went Vela with a crash, and was then and there slain. Thus did the force of circumstance once more raise a Pizarro to the governorship of Peru. King Charles, however, was not the man to sit quietly while his authorized representative was done away with; and he sent out, this time, a real diplomatist, with a tongue capable of making the worse appear the better reason, and of winning support- ers f.rom the ranks of the enemy. He was an ecclesiastic, 10 212 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and his name was Pedro de la Gasca. He was endowed with official powers; but chiefly with brains, and with the tongue aforesaid. His first step was to repeal such parts of the abolition laws as bore hardest upon the colonists ; and thereby he won their favor. No until after these good news had been promulgated did Gasca venture to leave Panama for Peru. The captains of Pizarro's fleet had been de- spatched to Panama to meet and watch the new emissary, and either stop him or bribe him, as might seem most expe- dient. But allowance had not been made for that tongue. Gasca wagged it to such good effect that Pizarro's captains began to feel that perhaps they were not Pizarro's cap- tains after all; at all events, they put their fleet at his disposal, and to Peru he came, landing at Tumbrez in June, 1547. Now was the time for Pizarro to declare that he had no intention of resisting his sovereign, but had only opposed Vela in the interests of order and decency. But this Pizarro was tarred with the same brush as his brethren ; he liked to shed blood, thought he had a particular talent in that direc- tion, and was confident that he could show this sly priest some things in the way of war which would more than counterbalance his gift of the gab. In short, he was brutal and unintelligent; and his doom was sealed by his first oper- ations, which were successful. Captain Diego de Centeno, acting for Gasca, captured Cuzco ; but was defeated in the battle of Huarina. Hereupon Pizarro pressed on, nothing doubting; and indeed one can hardly blame him for his con- fidence, since it lay not in human foresight to anticipate the magical seductiveness of this Gasca's conversation. The armies met; but Gasca did but open his mouth, and Pizar- ro's soldiers began deserting by troops. The thing was in- explicable; it was uncanny. "We would call him a magnetic man, nowadays; and Pizarro's men were the iron filings. Even those who stayed by him could not be induced to fight; by great efforts fifteen men contrived to get slain; and then Pizarro, losing patience, got on his horse, rode over to Gasca's camp, and gave himself up. Gasca showed BOGOTA, COLOMBIA (From a photograph) THE PAMPAS IN THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC Sfanish America. PIZAERO 213 that he was a worthy successor of Spain's rulers in America. He took off Pizarro's head the next morning; but there was among the latter 's adherents a veteran officer who had fought in Italy, and was then eighty-five years old. He had noth- ing particular to do with the rebellion; but there he was, with his white hair and beard, and the scars of his honora- ole old wounds. A capital subject for sport therefore. And the eloquent ecclesiastic issued the orders with that honeyed tongue, and looked on while the aged warrior was hanged and quartered. A quaint ending for a martial career of five and eighty years! This event occurred in 1548; the ingen- ious Gasca lingered yet two years in the New World, plying the noose and the axe with unction; and then returned to his own country, where he received the mitre of a bishop. Another rebel arose after his departure, and was in his turn defeated and decapitated; and finally, in 1556, the Marquis of Canete held in complete subjection both the Indians and the Spaniards, and there reigned the kind of peace that Spain has made her own. The Conquest of Peru was finished. The Inca whom Pizarro had defeated and made a fugi- tive was killed in a brawl by the same Gomez Perez who had avoided the puddle who was in his turn immediately slain by the bystanding Indians. His successor was his son, Sari Tupac, but when the Marquis Canete came, this sover- eign without sovereignty was induced to abandon his fast- nesses among the mountains, and his vain posture of hostil- ity, and accept an amicable asylum in the valley of Yucay. On his death, in 1560, his brother Titu Cusi Yupanqui re- verted to the mountains, where he held out for eleven years. He was poisoned by a Spanish monk, who was killed for "sorcery," and avenged by the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, who slaughtered or dispersed the highland army, captured the new Inca Tupac Amaru, and beheaded him in Cuzco. There were no more Incas. But while Peru was thus settling down into the pleasant ways of peace, there had been interesting events in northern 214 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and eastern South America, to which some attention must now be given. "Whatever may be our animadversions against the Span- iards on the score of their greed for gold, there is no denying that it prompted them, as nothing else in the world could have done, to pursue the work of exploration, and to make the New World known with a rapidity which could never have been rivalled by mere geographers and ethnologists. Before the eyes of all the Spanish adventurers there hovered forever the vision of some absolutely golden country, where the precious metal was the veriest dross, and where every one might become rich beyond avarice's dreams by simply stretching out his hand and taking. In quest of this vision they underwent labors and braved perils and sufferings which would have been heroic in any other cause, and which incidentally afforded excellent material for innu- merable subsequent romancers. The success with which they were rewarded in Mexico, and still more in Peru, only made them imagine some yet more enormous rewards; and they kept up the desperate hunt until the illusion died a natural death. Their prolonged strugglings amid the pri- meval wilderness, deadly with fevers, with intolerable heats, with starvation and thirst, and with stealthy savages, afford a singular spectacle; not a cheerful one certainly, yet not devoid of a certain fascination. Gold did they get, and also often failed to get; blood they shed at all times; on their first approach they were often welcomed as gods; but ere they had remained long, they were invariably hated as devils. Such were their nature and their destiny. For what sins of the American aborigines the Spanish scourge was let loose upon them we can only conjecture; in the case of the Aztecs we may surmise, with the moralizers, that it was in punishment of their reprehensible practice of sacrific- ing and eating their fellow creatures; though there are to this day many thriving cannibals in the South Sea and else- where, who ought to have been punished at the same time. The scourge had to come; the curse had to fall, and endure PIZARRO 215 its time ; and only to-day is it passing forever away. Let us hope that the history of it may admonish us to shun what- ever may cause us to be remembered as are the Spaniards. New Granada was the name given to that region of South America which is now called Colombia (though at first it was restricted to the country round the mountain town of Bogota) ; Venezuela was a vague term for a coast, and an unknown stretch of land back of it, roughly identical with what is now represented by the same name ; it was dis- covered, as we know, by Columbus in 1498. The Spaniards did not at first make much of it ; they landed on its coasts for gold and slaves, and in this way irritated the inhabitants, and made them dangerous to meddle with. But there was gold there ; and the Spaniards continued to make attempts to get it. The forests were dense and the arrows poisoned, and they could make little headway. Santa Marta was founded in 1525, on the north coast. Quarrels arose among the rival adventurers, and Charles V. appointed a governor, Garcia de Lerma. At the same time he leased the ambig- uous Venezuela to the house of Welser. Bartolomaus Wel- ser, the founder of this famous firm of German bankers and commercial agents, who were the Rothschilds of the six- teenth century, had established claims upon the Spanish government by lending the king large sums of money; Wel- ser had been created a Prince of the Empire, but he was a business man, and desired rewards more concrete. Upon receiving the grant, Dalfinger and Seyler, representing the firm, landed at Coro, on the north coast, east of Lake Mara- caibo, where they heard a story about a chief somewhere in the interior of the country whose title was El Dorado, because he covered his whole body with powdered gold ; and it was further said that gold was common as dirt in that country. This story, unlike some others of that age, was founded on fact; there really was a chief up hi the moun- tains who, on certain ceremonial occasions, dusted himself over with gold. The habitat of the tribe of El Dorado was in the table-iaud of Bogota, in the province of Cundinamarca, 216 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA in New Granada. Manifestly, this was a matter into which it concerned Messrs. Dalfinger and Seyler to look without undue delay. Of Bogota, Humboldt says, "this table-land has some similarity to the plateau that encloses the Mexican lakes; both lie higher than the convent of St. Bernard. Bogota is surrounded by high mountains, while the perfect evenness of the level, the geological constitution of the ground, and the form of the rocks which rise like islands from the midst of the savannas, all suggest a former lake-basin. The Rio de Bogota has forced a channel through the mountains south- west of Santa Fe. It issues from the valley of the estate of Tequendama, falling into a narrow canon which descends to the valley of the Magdalena. If this opening, the only outlet the valley of Bogota has, were closed, the fertile plain would be converted into a lake like that of the Mexican plateau." On this temperate plateau lived the Muysca Indians. They were isolated ; their pursuit was agriculture ; the tribes outside their mountain walls were cannibals. All the tribes were in constant warfare with one another. The Muysca wove cotton, and picked up emeralds ; in spite of the war- fare they maintained a lively trade, in the course of which an immense amount of gold got into the country; for the Muysca had no gold of their own, whereas the surrounding tribes possessed it in superfluity. The Muysca used it for ornament, and fashioned it into all manner of tasteful shapes. They dwelt in houses of wood and straw, and made tem- ples with pillars of stone. Their tools and weapons were of stone, and they made bronze vessels. They were a military democracy. The chief was the executive, and the elders served him as council. Their religion did not markedly differ from that of other tribes in like grade of culture. They had a worship of fetiches striking natural objects; their lakes were accounted holy, and they offered homage to the deities supposed to inhabit them by the simple rite of throwing emeralds and gold into the water. The lake PIZARRO 217 where the most notable and generous of these offerings were made was the lake of Guatavita, and it was here that the tale of El Dorado had its source. It lies north of Santa Fe, about two miles above sea-level, on the apex of a symmetrical cone ; it is about three miles in circumference, and a hundred feet deep. It has a bottom of fine sand. Near the lake was the village of Guatavita, the inhabitants of which were, in 1490, an independent tribe. They had a legend to the effect that the goddess of the lake had been the wife of a former chief, who had thrown herself into the lake to escape a whip- ping, and, like the maidens of Greek mythology, had been made one of the Immortals. Her cult was popular, and extended even beyond the borders of the tribe. Pilgrims came from afar to add their offering of gold and emeralds to the divinity. At every new installation of a chief, there was an imposing ceremony ; first marched a squad of naked men painted with red ochre, as mourners ; then men adorned with gold and emeralds, with feather headdresses ; and war- riors in jaguar skins ; these shouted and made an uproar on horns, pipes and conch shells. Black-robed priests accom- panied the procession, with white crosses on their breasts; and in the rear came the nobles bearing the new chief on a barrow hung with gold disks. He was naked, his body ren- dered sticky with resinous gums, and then smeared over with gold dust. Having reached the shore of the lake, he got on a barge and was ferried to the centre, where he dived into the water, and washed off his gold, while the assemblage on the shore shouted in joy, and flung their offerings into the transparent abode of the goddess. After which the pro- cession returned as it came, and finished the day with eating, drinking and dancing, as is the wont of mankind of all races under cognate circumstances. Such was El Dorado; a very pretty and picturesque matter; but the fame of it got from that remote and well- protected table-land to the Spaniards and German Jews on the coast, and thence spread all over the civilized world; and caused many persons a great deal of exertion, anxiety, evil passions, injury, and death. As 218 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA. we look upon it now, the game was obviously not worth the candle; but it lay with the Spaniards and the German Jews to prove just how much it was worth ; and their efforts are worth reviewing. Dalfinger, the German governor, started after El Dorado from Coro in July, 1529. He crossed the Gulf of Venezuela, and was then beyond the confines of his province of Vene- zuela ; but he was not aware of this, nor was there any one to inform him of it ; for no white man had ever before been in this region. It was not a region which white men would seek from mere preference. It was terribly hot and un- wholesome; the forest was a thick intertwinement of trunks, branches, vines and parasites; underfoot there were some- tunes oozy swamps, and sometimes puzzling hills. It was inhabited by savages of a low but fierce sort ; but they had gold, and they could be used as slaves; and Dalfinger, who was a soldier of a rather more barbarous cast than the aver- age even of that day, was out for slaves and plunder; just what enormities he committed in those stifling and miasmatic woods we shall never know ; but what we do know of them almost justifies the Spanish criticism that Dalfinger was even more fond of blood and cruelty than themselves. His scheme was to depopulate the regions through which he passed, and he came within measurable distance of realiz- ing his ideal. In course of time he had struggled to the banks of the great Magdalena River, and followed the wind- ings of one of its affluents southward, until the multiplicity of lagoons confused his route, and forced him up to a cooler region on the heights of the hills. Here he encountered an enemy who fought with such determination that he was unable to do away with him ; he was doubtless the Muysca, and Dalfinger was closer than he imagined to El Dorado. But too many of his men were dead by this time ; he could not advance, and wintered where he was. In the spring he resumed his raid; but the natives drew him into the Ambrosia Valley, and there smote him terribly once more. With little more than a hundred men he retreated through PIZARRO 219 the forest to Coro, which he reached in May, 1530. In spite of his reverses, he had brought back forty thousand pesos in gold, and had previously sent nearly as much by carriers to Coro; but this latter sum never arrived. Somewhere in those woods it lies scattered, forever lost to sight beneath the fierce tropic vegetation. It might be identified by the Spanish bones and armor that lie mingled with it. It has been said by some that Dalfinger himself died this year ; but the records make it appear more probable that his end did not come for two years more. At all events he never again sought El Dorado. But there were others to take up his work; and this time the Spaniards bore their share. A water and land expedi- tion was arranged to start from Santa Marta; one part was to ascend the river on brigantines, the other to march by land and meet the brigautines at the town of Tamalameque, on the right bank of the river, the furthest trading point south in this region. The water party was commanded by Adalantado Lugo, late of the Canary Islands ; the land force was led by Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada, afterward known by the title of El Conquistador; he was at this time thirty- seven years old. He had six hundred and twenty men on foot and eighty-five mounted. Both parties set out in April, 1536, but only the land party got to the rendezvous; the boats met with accidents, and the remnant of them turned back. Quesada had the enterprise to himself; but for a long time he was supposed by those on the coast to have perished. Quesada was making very nearly the same march that Dalfinger had made ; but Dalfinger had at least had Indians to rob and to furnish provisions for his troops; these Indians were no longer accessible, and Quesada must find food as best he could unaided. Meanwhile the poisonous plants, insects, and miasmas were as busy as ever; and his men kept dropping. But Quesada was a true leader, and he kept his soldiers to their work. None of them endured more hardships than he, or endured them so well ; none was more active, resourceful, helpful and cheerful. At the same time 220 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA his discipline was of the strictest. By hook or by crook he finally brought his force, or what was left of it, to the ren- dezvous, only to learn that the succor they expected was not there. What was to be done? Retreat by land would be fatal ; he must go forward, and he chose to follow the paths of the salt traders from the upper waters of the river. A couple of leaky brigantines had been left at Tamalameque; he pushed forward, and reached Latora, four hundred and fifty miles from the mouth of the Magdalena; he had now been eight months on the march, and had met with no luck whatever, except bad luck. The brigantines could go no further; looking around him, nothing was to be seen but swirling streams and turbulent torrents rushing downward and spreading out in all directions; the tropical rains had overflowed the rivers, and it seemed as if the whole world were turning to forest and flood. There was no moving either forward or back; must they then die miserably thus? The men were only kept from mutiny by their ignorance of what to do, and which way to go. Quesada sent two of his captains up toward the mountains, and in a few days they came back with news of men of some sort living up yonder. Quesada himself made a reconnoissance thither- ward, and found a village; he now sent his sick men back to Cartagena in the leaky brigantines, and with one hundred and sixty-six men all that were left of his seven hundred he pressed on to the great plateau of Cundinamarca. It was the opening of the year 1537. The Indians obstructed the Spaniards' advance as best they could, taking them for man-eaters ; but when the Span- iards had halted from fatigue, two of their horses ran away, and so frightened the savages that they fled. Still advancing the next day, they came to a village deserted, on a plain surrounded by higher ground, from which the late inhabi- tants overlooked them. By way of appeasing what they supposed to be their craving for human flesh, the savages offered them an old man, then children, and finally a naked man and woman, and a stag. The Spaniards ate only the PIZABEO 221 latter, which gave confidence to the natives, and they came down from their eyries and made friendly overtures, which Quesada gladly accepted. This country was tributary to the Muysca, and hated them. They showed the invaders the route to the chief city of Bogota, where emeralds and gold, they said, were abundant. A battle with the Bogota people ensued; they were defeated; but in their scattering flight they took their gold and emeralds with them. Where the treasure was hidden the Spaniards could not discover. But at length a rival chief directed them to the stronghold of the Tunja tribe, and Quesada surprised the principal Tunja chiefs in their council -house; a fight followed, and the Tunjas got the worst of it. And here, at last, was treasure in plenty : so big a pile of gold and gems that a man on horseback could be hidden behind it. Probably as much as was obtained had been carried off or concealed ; but about a million dollars' worth of gold, and near two thousand emer- alds, were collected. But where was El Dorado himself? He could not be found, though always came the rumor that he was but a short distance further, this way or that. One report had it that the bulk of the gold v/as in possession of a tribe of warlike Amazons in the south. But Quesada had not the men to attempt a search in that direction. He founded the city of Santa Fe de Bogota, in August, 1538; in the midst of which employment he was surprised by the news that two other parties of white men were in the imme- diate neighborhood. One of them turned out to be that of Belalcazar, from Quito in Peru, lured hither by a New Granada Indian with tales of El Dorado; the. other was commanded by Nicolaus Federmann, a lieutenant of Von Speyer, the successor of Dalfinger. Federmann too was in quest of El Dorado; and thus, by a coincidence, the three leaders were at the same time, with the same object, on the same spot. Which of the three had the right of way? As a matter of fact, Quesada had that right; but the others would not admit it without a struggle. Had there been a fight, with the savages waiting to take advantage of it, 222 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA there would soon have been no white men left in Cundina- marca; bat the three captains agreed to submit 'heir claims to Spain, and departed for that country, leaving their armies to hold the territory. Federmann never came back. He had disobeyed the orders of his superiors, and the Welsers dismissed him in disgrace. Whether he died in shipwreck, or at Madrid, is not known ; but die somehow he did, four or five years later. Quesada was treated with base ingrati- tude, which ought not to have surprised him, being in the service of Spain ; he was kept hi semi-durance for nine years, and then was given the sop of a useless title. But the Span- ish hold upon Cundinamarca was never relaxed, and it was the last of the three places Mexico and Peru being the others where a great treasure of gold, in a mass, was secured. But the search still continued for that impossible fairy region where all was gold; and though, before the end of the century, the market value of the metal had, ow- ing to the immense, finds, decreased forty per cent, the search was prosecuted only the more eagerly. Already, about 1530, Diego de Ordaz had ascended the Orinoco, and had pushed into the interior in search of a golden province called Meta, toward the west. This was, under another name, and with some change of locality, the story of the El Dorado region over again. Ordaz was forced to retreat without discovering aught of value. During his absence from the coast, he had been superseded by one Sedeno, and going to Spain with his complaints, as had so many disappointed Spaniards before him, he died at sea in 1533. Sedeno in his turn got into trouble; and in 1534, Alonzo de Herrera went up the Orinoco, and to the mouth of the River Meta ; but he was slain by savages, and only a few of his party got back to the coast. The next year D'Ortal attempted the same journey, but his men mutinied, and he gave up the business of adventure, and married and settled down, with a common sense which, for those times, seems preternatural. In 1535, Von Speyer, in the Welser service, went in quest of Meta, from Coroj he got into PIZARRO 223 flooded districts, and his command was much depleted by illness and Indians. He was one of the unlucky ones, but he was very persistent, and kept on to the sources of the Meta, and still further to the borders of Ecuador. After get- ting within a hundred miles of the equator, he was obliged to retreat, and reached Coro, very much the worse for wear, three years after he had left it. Meanwhile, as we have seen, his lieutenant Federmann, who had been ordered by Von Speyer to go west to fix the boundaries of Venezuela and Santa Marta or New Granada, had on the contrary started to find El Dorado on his private account, with what result we know. The upshot of these eight or ten years was, some millions in gold and gems, and several lines of explo- ration carried across the wilderness of forest and savanna of northern South America. The search was now to take a more southerly direction. We have already seen that Belalcazar had met Quesada and Federmann in Cundinamarca. Belalcazar was there in de- fiance of orders from Pizarro; but the latter, not sorry to be rid of him, sent his brother Gonzalo to take his place at Quito. Gonzalo found little to amuse him in Quito, and making up his mind that Belalcazar was gone for good and swallowed up in the wilderness, resolved to take a hand at finding El Dorado himself. He shaped his route toward the south and the Amazon, though at that time neither he nor any one else knew that such a river existed. But innu- merable minor rivers affluents of the Amazon flowed in a southeasterly direction ; and Gonzalo sent his lieutenant, Orellana, by way of the Napo River, designing to meet him at some point along its course. But the Napo flowed so swiftly that Orellana reached the rendezvous long before Gonzalo, who was occupied in cutting paths through the dense tropic jungle. In fact, Gonzalo never got anywhere in particular; but in process of time reappeared at Quito in the last stages of destitution. Meanwhile Orellana, after waiting for him until his provisions gave out, was forced to go forward go back against stream he could not and from 224 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA the Napo he floated into the Amazon, and down that enor- mous stream he continued until he passed its mouth. Thence he proceeded up the coast to Cubagua, which he reached in 1541 the expedition having set out in 1539. He related that he had met with a tribe of women fighters on the banks of the river; and that a captive Indian had told huii that a tribe of Amazons, having much gold, dwelt to the north. This story aided to fix the new site of El Dorado in this hypothetical Amazonian country; the only other result of the journey was the discovery of the river itself. Von Speyer being dead, his place as governor at Coro hi the interests of the Welsers was taken bj* Bastidas ; and he chose Captain Limpias to carry out the explorations which Von Speyer had begun. With him went Von Hiitten, a val- iant young German knight, and Bartolomaus Welser, son of the founder of the house. Von Hiitten and his party set out in 1541, and blundered through the forests for nearly two years, returning in 1543, with nothing done, to that point near the sources of the river Japura (close to the northern borders of Ecuador) from which they had made their plunge into the unknown. But during his wanderings he had been told by an Indian of a rich country to the east ; at the time he had disregarded or distrusted this informa- tion ; but now he thought it was at least worth looking intp. Accordingly, with only forty horsemen, he started in that direction, and though warned by the friendly Uaupes that he was exposing himself to danger from the powerful tribe of the Omaguas, he kept on, and somewhere north of the Amazon and west of its juncture with the Rio Negro, he came upon one of the Omagua settlements. The Omaguas were a race which occupied, with their several branches, an enormous stretch of territory, covering thousands of miles; but none of their villages was very large, and they were at long distances from one another. The one upon which Von Hiitten happened to stumble was perhaps one of the largest; at all events the annalists of the expedition assert that it mus- tered no less than fifteen thousand fighting men. Von Hut- PIZAERO 225 ten and his forty followers, looking down upon the village from a height, saw what they took to be a rich and thriving town, with a great palace in the midst, which they at once assumed to be the long-sought home of the Gilded One. As a matter of fact it could have been nothing but a large com- munal house, built of wood and straw. The white men rode down toward it, but were met by thousands of the sav- ages, who hurled back their charges, and finally drove the invaders off, and pursued them until they reached the coun- try of the Uaupes once more; several having been slain, and both Limpias and Von Hiitten wounded. But in spite of their discomfiture, the white men were happy, believing that they had found El Dorado, and only had to get sufficient reinforcements to return and capture it. As soon as they had recovered from the effects of their fight and flight, they took up their march across half the length of the continent for Coro. But now a quarrel arose, between Limpias on the one side, and the Germans, Von Hiitten and Welser, on the other. Limpias demanded to be made commander of the expedition; but Welser maintained that he, as son of the firm that leased Venezuela from Spain, had the first right to that dignity. Von Hiitten naturally backed his fellow-countryman. The three wrangled as they threaded their way through the forests and waded or swam the rivers; and at last Limpias left the others, and rode on ahead to Coro, meaning to complain to the Spanish represen- tatives and destroy German influence in South America. The party had been absent four years ; and events had occurred in the interval which favored Limpias's plans of revenge. Coro, which had no agricultural support, and was cursed with one governor after another, each a greater rogue and scoundrel than his predecessor, had finally wound up with a past master of villany in the shape of one Carvajel, who was both hostile to the Germans, and also a traitor to Spam. In order to escape from German control, he proposed to the Spaniards, who formed the bulk of the colonists, to leave Coro and enter New Granada territory, where they would 226 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA be in better circumstances. And in fact he led a hegira southward to Tocuyo, a pleasant spot not far from Coro. Hither came the revengeful Limpias, and found a ready listener to his tale. Von Hutten and Welser, with their men, were not far behind, and no time should be lost in devising means for their destruction. Emissaries were sent back to meet the advance guard under Von Hutten and Welser at Barquicimeto ; the two Germans were told a tale which brought them on to Tocuyo, where a quarrel was forced upon them; they were arrested by Carvajel, and the next day they were duly beheaded. This was the end of German power in Venezuela; for although Carvajel himself was decapitated not long after, and Limpias disappeared, the Welsers never again attempted to renew their hold upon the province. "Von Hiitten's fate," says Bandelier, whom we have followed in this narration, "the extinction of the settlement at Coro, and the threatened depopulation of the Venezuelan peninsula, precluded any further thought of an expedition into the interior southward. The Brazil- ian coast was too far from the unknown interior, which was concealed in immense forests. The western coasts, particu- larly those of New Granada and Peru, where the Amazon begins its course, not only lay geographically nearest to the region in question, but were also the seats of the strongest and richest settlements of the Spaniards in South America : the only ones from which campaigns could now be under- taken. But although the population of the west had rapidly increased under the stimulus of the metallic treasures found in the country, events in Peru made further expeditions im- possible for years. The conflict between Pizarro and Alma- gro culminated hi bloodshed in 1538. An unbroken succes- sion of crimes, to which nearly all the conquistadores fell victims (thereby expiating their own offences) marked the progress of the insurrection, till it overshadowed the coast from Chili to Popayan. And when the insurrectionists pre- vailed from Popayan to Atacameta, then the threatened storm loomed also over the southern horizon of New Gra- PIZARRO 227 nada and reached the heart of Cundinamarca. It was no time for expeditions to the interior every force had to be used for self-preservation. In this period a man came upon the stage in New Granada who is to be especially associated with El Dorado. He was Don Pedro de Ursua, a young knight from Pampluna hi Navarre ; he was nephew of the royal judge Armendariz, who arrived with him in 1545. Armendariz came as Inquisitorial Judge, and appointed his nephew his lieutenant." The Bogota government had been in the hands of a thief, Alonzo de Luga, who on hearing of the Judge's arrival, took his booty, amounting to three hundred thousand ducats, and escaped to Milan, where he died in comfort. Ursua took his place at Bogota. He was then twenty years old, and acted as military aid to Armendariz. The Muysca had ere this been subjugated, but other savage tribes were still inde- pendent, and as it was from them that the Muysca had got their gold, it seemed doubly expedient to subdue them. Ursua waged a war of extermination against them, and murdered all the chiefs of the Musos, by treachery. This exploit recommended him to the authorities, and he was sent to Panama to exterminate the natives there. He ac- complished this in two years, and in 1558 followed Caneta to Peru. Here there were living a large number of disor- derly persons, relics of the various rebellions, of whom the viceroy wished to be rid; and the best plan seemed to be to send them out of the country on some grand adventure. The region east of the Andes was to be the objective point. Chili, New Granada, and the banks of La Plata were al- ready occupied by Spaniards ; the expedition must go where it would disturb no existing colony. The rumors of gold in Brazil were already rife. No difficulty was found in getting volunteers for the expedition, for the disorderly element was as anxious to get away before their records were investi- gated, as the authorities were to have them go. Ursua was chosen for the leader. He was to be governor of whatever countries he might conquer. Not till 1560 was he ready to 228 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA start. The scum of Peru composed the army, and there were women among them. To captain such a rabble, a man of exceptional strength of character was needed ; Ursua was bold and reckless enough, but he was frivolous and indolent. He set an example of immorality from the beginning, robbing the priest of Santa Cruz of five thousand pesos, and taking with him as his mistress the young and beautiful widow of Pedro de Arcos, the Donna Inez. Before getting off, he hanged several of his followers for the murder of one of his officers ; and this act of incongruous severity boded him no good. But on July 1, 1560, the advance guard got off in a brigantine to the mouth of the Rio Ucayali. It was commanded by Juan de Vargas. The rest, delayed by the unseaworthiness of their boats, did not follow till the end of September. Everybody was surly and dissatisfied. When they overtook De Vargas they found his party half starved, and the brigantine rotten. These men therefore had to find room on the already crowded boats of the main body, which caused more trouble, increased by the fact that Ursua insisted upon reserving ample accommodations for himself and the fair Inez. Below the mouth of the Napo the flotilla landed, found provender, and repaired the boats. The Indian guides pointed still eastward as the site of the gold country. By Christmas they were in the Omagua country, where he de- cided to rest awhile. His men were already ripe for mutiny, and there was a certain Aguirre among them who was well fitted to be the leading spirit of the worst desperadoes in the world. Aguirre was fifty years old, a Biscayan, and had already spent twenty years in Peru. He was a fugitive from justice for many violent and bloody crimes; was short and spare in figure, ugly, black-bearded, eagle-eyed. He hated all gov- ernment, order and civilization; was shrewd, an excellent speaker, and a man who knew just what he wanted at all times. He was, says the sober Bandelier, "the most detest- able figure of the Conquest." Ursua's heedlessness gave the conspirators every oppor- PIZARRO 229 tunity. About Christmas time, a number of the best soldiers had left the camp on an exploring expedition. On the first of January, 1561, a party of men well-armed came unbidden to Ursua's quarters, where he lay in a hammock. Without ado, they fell upon him and killed him; Juan de Vargas was the next victim, and with shouts of "Liberty!" the murder- ers assembled in the hut of Fernando de Guzman. The lat- ter was made governor, with Aguirre second in command. Upon consultation, the majority were in favor of continuing the search for El Dorado, though Aguirre was with the dis- senting minority. A paper declaring Ursua's death a neces- sity was signed by all, and Aguirre wrote his name, "Lope de Aguirre, Traitor. ' ' To the protests of the others he said, " We have killed the king's representative; we are all trait- ors and rebels, and our heads are at the order of the first pettifogger who comes among us with royal authority." Many who heard this speech were angry, but it terrified all, for they knew its truth; and Aguirre, as the boldest among these desperate criminals, and the one who best knew what to do, gained an influence over all. Fernando de Guzman became the Biscayan's tool. The party pro- ceeded down the river, suffering for food, and finally eat- ing the horses; Aguirre made use of the demoralization that prevailed to get all the approximately decent men out of their commands, and to substitute creatures of his own. After passing the mouth of the Japura, the Indian guides confessed they did not know the country, and it was decided to invade Peru! How were they to get there? The plan which Aguirre now disclosed was magnificent, as such things go. They could not of course return by the way they had come. His proposition was to keep on down the Amazon to the sea; capture Margarita by surprise, thence proceed to Nombre de Dios and Panama; and having possessed themselves of the latter, they would trust to the terror they should have already inspired, and to the support of the many thousands of desperadoes like themselves throughout Spanish America, 230 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA to accomplish the rest of the enterprise. The very magni- tude and audacity of the scheme fascinated Aguirre's hear- ers; a paper announcing independence of Spain was drawn up, and all but three signed it. Two of these were killed; one Francisco Vasquez, who afterward wrote the story of the adventure escaped. It now remained for Aguirre, in order to get chief command, to murder Fernando de Guz- man ; the other officers had been already disposed of. Guzman was liked by the men on account of his courtesy and good humor; in order to render him unpopular, Aguirre worked upon his ambition and vanity; he proclaimed him "Prince and King of the mainland of Peru"; whereupon Guzman became haughty and arbitrary, and took on a state and dignity which offended the men. His fall, when the right moment should have arrived, was now certain. Meantime new boats were built, and before Easter the start was made. In order to avoid further temptations to- ward El Dorado, Aguirre changed the course of the expedi- tion to the Rio Negro. It was now that Aguirre determined to make away with Guzman, and his friend Salduendo, to whom ere this the beautiful but inconstant Inez had attached herself. He first quarrelled with Salduendo, murdered him with his own hands in Guzman's presence, and then sent two assassins to kill Inez, which they did with circumstances of revolting atrocity. Guzman, at last alarmed, resolved on Aguirre's death ; but he was too late. Aguirre collected his adherents that night and slaughtered Guzman and six officers who attached themselves to him. The next morning he was proclaimed "General of the Maranon," and his band received the name of Maranones. Whether the expedition passed down the Orinoco or the Amazon is uncertain; but at all events they reached the ocean on July 1, 1561. During the trip, Aguirre, who ruled now by terror, murdered eight more of the band. "Every new crime," says Bandelier, "attached the rest, by the sense of common guilt, more closely to their leader, who, like an evil spirit, led them, with an iron will, to further crimes." PIZARRO 231 At Margarita, Aguirre captured the governor by surprise and took the fort; seized the royal treasury and provisions and ammunition, and proclaimed independence. He then sent some of his men to capture a large ship in the harbor; but they took the opportunity to desert and surrender to the priest Montesinos, to whom they made confession of the plot. Montesinos at once sent messengers to warn the Venezuelan settlements, and ere long fifteen hundred men were under arms in New Granada; in Venezuela, two hundred and sixty. All this while Aguirre was awaiting the return of his faithless emissaries, and was robbing and murdering on all sides throughout the island. Finally the vessel he was expecting came in sight ; but it flew the royal flag of Spain ! Aguirre promptly killed the governor of Margarita and his principal officers, and went down to prevent the ship from landing its men. The ship then set sail to carry the news to the Antilles and the Isthmus. Aguirre determined to invade Venezuela, which, owing to the depletion of its inhabitants on El Dorado expeditions, was nearly without inhabitants. He obtained a vessel in which he embarked his well-armed cutthroats, hoisted a flag bearing the device of two blood - red swords crossed, and set sail. Passing Burburata, whose inhabitants fled to the woods, he marched to Valencia, some of his men deserting him on the way. He burned the aban- doned town, and indulged in the wildest fantasies of brutal- ity, even toward his own followers; and issued a manifesto addressed to the king of Spain which is full of evidences of insanity. He now turned southwest toward Barquicimeto, his men still gradually dropping away from him; the town was deserted, but a royal force under Paredes prevented Aguirre from going further. For several days deserters continued to flock to the royal flag, and Aguirre became more violent but also less powerful. At last Paredes re- solved to risk an attack ; before battle could be joined, the men remaining with Aguirre threw away their arms and cried for the king. Aguirre, finding himself lost, went to the room in which was his only daughter, a grown maiden, 232 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and said to her, "My child, God have mercy on your soul, for I am going to kill you, so that you shall not live in mis- ery and shame the child of a traitor." With that he stabbed her to the heart. The royal troops approached ; he went out to meet them, and though Paredes wished to capture him alive, his late followers would take no risks, but shot him down like a mad dog on the spot. They chopped off his head, put it in a cage, and exhibited it in Tocuyo. His memory to this day is a bogey to frighten children withal in Venezuela. But with his death, the systematic search for El Dorado ceased, though many persons subsequently were affected by the legends concerning it. El Dorado him- self had ceased to be before the first searchers started out to find him; and he became a sort of unsubstantial mirage, to lead men astray, until the trail was finally lost in the marshy forests of northern Brazil. CHILI 233 IV CHILI THE time needed to conquer Peru could almost be meas- ured by months ; Chili was not completely in the in- vaders' power after some centuries had elapsed; and the Araucanian Indians, though they have, within this gen- eration, accepted the situation, never were finally overcome by Spaniards. There are still over fifty thousand of these indomitable mountaineers occupying the southern part of the long-drawn-out region which bears the name formally bestowed only upon a small section to the north ; they retain the personal dignity and independent bearing which were theirs four hundred years ago; and though the fierce alco- holic liquors prepared for them by Europeans may gradually avail to extinguish them, they will always be remembered as the single aboriginal American race who never bent their necks to the yoke of foreigners. For this they merit the thanks of all friends of manhood and liberty. When we inquire as to the condition of Chili before Al- magro marched thither from Cuzco, we find the ambiguity common in answers to all similar questions in the western continent. The Incas had previously invaded the country, but it is probable that they never got further south than the River Maule, in south latitude thirty -six degrees, some two hundred miles below Valparaiso. The inhabitants were divided up into fifteen tribes; but as these all spoke sub- stantially the same language, it was surmised that they had originally been one people; or that Chili had in the remote past been ruled by a strong and semi- civilized race which had now disappeared, after the style of the ancient Piruas of Peru. This is a surmise and nothing more; hav- ing the value and the lack of value attaching to all like 234 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA guesses. Here, at all events, were some millions of people who, unlike the Peruvians, acknowledged no paramount lord, but lived almost in a state of individual freedom; each tribe had its chiefs, but the power of the latter was far from absolute, and they could be deposed for cause. It was this fact that made the country so hard a nut for Span- iards to crack; it was in vain that they murdered the native leaders, and hung up their remains in trees to scare their followers ; the latter were only the more enraged and fought the harder. It was in vain that the Spaniards built towns and planted colonies here and there ; the Indians came back like the tide of the sea, and again and again overwhelmed the foreign settlements. Spain has been hated by all other nations ever since she first achieved her own national exist- ence; but she has never been more soundly hated than by the natives of Chili, and has never fought so many battles with such small result as there. To-day, the country is held by a race of more or less impure blood, endowed with an ape- like imitativeness and superficial intelligence; vain, insolent and quarrelsome; slothful and frivolous in character, and quite devoid of independent initiative. Left to themselves, they could accomplish nothing. But the country is rich in an industrial population of Englishmen and Germans, who carry on all operations conducive toward the development of wealth and power. They build the railroads and bridges, construct the irrigation works, superintend the mining oper- ations, and promote commerce. It is in Europe that ships of war are built; and it is to European docks that they must be taken to be repaired. The war leaders and rulers of Chili who have achieved success have been Irishmen or other for- eigners; whatever institutions and laws are of value in Chili have been introduced from foreign sources. The cause that has drawn these valuable foreigners to Chili has been, of course, the great natural wealth of the country, especially nitre and silver in the north, and an inferior kind of coal in the south. The Creoles own the land in which these natural sources of wealth are found, and they receive consequently CHILI 235 the major part of the profits from them; but there still re- mains enough to attract foreign workers. The financial existence of the country now depends chiefly upon the nitre deposits in the north, in the region lately conquered from Peru; but the time is anticipated when this resource will have been exhausted; and that time will involve serious consequences to Chili. The country is nominally a repub- lic, whose political institutions are borrowed from those of this country ; but in fact it is a vicious oligarchy, in which almost absolute power is vested in the President, who, though he cannot immediately succeed himself, has the privilege of naming his successor. The bulk of the population, outside of the Spanish Creoles, consists of peons, who are a sort of bastard Indians, the progeny of the lower aboriginal tribes, generated by the vices of their masters. They have been oppressed for so many generations that they hardly retain respectable human traits; they are hard workers for infini- tesimal wages, and live almost in a state of savagery; their only pleasures are petty thieving and drunkenness. A com- munity of this kind cannot hope for permanent existence; the recent prosperity of Chili is an accidental and transient phenomenon, which will disappear as soon as the transient causes which have led to it cease to operate. Never was a title bestowed upon a people with less justification in fact than when the Chilians are called the <; Yankees of South America." If they were left to themselves for but one generation, they would vanish as a nation. The child born to-day will probably see their finish; and they will be suc- ceeded by the men who for so long a time have really ad- ministered the country. Under the latter, Chili doubtless has a bright future; and the sooner that future begins, the better will it be for civilization. For the country itself is a beautiful and desirable one, well-suited for the habitation of an energetic and respectable race. It begins at about south latitude 17, and extends be- low latitude 55, in Tierra del Fuego. This length of nearly three thousand miles has by no means a proportionate breadth ; 11 236 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERI.CA at the widest it measures but three hundred miles. On the east it is bounded by the long chain of the Andes, lifting snow-crowned summits from end to end of the continent. Parallel with the Andes, the coast range guards the western boundary along the Pacific; the height of these mountains is but a fraction of that of the Andes; but the two enclose the long, irregular valley which sustains the population. In the south, the coast is broken up into countless small islands, with sounds and winding inlets of the sea separating them ; and the geological formation of the northern portions shows that in prehistoric times the coast range was a similar chain of islands, and that the long valley was an inland sea, or a series of salt lakes, washing the western slopes of the Andes. In the extreme north, the so-called desert of Ata- cama presents an arid region where upon the clay and rock of this ancient sea-bottom is imposed a layer formed of the residue of decayed seaweed, which, owing to various chemi- cal changes- and additions, has become the nitre of com- merce. No rivers traverse this region, and rain falls there scarce once in five years, and even then it amounts to little more than a heavy dew. Were it otherwise, the nitre beds would be washed away, and the present wealth of Chili would go with them. But it would be possible, in some places, for irrigation to restore the desert to fertility; and this must ultimately be done; meanwhile, any attempt to cultivate by this means is forbidden, for vegetation would change the climate, and, by introducing a moister atmos- phere, bring on the rains which would hasten the destruc- tion of the nitre industry. South of the desert is the agri- cultural section of Chili, where irrigation is carried on with favorable results, and where the scenery is of enchanting loveliness. This fertile stretch extends over barely ten de- grees of latitude. Further south the landscape again takes on a severe and barren aspect, and so merges into the forlorn domains of Patagonia. When Almagro was ready to begin his march into this then unknown land, he had his choice of two roads, both CHILI 237 built by the Incas in their usual massive manner; one would lead him by way of the desert and the sea ; the other along the Andean mountain range. If he took the first, he was liable to perish of thirst and heat ; if the second, of cold and starvation. He chose the latter alternative, and, accompa- nied by Peruvian guides, he set out accordingly, as we have seen in the foregoing chapter. He had with him five hun- dred and seventy Spaniards and fifteen thousand Peruvians; by the time he saw the green vales of middle Chili, he had lost by the way four hundred and twenty Spaniards, and five thousand Peruvians. It was an arduous journey, and made at the least favorable time of the year, when the passes are buried in snows and swept by furious storms such as the Spaniards had never before experienced, and for enduring which their preparations were deficient. In their anxiety to keep alive, the invaders were not likely to pay much atten- tion to the features of the scenery from the sssthetic stand- point; but nowhere save among the Himalayas of northern India does nature assume such grandeur and sublimity of form and color. Beauty so stupendous and austere is hardly to be described; but an American traveller, Mr. Theodore Child, gives us a glimpse of an Andean sunrise (at a point further south) which is worth quoting. "My eyes rested in wonderment," he says, "on the surrounding snow-clad ridges, above which towered in the distance the conical peak of Tupungato. It was a singularly impressive sight. The gloom of the night still lingered in the valley; the lower ranges of mountains seemed to emit darkness ; the outlines of the bowlders, scrub a ad cactus plants were not yet sharply defined ; the earth appeared as if it were half asleep, lulled by the subdued roar of the Mendoza River rolling its torrent of brown-gray water along its deep and tortuous bed; the only other sound perceptible was the tinkling of the mule- bell and the soft pattering of hoofs upon gravel and pebbles. Suddenly the summit of Tupungato reddened, and in a few minutes all the topmost ridges became brilliant and almost transparent, like molten copper as it flows out of the fur- HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA nace. The spectacle of sunrise in the Andes was one that I contemplated each morning with ever-increasing awe, for each morning it seemed more wonderful, more beautiful, and more indescribable." Of the desert he remarks that it "has been aptly com- pared to an immense chemical laboratory, so great is its richness in salts of various kinds. In these latitudes the coast rises rapidly to a height of about three thousand feet, and thence eastward we find the country mountainous, the coast cordillera continuing its course parallel with the Andes. On the gentle slopes of the eastern cordillera the nitrate beds occur at a distance from the sea of from twenty-five to fifty miles, and at a height of from three to four thousand feet above the sea. So then we have in the east the great masses of the Andes, in the centre a longitudinal valley or pampa resembling the dry bed of a river, and on the west the gentle slopes and undulations of the coast cordillera, where the nitrate deposits are found along the edge of the pampa. . . . Passing Las Carpas and San Juan, we attain a height of over three thousand feet. All that we see is sand and rock, or a sort of red conglomerate strewn with bowlders, and loose flint or limestones ; but the outlines of the moun- tains are beautiful in silhouette, the undulations of the lower valleys have a singular softness, and the brilliant sunshine plays over the interminable wilderness of hill and dale, de- veloping in the arid rock and sand a variety of color that replaces the effect of vegetation, and sometimes even pro- duces the illusion of some dark green growth which might be appropriate in a lunar landscape. There are places too on the hillsides where Nature's chemistry has painted graceful designs, as it were arabesques of foliated Gothic windows, with the colors of green, violet and yellow oxides, while the other brown hills are toned with a velvety purple haze of sun-smoke, soft as the bloom on a plum. ... In the morn- ing it is calm; toward one o'clock a strong wind sweeps along the valley, raising clouds and whirlpools of dust; at sunset the calm returns, and the brown hills assume the CHILI 239 most brilliant colors, while the gray sandy pampa becomes tinted with pink and violet. After we reach the upper table- laud the absolute barrenness ceases so far as it concerns the pampa proper, where some dry bushes of the acacia family still grow with gray and dusty pertinacity. In the distance, over the glaring waste of sand and scrub, you see the snowy peaks of the Andes, and on the horizon of the plain innu- merable spiral columns of smokelike dust rising to a great height. On the other side of the line are the deep red- brown slopes of the foothills of the coast Cordillera, and the band of gray sand and brown conglomerate beneath which the nitrate lies." But Almagro and his men had no eyes for these things; they were busy keeping watch for the savages who ever and anon swooped down upon them; and in scanning the dark rooks, where the gales had swept them bare of snow, for traces of the golden deity which they worshipped. But nothing of value rewarded them ; and the contrast between the features of this new land, and the easy opulence of the one they had left behind them, forcibly affected most of the company; insomuch that they besought their leader to take them back to Cuzco. But Almagro was an obstinate as well as a weak man; and though he was at this time certainly sixty, and possibly seventy years of age, he would listen to no arguments for retreat. The whole of Chili could not be mountain summits and snow ; there were valleys fur- ther on, and to reach them might mean boundless wealth. So on he went, loading his baggage on such natives as he could capture, heedless though they perished by scores. On one occasion a squad of these unhappy Indians, driven to madness by the intolerable cruelties practiced upon them, slew three of their oppressors; upon which Almagro inflicted upon them the discipline of being burned alive, which proved effective, so far at least as those burned were concerned. As they neared Copiapo, about twelve hundred miles south of Cuzco, he rode forward with a few horsemen, and brought succor from the natives there. But for this help, the 240 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA entire party might have left their bones among the snow- drifts. Upon reaching the fertile valleys, they were received in a friendly manner, owing to the presence with them of a personage of authority from the Peruvians; and an officer was despatched on a reconnoitring expedition still further south. Paullu, the Peruvian, managed to induce the na- tives to bring in treasure to the amount of half a million ducats, which Almagro distributed among his followers in order to check the still strong tendency to retreat. The Chilians at this epoch were not so far advanced in the arts of life as were the Peruvians. Only the northern tribes had felt the influence of Peruvian culture; the south- erners were still in their healthy, primitive condition. But all had arrived at the condition of settled communities ; they cultivated crops, they mined metals, and had domesticated certain animals. They had a copious language, cooked their food, made bread, and brewed a dozen kinds of spirituous liquors. In person most of them were tall, strong and ac- tive, with a complexion of light reddish brown, sometimes approaching white. Cities, in the Peruvian sense, they had none, but lived in patriarchal hamlets, ruled by ulmens, who were in turn subject to a cacique of the tribe. Each farmer was master of his own field ; there was none of that land- ownership by the State which obtained in Peru. A people with this form of government could be subdued only in de- tail ; the conquest of one body of them would have no effect upon others. They had in them the spirit of the mountains, and valued liberty more than life or any worldly possessions. On the other hand, their arms were of the ineffective description, compared with those of the Spaniards, which characterized all the American tribes. They made cloth garments, which their women adorned with embroidery, and dyed with vegetable or animal extracts; they manu- factured a kind of soap; and their utensils were of well- fashioned pottery, wood and marble. They had a sys- tem of numbering, and their records were kept by quipus, CHILI 241 after the Peruvian style. They sat on mats and kept their belongings in baskets; they went to sea in canoes, and fished with fish-hooks; they knew something of as- tronomy and physics, and had some rather rude notions of drawing and carving. They called themselves Chil- dren of the Sun, and are supposed to have worshipped the sun and moon; they had the red men's vision of happy hunting grounds after death, and believed that those who died fighting in battle were certain of a happy immortality. They were afflicted, like our own Puritan Fathers, with a potent belief in witches, whom they stabbed to death with their knives; their laws were not many, but they were strictly enforced. Cleanly they were in the extreme, in this respect offering a sharp contrast to their invaders, who then as always were remarkable for their affinity with dirt. They took particular pains to keep their magnificent teeth white and clean, and were careful to remove all hairs from the faces and bodies. The women were dressed in woollen garments of a green color, with a cloak and girdle ; the men wore shirts and breeches, woollen caps and footgear, and over all capacious woollen ponchos. Cleanly and careful attire is still a characteristic of the Araucanian Indians of to-day. The country was thickly populated, and was well able to support a large number of inhabitants. The fertile valleys were watered by more than one hundred rivers, and those regions not favored by nature were made green by irriga- tion, which was an art well understood and deftly practiced by the natives. The climate resembled that of southern California ; the rains were gentle and the winds moderate. Earthquakes, however, were not uncommon, and there were numerous active volcanoes to lend interest to the landscape. But here was great actual and potential wealth in agricult- ure, manufactures, and cattle, without burrowing beneath the surface of the ground. Had Almagro and his men had eyes and senses for anything but gold, they might have set- tled in these valleys with ample profit and advantage. 242 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA But gold, upon investigation, though the country was by no means destitute of it, was not found in such abundance as in Peru ; and news at this time arriving that the Spanish government had reported favorably upon Almagro's claims to Cuzco, he finally resolved to return thither. But before doing so, he managed to incur the enmity of the natives by burning an ulmen, his brother, and twenty others, for some trifling offence; and in a fierce battle with the Promaucians the Spanish had none the better of the encounter, and re- treated. Almagro made no effort to wipe out the stain of this check ; back to Peru he went, and we already know his further fate. It is to Pedro de Valdivia that the question- able honor of the first resolute attempt to conquer Chili is to be ascribed. Valdivia was an able soldier, and not devoid of other merits ; he is one of the less repulsive figures of this epoch. He was born about the beginning of the century near Es- tramadura, had served in the Italian wars, and came to Venezuela in 1534. He fought under Pizarro at the battle of Las Salinas in 1538; and hi 1540, with Pedro de Hoz, he marched from Cuzco with a hundred and fifty Spaniards and some thousands of Indians. He chose the road along the sea and the desert ; and as his object was not merely to invade the country but to settle it, he took with him a num- ber of women and priests. At this time he knew nothing of the Araucanians ; probably he would have slighted their valor even if he had ; for his fault was over-confidence in his powers, and in the ability of a handful of Spaniards to defeat any number of red men. He gained much knowledge from hard experience in the course of the next fifteen years, and finally paid for his education with his life. He founded and occupied his seven cities, but he was unable to hold them, or to save them from destruction; and when he per- ished, it was with the bitter knowledge that the Araucanians were everywhere triumphant. Before going further, it will be well to get some closer idea as to what these famous Araucanians were. In Mr. CHILI 243 Hancock's "History of Chile" they are described at some length. From time immemorial, he says, they have "in- habited the country lying south of the river Biobio, their territory extending to the vicinity of the city of Valdivia, and covering all the region between the Andes and the Pacific. The province of Arauco gives the leading tribe its appellation, or rather, perhaps, the province is named after the tribe. They divided their country into four political divisions running from north to south, calling each division a uthul-mapu. The first was named in their language the Maritime country, and comprised the provinces of Arauco, Tucapel, Boroa and Nagtollen; the next the plain country, comprised Encol, Puren, Repo- cura, Maquegagua and Mariquina; the country at the foot of the mountains included Marven, Colhue, Chacajco, Quecheregua, and Guanagua; the country of the Andes Piremapu included all the valleys of the mountains in- habited by the allied tribe, the Puelches. They had three orders of nobility" adds Mr. Hancock, defying the wrath of Professor Fiske "the toquis, who stood at the head of each uthul-mapu; the apo-ulmenes, who governed provinces under the toquis; the ulmenes, who were the chiefs and un- der the apo-ulmenes. The military system was efficiently organized. A grand council determined upon war, and elected a general-in-chief, to whom all the toquis and ul- menes were subjected, and whom they obeyed during the continuance of hostilities. Envoys were then dispatched to the confederate tribes ; each toqui directed what number of men his uthul-mapu should furnish, and in this way an army of five or six thousand men could soon be raised. Be- fore proceeding to hostilities a three-days' conference was held, at which every one was permitted to speak, and the situation of enemies, condition of affairs, and necessity for war were thoroughly canvassed. If war were decided on, the vice-toqui, who had been previously selected, assumed command of the right wing of the army, assigned the left wing to an experienced officer, and then each soldier put on 244 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA his leather cuirass, took up his heavy war-club or long spear, and prepared to die with his face to the foe. Impressed, like the Saracens, with the idea that to die in battle is the highest earthly honor and a sure passport to the happy country be- yond, they advanced singly to combat, and shouting like fiends sought to penetrate the centre of the enemy's forces in a hand-to-hand encounter. Their foes discomfited, they divided the spoils of war and enslaved their prisoners, some- times offering up one or more of them to propitiate their gods of war, after they had humiliated- the captives with all the marks of ignominy that they could devise. Usually there was but one prisoner sacrificed; when he was dead, the chiefs sucked a little blood warm from the victim's heart, and then his skull was made into a bowl from which wine was drunk at a banquet. At the termination of their vari- ous wars with the Spaniards a congress was always held on a plain between the Biobio and Duqueco Rivers, where the Spanish president and the vice-toqui met in the presence of the armies and agreed upon articles of peace. The Arau- canians made war a principal business, and their youths were early instructed in the use of arms, were seldom pun- ished, and were applauded for lying and insolence. It was a saying with these Indians that chastisement makes men cowardly. We do not read of their having such grand mili- tary contests and chivalrous initiations as the Incas provided for their young men ; but there were military games in which the boys engaged, chiefly one of the mimic siege of a for- tress, and another having every appearance of a battle." Such, as depicted by Mr. Hancock, were the leading traits of the people with whom Valdivia was now to have a great deal of serious trouble. Valdivia began to meet with resistance from the time he reached Copiapo; these provinces had been under subjection to Peru, but had been freed by the death of Atahualpa. Their lack of organization and united action, however, made it comparatively easy for Valdivia to throw them aside; and he kept pushing forward until he reached the present site of CHILI 245 Santiago, where he determined to make his first settlement. It was full six hundred miles south of the then southern boundary of Peru, so that there would be little temptation for his soldiers to desert him and return . thither ; and the natural advantages of the site were manifold. Indeed, after nearly three hundred and sixty years, Santiago is still the capital of Chili, and the most important and handsome town in it. "It lies hemmed in by mountains, closing the per- spective of every street, and rising in grand silhouettes, even more beautiful in winter than in summer; for then the mountains are covered with a mantle of snow which reaches to within a short distance of the plain, and ceases there in a sharp line, marking the limit of the temperate air. The climate is delightful; rain falls only during the four winter months; the mean summer temperature is seventy degrees, that of winter fifty-two; day after day for weeks together the thermometer scarcely varies, and the sun shines in a clear sky with a constancy that fills the soul with con- tentment. The view from the top of Santa Lucia on a moonlight night is of unsurpassed charm. The whole plain extends before the spectator, with its dark enclosing moun- tains ; at his feet lies the expanse of the town, with its red- dish tile roofs, its patios, from which rise masses of foliage the whole plunged in mysterious black permeating shadow, relieved by patches of silver sheen where the moonlight strikes the roofs and salient objects. To the foot of the Andes the vast plain stretches darkly, and, to close in the perspective, the imposing silhouette of the mountains towers up like a silvery phantom, above which the moon is radiant with pure and dazzling brilliance. The landscape is so ad- mirably composed, so perfect is the picturesque arrangement, and the management of light and shade so ideally excellent, that it suggests how admirable is the view of nature modi- fied by art ; it reminds one of transcendently beautiful scene- painting." Valdivia began his new town on St. Valentine's Day, 1541; but as February 14th is also the day of San lago, who 246 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA is a better known saint in Spain, it received his name. It was a town of many vicissitudes; but it bears few traces of them to-day. Among the first buildings to be erected were the cathedral and the palace of the bishop : such was the faith of the soldier-builder in the permanence of his set- tlement. Upon the hill of Santa Lucia a fort was put up, which certainly was a more prudent act, from the merely material point of view, than the consecration of the religious edifices. In fact, the neighboring tribes were prompt to evince their lack of neighborliness, and news came to Valdivia that they meditated an attack. With his usual forehandedness, he seized some of the Mapochinian chiefs and confined them in his fort, and then himself went at the head of a troop of cavalry to reconnoitre the attitude of the Promaucians, who were liable, in his opinion, to ally themselves with the former. This was the Mapochinians' opportunity ; they cared nothing for the lack of their own chiefs, but perceived the advantage of the absence of the captain of the invaders ; and down they came upon the new city. The inhabitants fled at once to the citadel, where a woman, Inez Suarez, by way, perhaps, of showing that the presence of her sex in the colony could be of benefit in more ways than one, took a hatchet and chopped out the brains of the captive chiefs. Meanwhile the warriors of the natives set fire to the town, and reduced half of it to ashes; and then made repeated attacks upon the fort. The conflict raged from dawn to sunset; but Monroy, the commander, contrived to send a messenger to Valdivia. He came back hot-footed, and, after a desperate fight, drove away the enemy for the time; but they renewed the contest, and not for days or for months, but for six mortal years they kept up the attacks, until the Mapochinians had been deci- mated, and the Spaniards were reduced almost to the last extremit} 7 . Valdivia would doubtless have kept it up until no one was left to fight, had he not discovered a plot among his own men to mutiny and retire to Peru. He lost no time in cutting off the heads of the ringleaders ; and having thus CHILI 247 cooled the fever of revolt by blooding it, he soothed the anxiety of the survivors by promises of peace and profit in the immediate future. And as luck would have it, a gold mine happened to be discovered at this very juncture; and this instilled more determination into the hearts of the Span- iards than either religion or hope of glory could inspire. A ship was sent to Peru for reinforcements, and meanwhile the defenders buckled on their armor anew. In addition to the ship, which might get wrecked, Val- divia despatched an armed party by land, who decorated themselves with gold trappings, in order to produce an effect upon the hearts of their kindred in Peru which the mere summons of mortal extremity might fail to supply. At Copiapo this bedizened company was set upon by natives, who slew them all save two ; these were to be put to death with admonitory tortures. The wife of the ulmen, however, found it in her tender heart to intercede for them with her lord, after the manner later made famous by our own Pocahontas ; and her lord consented, on the somewhat sin- gular condition that they should teach his oldest son how to ride. They agreed to the stipulation with enthusiasm; and then was demonstrated the difference between the gal- lantry of Captain John Smith and that of Spanish cavaliers. The latter, taking the young man out into the open plain, proceeded to acquaint him with the first principles of holding on with his knees. Then, watching their opportunity, when the admiring father and mother were far off, and the youth wholly preoccupied in his new enterprise, the chivalrous Monroy stabbed him through the heart, and his companion, Miranda, having snatched a lance from one of the near-by attendants, the two heroes were soon out of sight in the dis- tance. The ulmen and his wife were fain to pick up the corpse of their son, and digest their rebuff as best they might ; what the father may have said to the mother on the occasion, concerning the quality of mercy to Spaniards, we have no means of knowing. But Indians have long mem- ories; and some time after this same tribe caught a party 248 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA of Spaniards at unawares, and slaughtered them to the last man there being forty vicarious victims in all. The Spaniards in Peru, however, got the news of Val- divia's danger, and sent him forces by sea and land. The commander of the former, Pastene by name, after relieving the siege of Santiago, was sent southward by Valdivia to explore the coast down to the Magellan Straits. That was a voyage worth taking, and Pastene was practically the first to enjoy it; for when Magellan went through the Straits, a score of years before, he saw only the most barren portions of the region, and his mind was fixed not on what was before him, but on what lay beyond. But the long archipelago which flanks Patagonia on the Pacific side is one of the most picturesque and exhilarating scenes in the world. Beginning at the Gulf of Penas, there is a winding passage between the islands and the shore nearly four hundred miles in length, and varying in breadth from five miles to as many hundred yards. It is an endless gorge, through which the tides of ocean ebb and flow, and sweep with strong currents, while on either hand rise steep, rocky mountains, rugged and deso- late as they came from the creative hand, yet clothed with splendid verdure, on their lower slopes, down to the water's edge. The peaks are about three-quarters of a mile in average height; the water is half a mile in depth; the chan- nel opens out toward the land in wide bays and lagoons, where a ship may come to anchor and traffic with the wild Indian tribes which sparsely inhabit the country. Far in- land, as the ship goes on, are seen ranks of jumbled and irregular summits, many of them crowned with perpetual snows ; while mighty glaciers slope downward to the valleys, and push their gigantic burdens slowly seaward. The air is cold ; the water clear as crystal, so that the dense growth of seaweeds is visible at immense depths; and among the weeds swim great fish of strange forms, and ever and anon a whale rises to the surface and sends its feather of white spray aloft. Many of the rocks are black as coal, with white seams running through them; these, with the deep green CHILI 249 foliage, the dazzling snows, the blue sky, and the mingled emerald and sapphire of the marine depths, make a scheme of color of unsurpassed power and charm. Many of the islands are entirely uninhabited ; and everywhere the Indians are migratory ; they come and go in their canoes, living on fish and mussels, dressing in the scantiest garments, and exposing themselves without a shiver to the semi-arctic tem- perature which makes white men huddle themselves in furs. The huge stature of the Patagonians, their hardy habits, their savage customs, have often been described; nothing could be more desolate and seemingly forlorn than their condition, and it might be supposed that life in such circum- stances was hardly possible. Yet the race was vigorous and prolific, until the white men tried to improve it; the intro- duction of European clothes has caused a mortality which will soon extirpate the wearers. They are being carried off by scores, victims of lung diseases of various kinds, to which they had before been strangers. But in Pastene's day such fatal attentions were as yet far distant ; the Span- iards came never to give, but to take away. And as there was nothing for them to take from the Patagonians, no harm was done on either side. One of the most striking features of the scenery of these parts is the magnificent form and hue of the clouds which continually impend in the sky, and seem almost as solid as the remote mountains, and are even more wild and stupen- dous in shape. Sunrise shows vast masses lying in heavy layers over the peaks, black, dark gray, with edges of shin- ing silver; through a jagged rent in the midst of them the sky is vivid blue, and as the sun approaches the horizon there are gloamings of gold and up-darting rays of pencilled light. Gradually the deep shadows that have rested on the lower lands are dispelled, and more and more the molding of the islands, the divisions of the foliage, and each impres- sive feature of the mighty loneliness are revealed. As day fully dawns, thin white lines of cataract are seen falling from the heights, between the masses of dark green and 250 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA yellow foliage that clothe the umber rocks; blue ice-fields glitter here and there; the nearer hills are almost black be'low, their upper parts covered with buff-colored lichens. Seaward the islands stand out in hues of indigo, and high overhead forever drift the cohorts of sombre clouds with silvery seams. As the latitudes further toward the antarctic are gained, the foliage disappears, but the rocks are still rich with many-colored mosses and lichens, for the atmosphere is full of chill moisture, and the heavens often descend in furious rains. On shore there is little earth, but the foot sinks deep in decayed vegetable matter, woven roots of shrubs, and thick low bushes. A few flowers of delicate and exquisite tints are found among the ferns; and there is a species of moss peculiar to this region, white and finely fibrous, like silver feathers. Sea-birds and otters are the only animals; occasionally an albatross rises on high with steady wings, drifting solemnly along the sky. In the Straits themselves the wildness and irregularity are in- creased, and all nature seems more awful and immense; this is the unfinished part of the world ; even the beauty has terror in it. Black Cape Froward, southernmost point of known continents, lifts its vertical front above the sea ; be- yond it Mount Victoria ascends in white sublimity, swathed in cloud ; anon, a hundred miles away, the grand symmetry of Mount Sarmiento is disclosed, a triangle of snow floating in mid-air. Here, amid everlasting cold, is the ending of the Andes, whose northern ranges pass through the burn- ing zone of the equator. Passing further eastward, we see the final stretches of the steppes and pampas which extend without a break to the torrid forests of Brazil and the Ama- zon ; and we feel the long roll of the Atlantic surges. The voyage is done. It is not probable that Pastene, in his cockle-shell craft, penetrated as far as this; it could not take him long to make up his mind that the country contained little of interest to Spaniards. The voyage, however, took the better part of a year; and on his return it was found necessary to send CHILI 251 to Peru for more troops, for the Indians were becoming more dangerous than ever: they had lately decoyed the Spaniards into an ambush, with a story of a treasure of gold, and having got them just where they wanted them, had sprung out and killed them every one, except only Cap- tain Rios and a negro, who told the dreadful tale. The In- dians had then followed up their success by destroying the new arsenal, and a frigate newly launched. But Valdivia was a persistent man ; he built a fort to protect the mines, and founded a new city in a good strategical position at the mouth of the Coquimbo, which ultimately became the centre of a thriving province. In the year 1545 Valdivia succeeded in persuading the Promaucians to join him in a league against the Araucanians: by far the most important step he had yet taken in the process of subduing the country. It enabled him, the next year, to push southward as far as Quilacura; but at that point he met with a defeat so severe that it compelled his retreat to Santiago. More men must be obtained for the conquest of these Araucanians. Val- divia, remembering the maxim If you want your errand done, go: if not, send started north in person to drum up recruits. He left Francisco de Villagran as his locum tenens during his absence. Villagran did the best he could ; he cut off the head of De Hoz, who had accompanied Valdivia to Chili, and had been making himself somewhat obstructive ever since. Meanwhile one of the local tribes made a descent upon the new town on the Coquimbo and it disappeared in fire and blood ; but a fresh one, in a somewhat more defen- sible position, was presently substituted for it. Valdivia, after helping Gasca the priest to overcome Pizarro, and re- ceiving as his reward confirmation of his title as governor of Chili, and ample men and supplies, came back ready for more trouble. He marched two hundred and forty miles south of Santiago, and on the shores of the Bay of Penco he founded still another city, known to history as Concep- cion. This was in 1550; the town was destroyed, not by Indians this time, but by earthquake, two hundred years 252 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA later; and the present city of New Concepcion was estab- lished somewhat further south. But meanwhile there was destined to be much opposition on the natives' part; they had not become accustomed to foreign rule. The Arauca- nians, uniting with local tribes, made ready to clear the country of Spaniards. An army of four thousand Indians crossed the bloody Biobio and gave battle to Valdivia; but that stout warrior succeeded, after a desperate conflict, in driving them back for the time. In the following year (1552) he carried the war into the enemies' country, and penetrating as far as the junction of the rivers Cauten and Damas, founded there another city named Imperial, which was to become the centre of many Homeric contests. Imag- ining that the work of conquest was already done, Valdivia began to portion out baronies among his followers ; but their titles proved to be but nominis umbra. The Araucanians had not yet had their say. The Spaniards, however, were permitted to advance as far as the present site of the town of Valdivia, the sixth settlement founded by its namesake, and vigorously defended on account of the gold mines found in the vicinity. Three forts were also built to protect the line of communications between this extreme southern point and Santiago. The city of Angol, the seventh and last of the series, was founded in 1553, about a hundred miles south of Concepcion. Valdivia then organized his military estab- lishment, sent another explorer to investigate the facili- ties of communicating with Spain by way of the Magellan Straits, and despatched Alderete to the Spanish court to negotiate for the recognition of Valdivia as perpetual gov- ernor of the new country. Whatever the attitude of Spain in the matter, the Arau- canians had yet to be reckoned with. There was among them a remarkable old Ulysses named Colocolo, who added to ardent patriotism a wonderful sagacity in both war and intrigue. He travelled over the country preaching a crusade against the invaders. A great conference was held among the various tribes, and a chief named Caupolican was, at CHILI 253 Colocolo's suggestion, chosen commander-in-chief. This hero was modest and valiant, a giant in stature, and wise in coun- sel as he was brave in battle ; he had but one eye, but he saw more with it than others with their two. His first exploit was the capture of the fort of Arauco, which he accomplished by an unexpected attack, compelling the garrison, after se- vere fighting, to evacuate and retire to the fort at Puren. The garrison of the Tucapel fort was in like manner driven to Puren ; from which place word was sent to Valdivia of their peril. He started for the seat of war with two hun- dred men and five thousand Indians; he sent forward a reconnoitring party of ten horsemen under Diego del Oro; all of whom were slain by Caupolican, and their heads sus- pended from trees, after the fashion taught to the Arauca- nians by the Spaniards. Upon seeing this grisly fruit, Val- divia's soldiers wished to go back; but the veteran was still confident, and would listen to no craven councils. The two armies came in sight of each other on the 3d of December, 1553, and manoeuvred for position. The right wing of the Araucanians was led by Mariantu; the left by Tucapel, the Murat of the host. At the opening of the battle, Mariantu attacked and cut to pieces the Spanish left, and served in the same manner a detachment sent to their support. At the same time Tucapel swept down upon the Spanish right. The latter's artillery wrought terrible havoc among the In- dians, and they were thrice repulsed, though without being thrown into confusion. At the critical moment of the fight, a young man saved the day for the Araucanians. His name was Lautaro. He had been previously captured by Valdivia, baptized, and made a page; but he seized this opportunity to escape from the enemies of his country and join his friends. He called on them to follow him in a final charge; they caught the contagion of his valor, and collecting themselves swept the Spaniards and their allies from the field with awful carnage. Valdivia himself was captured ; he begged hard for his life, even promising, if he were spared, to quit Chili with all his followers; nor did he scruple to entreat 254 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Lautaro to intercede for him. This the magnanimous former page did; but in vain. The grim old ulmens knew too well the worth of Spanish promises ; and disregarding Valdivia's screams for mercy, one of them crushed his skull with his war-club. And the next day the trees that grew in the great plain again bore Spanish heads as fruit; and Lautaro was appointed Caupolican's second in command. At the council which was forthwith held, it was resolved, in accordance with the advice of old Colocolo, to make a general attack upon all the Spanish strongholds. Angol and Puren were promptly abandoned by the invaders, who congregated in Valdivia and Imperial. Lautaro fortified himself in. the pre- cipitous mountain of Mariguenu, in order to prevent possible Spanish incursions southward. Of a band of fourteen Span- ish cavaliers who were riding from Imperial to Tucapel, seven were slain by the Araucanian Lincoyan. The inhabitants of Concepcion were terror-stricken at these catastrophes. Villagran was chosen Valdivia's successor. He made care- ful preparations, and advanced with a strong army of Span- iards and native allies toward Mariguenu. In a narrow defile Lautaro fell upon him; the Spaniards tried to scale the mountain, but were checked by slings and arrows, and a body of the Indians, falling furiously upon the Spanish cannoneers, captured the guns. An attack was then deliv- ered upon the Spanish front, and it gave way, Villagran flying headlong with the rest and barely making good his escape. The remnant of the Spanish army was pursued by Lautaro to the river Biobio, where the Araucanians paused, and the fugitives staggered into Concepcion. There Villagran stayed only long enough to gather together what property he could, and then, with all the inhabitants, he fled to Santiago. When Lautaro entered Concepcion the next day, he found nothing there but empty houses, which he destroyed. The Seven Cities were having a hard life of it. An attempt, some time afterward, to retake and rebuild Concepcion was prevented by the Araucanians, who met and defeated the Spaniards in the open plain and again drove CHILI 255 them back to Santiago. A lull in the conflict was brought about by a terrible epidemic of smallpox among the Indians, which partly depopulated several districts and caused them to take precautions against the disease which they have ever since observed. In the next campaign, Lautaro went against Santiago, while Caupolican attempted the siege of Imperial and Valdivia. Lautaro laid waste the country of the Pro- maucians, and fortified himself on the Claro; a Spanish reconnoitring party was surprised and cut to pieces, and Santiago was in danger. Villagran, being ill, gave the com- mand to his son Pedro, who was led into an ambuscade by Lautaro and his army slaughtered. But this was Lautaro's last victory ; for a few days later, standing upon his battle- ments to watch the approach of a Spanish party, he was killed by a chance shot; and though, in the battle which followed, the Araucanians fought valiantly, they were finally overpowered. The death of Lautaro was for three days cele- brated by the Spaniards ; and indeed his fall meant much to them. He had invariably defeated them in battle and out- generalled them in manoeuvres ; and at the age of only nine- teen had made a reputation as a warrior such as any veteran might envy. But he was dead ; and upon hearing the news, Caupolican abandoned the siege of Imperial, which had been just on the point of surrender. It was the close of the year 1556. In the spring of the next year, the son of the viceroy of Peru, Don Garcia Mendoza, appeared at Concepcion to take over the government. He brought with him ten ships and a number of soldiers. His first act was to open negotiations with Caupolican with a view to making peace with the Arau- canians ; and upon the advice of old Colocolo, a polite answer was returned; but both parties had their knives up their sleeves. It was not until August that overt operations took place. Mendoza had built a fort on Monte Pinto, in a com- manding situation ; the Indians attacked it, led by Tucapel, who with his own club slew four Spaniards. After a long and furious struggle, the Indians were temporarily repulsed ; 256 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and soon after, being reinforced by cavalry which came by the overland route, Mendoza took the offensive. A sort of running fight ensued, the Spaniards driving back the Indians, but being constantly harassed by them. Finally, at Melipuru, a pitched battle took place. The slaughter was great, and neither party got a decisive victory; but the In- dians again retreated. Mendoza hanged the captured chiefs, and founded a city called Canete, in memory of Valdivia; Caupolican attempted its capture, but was prevented by treachery. Mendoza now pressed southward, and discov- ered the island of Chiloe, and other islands of the archi- pelago. Returning to Imperial, one of his lieutenants suc- ceeded in surprising and capturing Caupolican, who was forthwith impaled and shot to death with arrows. But the son of the old warrior was elected chief in his place, with the valiant Tucapel second in command. He marched against Concepcion; Reynoso, the murderer of his father, went to meet him with five hundred men, and was utterly routed and cut to pieces. Another attempt of the Spaniards to stop the Araucanians' advance met with a like fate. But the young Caupolican was not so successful in his siege of Concepcion ; and though many Homeric combats took place, the walls repelled all attacks. The Spaniards kept receiving reinforcements from Spain and Peru, while the Araucanians became decimated. Caupolican fortified himself in a place called Quiapo, but was finally overthrown in an assault, and his best officers, including Tucapel and old Colocolo, were slain. This victory confirmed the Spanish hold on the coun- try; forts and towns were built or rebuilt, and the first bishop, Marmolejo, was ordained in Santiago. He governed his see until 1 565. Villagran was now made Captain-General of Chili, and the period of conquest was deemed to be closed. The Araucanians however were as far as ever from ac- cepting this view of the situation. They organized another army, gave it to a new chief, Antiguenu, and defeated the Spanish force under Villagran's son Pedro. Canete was taken and burned. Villagran died, and Pedro, succeeding CHILI 257 him, was besieged in Concepcion. The stronghold of Arauco was also attacked, and the Spaniards driven out. Angol resisted the Indians, and in a battle on the Bio bio, Antiguenu was killed. The Spaniards took possession of the archipel- ago, which was at that time well inhabited with a tribe which bore physical resemblance to the Araucanians, but which had become peaceful owing to their long residence apart from the seat of Indian wars. Philip II. was now king of Spain, and he resolved to make a final attempt to subdue the indomitable Araucanians. An independent Royal Audience was established in Chili, and the military command was be- stowed on Ruiz de Gamboa. He went to Canete, where the new Araucanian chief, Paillataru, was making preparations for a siege. The Indians were badly defeated, and a part of their territory laid waste; and Gamboa enslaved their women and children. The Royal Audience was modified so that Saravia, a fresh official sent out from the inexhaust- ible repertory of Spain, administered the government under three departments that of President of the Audience, civil governor, and commander-in-chief. But Saravia failed as commander-in-chief, being defeated by Paillataru in 1568, and Arauco was evacuated by the Spaniards. Paillataru then attacked Cafiete, but in a subsequent battle was de- feated by Gamboa, who had again assumed the military command. This engagement was followed by four years of peace, welcomed by both parties; and the only event of note during this period was a severe earthquake by which most of the Spanish cities were injured or destroyed. In 1574 the Araucanian chief died, and was succeeded by a half-breed, Alonzo Diaz, who was defeated on the Biobio by Bernal; but a desultory war continued, in conse- quence of which Spain sent out an Examiner, who dissolved the Royal Audience, and put Quioga in control of the local government. He continued to contest the Araucanian terri- tory with its defenders for four years more, when he died, and Gamboa acceded to his title. Upon his death in 1583, Alonzo de Sotomayor was sent out as governor from Spain. 258 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA He brought six hundred soldiers with him, and defeated the Araucanians in several battles or skirmishes. All prisoners captured by the Spaniards were foully mutilated and then released, to inspire terror in their fellows. But the Arau- canians were only thereby stimulated to renewed efforts; and with an army consisting partly of half-breeds and rene- gade Spaniards, in addition to their own warriors, they gave battle to Sotomayor. As usual, the conflict was stubbornly fought; but once more the Indians were overthrown, and their chief, Paynenancu, executed. The Spaniards had by this tune become so numerous in the country, that they were able to put almost as many men into the field as their adver- saries. But in 1585 a new chief arose, and collected another army. He did such good work against the Spaniards that, although a technical victory was not won, the Spaniards left the territory, and built forts along the border. For some years the Indians had the best of the many engagements which were fought in the debatable land. In 1586 a new element appeared in the person of the English admiral Sir Thomas Cavendish, who attacked Valparaiso with three ships, but without success. The incident, however, so diverted the Spaniards from the operations of the Indians as to enable the latter to win some minor advantages. The forts at Trini- dad and Espiritu Santo were abandoned. In 1589 a woman, widow of a former chief, resolved to avenge her husband's death, and assumed the leadership of the Puelche tribe. She carried on a galling guerilla warfare, and was careful to kill ever}'- Spanish prisoner who fell into her hands. Janequeo was the name of this heroine, the Boadicea of Chili. An army was sent after her into the mountains, but was beaten back. She attacked the fortress of Puchanqui, defeated part of the garrison, and killed their commander. Making a stronghold among the mountains near Villarica, she terror- ized the inhabitants of that settlement. Finally a powerful Spanish force was dispatched to oust her from her fastnesses at any cost; and after inflicting great losses upon her ene- mies, the valiant lady was compelled to withdraw into still CHILI 259 remoter regions. But she enjoyed the satisfaction of having amply avenged her husband; and meanwhile there were other chiefs to carry on the good work. Under Quintuguenu the Araucanians encountered an army of a thousand Spaniards and several thousand aux- iliaries, and a great battle ensued for the possession of the Araucanian stronghold of Mariguenu, among the mountains. The greater part of the auxiliaries were slain, and many Spaniards were destroyed; but Quintuguenu was finally killed, and Mariguenu fell into the hands of the enemy, who celebrated the event by general rejoicings all over the coun- try. But it was still too soon to look upon the war, which had already lasted as long as the average life of a man, as being over. In truth, the Araucanians were as far from being conquered as they had been thirty or forty years before. No offer of peace made to them was even seriously considered; they knew that Spanish promises are always broken, and they would not submit to slavery under any disguise. It was in vain that the Spaniards entered Arau- canian territory, and drove the Indians from one place to another ; they kept returning like the tide, and in every con- flict a greater or less number of Spaniards fell; so that at length the Spanish captain retreated to Santiago, there to await further reinforcements from Peru. The reinforce- ments were tardy ; and Sotomayor decided to go after them in person ; but he never returned. Spain superseded him by Don Martin de Loyola, who had made a warlike reputation in Peru, and fancied he would find no difficulty in disposing of the Araucanians. He assumed his office in 1593; but it was not long before he discovered that the work before him was very different from that at the north. Paillamachu, the Araucanian chief, was an old and wise man, with the experience of all his predecessors to guide him. He sent two emissaries to Loyola, ostensibly to compliment him, but really to spy out his condition and power. Loyola adopted the well-worn policy of displaying his resources to the best advantage, in order to "impress" the barbarian; but the 12 260 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA latter silently drew his own conclusions, and went away as resolute as ever. In the next year Loyola built several forts on the other side of the Biobio, including one named Jesus, on a defensible position on the banks of that river. Pailla- machu ordered his lieutenant Loncothegua to take it; but he was killed after nearly accomplishing his object, and burning part of the fort. Paillamachu devoted himself thereafter to making incursions into the country and gath- ering forage; but avoided pitched battles. At length, hav- ing an adequate army, he descended upon the Spanish strongholds, overthrew one or two of them, and menaced Imperial. Soon after he attacked Loyola himself and slew him with his army. Immediately all the Araucanian prov- inces were in the field, together with several adjoining tribes; Concepcion and Chilian were burned, the other towns were besieged, and Paillamachu finally got back across the Biobio with immense booty. This nearly brought the Spaniards to despair, and many were in favor of giving up the contest. A new governor, Quinones, was sent south from Peru, but was unsuccessful in repairing the damage, and incurred the added enmity of the Araucanians by killing and quartering his prisoners. Valdivia was attacked and destroyed, and its inhabitants massacred ; the shipping in the harbor was at- tacked, and the booty included two million dollars' worth of property, four hundred prisoners, arms and cannon. The outlook for Spain had never been more dark. Meanwhile the English and Dutch ravaged the coasts of Peru and Chili, and plundered the islands of the archipel- ago. Ramon succeeded Quinones, but had no better suc- cess. Ramon was followed by Alonzo de Rivera, who once more fortified the Biobio, but could not recover the demol- ished cities. Villarica and Imperial fell into the hands of the Araucanians, and Osorno met with a like fate. This ended the Araucanian wars for a time; no attempt was made to rebuild the forts and cities. Paillamachu died in 1603, and was succeeded by Huenecura. Meanwhile a good deal of intermarrying went on between the Indians and the CHILI 261 Spaniards. Ramon was restored to office, and collected a Spanish force of no less than three thousand men, besides auxiliaries. "With this force Ramon ventured once more into Araucanian territory and founded another fort and left in it a garrison of three hundred men. Half of this number was surprised by Huenecura and demolished, their leader being among the killed. The fort was besieged, and the garrison fled. The campaign ended in the destruction of Ramon's army. In 1608, the new king of Spain, Philip III., established an army of two thousand men on the frontiers, and in the next year reconstituted the Royal Audience of Chili. Ramon died in 1610, after having won a hard-earned success over the Araucanians in the marshes of Lumaco. Huenecura also died of wounds, and was succeeded by Ail- la vilu. But in 1612 a new element was introduced into the imbroglio by the advent of a Jesuit priest, Luis de Valdivia, who was consumed with an ambition to convert the Indians. He was placed by the king at the head of the government, but he appointed Rivera his civil governor, and himself im- mediately entered into negotiations with a view to establish- ing a treaty of peace with the Araucanians. The terms of the treaty were that the Biobio should be the boundary be- tween the two nations, neither being allowed to pass it with an army ; that all deserters should be returned on both sides, and that Christian missionaries should be permitted to preach the gospel to the Araucanians. The latter stipulated that the forts of Arauco and Paicavi should first be abandoned, to which the Spaniards agreed. But at this interesting stage the negotiations were interrupted by a domestic incident; the Araucanian chief, Ancanamon, had married a Spanish woman; and she seized an opportunity to escape to the Spaniards. He demanded her return, which being refused, he broke off negotiations, and slaughtered a party of priests and others who had been ent to treat concerning the mat- ter. Another term of raids and reprisals ensued, with no conclusive results to either party. Spanish governors and Araucanian chiefs succeeded one another, year after year; 262 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA the operations now favored one side, now the other, but the Spaniards on the whole lost more than did the Indians. It was not until 1640, about a hundred years since the out- break of the war, that anything approaching a settlement with the Araucanians was made; and the initiative came from the Spaniards. At the village of Quillin the Spanish governor, the Marquis of Baides, met the Araucanian chief Lincopichion, both being attended by a great retinue. The treaty was ratified by speeches, and the sacrifice of a llama. The Spaniards and Araucanians were mutually to refrain from incursions, and the Araucanians were not to permit the troops of other foreign powers to land on their coasts, or to furnish supplies to the enemies of Spain. This clause was inserted in view of the recent attempts of the Dutch to effect a lodgment in Chili. This compact was kept by the Indians, in spite of temptations to break it, for ten or a dozen years, when hostilities broke out afresh owing to bad faith on the side of Spain. The Spanish were overwhelm- ingly defeated in 1655, and during ten years the power of Spain in lower Chili was broken. In 1665 the Spaniards were glad to make another treaty with the Indians, which was kept for half a century. The invaders, from the first, had gained much more by their treaties than by their arms. And what was the state of Chili after a Spanish regime of a hundred and fifty years? It was, by dower of nature, one of the richest provinces of the New World ; but the ad- ministration of it by its invaders had left it little better than a wilderness. The Spanish population consisted of the Cre- oles (persons born in Chili of Spanish parents, or of parents of Spanish descent), and the Spaniards sent to fill the colo- nial offices from Spain. The former were regarded by the latter as an inferior class, and were in all ways looked down upon, insulted, slighted, and oppressed. No offices were per- mitted to them, save in very exceptional instances, and they were allowed no voice in determining the laws by which they were ruled. The next class were the mongrels, or half- CHILI 263 breeds, spawn of the inferior Indian tribes with the Span- iards. They performed menial offices, and were practically slaves, concerning whose rights and lives no one took any interest; they had not spirit enough to revolt, nor brains enough to better their condition. Finally there were the imported negroes, of whom the less said the better, and the native Indians, who were addicted to drink, and with the exception of the Araucanians were steadily deteriorating. Such were the inhabitants of Chili. The country was a waste, dotted here and there with miserable towns, most of which were but villages; Santiago itself had but eight thousand inhabitants of all kinds, and the houses were little better than straw-thatched huts. Agriculture was limited to raising such products as the colony needed for its subsist- ence; all the energy of the rulers was devoted to extracting the precious metals from the mines ; part of this product was shipped to Spain, to enable the kings of that country to carry on their wars in Europe, and the rest was looted by the governors and their lieutenants. In short, Spain was using Chili as she had used all her colonies, and as she continued to use them down to contemporary times. Concerning such an administration there can be no historical memoranda worthy of being related ; it was a story of civil misery and political stagnation. It has been said that that country is happy whose annals are dull reading; the same saying holds of colonies like Chili, which exist in a monotony of unre- lieved tyranny on one side and soulless submission on the other. Despotism in politics and religious bigotry bad quenched whatever had once been honorable in the Span- ish character, and the nation had become a race whose main source of revenue was robbery, and its leading aim the en- slaving of other peoples. But, as might be expected, such a policy was suicidal ; and England and Holland gave to Spain the first staggering blows which were to be followed by reverses which ended in making her the byword and scorn of the world. The eighteenth century opened with the wars of the Span- 264 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA ish Succession. Charles II., last of the Austrian dynasty, died in 1700, and there was no legitimate successor to the crown. Dispute thereupon arose between Austria and France as to which should furnish the next king, and the war that followed was^ exhausting and savage. It ended in the ele- vation of a grandson of Louis Quatorze to the unenviable dignity, with the title of Philip V. But his reign brought one good result for Chili, and the Spanish American colo- nies generally, in that it opened them to French trade, and thereby greatly increased the legitimate sources of revenue. Many French settlers also came to the new countries, and Chili was the goal of a number of colonists from Aragou and the Basque provinces, who became an important aud useful part of the population. In 1723, however, a new war with the Araucanians broke out, the cause being the intol- erable conduct of an organization of Spanish freebooters styled the Captains of the Friends, who made use of their ostensible office of guarding the missionaries, to tyrannize over the Indians. The Araucanian chief Vilumilla packed all missionaries out of the country, and captured Fort Tuca- pel and Fort Arauco ; he offered battle to the Spanish gen- eral Aponte, who commanded an army of five thousand men ; but the latter declined the contest, and retired. The Cap- tains of the Friends were abolished, and the Araucanians, having gained what they demanded, assented to another treaty of peace. It was more than forty years before the Spaniards ventured to break this peace again. During the first fifteen years of this period Chili continued under the rule of Aponte, and under him, and his successor Manso, several new cities were founded. These cities served to group the people scattered through the province in urban societies, thus rendering the business of taxation easier. The measure consequently rendered Chili a desirable place to rule over, and the captain-generalship of Chili became the pre- liminary to the still more lucrative office of viceroy of Peru. In 1747 a university was established in Santiago, which somewhat impaired the hitherto exclusive educational pow- CHILI 265 ers of the Jesuits. A mint was instituted in 1749, and a currency of gold and silver was coined. Two years later another earthquake destroyed Concepcion, and the town, when rebuilt, found a site six miles further from the coast. Meanwhile robbery was rife throughout the country, and neither life nor property was safe. Vigilance committees were organized, and a militia was created to defend the coasts against pirates. But at length Captain-General Gon- zaga undertook to gather the Araucaniaus into cities with disastrous results. The Indians resisted and finally raised an army and defeated the Spanish force under Gonzaga. In 1 773, after the war had cost Spain a million and a half of dollars-, peace was made with the Araucanians upon the con- dition that henceforth the Araucanians should be permitted to maintain a minister of affairs at Santiago, after the man- ner of other foreign nations. In other words, the independ- ence of the tribe was acknowledged. Charles III. abolished some of the restrictions which had hindered the prosperity of the colony; but in 1780 an attempt was made by two Frenchmen residing in Santiago to stir up u rebellion and make Chili an independent State. It was too soon for such a step, however, and the Frenchmen were ar- rested ; but the seed they sowed was not lost. In 1788 Don Ambrosio O'Higgins, a man of Irish blood, was appointed captain-general by Spain; with whose accession we may bring this part of the annals of Chili to a close. The Spaniards were at that time well settled north of the Biobio. Their territory was divided into thirteen provinces. The captain-general resided in Santiago and was directly responsible to the king of Spain, save in the event of war, when he might be directed by the Peruvian viceroy. In addition to this territory the Spaniards held the fortress of Valdivia, the archipelago of Chiloe, and the island of Juan Fernandez, off the coast. There were four subordinate gov- ernors under the cap tain- general, exercising their functions over Chiloe, Valparaiso, Valdivia and Juan Fernandez. There were three chief Tribunals, of Audience, Finance and HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Commerce, presided over by judges with high salaries. The provinces were governed by corregidors appointed by the captain-general; their pay was in fees, leading to many abuses. The inhabitants were divided into upward of fifteen thousand militia troops in Santiago and Concepcion, and in addition there was a force of about two thousand regulars. Negro slavery existed, but never throve abundantly; the peasantry were a healthy and robust race, and had consider- able comparative freedom. Their dress and language was largely influenced by the Araucanians. Wealthy citizens were fond of display, and imitated European fashions. The country was divided into the dioceses of Santiago and Con- cepcion, and was overrun with monks of various orders; but in 1767 an order to expel the Jesuits was promulgated; they possessed at that time immense wealth, and were powerful political intriguers. They were evicted from all their hold- ings, and their property was confiscated. The total population of Chili at the end of the century was about half a million, mostly Spanish or Spanish-Indian, but containing also many French, English and Italians. There was little internal commerce ; outside commerce was beginning to assume some importance, and ships were build- ing for that purpose. During the century and a half since Almagro invaded Chili, up to the accession of O'Higgins, there had been sixty-one captains-general and provisional governors of the country, according to the following list: Pedro de Valdivia, Pedro de Viscarra, Francisco de Villagran, Francisco de Quinones, Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, Alonzo Garcia Ramon, Roderigo de Quiroga, Alonzo de Rivera, Villagran (2d time), Ramon (2d time), Quiroga (2d time), Luis Merlo de la Fuente. Martin Ruiz de Gamboa, Juan de Xara Quemada, Melchor Bravo de Saravia, Rivera (2d time), Quiroga (3d time), Fernando Talaveranno. Gamboa (2d time), Lopez Ulloa y LemuS; Alonzo de Sotomayor, Cristovel de la Cerda. Martin Onez de Loyola, Pedro Sorez de Ulloa, CHILI 267 Francisco de Alva y IToruena, Luis Fernandez de Cordova y Arce, Francisco Laso de la Vega, Francisco de Zuniga, Martin de Muxica, Alonzo de Cordova y Figueroa, Antonio de Acuna y Cabrera, Pedro Portale Casanate, Oiego Gonzales Montero, Angel de Pereda, Francisco de Meneses, Marquis de Navamorquende, Montero (2d time), Juan de Henriquez, Jose de Garro, Tomas Martin de Poveda, Francisco Ibanez de Peralta, Juan Andrez de Ustariz, Don Jose de Santiago Concha, Gabriel Cano de Aponte, Francisco Sanchez de la Bar- reda, Manuel de Salamanca, Jose de Maaso, Francisco de Obando, Domingo Ortez de Rosas, Manuel Amat y Junient, Felix de Berroeta, Antonio Guill y Gonzaga, Juan de Balmaseda, Javier de Mprales, Agustin de Jauregui, Tomas Alvarez de Acevedo, Ambrosio de Benavides, Acevedo (3d time). 268 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA V MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION WE will now take a summary view of the other Span- ish provinces in America before the Revolution which, in the beginning of this century, finally resulted in freeing all save Cuba and Porto Rico from Span- ish rule. After the Conquest, there were nine distinct gov- ernments in the Isthmus and in South America; each was independent of the others, though all were based upon similar principles. Of these nine, four were viceroyalties Mexico, Peru, La Plata, and New Granada. The remaining five were captain -generalships; they were Yucatan, Guatemala, Chili, Venezuela, and Cuba. It will be remembered that New Granada embraced the territory now called the State of Colombia, having expanded from the original region round about the highlands of Bogota. From 1564 to 1718 New Granada was ruled by colonial presidents; in 1710 the pres- ent Ecuador (then called Quito) was annexed to it; but this union was dissolved twelve years later. The viceroy alty of Peru was the real kingdom of Spain in the West. Its con- quest led to those of Chili, Charcas (now called Bolivia), and Quito, or Ecuador; and the successive viceroys, after Pizarro, controlled these countries through their Audiences, and presidents or captains-general. After a time, there were added to the,. Peruvian viceroyalties the colonies of New Granada, Panama and Paraguay, the latter including all the Platine region; so that in the seventeenth and in the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, Peru's government controlled in effect the whole of the Isthmus and of South America; the several Audience districts being Lima, the capital of Peru, Charcas, Buenos Ayres, Santiago de Chili, Quito, Bogota, and Panama. The viceroy was appointed MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 269 directly by the Spanish crown; he was president of the Audience at Lima, was supreme in civil and military affairs, and received a salary of thirty thousand ducats, which, how- ever, represented but a small part of the money which he derived, in ways more or less illegitimate, from his position. Not since the time of the great kings of Asia in early historic eras has there been any instance of rulers so absolute and uncontrolled, and who so abused for their own ends the privileges granted them, as the viceroys of Peru. All the luxury that earth could give, they had; and the conduct of each one of them deserved nothing less than the gallows. It would be hardly possible to exaggerate the magnificence, the depravity and the corruption of their rule; but the story is not worth telling, for the moral of one reign is the moral of all the moral of all human tyranny, rapacity and cruelty.' In 1718 New Granada was completely separated from Peru; the viceroyalty of La Plata reduced Peru to Peru properly so called, Chili, and Quito; but the last two were controlled by Peru only in matters military, and in the treasury depart- ment. This state of things continued until the Revolution. Arbitrary though the viceroys were to all practical intents anl purposes, they were under certain nominal restrictions. The Royal Audiences were nominated by the Crown, and were supposed to be independent; the municipalities and the corporations or guilds had certain prescriptive privileges. But as the aim of all alike was to fill their pockets, it can easily be understood that compromises were made between them by which all were satisfied at the expense of the people, who were without any available rights whatever. The clergy formed the only real rivals to the political estate; they were numerous and rich, and their influence over a superstitious laity was naturally great; but when the Jesuits were ex- pelled, this influence was for the most part destroyed. The colonial system of Spain was a type of a vicious system of government, especially adapted to protect abuses and oppres- sions. The plight of the white inhabitants was bad enough; but it was freedom and security compared with that of the 270 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Indians, who were beasts of burden, and were hardly per- mitted to own the rags that covered them. Whether they were called slaves, or were said to be emancipated, made no perceptible difference in their condition; they were taxed down to their last shred of property, and they could be forced to work from morning till night all the year round at the pleasure of their lords. They were suffered neither to buy nor to sell ; and indeed the wrongs they were obliged to en- dure, attested by Spanish chroniclers themselves, appear hardly credible, though the like have never ceased to exist wherever Spain had power to inflict them. On all sides Spaniards in America rose to affluence with or without sal- aries; and priests rivalled laymen in robbery and inhuman- ity. During many generations Spain retained the whole trade of the colonies, and safe-guarded her monopoly with severe penalties. No books were allowed to be imported except books of Roman Catholic devotion. The sciences were tabooed; and American-born Spaniards were not per- mitted to visit Europe, lest they should learn there things which were forbidden at home. At home must they stay, where the priests filled their minds with bigotry and the terrors of superstition. All offices, as we have already re- marked, were reserved for persons born in Spain, and sent out thence to fill them. Thus was established a class of men distinct in all ways from the native population, and whose interests were hostile to theirs. It was a privileged caste, who came out only to extort money, and whose roots were in the mother country. At best, the people were only allowed certain necessary rights in return for service and obedience. Their condition was hardly to be distinguished from what we should consider slavery. They were robbed, but to this robbery was given the name of government requisitions. By this means, an enormous amount of wealth was poured into Spain; but instead of being prudently invested there, it was squandered in wars and frivolity, under the belief that the resources of the colonies were inexhaustible. For a creole to object to any phase of the despotism under which MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 271 he groaned was to sentence himself to death. Among the widespread corruption of the priests there were occasional exceptions men who desired the good of the people, and even attempted something toward their relief; but their efforts were sporadic and ineffective; and as a rule the tyranny of ecclesiasticism was as rigorous as that of the state. The assumption was that America was the gift of the Holy See to Spain, and that the Spanish kings ruled by right divine. Whoever demanded justice in contradiction of the royal authority was guilty, ipso facto, of treason and heresy. But the endurance even of Spanish American Creoles is limited, wide though the limits be. After more than two hundred years, they revolted; but it may be doubted whether they would have nerved themselves to the act, had not the state of Europe, disorganized by the whirlwind campaigns of Napoleon, almost made the act compulsory. Moreover, the way had been shown, and the hint given, many years before, by the struggle against oppression of the descendant of the line of the ruling Incas themselves of him who is styled in history Tupac Amaru. His story and his fate are worth recording. The ancestry of the man was noble. It takes us back to the region of legend and mystery. The Inca tribe, as we have seen, was the leading tribe of the Peruvians, and its chief family furnished the rulers of the country. Of the origin of the Peruvians themselves, before their advent to South America, nothing is known, and way is thus afforded for all manner of poetical and extravagant hypotheses. Among these, the most striking is that which identifies them with wandering Israelites who crossed the Pacific from Armenia. In support of this notion, many curious similarities are pointed out in the customs and religious rites of the two peoples. "Like the Jews," say Rivero and Tschudi, in their "Peruvian Antiquities," "these Indians offer their first fruits; they keep their new moons, and the feast of expiation at the end of September or the beginning HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA of October; they divide the year into four seasons, corre- sponding with the Jewish festivals. The brother of a de- ceased husband receives his widow into his house as a guest, and after a suitable time regards her as his lawful consort. There is also much analogy in the ceremonies of purification, the use of the bath, the ointment of bear's grease, fasting, and the manner of prayer. The Indians likewise abstain from the blood of animals, as also from fish without scales ; they regard certain quadrupeds as unclean, and also certain birds and reptiles ; and they are accustomed to offer as holo- causts the firstlings of the flock. Some allow marriage only with members of their own tribe or lineage. But what most fortifies opinion as to the Hebrew origin of the American tribes is a species of Ark, seemingly like that of the Old Testament. This the Indians take with them to war. It is never permitted to touch the ground, but rests upon stones or pieces of wood; and it is deemed sacrilege and unlawful to open it or look into it. The priests scrupulously guard the sanctuary, and the high-priest carries on his breast a white shell adorned with precious stones, which recalls the urim of the Jewish high-priest, of whom we are also re- minded by a band of white plumes on the forehead." Sev- eral philological reasons are also adduced in support of this theory ; but after listening to all the testimony, we are forced to the conclusion that there is more poetry and ingenuity in its advocates than scientific conscience. It is easy to detect parallels and similitudes, and to group them together until they appear formidable ; but nothing is said of the innumer- able dissimilarities, which render the enterprise of identify- ing the two races practically hopeless. Montesinos, the Span- iard, claims to have found the Mines of King Solomon in the New World, and discovers traditions of the Deluge among the Peruvians. Other writers have tried to show that the first Inca, Manco Capac, and the Mexican deity, Quetzalcoatl, were Buddhist priests, travelling as missionaries. And a contemporar} T investigator professes to have found in Cen- tral America the site of the Garden of Eden, and traces MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 273 of the property of Adam and Eve after their expulsion thence. Be all that as it may, there is no question that the ruling Incas were a remarkable and ancient race, and that their destiny was a high one. One of their blood, called Garci- lasso de la Vega, describes in gorgeous language the ap- purtenances of the royal domain. "In their gardens and orchards," he says, "were planted all the fine and beautiful trees and sweet-smelling plants of the kingdom, which mod- els they imitated most perfectly in gold and silver, with their leaves, flowers and fruits ; some seemed about to bud, others were half-matured, others again entire and perfect. They also made counterfeit resemblances of various species of corn, with leaves, ear and stem, and with roots and flowers; the fibres which are found in the ear and stem were of gold, and the rest silver, soldered together. The same difference was made in other plants, so that the flower or whatever other part inclined to yellow was imitated in gold, the rest in silver. There were also to be seen animals, large and small, cast in gold and silver, such as rabbits, lizards, snakes, butterflies, foxes, and mountain-cats; also birds of all kinds, some perched in trees as if singing, others flying to and fro and sucking honey from the flowers. There were also deer, lions, tigers, and all other creatures which the country produced, each in its proper place, true to nature as the reality. In many houses were baths with large jars of silver and gold, from which water was poured; and where there were natural hot baths there were also recep- tacles of great splendor and richness. Among other dis- plays of wealth, were collections of billets of wood imitated in gold and silver, as if deposited to be used in the service of the house." This must suffice for Senor Garcilasso, who, if he be not telling sober facts, has a fine tropical imagination ; and the gold woodpile and kindlings cap a fine climax. The whole conception reminds one of the old myths of Midas, who went about turning all his belongings into gold, until at last he 274 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA happened to lay his gold-engendering hands on his own favorite daughter, who straightway became a charming golden image, true to life, but quite lifeless nevertheless. As for the golden and silver vegetables and animals of the Incas, we must take Garcilasso's word for them; for of course the Spaniards did not suffer them long to retain such fantastic anjl unpractical shapes, but threw them into the melting pot forthwith, and brought them out in the shape of bars suitable for the mint. In fact, no one except Solomon and the Incas ever seems to have looked upon the precious metals as good for anything but coining ; and this may serve as an additional argument, if one more be needed, to confirm us in our belief that the Jews and the Incas are one. The line of the historical lucas, beginning with Manco Capac, numbers fourteen, down to and including the illegit- imate Atahualpa, murdered by Pizarro. Manco Capac II. was a creature of the Spaniards, somewhat after the fashion of the present rajahs and maharajahs of British India. He was succeeded by his three sons, the last of whom, Tupac Amaru, was beheaded in Cuzco in 1571 by order of Toledo, the fifth Spanish viceroy. Tupac Amaru the younger, of whose adventures we are now to tell, was the fifth in descent from this beheaded prince, and upon him was bestowed the respectable Spanish name of Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui. He got a college education at Cuzco, learned the Spanish language, and generally approved himself a youth of parts and intelligence. But he was not prevented by his change of name from remembering what blood flowed in his veins, or from secretly harboring thoughts of rebellion against the task-masters who were grinding down his countrymen. He had some property, and a sufficient income, permitted him by Spain in consideration of the fact that the whole of Peru rightly belonged to him. But when he pleaded the cause of his compatriots before the priests and officers, they turned a deaf ear to him, or intimated that he was setting out upon a road, the end of which was apt to lead to the scaffold. When he was twenty years of age, he succeeded to the MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 275 chieftainship of his tribe in the mountain province of Tun- gasuca; in that comparative solitude the thoughts of revo- lution could be cherished undisturbed. And to him, as to so many other eminent red men, both north and south of the equator, came the idea of uniting all the tribes in one great effort for freedom. It is singular that this idea should have come to several Indians, at long separated intervals of place and time, though all alike must have known that there was no hope of uniting Indians, by any bond which would insure permanent co-operation ; the sense of race homogeneity being a product of a more advanced civilization than that to which they had attained. In New England the league of King Philip was but of brief continuance, and the same may be said of that of Pontiac; but the Indian tribes involved in those rebellions were far better and more determined fighters than were the Peruvians to whom Tupac Amaru appealed. The latter, meanwhile, did whatever good he personally could ; out of his means he gave help to many, and proved ' by practical deeds of beneficence that the wrongs and suf- ferings of others were to him as his own. Personally he was a man of serious and impressive deportment, with a sense of the moral dignity of his position, and of his moral responsibilities. Arguments and entreaties proving barren of result, Amaru resolved to act; and he began his campaign by arresting the governor of Tinta, a place near Luna, who had made himself especially odious by his cruelty and tyr- anny. This man was taken to Tungusaca and there put to death; and the Indians of the neighborhood, learning of this execution, and hoping that the time was come for free- dom, gathered round the son of the Incas and formed them- selves into a sort of army. As Amaru advanced from his mountain home, this army grew, and by the time he reached Cuzco he had followers enough to frighten the Spaniards of that town into surrender. The Spanish factories were filled with Indian workmen ; these he liberated, and abolished the "mita," or system of forced labor. It seemed for a while 276 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA as if everything was coining his way; and the Spanish offi- cials, while making their preparations to oppose him, sent emissaries with smooth words to open negotiations and throw him off his guard. He received these persons courteously, stated his wishes and intentions, and issued proclamations (in the production of which barbarous revolutionists or rebels have always been especially fertile), describing the wrongs under which the Indians suffered, and calling upon them to join him for emancipation. The whole country was stirred, and the outlook for Spain began to be more serious than the Spaniards had at first anticipated. The viceroy was obliged to consider his position. Of course the rebels greatly out- numbered the Spaniards ; but Amaru had betrayed no bloody designs; his utterances showed that he hoped to settle every- thing by peaceful means. Therefore the Spaniards inferred that he had no heart for battle; and the viceroy, hoping to intimidate him, sent him a fierce defiance, refusing to make any terms with him, and only vouchsafing the remark that if he surrendered without further delay, some of the refine- ments of torture awaiting him might be mitigated. Amaru was thus placed in a position where he had little to lose and everything to gain by fighting; and his rabble now num- bered some two hundred thousand men. They were met by a small but well-drilled Spanish force, and in the battle which ensued there was never any doubt as to which party would win. The Indians were utterly defeated, and Tupac Amaru and his family were taken prisoners. All was now ready for one of those inhuman exhibitions which the Spaniards regard as sport. The tiger had corralled the sheep, and would have his fun with them. The Spanish inhabitants assembled en fete. They surrounded the arena in which the exhibition was to take place. People less ad- vanced hi the arts of inhumanity than Spaniards are apt to imagine that a man has but one life, and can die but once ; but the viceroy knew better. Amaru's family consisted of his wife, his two sons, and his uncle. Amaru loved them all as he loved himself, and therefore the tormentors ar- MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 277 ranged that he should look on at their torture, before being personally dealt with. First the old uncle was led out. Pincers were applied to his tongue, which was slowly drawn out by the roots, amid the laughter and plaudits of the as- sembly. An iron collar, fitted with a screw, was then put round the victim's neck, the screw was revolved, and he was firmly strangled to death. The corpse having been removed, there was a pause; and then the father saw his elder son brought into the circle. The tortures to which this young man was subjected were more prolonged, and of a more exquisite nature, than the simple methods which had sufficed for the uncle; the whole performance being conducted on the principle of artistic climax, so that the spectators, and especially the star spectator, Amaru him- self, should not be sensible of any monotony or satiety in it. The son lasted a good while, for he was a lusty youth of twenty; but he was fain to succumb at last, and the re- mains were removed, to make room for the third subject of experiment Amaru's wife. Here was the honorable woman whom Amaru loved, and who loved him; who had borne him two sons, and who was as blameless and innocent as a woman can be; she was brought forth into the glare of the arena, the centre of thousands of gloating eyes, the butt of thousands of jeering cries ; the centre, too, of that awful gaze bent upon her by her husband, who would have given his life to save her from any pain, but who must sit helpless there and witness her agony, long drawn out, and see her subjected to shameful insults, more terrible for her to endure than death ; and at last must behold her die, a mangled and dishonored spectacle, handled and flouted by brutal creat- ures, the mere touch of whose coarse hands was an outrage to such as she. Well, she was dead; and the viceroy, smil- ing archly at the knights and ladies of his retinue, observed that the Inca had by this time probably seen as much as he was capable of appreciating, and that the next scene of the exhibition would consequently be the disciplining of Amaru himself. The second son, the little ten-year-old boy, who 278 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA had stood beside his father all this while, his fresh young eyes blasted by the hellish transactions, should survive to learn how Spain admonished those who ventured to dispute her power. And Tupac Amaru, last of the Incas, was led forth, while a movement of interest and animation stirred the great audi- ence. Men with knives surrounded him, and his body was stabbed and whittled until from head to foot it was a bloody mass, helplessly writhing, yet with life enough left in it to feel the final torture. Four horses were led in, with harness attached to them ; the ends of four thongs were made fast to the arms and legs of the hideous figure, and a man at each horse's head led them in four diverse directions. There was a strain, a jerk, then a fierce pull for the joints and sinews of a man are tough and not to be rent apart readily ; but the drivers encourage the animals, there is a final deadly tug, and the still living body flies asunder, and the gory frag- ments are dragged in the dust to the four quarters of the compass. What a thousand-throated roar of gratulation and triumph goes up : mingling the hoarse shouts of men, and the shrill calls of Spanish ladies ! But higher than all rises to Heaven a shriek, piercing and quivering, of childish horror and anguish; a shriek never to be forgotten by those who heard it. The heart of a little child was broken. Even the smile that curved the bearded lips of the viceroy wore a ghastly aspect for a moment. The show was over. The brilliant southern sun shone down, pure and peaceful ; and no earthquake swallowed up the great throng in sudden de- struction. Men do evil in the world, and God in His Provi- dence permits it. Hell has its season, and its uses too; out of its foulness spring the immortal flowers of human liberty and mutual love. Such a death as that of Tupac Amaru wakens sluggards, and arms the indolent; it brings faith to life, and steels the resolution of well-doing. The deed of May, 1781, was the foundation on which was built the liberation of Spanish America. "But woe to them by whom the offences come!" MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 279 Eighty thousand Indians of the Inca tribe, men, women and children, were slaughtered at this time; the object being to finally extirpate the race. The little son, condemned to penal servitude for life, was carried to Spain ; and his fate is not known; though there is a tradition that after many years he returned to Peru, and died, a monk, in some con- vent in Lima. But at all times during his life, and when he closed his eyes to die, he saw pictured that scene in the blood-stained square of Cuzco; the straining horses suddenly breaking free, and dragging hither and thither across the sunlit sand the fragments of what had been his father. He had been an innocent child, who did no wrong to any mor- tal ; but that sight was to remain with him to the end. Many deeds not less eminent for cruelty were done by Spain in America, before and afterward; but something in the cir- cumstances of this act has preserved it distinct and vivid in the eye of history. Soon after a secret club was formed in Lima, whose members included not a few persons of Span- ish blood ; its object was to secure the rights for which Amaru died. Its influence slowly and surely spread, and its final fruit was the Revolution. But the actual murderers went unscathed and free; for human justice has no punishment for such as they. Perhaps the best way to convey a picture of the state of South America before the revolt will be to quote in full the Manifesto issued from Buenos Ay res in 1817, reciting the circumstances which led up to the movement. It is long, but there was much to be told ; the truth of its allegations is unquestioned, and it affords a resume of Spanish policy and procedure which can be supplied in no more effective manner. "Honor," say the authors of the Manifesto, "is a distinc- tion which mortals esteem more than their own existence, and they are bound to defend it above all earthly benefits, however great and sublime these may be. . . . We waive all investigations respecting the rights of conquest, papal 280 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA grants, and other titles on which Spaniards have usually founded and upheld dominion. We appeal to facts. We will exhibit reasons which no rational man can disregard unless he could find pleas to persuade a country forever to renounce all idea of its own felicity, and in preference to adopt a system of ruin, opprobrium and submission. From the moment when the Spaniards possessed themselves of these countries, they preferred the system of securing their dominion by extermination, destruction and degradation. This system has been continued without intermission dur- ing the space of three hundred years. They began by as- sassinating the monarchs of Peru, and they afterward did the same with the other chieftains and distinguished men who came in their way. The inhabitants of the country, anxious to restrain such ferocious intrusion, owing to the great disadvantage of their arms became the victims of fire and sword, and were compelled to see their homes in flames, everywhere applied without pity or distinction. "The Spaniards then placed a limit to the population of the country. Under rigorous laws they prohibited the in- gress of foreigners, and in all practicable ways limited that even of Spaniards themselves, although latterly the immigra- tion of criminals and outcasts was encouraged. Neither our vast though beautiful deserts, formed by the extermination of the natives, nor the advantages Spain might have derived from their cultivation, nor the incitement of mines the rich- est and most abundant on earth, nor the stimulus of innu- merable productions fitted to carry agriculture and commerce to the highest pitch of opulence, nor even the wanton wicked- ness of keeping these countries in their condition of abject misery were motives powerful enough to influence the dark and menacing principles of the cabinet of Madrid. In the spaces intervening between one city and another there are still hundreds of leagues unsettled and uncultivated ; in some places entire towns have vanished, either buried in the ruins of the mines, or their inhabitants destroyed by the forced and deadly labor of working them. Nor have the cries of MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 281 all Peru nor the remonstrances of zealous ministers availed to reform this exterminating system of 'mita,' carried on in the bowels of the earth. ''The art of operating the mines has been unattended by the improvements which have distinguished the enlightened age in which we live and lesiened the incidental casualties. Hence, rich mines, worked in a clumsy and wasteful man- ner, have caved in and been overwhelmed, or the rush of waters has inundated them. Other rare and valuable prod- ucts of nature are still undeveloped and neglected by the government, and if any among us have ventured to point out their advantages, he has been censured by the court and forced to silence, lest competition arise among the few artisans of the country. "The teaching of science was forbidden us, and only the study of Latin grammar was permitted, together with ancient philosophy, theology, civil and canonical jurisprudence. Um- brage was taken at the Buenos Ayres Board of Trade because it presumed to bear the expenses of a nautical school. By order of court it was closed. An injunction was also laid upon our youth not to visit Paris to become professors of chemistry, with a view to teaching this science to their countrymen at home. "Commerce has always been a monopoly in the hands of Spanish traders and the consignees they sent to America. Public offices were reserved for Spaniards, and though bylaw they were equally open to Americans, we attained them, if at all, only by satisfying the avarice of the courts by sacri- ficing immense sums. Among one hundred and sixty vice- roys who have ruled in America, only four natives of this country are numbered; of six hundred and two captains- general and governors, all save fourteen have been Span- iards. The same discrimination was made, pro rata,* in other offices of importance. Even in the lowest situations the Americans were hardly permitted to alternate with the Spaniards. "Everything was arranged by Spain to secure the degra- 282 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA dation of natives of America. She wished no wise men to arise among them, lest minds and talents should exist able to forward their country's interests, and advancing the civil- ization, manners and faculties of the children of the colonies. She steadily diminished our population, fearing it might other- wise rebel against a dominion maintained only by the few hands to whom was intrusted the task of guarding remote and extensive regions. She carried on an exclusive trade, believing that wealth would render us proud and indepen- dent. She forbade us the cultivation of industries, that we might lack the means to rise from poverty and misery ; and we were excluded from offices of trust, in order that Span- iards only might exercise influence in the country, and establish among us habits and inclinations that would dis- able us from thinking or acting except according to Spanish models. "Such was the system upheld by the viceroys, each of whom bore the state and arrogance of a vizier. They had power to crush any who had the misfortune to displease them. Be the outrages perpetrated what they might, they must be endured with resignation, for the frown of the rulers was compared by their satellites to the wrath of God. Com- plaints addressed to the home government were either lost in transit, or were buried in the offices by the influence of relatives or patrons of the men in power. This system, so far from being ameliorated, has been more exacting, so that all hope of improvement through lapse of time is vain. We held no part in our own government, either direct or indirect; all legislation was done by Spain. Nor were we permitted to send emissaries to point out the wishes and needs of the people, as the cities of Spain might do ; and the only resource left us was patience ; for he who was not ready to endure all in silence was menaced not merely with capital punishment, but with torments of such unheard-of cruelty as made nature shudder. "Not so great nor so persistent were the hardships that roused Holland to revolt from the yoke of Spain, nor those MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 283 of Portugal under like conditions. Less were the sufferings which drove the Swiss to the protection of William Tell; less those which marshalled the United States of North America against the imposts of the British king; less, in short, the urgent motives which have driven other countries, not sepa- rated by nature from the parent state, to cast off a yoke of iron and embrace their own felicity. . . . " Posterity will marvel at the ferocity toward us of men interested to preserve Spanish power in America, and their rash folly in punishing demonstrations of affection and loy- alty. The name of Ferdinand de Bourbon preceded all our decrees of government and was at the head of its public acts. The flag of Spain floated over our ships and animated our regiments. The provinces, beholding the discomfiture of the mother country, raised up a watch-tower, as it were, amid themselves, to guard their own safety, reserving to them- selves the epportunity to return to the captive monarch, should he regain his liberty. We offered pecuniary supplies to prosecute the war, and we repeatedly published the recti- tude of our purposes and the sincerity of our good wishes. Great Britain, at that time so friendly to Spain, proffered her good offices to mitigate the harshness of our treatment. But the Spanish ministers, blinded by their sanguinary caprice, spurned mediation and issued orders to their gen- erals to push* the war and inflict heavier punishments. Everywhere were scaffolds erected, and every means was availed of to spread consternation. They tried to divide us in order that we might exterminate one another. They circulated atrocious calumnies against us, attributing to us the design of destroying our sacred religion, of casting aside morality, and of giving rein to licentiousness. They urged a war of religion against us, devising plots to disturb and alarm the conscience of the people, causing Spanish bishops to issue edicts of ecclesiastical censure and interdiction among the faithful, to publish excommunications, and to sow fanat- ical doctrines in the tribunal of penance. Thus have they created discord in families, provoked quarrels between par- 13 284 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA ents and children, torn asunder the bonds uniting man and wife, implanted enmity and rancor among brothers formerly affectionate, and even placed nature herself in a state of hos- tility and perversity. They have adopted the system of kill- ing men indiscriminately in order to diminish our numbers. On their entry into towns, they have seized non-combatants, hurried them in groups to the squares, and there shot them one by one. The cities of Chuquisaca and Cochabamba have more than once been the theatre of these ferocious acts. They have mixed our prisoners among their own troops, carrying off our officers, in irons, to remote dungeons where, during the period of a year, it was impossible for them to keep their health. Others they have left to die of hunger and misery in the prisons, and many they have forced to labor in public works. In an arrogant manner they have shot down the bearers of our flags of truce, and perpetrated the basest horrors upon military chiefs and other eminent persons who had already surrendered themselves, notwith- standing the humanity we have always shown to prisoners captured from them. In proof of this, we quote the cases of Deputy Matos from Potosi, Captain- General Pumacagua, General Angulo and his brother, Commandant Mimecas, and other leaders, shot in cold blood many days after they had been made prisoners. "In the town of Valle-Grande they enjoyed the brutal pleasure of cutting off the ears of the inhabitants, and sent a basket filled with these gifts to their headquarters. They afterward burned the town, set fire to thirty other populous towns belonging to Peru, and took delight in shutting up persons in their own houses before the flames were applied to them, in order that they might there be burned to death. They have not only been cruel and implacable in murder, but they have also divested themselves of all morality and decency by whipping ancient religious persons in the open squares, and also women, bound to cannon, having caused them first to be stripped of their clothing and exposed to shame and derision. For all these kinds of punishments MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 285 they established an inquisitorial system. They have seized the persons of numbers of peaceable citizens and conveyed them overseas to be judged for alleged crimes. Many have they sent to execution without any form of trial whatever. "They have destroyed our ships, plundered our coasts, butchered defenceless inhabitants, without even sparing superannuated priests; and by order of General Pezuela they burned the church belonging to the town of Puna, and put to the sword old men, women and children the only inhabitants found therein. They have stirred up atrocious conspiracies among Spaniards domiciliated in our cities, and thus forced upon us the painful necessity of imposing capital punishment upon the fathers of many families. They have compelled our brethren and children to take up arms against us, and forming armies out of the people of the country, under command of their own officers, have forced them to do battle with our troops. They have stirred up domestic plots and conspiracies by corrupting with money, and by means of all kinds of machinations have misled the peaceful inhabitants of the country in order to involve us in anarchy, and then, in our weak and divided condition, to overwhelm us. "In a shameful and infamous manner they have failed to fulfil every capitulation we have concluded with them, even at such times as we have had them at the mercy of our own swords. They caused four thousand men, after surrendering, again to take up arms, together with General Tristan, at the action of Salta; though our own General Bel- grano, on the field of battle, had generously granted them terms of capitulation, trusting to their word of honor. "They have invented a new and horrid species of war- fare, by poisoning wells and food, as for example when they were conquered by General Pinelo, in La Paz; moreover, in return for the kind manner in which the General behaved to them, they descended to the barbarous stratagem of blowing up the soldiers' quarters, which they had first undermined. They have had the baseness to tamper with our generals and governors, by abusing the sacred compact of flags of truce; 286 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and by making written overtures to them have endeavored to make them play the traitor to us. They have declared that laws of war as observed among civilized nations cannot be observed in our case; and, after the battle of Ayouma, their General Pezuela, in order to avoid any compromise or understanding, had the audacity to reply to General Belgrano that it was impossible to enter into treaties with rebels. "Such has been the conduct of Spaniards toward us since the restoration to the throne of his ancestors of Ferdinand de Bourbon. We then hoped that the end of so many mis- fortunes had come. We had believed that a king schooled in so many lessons of adversity would not be indifferent to the ruin of his people; and we dispatched a commissioner to him in order to inform him concerning our situation. We could not for a moment anticipate that, as a benign prince, he would fail to meet our wishes; nor could we doubt that our requests would interest him in a degree answering to the character which had been ascribed to him by his Span- ish courtiers of nobility and consideration. But for America was reserved a new and hitherto unknown species of ingrati- tude, surpassing all examples found in history of the greatest tyrants. ' ' It is curious to compare this prolonged and almost femi- nine "shriek of aggrieved protest, uttered in 1817 by the republicans of Buenos Ayres, with the curt, masculine ar- raignment of George III. of England, in our Declaration of Independence, by the resolute patriots of 1776. We have not a little compressed and pruned from its native rhetorical exuberances the Spanish- American composition ; but the dif- ference between the fibre of the Latin Race and that of the Anglo-Saxon is abundantly apparent. It is interesting, too, to remember that the complainants in this case are precisely the same people, by blood, as are the tyrants whom they denounce. It has been a case of dog eating dog; and the under dog protests as vehemently against the upper dog's MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 2b7 savagery, as if he himself, a few generations before, had not practiced identically the same savagery against the Pe- ruvians and other native American races. Spaniards are as quick as any one else to denounce Spaniards, when Spanish tactics are directed against themselves. But our recognition of this fact need not lead us to withhold our compassion from the terrible plight in which the Spanish Americans stood; we can only marvel at their having endured such treatment so long. It would be politically instructive to draw an elaborate parallel between the revolt of the North American colonies, and its sequel, and those of the South American colonies of Spain. The former were not only ardent for independence, but they were prepared for self- government ; they knew how to be free. They had been out- rageously wronged by the British blockheads who formed the Cabinet in London ; but there was not, nor had there ever been, a drop of either slavish or despotic blood in their veins; they had never perpetrated barbarities on others, and they had never tamely submitted to them. When it came to fighting, therefore, there was generated on neither the col- onists' nor the English side that species of murderous frenzy and satanic hatred which marked the conduct of both par- ties in the war of Spanish- American revolution. But for the use of German mercenaries against us by King George, the war of our Revolution was a very decent war on both sides, and was not attended by any of the fantastic extravagances which stain and render grotesque the grapplings and snarl- ings of the Spaniards and their colonists a generation later. And when our war was over, we built our Constitution on sane and dignified lines, and have stuck to it with most commendable fidelity ever since; whereas the annals of the Spanish American republics are for the most part an anom- alous welter of license and despotism, sublime manifestoes and base treacheries, heroic proclamations and vulgar as- sassinations ; the august robes of Liberty trailed in the mire by political trollops of the most profane and bloodthirsty type. The testimony of history as regards the Spanish 288 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA American republics, during the last eighty or ninety years, demonstrates plainly that these Latins are not made of self- governing stuff ; there is not, in sober truth, such a thing as a Spanish American republic up to this hour in existence. The moment a "president" is elected or manages to make good a claim to having been elected he becomes inevitably a tyrant, and a mark for assassination. Once in a while we find a man like Diaz of Mexico who has really great quali- ties, and force enough in his personal character to rule with- out constantly resorting to inhuman extremities. Diaz is a dictator, as Francia was ; though of course there is a breadth and security about him which poor lonely Francia lacked. But circumstances and good fortune, long continued, have so settled him in his seat that no one now thinks of attempt- ing to get him out of it; and consequently he is able to put in practice the qualities of statesmanship which he possesses ; and which are of incalculable benefit to his subjects and his country. Sound statesmanship is by no means foreign or impossible to the Latin character; the trouble is, so far as Spanish America is concerned, that so few of their leaders have arrived at a position where they could call these qual- ities into play; their entire tune and resources were taken up in guarding themselves against conspirators. Not only is republicanism impossible to Latins, but the pretence of it does them great harm ; it becomes to them simply an irre- sistible incentive to lawlessness. Their paper preamble de- clares that they are all equal, and that any one of them may be at the top of the heap; therefore they all engage in a fierce scramble to reach that sinister eminence. The com- mon people, meanwhile, who will ultimately be the salva- tion of the situation, try to do their work and earn their living between revolutions, or even while these are in prog- ress; they feel no personal interest in the quarrels of the governing class, though they cannot avoid being occasion- ally dragged into them ; they do not comprehend the glori- ous privilege of universal suffrage; and certainly they have never enjoyed the opportunity of learning what it mar bt? MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 289 from practical experience. In the long lapse of time, we may hope, the matter will work itself out on common-sense principles. Here are magnificent countries to be developed, and an ample population to develop theni: the weight of that pair of facts, if you give them time, must finally pre- vail over all the opera-bouffe element which has hitherto been so noisily and bloodily conspicuous. We may look for a gradual drawing together of the several states into one homogeneous organism, with probably some able adminis- trator at the head; whether that administrator will be a Spanish American or quite another species of man, is a question we need not here speculate upon. But his gov- ernment will be of such a sort that the Spanish American politicians cannot overturn it, and the common people will not desire to do so ; for they will be permitted to mind their own business, and will find peace and prosperity in so doing. The English, the Germans, and the Americans from the United States, will insensibly possess the industries and the commerce of the continent, and the Spanish strain will become more and more diluted, until, for all practical pur- poses, it will vanish as a factor in the problem. When that happens we can begin to think about a real republic for America, extending from as far north to as far south as we please. But, till then, it is a phantasmagory, enter- taining as a drama, but with nothing real and substantial about it. But to return to the period of Spanish domination, we may freely admit that it was much less tolerable than the worst that we were ever called upon to put up with. The colonists were justified, one would say, in any kind of re- taliation; and considering that they might have conducted themselves like wild beasts, it is to their credit that they retained their resemblance to humanity throughout; and here and there, in the person of some leader, attained quite heroic proportions. But even the most laudable of these Spanish American heroes, like St. Martin, for example, suf- fers by comparison with the men who led our race, in that 290 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA they cannot get rid of their self -consciousness. No matter now vast the events in which they move, it is always their own part in those events which looms largest in their eyes. There are some things in St. Martin which recall the En- glish Gordon; but Gordon's soul hurried him along, from one end of his life to the other, without Gordon in his proper person having anything to say in the matter; whereas St. Martin, perhaps hardly less good a man in the orthodox sense, continually saw before him, beckoning him on, the vision of himself in sublime poses and uttering splendid apothegms. It is the old distinction between the purpose and the person that is here drawn. It is the distinction be- tween Napoleon and Wellington. The Napoleons often per- form prodigious feats, but the Wellingtons are working in harmony with permanent principles, and in the end their result is the more valuable. There is no history, properly speaking, of the southern parts of the South American continent, previous to the Revolution. The reason is that the native Indians of those regions, unlike the Peruvian and Chilian tribes, were not advanced in civilization, and had no wealth to tempt the invaders withal. They were savages, living as savages do from hand to mouth, and incapable of opposing even so much resistance to the Spaniards as had the Incas and the Chilians. There was nothing in the outward aspect of the vast pampas of the Argentine and lower Brazil to arrest the attention of men in quest of gold and precious stones; the country might be useful for agricultural purposes, and for stock-raising; but it was not until long after the first flush of South American discovery was past that these at- tractions had much weight with the Europeans. The Ar- gentine region was colonized by Spain about the middle of the sixteenth century ; and a race of Creoles, mongrels, and native Indians lived and grew there until 1810, when the first stirrings of revolt began. During those silent ages there was no attempt to fix boundaries, still less of course to quar- rel over them; no one knew how far the country extended, MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 291 or what it was worth. Commerce, so far as it existed, sought only the northeastern coast and that of the Pacific slopes; every one wished to get his share from the lands of gold before the gold was all gone ; and would only take up with farming when there was nothing else left. The annals of the vast expanse of Brazil are still more featureless than those of the Argentine. This country, as we have seen, was discovered by a Spaniard, Pinzon, in 1499, and in the following year the navigator Cabral, a Portuguese, while shaping his course for the Cape of Good Hope, was blown across the Atlantic and rediscovered the country for himself. Inasmuch as it appeared that the land lay on the Portuguese side of the imaginary line drawn by the Pope, to Portugal was the new region finally assigned, and it has remained in Portuguese hands ever since, though, a few years ago (1889), Emperor Dom Pedro was forced to leave the throne, and a quasi-republic was substituted for the empire. In the vast Brazilian forests there is inexhaust- ible wealth, and the illimitable plains and plateaus to the south are capable of supporting countless herds; but the de- ficiency of transport, and the immense difficulty of conduct- ing steady industries in these heated and wild regions, will for a long time prevent Brazil from realizing its possibilities. The area of Brazil is a little over three million square miles, while the population is about fourteen millions or about four to the square mile. Evidently, therefore, the country has hardly yet reached the threshold of its destiny. Should it remain in its present ownership, and under the existing spe- cies of administration, it might be several centuries before it showed much signs of advance ; but it is not likely that present conditions will much longer continue. "The horse is his who rides it," says the proverb; and Brazil will be ridden before the close of the next century by men of another race than its discoverers. The Spanish American Revolution, though precipitated, as we have observed, by the state to which Napoleon reduced Spain in the first decade of the nineteenth century, had had HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA its premonitory rumblings some years before. The example of the United States, followed by that of the French Revolu- tion, could not be lost upon any man of education and sen- sibility whose own country was suffering under oppression. Accordingly, we find various more or less obscure move- ments and gettings-together of Spanish Americans, toward the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, having in view the purpose to conspire against Spain, and to get help, from one nation or another, toward making the revolt successful. It need not be doubted that there was a great deal of real patriotism behind these move- ments; and we need not criticise them too harshly if we ficl that within this patriotism, as soul within body, was the in- tention on the part of the conspirator to himself occupy the seat of power now held by the Spanish viceroy, so soon as the latter should have been cast down from it; and in the meanwhile, of taking the leading part in the operations hav- ing that casting down for their object. In other words, it would be cause for special wonder if personal ambition had not entered largely into the motives of these premature revo- lutionaries; the political education they had enjoyed, so far as it was pursued in their own country, was not of a sort apt to beget disinterested ideas. Moreover, having reflected upon the subject of freedom, they would naturally suppose themselves better qualified than others to carry to a success- ful issue the principles which they had been thinking about. The true conditions of government by the people for the peo- ple had not been, and could not be, apprehended by such men; there was to be a "constitution," of course, with all the political virtues inscribed in it ; but as a matter of fact, some person, preferably the arch conspirator himself, was to guide the new state, and administer its liberties in such manner as might seem most expedient. That a legislature should be actually and literally representative of the mass of the people, and that the presidential office should be purely executive, was a conception not as yet above the mental horizon of these good folks. And, bearing in mind that the MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 293 mass of the people were then, and still are, wholly incapable of knowing what was for their best interests, we must admit that there was much excuse for the blindness of the leaders in this particular. In fact, the difficulties in the way of organizing a true republic in South America were insurmountable. There was no material out of which to make one. There was a rabble of illiterate and semi-brutalized human beings, but there was no democracy. The tyranny of Spain during three or four centuries had borne its normal fruits. The rabble disliked being worked to death and robbed, no doubt ; they coveted all the good things of life that they knew about ; they would like to have the say as to what they should do and be ; but all that was very different from harboring any intelligent notions of self-government. We, in this country, have dis- covered that self-government demands a good deal more of the individual's time and trouble than most individuals are disposed to expend upon it; and the consequence is, the race of professional politicians who manage our affairs and help themselves out of our pockets for doing so. The cause of our neglect is, not that we do not know better, but that we are giving our whole energy, each of us, to building up and maintaining our private fortunes or place in the com- munity. But in the case of the South Americans, the mass of the population would postpone exacting labors for the common weal to the indulgence of whatever selfish and material indulgences their knowledge or their opportunities afforded them. This preoccupation of theirs left apart the class of persons, with some private means perhaps, who sought to be the governing class. They were comparatively few in numbers, but their voices were loud, and their greed of office, and of the emoluments of office, was insatiable. Each of these persons was for himself, and therefore against all the rest; but numbers of them would band together to promote the fortunes of some leader, because in his success they saw the opening of the road to their own minor ends. Political Control being the common object of all, no party 294 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA could remain in possession without being the object of the intrigues of the other party. And since both sides were as a rule nearly equally strong in numbers, the situation could not be other than chronically insecure. In truth, the only form of government for which these South American States were fitted, was that of a dictator ; and that was the reason why the presidents, one after another, were dictators more or less avowed. If it had not been for that illusion of a republic behind the dictatorship, all might have gone fairly well; but the dictator was rendered vicious and cruel by the inward knowledge that he was violating the constitu- tion; and the people were kept in turmoil by the obvious fact that they were not getting the kind of government which they had been told they were to have. No one seemed capable of understanding the seemingly simple proposition, that if a people is not inwardly free, there is no use in deco- rating them with the external symbols of freedom. What was needed were education and culture, and the progressive use of the virtues of self-control and duty. A dictator, avowedly endowed with absolute powers, and secure in his position, could have conferred immense benefits upon South America; and a succession of such men, during the interval which has elapsed since the Revolution, might have brought the population up to a level where the exercise of the ballot would not be a swindle and an absurdity. Diaz in Mexico, in comparatively a few years, has shown what intelligent and benevolent dictatorship may accomplish. When he dies, he will leave his countrymen so much above what they were when he found them, that they may succeed in founding a real republic the first real one that will have been seen south of the United States on this continent. But to return to actualities. In 1756 there was born in Caracas, at the base of the maritime Andes, on the northern coast of Venezuela, an individual by the name of Francisco Miranda. His family was, socially, of the better sort; they possessed property, and the boy received a fair education, and was never obliged to work for his living. He was by MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 295 nature impulsive, passionate, self -conceited, and weak; given to vague imaginings, and easily kindled by exalted notions which lacked the substance and knowledge to become reali- ties. He was a man in fact who ever mistook the shadow for the substance, and was continually in hot water on this account; he was voluble and magnanimous in talk, and thought that because he said things he did them, and ought to receive the rewards of such doing. Had he had the good luck to be born in an earlier or in a later age, he might have frothed away harmlessly; but it was his doom to live at a period when great overturnings were taking place in the world, and he got the idea that he himself could become such a figure as those which he saw in Europe or in North America, standing at the head of nations. He spun out elaborate systems of political and social morality, and dinned them into the ears of whomsoever would listen to him; he waxed eloquent over the wrongs of his country, and formed romantic projects of bettering its condition. And, so great is the power of mere speech, many persons who listened to him took him at his own valuation, or near it, and said to themselves that here, once more, was one of the great liber- ators of mankind. Meanwhile he drifted to and fro about the world, and got mixed up with many things which were going on, and attained titles and military rank, and really made quite a gorgeous and impressive spectacle, by the glamour of which no one was more deluded than himself. He attained the grade of captain in the army, being at that time about two and twenty years of age; the American Revolution was in progress, and he came north in 1779 and served a couple of years in the French contingent of the American army. What Washington and Lafayette did for the United States he fancied himself capable of doing for Colombia. He was in a state of unremitting inspiration and stimulation ; and as he was still so young, many who con- versed with him may have thought that he would one day make a name for himself in the world; and so indeed he did; for the world can get some profit out of even a mere theo- 296 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA rizer. Miranda's notions were far from being all nonsense; and though he himself might fail in the attempt to put them into practice, his words might fall on ears where they would fructify into actions. Had Miranda done nothing but the- orize, he would have been a much happier and more useful man ; it was because he mixed a little action with his words that he wrought quite as much mischief as good in his gen- eration, and obstructed the designs of better men than he. After visiting Cuba, the young Venezuelan went to Eu- rope; and in Russia, which was at that time ruled by the Empress Catherine II., he found favor in that lady's eyes, and was presented by her with a pension ; but this did not quench his enthusiasm for the cause of human liberty. He reached France while the Revolution was still in progress, and entering into the conflict as a matter of course, on the side of the patriots, he attained such success as may be indi- cated by the rank of major-general ; but in the subsequent proceedings he incurred the enmity of the Directory, and in order to save his head was forced to fly to that refuge of all revolutionists, England. Here he was well received, as be- came a man still under forty who had had so distinguished a career. He talked to the members of the British govern- ment, and his words were still about the freedom of his country. He sought to interest William Pitt in the cause ; and he founded a society of a secret nature, called the Gran Reunion Americana, the avowed object of which was the freeing from Spain of the South American colonies, and the influence of which was felt far beyond the place of its birth. Other men eminent in South American history were connected with this society : San Martin, O'Higgins, Narino, Montufar. But the time for overt acts was still delayed. The contract to be undertaken was a large one, and must be well canvassed before being put to the touch. The Gran Reunion put off a branch or sister society called the Lautaro, which was established in several Spanish cities, and had its first American lodge in Buenos Ayres. The Lautaro, in fact, was the more powerful organization of the two, and MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 297 lasted quite through the revolutionary period. "It was not a machine of government, or of speculative propaganda,'* remarks Mitre, in his "Emancipation of South America"; "it was an engine of revolution, of war against a common enemy and of defence against internal dangers. Under its auspices was created the first popular assembly which gave form to the sovereignty of the people; to it was due that spirit of propaganda which characterized the Argentine revolution, and the maintenance of the alliance with Chili, which gave independence to half the continent." In plan- ning the ideal republic the Spanish Americans were laudably successful; but in working out the practical details in the field of battle and in the forum and cabinet, they were greatly hampered, as has before been intimated, by the intrusiveness of the "personal equation." Miranda continued to hover here and there, never getting his feet on solid ground, for several years. A nature like his cannot keep its own counsel, and grow strong by re- pressed thought; he must ever be communicating his grand ideas to some one, in order that his hearer may reinforce his own good opinion of himself by praising, or at least seriously criticising, his schemes and sentiments. Those who knew the man best were not always his best friends. "He is a great moralizer," says his quondam subordinate, James Briggs. "According to his own declaration, vice and mean- ness in any shape are quite abhorrent to his taste and judg- ment. If you take his word for it, he is a lover of virtue even to enthusiasm. To use his own language, he 'abomi- nates tyranny, hates fools, abhors flatterers, detests pride, and laments the corruption of modern days. * He loves free- dom, admires candor, esteems wise men, respects humility, and delights in that noble and beautiful integrity and good faith which distinguished the golden times of antiquity. He would renovate the perverted minds of mankind and restore the ancient beatitudes, when every excellence and virtue prevailed among men, for the happiness of the present race, and the perpetual prosperity of future generations." James 298 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Briggs knew Miranda a little too well. How often had hu been bored to extinction, and then again revived to a mur- derous vivacity, by hearing such stale cant and empty whip- syllabub as the above served up over and over again, and with renewed zest to every untried listener, while, all the time, the utterer of them was more and more unmistakably a creature of very common clay, differing from ordinary men only in the vain fancy that he was not ordinary, but was everything that he could find in moral and classic his- tory that was sublime and apocryphal. But he did know enough to vary his note somewhat according to the calibre and power of his auditor. Thus, in a letter of his to Thomas Jefferson, from whom he hoped for assistance, he gives us a specimen of his fawning and flattering style. "If," he exclaims, "the happy prediction which you have pronounced on the future destiny of our dear Colombia is to be accom- plished in our day, may Providence grant that it may be under your own auspices and by the generous efforts of her own children. We shall then in some sort behold the arrival of that age, the return of which the Roman bard invoked in favor of the human race" and he proceeds to quote a verse from an Eclogue of Virgil! But Jefferson was not to be caught by such chaff. At the time this letter was written, Jefferson was in the midst of his second term a* President, and the conspiracy of Aaron Burr was yet befoul- ing the land with the ill odor of its futile intent. But Miran- da had been at work in this country as far back as Adams's time. There was a plot on foot to undertake an expedition against the Spanish American colonies under the joint pro- tection of Great Britain and the United States, to enable those colonies to free themselves from the Spanish yoke. Spain was at that moment in alliance with France. Great Britain would have provided the ships of war for the proj- ect, and the United States the army ; if the affair succeeded, Great Britain was to get as her reward the West Indies as a market for her manufactures, and right of travel across the Isthmus; and the United States would have Florida and all MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 299 Spanish Louisiana east of the Mississippi. Miranda was in secret conference with several of our public men at this time regarding the plan, and England, being desirous to stave off the threatened invasion of her coast by Napoleon, was very ready to secure the United States as an ally. Our Alexander Hamilton, who was ever disposed to look for glory beyond the routine confines of the political field, was counted upon for support, which would be especially valuable by reason of his great weight in our diplomacy. It is probable that had Hamilton followed his own preferences, the expedition would have been undertaken. He was in confidential corre- spondence with Miranda in 1798, and expected to be himself the leader of the American forces. Miranda, who was at the moment in London, replied that all would be ready in Eng- land as soon as the United States should give the word. Fortunately, however, Hamilton was not able to give the word, because Adams, who was President, was not inclined to go into the enterprise ; he counted the cost of this invad- ing army of Americans, and could not see where the returns came in. "Regiments are costly articles," he said, "and at present there is no more prospect of seeing a French army here than there is in Heaven." In other words, he was not in favor of fighting France for Miranda's sake, or even for the sake of giving Hamilton a chance to win military glory. Accordingly, poor Miranda was kept waiting for "the word" which he was destined never to hear; and with that oppor- tunity his best chance of getting other nations to back his efforts disappeared. Had all South American revolutionists been like Miranda, Spain might still be holding undisturbed possession of the territory. But such men as San Martin and Bolivar had no relish for hanging round the back doors of foreign gov- ernments, begging for armies and ships to do their fighting and liberating for them. Nations are not wont to indulge iu altruistic adventures for the benefit of their neighbors, unless they are assured of receiving at least as much as they give. Bolivar and San Martin had divined this truth, and 300 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA conducted themselves accordingly. They knew that Spain had no friends for her own sake; but she could count on what was just as good friends for the sake of the use she could serve to others. Nations that took part in freeing South America from Spain would do so only in order to se- cure South America for themselves. And though it might be true that any tyranny was preferable to that of the mother country, still, if South American blood was to be shed at all, it might better be independently than as the cat's-paw of others. Having failed in his international conspiracy, Miranda left London and appeared in New York about 1806. He must attempt something, or be finally discredited. There were at that time plenty of persons in our country who were ready to undertake any sort of enterprise that promised adventure and profit; and the vague notion that South America was the land of gold still prevailed in many idle and ill-informed minds. Miranda was voluble, grandiloquent and plausible as ever, and he was able to make out a promis- ing case for his project. This project was, to collect a band of heroes, sail for Venezuela, proclaim a republic, and then trust to luck. It was practically certain, according to him, that the Venezuelans would promptly rally to his standard, and overthrow the tyrants. And when England and the United States saw that fortune was inclining his way, they would be willing to give whatever moral or even physical support might be needed to clinch the success of the advent- ure. Having got his followers together, not all of whom clearly understood what was really in the wind, he set sail from New York, and on the 15th of February arrived at the port of Jaquamel in San Domingo. He was provided with a tricolor flag, and with a printing-press for the printing of the indispensable proclamations and manifestoes. These documents were addressed to the People of South America, and were signed by Don Francisco Miranda, Commander-in- Chief of the Colombian Army of South America. They drew a moving picture of the wrongs and oppressions under MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 301 which the people were groaning, and painted in vivid colors the advantages of freedom and glory which the Commander- in-Chief was prepared to bestow upon them. Those mem- bers of the expedition who had been given brevet rank as officers were now called up, and their full commissions were issued to them, Miranda constituting himself the fountain of honor for the occasion.. All this having been done, a delay occurred, for it had been announced that the army was to be reinforced by two other ships, the "Cleopatra" and the "Emperor," American merchantmen, which had been or- dered to rendezvous at Jaquamel. The name of Miranda's own vessel was the "Leander. " The other two ships not arriving according to contract, Captain Lewis and Major Smith were sent to Port au Prince to find out what was the matter. They returned in due time, and reported that noth- ing was discoverable concerning the reinforcements in ques- tion. "What was to be done? The Army of Liberation numbered little more than one hundred men; South Amer- ica is a large place, and the Spaniards had more than a hundred soldiers there. Finally, two small unarmed schoon- ers were obtained the "Bee" and the "Bacchus" and desperate efforts were made to raise more men; but after all was said and done, the total force at Miranda's disposal, including the sailors, did not exceed two hundred. But two hundred heroes can do much, if they stick together, and take an oath to be true and faithful to the cause, and to obey the orders of the "supreme government." This oath was ac- cordingly administered, with all solemnity; and the officers subscribed to an additional instrument binding them to be governed by the articles of war of the United States, modi- fied according as the usages of the different foreign govern- ments under which they might find themselves should require. Having thus given the enterprise all the formality possible, strict discipline was enforced upon all the members, and the army was apparently ready for business. But the readiness was hardly unanimous. The sailors on board the "Bee," awakening to the actual facts of their 302 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA position, and being wholly unfired by the prospect of freeing South America, vehemently desired to escape from their pre- dicament forthwith, and tried to devise means to get away. But they were without arms; and at the crisis of their at- tempt, the men of the "Leander" came to the assistance of the "Bee" officers, quelled the mutiny, put the ringlead- ers in irons, and produced the outward appearance of subjec- tion. But it was apparent only, for the purpose to desert was as ardent as ever. Sail was now made upon the fleet, however, and there ensued ten days of cruising on the blue waters of the Caribbean, the destination being the little island of Bonair or Buen Ayre, one of a group of three owned by the Dutch, off the northern coast of Venezuela, and some seventy miles east of the Gulf of Venezuela. But the pilot was out in his reckoning, and brought the fleet directly to the gulf itself. This would never do; so they put about, and after some trouble and anxiety, succeeded in making the island of Aruba, one of the above-mentioned group, to the west of Bonair. It was now the 4th of April, 1806. While lying at this port, there arrived a mysterious English schooner called the "Echo," which was said to be engaged in the smuggling trade ; her captain, Phillips, com- municated with Miranda, and received from him certain sealed dispatches; after which he sailed away, and never appeared again. The fleet began beating up to the east- ward, and on April 24th was within sight of Bonair; but the English frigates which Miranda professed to be expect- ing had not been heard of. By this time the alarm and dis- affection which had come to open expression on board the "Bee," began to spread over the rest of the fleet and army; and Miranda had nothing but words to combat it withal. But he made such good use of his resources in this respect, that finally a sort of hollow accord was patched up; the men were to receive thirty dollars a month pay, with a bounty of fifty dollars to all who should have achieved warlike distinc- tion at the close of the campaign ; together with other rewards and advantages more or less explicit and alluring. It was. MORE SPANISH CIVILIZATION 303 not dazzling, but it was accompanied by so much talk about glory and honor that it passed, for the time being, with many of the men. Others were not so readily persuaded. They had been hurried into the scrape without any clear idea of its nature; but they now reflected that the United States was not at war with Spain, and that if they met with dis- aster, they could not look to the United States to help them. On the other hand, what was thirty dollars a month, and contingencies? They resolved to vanish. Two men, Davis and Sperry, undertook to find out upon whom they could rely. The plot was in a promising condition, when it was discovered; and just at that juncture two Spanish ships happened into the port, and an action took place. "After some broadsides exchanged between the armed vessels on both sides," says Moses Smith, in his contemporary narra- tive, "they were ordered to board the enemy on the lee side, while the 'Leander' was to attack and board the ship on the weather side. They obeyed their orders; but before they could accomplish them, to their inexpressible astonishment, they saw the 'Leander' (with Miranda on board) haul down her colors and make off ! The remaining ships were boarded and taken by the Spaniards. The men were plundered, stripped and rifled; and so impatient were the conquerors for the booty, that before they took time to pull the clothes off, they first cut the pockets to make sure of the contents. So expert were they in this inglorious kind of warfare that they seldom failed to clear away the pocket with a single stroke. The prisoners were next pinioned and secured, tied back to back, and in that humiliating posture conveyed to Porto Cabello. There they were disembarked and driven into the castle of St. Philip, chained two and two, and loaded with irons. They were divided into two parties of about thirty each, the whole number taken in the two schooners amounting to about sixty. They were then thrown into two separate dungeons, and suffered inde- scribable privations. Their trial took place toward the end of June. It was not till the 20th of July that their 304 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA doom was announced to them. On that day their prison doors were thrown open, and they were told by an inter- preter that they must come out and be hanged. The names of ten of the prisoners, all officers in Miranda's army, were first called, and the interpreter read this sentence from a paper he held: 'In the morning of to-morrow, at six o'clock, you, and each of you, are sentenced to be hanged by the neck until you are dead ; after which your heads are to be severed from your bodies, placed upon poles, and dis- tributed in the most public parts of the country. ' The re- mainder, being nineteen in number, were sentenced to eight years' imprisonment in the castle of Boca Chica, near Carta- gena: which sentences were all executed." Thus was the Grand Army of Liberation obliterated by a couple of scurvy Spanish brigs, before it had so much as set foot on Spanish dry land, or made its existence known to the waiting myriads of South Americans who were al- leged to have been expecting its arrival. The disgraceful poltroonery of Miranda is so wholly vile and inexcusable, that it is nothing less than a marvel that he ever ventured to show his face among men again. But men of his kidney can talk themselves into heroics at the very moment they are being kicked by justly irate critics; and incredible though it seems, he outlived this affair, and achieved a conspicuous- ness which, while it lasted, must have seemed miraculous even to himself. Never was mortal afforded better opportu- nities to distinguish himself than this jackdaw enjoyed ; nor did any one ever make worse use of them. We shall be obliged to bring him forward once more. But before doing so we shall take the reader back into the sixteenth century, to pick up the thread of the career of Cortes a person of a character sufficiently contrasted with that of Miranda. Mexico has been all this while developing on lines of her own, and it behooves us to trace rapidly the circumstances which brought her to her present position. THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 305 VI THE SEQUEL OF CORTES WE left Cortes at the conclusion of the siege of Mexico City, or Tenochtitlaii ; one of the bloodi- est sieges of history, if all that is told of it be true. The city had been defended by the young successor of Montezuma, Cuahtemoc; he was captured on the 13th of August, 1521, and brought before Cortes. He is de- scribed as a manly youth, grandly proportioned, handsome of face and fearless of bearing. Cortes, with Malina beside him, stood on an elevation, from which he had been direct- ing the siege. The young Aztec chief was as brave a man as the -Spaniard, and there was none of the feebleness of Montezuma in his make-up. His defeat did not diminish the pride and serenity of his behavior. His eyes met those of Cortes, and he laid his hand on the dagger in the latter's girdle. "Kill me, I ask you that favor," said he. "I have done what I could for my people." But Cortes, who hoped to learn from the other where the treasures of Montezuma were concealed, assured the chief that he desired his welfare and friendship; and he and his wife were treated for a while with great courtesy and consideration. While the city was being rebuilt under Cortes's direction, he tried to lead the captive to reveal the secret, and the Spanish soldiers sought everywhere for the hoai'd, which was believed to rival that of the fabulous Niebelungen. But they could find no traces of it, and as Cuahtemoc remained mute, in spite of all blan- dishments, the chivalrous Cortes changed his tactics, and threatened him with torture. Threats did not move the Aztec; and at the Conqueror's command, and to his ever- lasting shame, Cuahtemoc's feet were put into burning oil; as were also those of the chief of Tlacopan, who was sus- 306 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA pected of sharing the knowledge of the hiding-place. But all was in vain ; Cortes had his infamy for his pains. The treasure was never found; it was thought to have been thrown into the lake, but no dredging or diving could get up an ounce of it. Treasure-seekers have hunted for it ever since, with as little success. Possibly it had been taken away in small parcels by faithful servants; or perhaps there was no treasure. But there will always remain the convic- tion in the minds of many people that somewhere near the city of Tenochtitlan a vast quantity of gold and precious stones lies buried, to reward the fortunate person whom chance, or the divining-rod, or some ancient chart or tra- dition, may lead to it. Meanwhile, the romancers have a free field. The remaining days of Cuahtemoc were few and evil; after lingering in his agony, he and his fellow-captives were finally hanged on a false charge of conspiracy, at the town of Izancapac, of the Tabascans. The execution of these brave and innocent men marked the end of the Aztecan rule in Mexico. There were no subsequent revolts of the natives; and the remaining chiefs, having submitted, were allowed to die by the course of nature. Such of the tribes as were unwilling to live under Spanish rule, retired to the mountains, where their descendants may yet be found. There were no Araucanians in Mexico, to carry on a war for centuries. The deserts and sierras on the out- skirts of the settled regions were full of peril for travellers from the sudden attacks of these wild tribes, whose manner of life resembled in some respects that of the Arabs of the African Sahara. But there was never any systematic or combined effort on the part of the Indians to recapture Tenochtitlan, or to drive out the invaders. By them, as by all men, the Spaniards were hated; but they acquiesced in the situation; and Mexico, in consequence, rapidly be- came a Spanish province. After the city had been repaired in some measure, the country was placed umder martial law, with certain unim- THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 307 portant indulgences to some of the chiefs, who were per- mitted to keep the name while losing the reality of power. Cortes himself was the ruler; his titles, self-imposed, indi- cated that he commanded in civil affairs, in military mat- ters, and in the courts of justice. Cortes then proceeded to reduce his kingdom systematically ; he sent forth expeditions to outlying places, and generally received the submission of the chiefs without the necessity of fighting for it. None was so confident in his strength as to believe that where Monte- zuma and Cuahtemoc had failed, he could succeed. We can imagine these picturesque barbarians journeying, one after the other, to the famous valley, to pay their respects to the great white chief, and to view the ruins of his victory. Many of these chiefs were terrorized into accepting the Christian faith, as interpreted and administered by the Spaniards. During the ensuing three years, the territory of New Spain, as Mexico was for a time called, was ex- tended as far as Honduras. Over this comparatively un- known region Cortes set one of his officers, Christobel de Olid, who, presuming too much on his distance from the centre of affairs, had the temerity to set up in business on his private account. Cortes was not the man to endure rivals ; he set out for Honduras, and Olid lost his satrapy and his life. Meanwhile the work of obliterating all ves- tiges of the native religion and dominion went on. The Aztec war-gods were cast down and their temples destroyed ; the picture-written records were burned, upon the plea that they were magical documents, allied with the evil practices of heathendom; and gradually the distinctive names of the tribes themselves were abolished, and all alike were given the indiscriminate name of Indians. It was no doubt a gain for decency and comfort that the human sacrifices were done away with ; but in other respects the civilization imposed by Spain was perhaps not greatly to be preferred to that of the Aztecs ; in some features it was inferior thereto. Such as it was, the natives accommodated themselves to it as best they might, and in spite of the enormous slaughter occasioned by 14 308 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA the Conquest, there were enough of them left to make a fair beginning. The Nahuatl race was a remarkable one, and their only serious fault seems to have been their indulgence in the rites of blood. But even this was probably objec- tionable to the majority of them ; so that the Spaniards, in causing them to discontinue the practice, could actually be credited with having done some good in the world. The Spanish government, as we have seen, was at first a military autocracy, of which Cortes was the head. But he had the good sense not to attempt to carry it entirely alone. He gathered around him the more distinguished and able of his followers, constituting of them a sort of advisory board, which he called the Ayuntamiento. To this body, which was maintained during his reign, he delegated the business of founding new cities, and of dispensing lands to colonists; of creating regular markets, and of instituting sanitary measures and seeing that the laws of the realm were carried out. The laws in question were often so sound and just that they survive to this day. Cortes also provided against trouble in Spain by sending periodical consignments of gold to the king, and by referring all his conquests and acts of sovereignty to the Spanish throne. "When we consider that he was at this time only about five- and-thirty years of age, we must concede to him the posses- sion of remarkable genius both in war and in diplomacy; and he compares well with the other eminent conquistadores of his epoch. But he had his foibles; and among them was his treatment of Malina. This girl, as has been shown in the course of our narra- tive, had been his constant companion throughout his ad- ventures in the land of New Spain. She was not only dear to him in her capacity as a beautiful and intelligent woman, but she was invaluable as an interpreter, and as one who knew the customs and traits of the Aztec people. By his command, she was always treated with respect by his offi- cers, and her position was the same as if she had been his lawful wife. She was faithful and courageous; and during THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 309 his darkest hours she always remained confident and cheer- ful. During the Noche Triste she was cared for by a de- tachment of Tlaxcallans, and throughout the dangerous days that followed she was always by his side. If ever woman merited undying gratitude from man, Malina was she. After the siege was over, Cortes went to reside at the neighboring town of Coyoacan, and Malina was with him there. It was her hour of felicity. The man whom she re- garded as the chief of heroes had triumphed over all obsta- cles, and was in the position of highest dignity and power. She lived in the style of a queen, with a palace and attend- ants, and meeting with respect and praise from all. Her union with Cortes had resulted in the birth of a son, to whom she gave the name of her lover. She looked for- ward to a long life of happiness with the man of her heart. Whether or not Cortes had ever happened to mention to Malina the fact that he had a wife in Cuba we are not cer- tainly informed ; he may have thought other topics of con- versation more expedient; but that he did have a wife there is no doubt; and there is a romantic story connected with the marriage. The lady was Dona Catalina Juarez, who was living in Hispaniola at the time of Cortes's arrival there. Cortes, then an unknown young man, fell hi love with the lady, whose attractions were unfortunately so great that she had already won the devotion of the governor, Velasquez. Naturally, jealousy was engendered between the two men; but all the power was in the hands of Velasquez, and he used it against his rival. He pursued Cortes with every species of persecution, and though he did not venture to put him to death, he had him arrested on some trumped-up charge, and cast into a dungeon which, in a country like Hispaniola, meant a good chance of death by disease and misery. But Cortes had his career still before him, and meanwhile was too full of life, love and enterprise to submit to confinement ; he contrived to get out of his cell, and took refuge in a church, hoping to plead successfully the right of sanctuary. But either by some indiscretion of his own, or 310 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMEK1CA by the unrelenting purpose of his adversary, he was again captured, and this time he was thrown into the hold of a ship, with a chain round his leg. Even this was insufficient to hold or subdue him ; he procured a small boat which con- vej r ed him from the ship, and from the boat he reached the shore by swimming. He now sought sanctuary once more ; there was nothing else for a prisoner in Hispaniola to do; and finally matters were accommodated between him and the governor, and the marriage of Cortes and Dona Catalina took place with all the formalities of the Catholic Church. The lovers had no doubt been forced into each other's arms by the very efforts which were made to keep them apart ; and were not well enough acquainted with each other's in- terior character to know whether or not they were' adapted to a life of matrimonial felicity. At all events, Velasquez, having yielded his point, made handsome amends for his former actions by appointing Cortes Alcalde of Santiago de Cuba, where he went to live with his wife; and when the quarrel with Grijalva occurred, the commission to go to Mexico was offered to Cortes, and gladly accepted. But he made no provision to carry Catalina with him : already that rose had lost its sweetness for him. It is even asserted that had Cortes been left wholly free in the matter, he would never have married the lady at all ; but she had taken an- other view of the situation, and had been convinced that since Velasquez had given her up, it was to the interest of her reputation to marry the other man. Be that as it may, time enough had elapsed for their relations to become strained; there was no love lost between the pair, and Cortes took his departure with a distinct feeling of relief. Catalina vanished from history during the time of his war- ring against the Aztecs ; but after he had become settled in his new kingdom, she thought it well to join him; there was no longer any question of conjugal affection, but only of conjugal rights; Cortes was a famous and powerful man, and she might as well enjoy the advantages of his emi- nence. THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 311 Her arrival was doubtless unwelcome to her husband; but the Catholic Church is very particular regarding the inviolability of marriage, and Cortes could not venture to defy its law. Dona Catalina made a magnificent entry into Mexico City, and assumed her legal position as head of the governor's establishment. Malina had her rights too, as she thought ; but Cortes, despite his courage and diplomatic gen- ius, was unequal to this test, and gave her to understand that her day was past. She appealed to the priest, Father Olmedo, who had baptized her and given her her Christian education ; but he had no help to give her, except to exhort her to make use of all such Christian virtues as might be at her disposal. Accordingly, the unhappy woman departed; but the story was not yet finished. Dona Catalina was not destined long to enjoy her triumph; it was officially an- nounced that the rare atmosphere of the Mexican plateau did not agree with her constitution, brought up as she had been in the soft, relaxing air of the Antilles; and the next thing that was known, she suddenly died. It is possible, no doubt, that the official explanation is true, and that the cause of her demise was a normal inability to draw her breath at an elevation of seven thousand feet above the sea. But there is a persistent tradition, which most people incline to believe, that her end came owing to the direct action of her husband, who took her bodily and dropped her into a well; and visitors to Mexico are still shown the self-same well which is alleged to have been the means of her end. The tale may do Cortes injustice; but certain it is that from this time his fortunes began to wane. The suspicion pursued him, and circumstances seemed to give the accusation substance. When he was preparing for his expedition to Honduras to subdue Olid, it became necessary to include an interpreter in his retinue; and who so fitted for the post as his old friend Malina. She was accordingly installed in that position, and they set out. But people began to talk, saying that the death of Catalina had happened very opportunely; and the talk finally became so audible, that Cortes was forced to 312 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA take notice of it. If the belief gained ground that he had murdered his wife, it was not likely that the court of Spain would permit him to represent it in New Spain. Something must be done to down the report. Unfortunately for Malina, she supplied the most convincing means of proving Cortes 's innocence. If he had killed Catalina, it must have been for Malina 's sake. In order, then, to show that no such motive could have actuated him, he commanded Malina to marry one of his officers, Don Juan de Jaramillo. Evidently, when love and ambition came into conflict in Cortes's heart, it would never be love that got the better of the encounter. Malina hardly knew Jaramillo by sight : but she submitted to her fate, and went through the form of becoming his wife by rites of Church. It is added by the chroniclers, however, that she never lived with the man, but immediately with- drew to the place where she was born, the little pueblo of Painala, near the eastern coast. Here, in the days before the invasion, she had lived with her father, who had been a notable chief under Montezuma; and as a child she had enjoyed all the barbaric luxuries which her station afforded. But her father died when she was eleven years old (she was born in 1502) and her mother married again, and had a son by her new husband. The son was thereupon preferred to Malina, and an attempt was even made to prove that the latter had died; a slave was buried in her stead, in order that the son might be disembarrassed of a rival claimant to the family inheritance. But Malina was alive, and, in order to get her out of the way, she was sold as a slave, and taken to the Tabascans, where she lived until Cortes came. The Tabascan chief then presented her, together with a number of other pretty maidens, to the invader; and as she was acquainted both with the Mayan and Az- tecan dialect, she was soon employed as interpreter. Such had been her history ; when she now reappeared in her an- cestral home, where her mother and stepfather, and their son, were still living, they became greatly alarmed lest she should use her power as a favorite of the conquerors to re- THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 313 venge herself for their former ill treatment of her. But revenge had no habitation in the sad and gentle heart of Malina ; she relieved the apprehensions of her relatives, and settling down among them, passed the rest of her life, which was very short, in silent retirement. She died before Cortes met with the reverses and disgrace which attended the close of his career. He found it necessary to make several voy- ages to Spain, in the attempt to secure his position with the court; on his first appearance he was greeted as became a conqueror and a hero, and the title of Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca was conferred upon him. So brilliant a figure, invested with the glory of romance, and the tender interest of widowerhood, could not fail to be affecting to the fair sex, and when Cortes went back to Mexico, he took with him another wife the daughter of Count Aguilar, brother of the Duke of Bejar, Dona Juana de Zufiiga. But the alliance was of ill omen. The Conquest of Mexico was no longer the greatest achievement of Spain in America. Peru had been discovered, and the reports of the wealth and splen- dor of that country made the riches of Tenochtitlan seem trifling, and with them dwindled the repute of their finde'r. He again sought the presence of Charles V., but that able sovereign gave him a chilly reception ; and when a Spanish court is chilly, it is one of the unhealthiest places in the world. Cortes retired with his hair on end, went to Seville, and died there a few years later, in dishonor and obscurity. He had risen to the highest honors possible to a Spanish subject, and by his great qualities he had deserved them; but he was a murderer and a dastard in his relations with women, and for this and other cruel crimes he deserved more than the trifling punishment inflicted on him. In fact, his only sin, so far as Charles was concerned, was that he had become inconvenient; much darker criminals than he, with- out a tithe of his parts, were kept in honorable positions without any reference to their vileness. Be that as it may, the sun of Cortes set in gloom; and since he had valued place and power more than anything else in this world, 314 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA he perhaps suffered quite as much as if his head had been taken off. Charles now decided to put the new country under the control of a body of men representative of him, whose au- thority should be absolute under his ; they were to be given each his province ; and their mutual jealousies would serve to keep them all in due subordination. It was the same plan of an Audiencia that was observed in Peru. The members of the first board reached Mexico in 1528; their chief was Nuno de Guzman, a finished tyrant and a man of blood, and therefore well in harmony with the fashion of the time. His instructions had been to treat the Indians with kindness; but he interpreted the order in a Pickwickian sense, and not only continued the slave business, but murdered right aud left with great industry. His object, and that of his col- leagues, was to enrich themselves; they came into opposi- tion with the ecclesiastical powers in New Spain, and were excommunicated by the Spanish bishop ; in return for which they disturbed the proceedings of the priests. Guzman went to the maritime province of Michoacan, on the Pacific coast, ahd applied himself to despoiling the chief of that hitherto untroubled region, Calzonzi, sovereign of the Tarascans, of his wealth. But Calzonzi was either not so rich as Guzman thought he ought to be, or else he concealed the fact from his inquisitor; and by way of reproof for his greed, Guzman burned him alive. Guzman then proceeded on his journey, and laid waste the country round Jalisco, founding in that place the city of Espiritu Santo, now known as Guadalajara. Thus he went on, sowing misery wherever he came, until at length the arrival of a second Audiencia put an end to his career. The new Audiencia published a decree reaffirming the slave law ; whoever should presume to enslave an Indian should die. It also founded a college for the education of the Indians, providing that they should be instructed in the Latin language ; though why Latin-speaking Indians should be happier or better than those unversed in that tongue does not appear. But there can be no question that it is more THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 315 praiseworthy to teach an Indian Latin than to burn him alive for not having enough money to be robbed of. The priests also exercised an influence over the natives which, upon the whole, was beneficial, and matters began to go more comfortably. But the members of the Audiencia were not always able to agree among themselves, and as^ill their disputes were brought before the king for adjustment, he finally made up his mind to put an end to them by appoint- ing a viceroy whose authority should be supreme. The func- tions of the Audiencia (which was continued) were hereafter to be confined to dispensing justice at the civil courts of the realm. The plan turned out to be the most successful yet devised, though quarrels between the viceroy and the Audi- encia still occasionally occurred. Indeed the territory of New Spain was of such vast extent that it was hardly pos- sible for one man to control it efficiently; it embraced not only what is now known as Mexico, but in addition the coun- tries of Texas, Alta California, New Mexico and Louisiana. But a small part of this was actually colonized by Spaniards, and little was known of its character and boundaries. The first viceroy selected for this great office was Antonio de Mendoza, who was a representative of one of the most honorable and ancient families of Spain; their historical generations numbered no less than twenty-three, and they claimed to be descendants of the Cid, the legendary Spanish hero in the wars with the Moors. The Conde de Tendilla such was his title seems to have been almost a paragon among men of that epoch; his object in undertaking the government was not simply to fill his pockets by draining the resources of the country and slaughtering its inhabitants ; but, first, to improve the condition of the natives, and, sec- ondly, to advance the welfare of the colonists. That a man of this stamp existed in that age, and of that country, is a relief and somewhat of a surprise; and still more singular is it that he should have been chosen for so conspicuous a post. But Charles V., who was in some respects one of the greatest Spanish sovereigns, was becoming weary of the cares of office, 316 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and may have already bethought himself to retire, leaving a worthy man to represent him in his new dominions. Charles was able to understand that the very life of Spain might come to depend upon the integrity of her American empire, and that he could do no better service to his country than to givethat empire every possible opportunity to develop. Mendoza ruled New Spain for about fifteen years, after which he was promoted to be viceroy of Peru, where his chief distinction was the creation of the code of laws called Libro de Tasas, a mingling of the old laws of the Incas and of Spanish common law, together with some special laws devised by the resident councils. But in New Spain, Men- doza gave his chief attention to the stimulation of industries. He could not teach the natives much about farming ; but he encouraged them in the practice of what they knew; and he introduced a fine breed of sheep* into the country, so that wool might become the clothing of the people, instead of the cotton garments which had hitherto been their only wear. The cultivation of the silkworm was also favored, and he made great advances in the working of mines, and the dis- covery and opening of new ones. He co-operated with the priests, and they became more useful and active under his reign than they had been before, and their missions were spread into remote parts of the domain. So far as one can judge, these Central American Indians seem to have accepted the new religion with little difficulty; they perhaps found it less exacting in its demands than that which it replaced. Nothing in the shape of a religious war is upon the records of Spanish rule in this region. Moreover, the Catholic faith is calculated to attract people such as these, by the beauty and charm of its ceremonies and services. Great and splendid churches were built, some of which still remain. The city of Guadalajara, already mentioned, owes to Mendoza its importance and prosperity ; it is to-day the second Mexican city in size, though only of late has it been reached by the railway. It took the place of the original town of Espiritu Santo, built by Guzman, and sprinkled with the blood of the THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 317 natives whom he had tortured and slain. It is a sort of museum of old Spanish and Aztecan curiosities and customs, and its citizens have an old-world flavor about them, most agreeable to the sympathetic tourist. Valladolid is another city which calls Mendoza its father. This was founded in the province of Michoacan, which borders on the Pacific Ocean. It contains some of the most beautiful scenery of Central America. It was at this period occupied by the Tarascan tribe, a race of mountaineers, with the independent and courageous proclivities commonly found in natives of highlands. Mendoza, instead of massacring them, bethought himself to civilize them with a city; the site for which he chose in the midst of the country. The charter for the build- ing of this town is still extant, issued by Queen Juana in 1537. The inhabitants of the chief pueblos in the neighbor- hood were summoned to attend the ceremonies, which took place in the semi-tropical forest, and must have made a de- lightful picture, full of every variety of color and form; the Indians with their wild manners and vivid decorations, and the Spaniards with their glittering armor and priestly vest- ments. In the midst stood the royal commissioners, and confronting them were the chiefs of the tribes. The royal parchment was produced and read aloud to the multitude. "Inasmuch as I am informed," writes Queen Juana, "that in these lands you have found a most beautiful site toward the part of the Chichimecas in the province of Michoacan : in which, as it is a place both attractive and convenient, you desire to establish and found a city to accommodate sixty or more Spanish families and nine officers of religion, for this purpose acknowledging the service of God and of the Crown of Spain : therefore we hereby give and concede faculty and license to the viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza, to establish and people the said city." The royal lady was not skilful in literary expression, but the charter pleased the Indians just as well as if it had been composed by the greatest mas: ter of style, and was received by the Spaniards with the reverence which they paid to all royal commands. The 318 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA parchment was then kissed by the chiefs, in testimony of their acquiescence with its authority; and a mass was cele- brated upon an altar which had been erected under a canopy of green boughs. Festivities then began, and were kept up several days; after which the work of laying out the plan of the city in the wilderness was commenced. The sixty Spanish families, more or less, were ready to select the lots on which their dwellings were to stand, and to set about the work of clearing and building. The large emigration of Spanish families to New Spain is a somewhat noteworthy fact ; inasmuch as there was in their case none of that desire for civil and religious liberty that moved our own Pilgrim fathers to seek the wilderness. On the contrary, life in New Spain was if anything more rigorously controlled than in Spain itself. The thirst for gold would of course account for the emigration of adventurers, and persons whose room, in any part of the world, is more desirable to the inhabitants f that part than their company. But families do not go treasure-hunting; they emigrate to settle down and live quietly, in the pursuit of whatever normal industry may offer itself. "We can only conclude that existence in old Spain, except for such as were court favorites, must have been very dry and tedious, if nothing worse; from which many were glad to take great risks to escape. There was no intellectual life there, and everywhere there was a dead monotony. The very strangeness of the wilderness was its charm for people thus oppressed ; there they could see new things, undergo novel experiences, and each fresh day would be distinguishable from its predecessors. At all events, the number who left Spain, never to return, was very large, and many of them must have been persons of a superior stamp, precisely because commonplace and worthless people would be the least likely to undertake such an enterprise. Had Spain treated these first emigrants and their descendants with consideration, instead of slighting them and oppressing them upon all occasions, New Spain would in time have given an illustration of the best results which the Spanish THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 319 nature is capable of attaining. But three centuries of injus- tice and enforced ignorance will degrade and brutify the most promising human material. Valladolid was the name given to the new city that be- ing also the name of Mendoza's birthplace in Spain. It bore that nane for about three hundred years, after which it was changed for that of Morelia, in compliment to the warrior and statesman Morelos who was distinguished in the revolu- tion. It was a flourishing settlement from the first, both its native and its Spanish population being of a superior char- acter. The site for the great church was first fixed in the pueblo of Tzintzuntzan, where the famous bishop Quiroga, originally a lawyer, had dwelt for some years among the people, and caused them to forget the cruelties of Guzman. The place was afterward changed to Valladolid; but there is a small church in the village of Patzcuaro, where Tzint- zuntzan formerly stood, which contains a large and valuable picture of the Entombment, said to have been painted by Titian. The proper place for such a work of art would of course be the great church in Valladolid ; but the villagers will not permit it to be removed thither. The latter edifice was begun at Patzcuaro, on a magnificent scale; but the ground on which it was to be built was found to be insecure, owing to its proximity to a lake; the work was stopped, and ultimately it was begun anew upon the present site in Valla- doli'.l. It was nearly two hundred years in building, and is considered a finer work of architecture than the church in Mexico. In the year 1536, Mendoza added to his benefactions by causing to be printed the first Mexican book, on a press im- ported by himself, and operated by Juan Pablos. He issued minted coins in the same year, of silver and copper. There were no noticeable events during the rest of his administra- tion, and when he departed to assume the reins of govern- ment in Peru, he had the distinction of not being followed by the curses of his people. He died in Lima in 1552. It should not be forgotten that he was the discoverer of what 320 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA is known as the Mendoza Codex, a famous Aztec manuscript which Mendoza sent as a present to Charles V. It never reached him, however, being captured on the way by a French cruiser, and finally turned up, after many years and vicissitudes, in the Bodleian Library. The manuscript com prises a history of the Aztecs, with notes regarding their domestic and civil economy. So much for the first viceroy of New Spain. The co-operation of good priests with the civil govern- ment was unquestionably of great service in bringing New Spain into peaceful acquiescence with the Spanish regime. All Indians are of an imaginative tendency, and prone to superstition ; and the miracles of the Catholic saints not only found ready credence with them, but they engrafted them upon fancies of their own, until a very remarkable combina- tion was the result, like nothing else in religious history. The early Spanish monks themselves, who spent their lives in working for the natives, have undergone a sort of unoffi- cial canonization, and tales are told of them which take their place along with the accepted marvels and mysteries of church history. The large town of Puebla de los Angeles, south of Mexico City, is especially a scene of sacred events. The tradition goes, that before the Spanish invasion, the inhabitants of this region were accustomed to see visions and dream dreams of a religious character ; the subsequent interpretation of which seemed to indicate that Puebla was destined to become the headquarters of Heaven on earth ; vast hosts of heavenly beings were seen, by these Indian clair- voyants, marshalled above the site of the town (which was close to the pyramid of Cholula, of which we have already heard something not markedly angelic). But the place was on the great highroad to Mexico City, and it was expe- dient that there should be established a halting-place some- where thereabout, in which travellers could break the long journey between the capital and the coast. This conviction fastened itself in the mind of the holy Fray Julian Garces, who was the first Tlaxcallan bishop commissioned from THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 321 Spain , but the good man could not decide which one of sev- eral possible sites would be most desirable for his proposed town. There is a full account of what followed, written by a local and contemporary chronicler, which may therefore be accepted with the confidence always attaching to such documentary evidence. Fray Julian, it seems, falling asleep upon a time, or lapsing into a more profound meditative state than usual, beheld a vision, which was not all a vision, inasmuch as subsequent events showed that it represented a concrete reality. It seemed to the Fray that he stood on the confines of a delightful and verdant plain, stretching away toward the west until it merged in the vast foothills of a great volcanic range rising cloudlike against the sky in that direction*. Two rivers wound their way through the green fields and forests; and on all sides there bubbled forth springs of fresh water, making a blessed fertility and beauty everywhere. The uniformity of the plain was broken by a couple of small hills, crowned with great trees, and fragrant with the breath of innumerable rainbow-hued flowers. Long did the good bishop gaze upon this dream-landscape, till every feature of it had become impressed upon his memory; and never had he beheld a spot which so captivated his im- agination, and won his love. But presently he became aware that he was not alone in the place ; for there appeared two shining ones over yonder; he had at first taken them for two bright clouds floating in the azure of the sky ; but they had softly descended toward the earth, and now revealed themselves as angels, clad in lustrous white garments, with far-extending, snowy pinions, and faces more glorious than could be described. They alighted upon the little hills; and the bishop saw that they held lines and rods in their hands, such as are used for the laying-out of the metes and bounds of cities ; and he saw these divine surveyors set to work, and mark out distances, and set monuments, as if to determine the streets and buildings of a city. After having done these things, the angels took flight, or ascended heavenward, and were lost in the empyrean. The bishop awoke, but with his 322 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA wits about him ; the plain with its hills and other features still lay clear and distinct in his memory; and as for the angels, he comprehended that they had been sent to apprise him that in this spot, and not elsewhere, should be built the Puebla de los Angeles. The next thing to do was obviously to find the real plain whose spiritual counterpart he had seen ; and as will readily be anticipated, the bishop met with little difficulty in doing this; he had but to ride the road between Mexico and Vera Cruz until the very scene rose before his delighted eyes. There was the town built, with the consent of the Audiencia; and chiefly by the labor of the Franciscan friars, whom, however, the natives gladly assisted, asking no recompense, but singing cheerful songs at their work ; thereby demonstrating to such* as had minds to learn that the best way to make an Indian useful is not to torture him, whip him, or even murder him, but to leave him to the inspiration of his natural friendly instincts, and he will do better work for nothing than whips could make him do. A Franciscan, also, was the first archbishop of Mexico (though he died a few days before the bull raising him to that dignity was received), and the title of Protector of the Indians which he bore, he did nothing to disgrace; though, to be sure, his zeal led him to take the step, regretted by historians and antiquaries, of collecting and burning every copy of an Aztec book or manuscript which he or any of his numerous emissaries could lay their hands on. Into the fire they went, all those priceless records, by means of which, had Juan de Zumarraga been a little less earnest or a little more liberal, we might ere this have discovered more about the true nature and origin of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Toltecs than we are ever likely to know as it is. The leaves of maguey fibre, with their quaint, painted characters, burned finely, and the smoke of them rose in the air, while the priest looked on with an expression of approval on his honest countenance, deeming that with every new bundle added to the pile, the benighted heathen were brought so much THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 323 nearer to their divine home. But alas! what arcana of irre- placeable knowledge crackled and spluttered in that confla- gration! Perhaps the only extant annals of the lost ten tribes of Israel perished there; and what would have been the archbishop's consternation, had such an idea been sug- gested to him! While he was imagining that he was doing the Lord's work in annihilating the witchcrafts of the heathen, he was throwing away a unique opportunity of adding an invaluable supplement to the volume of the Holy Scriptures! But if such were the fact, the worthy arch- bishop lived and died in blessed ignorance of it, as well as of many other things. The manuscripts being burned, he de- voted himself to enlarging the boundaries of his missionary field throughout Central America. He was a good man; and after all, it is comforting to think that he burned Indian books instead of the Indians themselves. Another saint of the church in Mexico was Fray Martin de Valencia, concerning whose adventures much has been written by the scribes of his epoch. His life was spent chiefly in the village of Amecameca, not far from the capital, where Cortes had halted for reorganization and refreshment before marching to the attack upon Montezuma's stronghold. In this vicinity Fray Martin had a quiet hermitage, which, says the chronicle, was "most appropriate to prayer, for it is on the side of a little mountain, and is a devout hermitage. Close to the house is a cave devoted to the service of God, and very suitable therefor. In this he was used at certain times to give himself up to prayer; at other times he would seek a neighboring grove ; and among the trees of the grove there was one, remarkable for its size and the great spread of its branches, under which it was his pleasure to pray in the early morning; and it is said that no sooner had he knelt there in prayer, than the tree immediately was visited by innumerable birds, whose songs created so delectable a har- mony that the holy man was greatly comforted and uplifted by it, and redoubled his praises and blessings of the Lord. And no sooner did he depart from under this tree, than the 824 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA birds likewise flew away from it; and when at length Fray Martin died, the birds never returned to the tree any more. These things were observed by many persons who were wont to repair thither to hold converse with the man of God ; not only did they see the birds come and then fly away as afore- said, but they noted that after his death they ceased their coming. It is moreover related by a monk of good life that on a time there appeared to Fray Martin Saint Francisco and Saint Antonio, in the hermitage of Amecameca; who finally departed from his presence, leaving him much com- forted." Just outside Amecameca is a hill, rising abruptly from the plain, closely covered with a growth of ancient trees, some of which rival those of Chapultepec in size, and in their venerable aspect. The name of this hill was Monte Sacro; and there is good reason to believe that even before the arrival of the Spanish priests, it was sacred to the deities of the Aztecs; and that the Spaniards adopted it to carry on the traditions belonging to its history. Be this however as it may, certain is it that it was one of the favorite retreats of Fray Martin, for he retired thither at times to an oratory which he had made in a cave on the bill, there to give him- self up to special exercises of the highest contemplation and rigorous penance. "For a long time he continued to give instruction to the Indians, especially to the young boys, for whom he manifested a singular affection. But at length, in the year 1533, he was attacked by a disease of the lungs, which occasioned his death. This event was accompanied by very remarkable circumstances. For a few days before he was taken ill, being in Amecameca, he manifested to his companion, in a few words, that now was approaching the term of his natural life ; and though the companion did not at first credit this, yet soon he was convinced thereof by beholding the calenture, or delirium of the tropics, which overcame the servant of God. As his illness increased, he was forced to conduct Fray Martin to the convent of Tlalmanalco, where the nature of the illness having mani- fested itself, the holy sacraments were administered to him. THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 325 It was now resolved to take him to the infirmary in Mexico City ; and in fact he was borne with much toil on the shoul- ders of Indians to the shore of Ayotzinco, two leagues from the pueblo; there he was placed in a canoe, to continue the journey by water. But scarcely had he been placed in the canoe than, feeling that even now his hour was come, he begged them to carry him back to land. Yielding to his entreaties, they disembarked; and he, although already in articulo mortis, put himself upon his knees, and calling upon them to commend his soul to God, his spirit was united with the Lord; when his body fell into the arms of his com- panion, St. Antonio Ortiz; thus verifying the prophecy which he had made many years before, while in Spain, that he was to die in St. Antonio's arms, in the middle of a field. As soon as the monks became assured of his death, they took up his corpse, and with innumerable tears, of their own and of the Indians, they gave it sepulture in the church, in bare ground, without any precaution to preserve relics so precious. But after some time the custodian of the church was apprised of the matter, and had the body exhumed; and finding it undecayed, as in life, put it in a coffin, and in a separate sepulchre, and caused a great stone to be placed above it, with a fitting epitaph. The body was at a later time secretly moved to the cave of Amecameca, where it awaits the glori- ous day of resurrection for saints and of confusion for here- tics. Many miracles are told of the saint; but his name will ever be glorious in our country, not more on this account than because of his great virtues, and above all for the vast services rendered by the order which he founded to the Mexicans, during more than three hundred years." The chronicles of the time are full of similar tales, hav- ing a more or less supernatural quality; and there were shrines which were visited by pious Indians on errands sim- ilar to those which cause devout Catholics to visit Lourdes- and Mohammedans to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. The second viceroy of New Spain was Don Luis de Ve- lasco, who came to the capital in 1550, and remained until 326 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA his death fourteen years later. He was a worthy and hu- mane administrator, and all went well during his incum- bency. One of his first acts was to liberate from slavery in the mines one hundred and fifty thousand Indians; and when it was objected to this measure that the mining indus- try would be paralyzed by it, he made the memorable reply that the freedom of the Indians was a matter of more im- portance than the prosperity of all the mines in the New World ; and that the revenues due to the Crown could not be of such value as that, in order to obtain them, human and divine laws should be violated. He also established a tribunal of the Holy Brotherhood, the function of which was to protect travellers upon the highways of the country; and he founded the Royal University of Mexico, and the Royal Hospital, which was designed for the use of natives exclu- sively. Native agriculture was favored by him, and the Indians were assisted to develop lands hitherto uncultivated ; and he promoted the discovery of new mines. The building of the Cathedral at Puebla was energetically advanced under his directions; and the civil, religious and political founda- tions of the state were firmly laid; so that when he died, in 1564, he was mourned by Spaniards and Indians alike, and the title of Father of New Spain was conferred upon him. After his decease, a period of two years was allowed to elapse before a new viceroy was appointed; the interval being filled by the Audiencia, which did nothing of value, but on the other hand so well was the machinery of gov- ernment ordered contrived to effect very little mischief. With Velasco, however, the great New Spanish viceroys came to an end, and were followed by a long line of more or less inconsiderable personages, who served their time, and passed on to Peru, finally either dying where they were, or retiring to Spain to digest their gains. The Mexican popula- tion, native and foreign, developed no marked traits; they went on their way with little visible demonstration either of content or turbulence. The Church, while it imposed upon them its will in matters ecclesiastical, avoided giving them THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 327 instruction in any branches of worldly or political learning; it was believed that ignorance was the happiest and safest state for a people. The Indians appeared resigned to this state of things; the new religion suited them quite as well as had that which it supplanted; and for other studies they had no proclivity. The Spanish Americans were convinced of the uselessness of contending against the power of the Crown, and sank gradually into a state of lethargy, from which they were aroused only by the universal revolt which marked the beginning of the present century. The event which arrested the growth of the country was the abdication of Charles V. in 1556. This sovereign, in the October of the previous year, had ceded to his son, Philip II., the sovereignty of the dependency of Flanders; and he fol- lowed up this step by resigning his kingdom of Castile and Aragon, and retiring to end his days in the convent of Yuste. This monarch was born in Flanders in 1500, the son of Philip of Burgundy by a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella ; and he had been crowned emperor in 1519. After a reign of va- rious vicissitudes he had concluded the Peace of Augsburg with the Protestants in 1555; this was his last notable act as emperor. He was a man of exceptional ability, and of many good qualities; but he was weary after wellnigh forty years of power, and was glad to shift the burden to younger shoulders. His death occurred two years after his abdica- tion. Philip was also a man of ability and energy; but he had not the same personal interest in the affairs of his American empire that his father had possessed. His em- pire extended to all parts of the world; he was king of Naples and Sicily, Duke of Milan, master of the Nether- lands, owner of part of Africa, and of the Philippines, as well as monarch of Castile, Aragon and Granada. These possessions constituted a vast responsibility, without taking into consideration the American territories; and Philip was content to derive from the latter the revenues which had been furnished in the past, without concerning himself too closely with the manner in which, in other respects, they 328 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA were administered. Instead of selecting men of tried vir- tue and ability, personally known to himself, he allowed the choice of viceroys to fall into subordinate hands ; with the inevitable result of lowering the character of the men ap- pointed. And the riches of Peru had by this time so far ex- ceeded those of New Spain, that the latter took a subordinate rank and was less an object of solicitude than the former. In 1571 the Inquisition was established in the New World. For more than forty years the Church had been endeavoring to import this institution from its Spanish home into the col- onies. "It is most necessary," declared the Council, "that the Holy Office of the Inquisition be extended to this land, on account of the commerce with strangers here carried on, and of the evil customs brought by them among us; and be- cause of the many corsairs abounding on the coasts, to the injury of both natives and Castilians, who, by the grace of God, should be kept free from heresy." Accordingly, in 1570, Don Pedro Moya de Contreras was appointed Inquis- itor-General, and his headquarters were fixed in the city of Mexico. By a special regulation, Indians were uniformly exempted from its jurisdiction, which was applied chiefly to heretics of other nations. "Twenty-one pestilent Luther- ans" were burned in 1574 in the Quemadero, a place within the bounds of the city, and now included in the Alameda. Thereafter the autos-da-fe were of frequent occurrence, though, owing mainly to the lack of suitable material, in comparison with that obtainable in the Old World, the num- bers of those murdered in this manner fell below the Euro- pean records. But the work went steadily on all through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, until, early in the present era, the Holy Office was suppressed throughout both Spain and the Spanish dependencies; and, save for a short revival, was finally abolished. It still exists, indeed, as an office in Spain, but its activities are directed chiefly against heretical literature or, in other words, against the education and enlightenment of the people. The chief aim which Philip II. set before himself was the THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 329 restoration of the Roman Catholic religion in the Protestant countries of Europe, and the establishment throughout his dominions of a despotic form of government. The conse- quence of this policy was the revolt of the Netherlands in 1566, resulting in their independence in 1579. He annexed Portugal; and formed the league against the Huguenots, in spite of which Henry IV. acceded to the French throne in 1594. It was he who sent the Armada against England in 1588; and his death occurred in 1598, deservedly wel- comed by the greater part of civilized mankind. His end marked also the fall of Spain's greatness, never to be re- vived. He was succeeded by a weaker man, Philip III. ; but the colonies suffered less than did the home government by the consequent political profligacy. The Creoles were be- coming gradually solidified into the semblance of a race with traits of their own, and the Indians were peaceable and quiet. "Whatever menaced the welfare of the mother country was of benefit to the colonies. There had been a disastrous eruption of the great moun- tain Popocatapetl at the time of the establishment of the Inquisition, in 1571 ; and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Mexico was overwhelmed by an inundation, simi- lar to those which had often afflicted the Aztecs in the past. The precautions which had been taken against such a catas- trophe proved quite ineffectual ; and there was a consultation as to what had better be done. The project of removing the whole city to the mainland was canvassed ; but the obstacles were too great. There was a chain of lakes in the valley of Mexico, and it was thought that by diverting the waters of the highest of these into another channel, the overflows might be prevented. This idea was put into execution ; and in 1607, fifteen thousand Indians were set to work sinking shafts at intervals, with a view to boring a tunnel, which was to be over four miles in length, thirteen feet in depth, and eleven feet wide. This huge work was completed in less than a year amid great rejoicings; but the tunnel proved too small; and during a number of years various attempts were 330 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA made to improve it, without much success. In 1614 there occurred another inundation, and the mouth of the tunnel having been blocked up, the whole city was under water, and so remained for five years. The engineer Martinez, who had been put in prison for blocking up the tunnel, was now released in order to open it again ; he did this, and also built a great dike, which ameliorated matters to some extent. Nothing, however, was really effective, until, in 1767, the plan of operations was changed, and an open canal was made instead of the closed tunnel. The work was finished twelve years later; and the result has been that the lake of Texcuco is now little more than a large marsh. Philip III. was succeeded by his son Charles II., who, dying childless in 1700, prepared the way for the wars of the Spanish Succession. The struggle was between France and Spain, and lasted from 1701 to 1714. All Europe was concerned in it, directly or indirectly, and many fortunes depended upon the issue; but the victories of Marlborough were decisive, and the death of Joseph, son of Leopold, in 1711, placed Charles on the imperial throne, thus removing the chief obstacle to the recognition of Philip of Anjou. The latter was accordingly recognized as king of Spain under the title of Philip V. The Bourbons continued on the Spanish throne until within fifty years of the present time. Mexico took no part in the war, and the death of Charles II. left the viceroys of New Spain, three thousand miles away, undisturbed in their place. There was nothing noticeable in Mexican affairs except the rather eccentric char- acter of the viceroy Revillagigedo, who acceded in 1787. He found the city in a very bad and neglected condition, and undertook the work of restoring it to decency. He was of an eccentric character, but just in his decisions and distin- guished for his energy, and for the severity with which he enforced the laws. There are anecdotes concerning him, of a kind similar to those which are told of Haroun Alrashid and Peter the Great. He was fond of walking amid the people in disguise, and finding out for himself the manner THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 331 of their life, and their private thoughts. Like all reformers, he made enemies, and their attacks finally drove him from power, and he returned to Spain in 1794. But the standard of order and cleanliness which he enforced continued to obtain in Mexico long after his departure. A school of engraving was opened by royal decree in 1779; and so much popular interest was aroused in it, that in 1783 the viceroy Galvez, with the royal approval, licensed the institution of an academy, called Academia de las Nobles Artes de San Carlos de la Nueva Espana. It was opened in 1785; but was removed later to another building, which it still occupies. It contains a fine collection of casts, many of which were presented to it by Charles III., and for many years it was under the direct protection of the Spanish gov- ernment, and was improved by the ministrations of eminent artists sent out by Spain. Humboldt describes the scene during his visit, with the spacious halls lighted by lamps, and hundreds of youths drawing from the cast, or from life; others copying designs for furniture or decoration ; the Cre- oles mingling with the Indians, the rich with the poor; for access to the privileges of the Institute was free to all. Dur- ing the revolution, however, the Academy fell into neglect, and it was not until the advent to power of Juarez that it was endowed with an annual allowance of thirty-five thou- sand dollars, which has sufficed to revive its character; it was renamed the National School of Fine Arts. The experi- ment is an interesting one; and it may be that the Indians are destined io develop a genius for art which their prehis- toric performances partly foreshadowed. It was in 1799 that Humboldt was in Central America, and his descriptions give us some conception of the aspect of things at that time. He saw the casting of the bronze statue of Charles IV. ; and admired the then new cathedral, with its stately towers overlooking the broad plaza in front. The Aztec calendar stone, with its strange carvings, had been discovered, and a collection of the Aztec manuscripts which had escaped the zeal of the old Bishop of the previous 16 332 century were subjects of the learned German's interested scrutiny. Perhaps the most remarkable antiquarian object, however, was the statue of the idol Teoyamique, which had been originally exhumed from the grave to which the conquistador had consigned it, during the viceroyalty of Revillagigedo, who wished to place it in the university; but the professors objected on the ground that it would disturb the orthodoxy of the Indian students, and tempt them to fall down and worship the deity of their ancestors. But Hum- boldt succeeded in inducing the authorities to permit it to be dug up in order that he might examine it and make drawings of it. Stranger images than this have since then been discovered in other parts of Central America. Chapultepec was occupied by a pleasure-house, erected there by the viceroy Galvez, giving a beautiful view over the widespread plain, with the volcano in the distance. An unfailing amusement was provided by the markets, which offer many lively and original features. The booths of the Indians are always ornamented with flowers, which, as in the days of Montezurna, are greatly loved by the Aztec In- dians. Hedges of fresh herbs, a yard in height, surround the fruit stalls, constructed of interwoven twigs and leaves, with little bunches of flowers inserted at frequent intervals. The fruits are brought to market in small wooden cages, ornamented with flowers. In the early dawn of the market days, the canals are filled with the canoes of the Indians, loaded high with produce and flowers. Floating gardens, as in Aztec times, still beset the marshy shores of the lake, in which both vegetables and flowers are cultivated. In his examination of the mines of the country, Humboldt found the methods of working them unchanged since the six- teenth century; and in spite of the emancipation of the In- dians from slavery, they were still kept at work in these underground prisons, carrying the ore up from the depths on their backs, or descending the thousands of steps to the bottom. Not only able-bodied men were employed, in this work, but old persons *of seventy, and children of ten years. THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 333 It would seem, therefore, that the Spaniards had solved the old problem of how to eat one's cake and have it too; they could not only free their slaves, and make it death to prac- tice slavery, but they could at the same time keep thousands of natives toiling in the mines, apparently for the pure love of the thing. The period of Mexican decay which began with the acces- sion of Philip II. was temporarily suspended under Charles III., who came to the Spanish throne in 1759. This son of Philip V. was a well-meaning creature, and his subordinates co-operated with him in making matters pleasant for Mexico, so that his memory is still held in veneration there. The Charles who followed him did not inherit his virtues; and affairs became difficult once more. The French Revolution broke out in his reign, and the owners of colonial empires became uneasy, to say the least of it. Charles sent an Italian adventurer, Branciforte, to assume the New Spanish vice- royalty; he was a man of base qualities, whose advance- ment was a job, engineered by the queen's favorite, Godoi. He did his best to enrich himself, in the traditional Spanish style, which he seems to have caught without difficulty; among other devices, he collected money for the erection of a bronze statue of the king, which was the more offensive to the reluctant subscribers, because the king himself was very unpopular. Napoleon now began to make himself the master of Europe, and a quarrel between Charles and his son Ferdinand gave him a pretext for intervening in Spanish affairs. He invaded Spain with an army in 1808, and the king fled from Madrid, and for a time meditated seeking ref- uge in Mexico, which, in spite of its wrongs, still remained faithful. In the sequel, however, Charles abdicated, and Ferdinand was entitled to the throne as Ferdinand VII. ; but Napoleon had other views, and forced him to renounce the crown in favor of Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, who had no liking for the dignity, and did not long retain it. The Spanish people wanted Joseph for king as little as he wanted to reign over them, and in 1813 his rule came 334 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA to an end. Councils were created to govern during Ferdi- nand's involuntary absence. These councils, or juntas, were thenceforth to play a large part in the events of the revolu- tion; they somewhat resembled the "Continental Congress" of our own Revolution. After the fall of Napoleon,, the Bourbon dynasty was re-established in Spain and in France, and Ferdinand VII. reappeared in Madrid. But during his exile, the Spaniards had found out that it was possible to live otherwise than under a despot, and the powers of the king were restricted. Branciforte, meanwhile, was obliged to cease his money- making industry, and to fly to France, announcing himself an adherent of Joseph Bonaparte. This absurd step settled his political fate; his estates were confiscated by the Mexi- cans and handed over to the existing authorities. Don Jose de Iturrigaray was the next viceroy, and a great improve- ment upon his predecessor. He stimulated commerce by affording it a measure of protection ; built the great Puente del Rey, or National Bridge, and repaired and improved the great highroad between the capital and Vera Cruz. Home industries were also advanced under his rule, and he organ- ized a militia, besides greatly strengthening the regular army. This latter measure, however, aroused apprehen- sions in Spain that the viceroy had designs of a political character: that he contemplated leading a revolt in Mexico, and seizing the crown for himself. Considering what had already occurred in South America before this time, such suspicions were not surprising. Whether or not they were justified is another question, never likely to be determined; for before the viceroy could prove his intentions, either for good or evil, the palace was besieged, he and his family captured, and shut up in the fortress of San Juan de Ulloa ; from which he only emerged to be carried for trial to Spain. We need not follow him further ; when we see an ox led into the slaughter-house, we can form a probable idea of what is about to happen. For a few months Marshal Garibay filled the place of THE SEQUEL OF CORTES 335 viceroy; but the central Junta of Spain soon ordered the Archbishop of Mexico to assume the reigns of government. This act marked the beginning of a new era ; not that the Archbishop introduced anything novel, but the discovery that a government could be overturned, and the world yet continue to revolve upon its axis, so surprised and pleased th? Mexicans that they could not afterward restrain themselves from repeating the experiment, as occasion or whim might dictate. They were catching the great contagion which, sweeping over Europe and North America, had now made its way downward to the south; the contagion of human free- dom. It displayed itself in many singular shapes, some of which wore the guise of despotism more pitiless, if anything, than that which had been overthrown ; but upon the whole the change was wholesome; and when its final stages have been reached, something beautiful may be looked for, rising transfigured from the debris of mere disorder and revolt. Here we will leave Mexico for the present, and betake ourselves to another part of the Spanish American domin- ions. 336 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA VII THE WEST INDIES THE Papal Meridian, drawn with a plentiful lack of geographical knowledge, but binding nevertheless upon all Catholic countries, gave all the "West Indian Islands to Spain; and the right of first discovery confirmed the gift. Columbus, as we have seen, fancied that he had found an archipelago off the East Indian coast, and con- formed his nomenclature to that hypothesis. After the truth was realized, it was too late to change the names; ail that could be done was to prefix the qualifying word "West." As the West Indies, therefore, this remarkable group of islands is still known, though they are distant half the circumference of the terraqueous globe from the point where Columbus supposed them to be. There are upward of two thousand of these islands, all but four of which are very small, and the majority of which are mere atoms of coral or rock emerging from the sea. They have been geographically divided into separate groups; to the whole, the name of Antilles has been ac- corded, because, in the sixteenth century, it was believed that there was a large island, sometimes called Antilla, somewhere between Europe and the east ; occupying, in the Atlantic Ocean, about the position really held by Australia m the Pacific. Subdividing this comprehensive group, we have the Greater Antilles, including Cuba, Haiti and San Domingo, Porto (or Puerto) Rico, and Jamaica. These lie between latitude 84 and 66, approximately, and between the twenty-third and seventeenth parallels of north latitude. East of Porto Rico, which is the easternmost of the Greater Antilles, begins the archipelago of the Lesser Antilles, which curves round toward the south hi a graceful crescent, ending THE WEST INDIES 337 with the comparatively large island of Trinidad, a few miles off the north coast of Venezuela. There is another distinct group of islands called the Bahamas, situated north of Cuba and Haiti, and extending north as far as the latitude of Lake Okeechobee in Florida. Three small islands, now be- longing to the Dutch, lie a little east of the mouth of the Gulf of Venezuela. Barbadoes, though grouped with the Lesser Antilles, is really a distinct geographical formation, the depth of water between it and its nearest western neighbor, St. Vincent, being about six thousand feet. Geologists believe that Cuba and the other large islands are part of the American continent, organically connected with the main; but in past ages a subsidence of the land caused the ocean to flow between and sever them therefrom. The present Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, were then vast plains, with deep lakes or inland seas here and there ; the soundings in the Caribbean show vast depths in places, going down as far as twenty-seven thousand feet in one spot, a hundred miles north of Porto Rico, and often attaining depths of twelve thousand and fifteen thousand feet. The water within the Bahama group, on the other hand, is quite shallow, generally less than one hundred feet, though here also there are deep crevasses as much as a mile deep. The Bahamas are chiefly of coral formation : pillars of coral rock, the slow growth of many ages, beginning as irregular columns, but spreading out mushroom- wise as they near the surface, and then uniting their edges, till islands of irregular shape and of various sizes are formed. Under- neath these formations, the tides of ocean flow, causing the levels of inland ponds or lakes to vary. The crescent of the Lesser Antilles is of another origin; the islands may be regarded as the summits of a chain of mountains. The northern section of this group is often referred to by mari- ners as the Leeward Islands, while to the southern series the corresponding name of Windward Islands is given; these names having reference to the direction of the trade winds, which blow in the easterly or westerly direction at 338 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA different times of the year, owing to the atmospheric suction caused by the tropic sun. Of the two thousand protuberances of one kind or another which constitute the Bahamas, some seven hundred may fairly be called islands; and of these thirty-one are inhab- ited. Their aggregate area is reckoned at about five thou-. sand four hundred square miles, with a total population of fifty thousand persons. The large island of Cuba contains forty-eight hundred square miles, and its population has numbered as much as sixteen hundred thousand. Jamaica is of more than four thousand square miles' area, and its population, all but a small percentage of whom are negroes, is about seven hundred thousand. Haiti and San Domingo (the island is politically divided into these two parts) has an area of over twenty-eight hundred square miles, and a population of over sixteen hundred thousand. There are probably more inhabitants in Haiti than in Cuba to-day, though the former is not two-thirds the size of the latter. Porto Rico is the smallest of the Greater Antilles, with an area of three thousand five hundred and fifty miles ; but it has a population of eight hundred and six thousand persons. Of the Lesser Antilles we may say without going into particulars that their aggregate area is a little under five thousand square miles, and their population about twelve hundred thousand. Thus the total land surface of the West Indies may be put at ninety-five thousand square miles, of which eighty-five thousand belong to the Greater Antilles; and the total population is five million seven hundred and fifty thousand, of which the Greater Antilles contain four and a half million. The heat of the sun, combined with the peculiar forma- tion of the archipelago, produces the phenomenon known as the Gulf Stream, which flows eastward and northward with gradually diminishing velocity out of the strait between Cuba and Florida. Mr. A. K. Fiske, in his admirable monograph on "The West Indies," thus accounts for it: "The great equatorial current is produced by rapid evaporation under THE WEST INDIES 339 the tropic sun, which draws the cooler and denser water from north and south toward the equator. The great ve- locity of the earth's surface in its rotation toward the east, as the diameter perpendicular to its axis increases, draws these two currents from north and south into a single broad stream tending west upon the central belt of the globe. As this strikes upon the South American coast it is deflected to the northwest and thrown upon the barrier of the Antilles. Far the greater part of its volume is again deflected north, to be spread over the Atlantic; but vast quantities of the water make their way among the huge pillars and over the vast sills of the Caribbean barrier and rush on, to be forced into the Gulf of Mexico by the swelling mass behind. As the movement is continuous, the invading force of equa- torial water is turned back by the resisting shores of the Gulf and by the volume of cooler water that drains down from the Mississippi River, and is driven out again through the Florida Straits to form the Gulf Stream. . . . Here it is thirty-seven miles wide and twelve hundred feet deep, and its volume is two thousand times as great as that of the Mississippi emptying into the Gulf the drainage of a continent, while it moves with a more rapid flow than the greatest rivers of the earth." The phenomenon of the trade winds Mr. Fiske explains as follows: "The heat of the equatorial zone causes the air to expand and rise, and this produces a pressure from north and south which draws currents along the surface of the globe from the direction of the poles. The rotation of the earth toward the east, increasing in surface speed with increase of diameter in its latitude, tends to draw these currents into an 'equatorial stream; but the freedom of expansion and movement characteristic of air causes it to join the rising mass where the currents meet in the equatorial belt, and to flow back in counter-currents to the north and south. In the northern hemisphere the surface currents, drawn from the direction of the Arctic zone and deflected to the south- west by the revolution of the earth, constitute the northeast 340 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA trade winds. Sweeping over a wide expanse of ocean with- out interruption, they become within a certain zone remark- ably steady and uniform, though affected more or less by changes of season and external atmospheric disturbances. . . . The outer verge of the Antilles is in the direct track of the trade winds, which have a perceptible effect in tem- pering and equalizing their climatic conditions. Incidentally they give more rain to the northern and eastern coasts than to those bordering on the Caribbean Sea, and bring the rainy season, after the first tropical heat of the year, by condensing the moisture that rises from the ocean." Hurricanes originate in vast eddies in the atmosphere, caused by the currents of heated air from the eastern tropic regions meeting the returning currents of the trade winds moving east or north ; these eddies descend obliquely until they strike lower currents rushing in to fill the equatorial vacuum. The course of the hurricane is usually across the lower part of the Lesser Antilles and so over the larger islands, or some of them, its spirals always circling from left to right. But these tornadoes are only occasional, and do not prevent the beneficent climatic effect of the meteor- ological conditions in the "West Indies. There is a rainy season from June to the end of September, a cool dry season during the winter, and a hot dry season during the spring; the greatest heat is never above 98, and the average of summer is about 90, while in the cool period it goes down to 78 in the day time, and 70 or lower at night. These are temperatures at sea-level; on the mountains it is much cooler; frost has been known on the summit of the higher mountains, and at an elevation of from, one to two thousand feet the night temperature often goes as low as 60. No large animals are native to the West Indies, though the remains of gigantic fossil creatures have been found in Cuba and Haiti. Snakes are common on some of the islands, and entirely absent from others. Cattle of all kinds have been introduced, and some of them, such as hogs and goats, flourish exceedingly; horses do fairly well; but cows seem THE WEST INDIES 341 to miss the coolness of their native north. All kinds of plants, on the other hand, attain a triumphant growth, and the forests of the islands have an almost appalling luxuri- ance. Mangoes, oranges, bananas and other fruits are at home in these regions, and most of the vegetables which are grown in the north can be raised there. The day is near when Cuba may be expected to supply the whole of our continent with vegetables during the winter months; the fertility of the soil, in that as in other islands, surpasses all anticipation. The possibilities of food production of the "West Indies have hardly been touched as yet; with proper tools and workmen they will be found practically limitless. The growing of sugar, coffee and tobacco form but one chapter in the story. It may be said of the islands that they are as potentially useful as they are beautiful a mine of inexhaustible wealth, as well as a garden of loveliness. With ordinary attention to hygiene, they are as healthful as any part of the world ; and for some diseases their climate is a specific. Before the advent of the Spaniards they were inhabited by two distinct races the Arawaks, or vegetable feeders, and the Caribs, flesh eaters, who are supposed to have come from the South American coasts. The Arawaks are re- garded as aborigines ; but remains of a different race have been found in some of the limestone caves, which warrant the inference that an older race may have preceded them. The Arawaks were a gentle and peaceable people, disinclined to war, and able to perform such minor acts of agriculture as might be needed to supplement the natural fertility of the soil. They spoke various dialects of one language, showing that their sojourn must have been a long one. There may have T^een some intermingling of the Maya people from Central America and Mexico; but they were less advanced in the arts of life than the latter. A subdivision of the Arawaks occupied the Bahamas, and called themselves Yucayos, modified by the Spanish tongue into Lucayos. They lived by fishing, and were amphibious in their hab- 342 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA its; the water was warm, and, like the natives of the Pacific isles, they delighted to swim and dive in it. Their diving was phenomenal, and they foraged among the bases of the reefs, under water, as freely as ordinary people do on dry land. They went naked, and seldom needed the shelter of a roof; when they did, it was soon made oat of a few stakes and palm leaves. Fish nets they made out of cotton fibre; their beds were of the same material and were called ham- acas, whence our word hammocks. Their weapons were bows and arrows, and darts with fish-bone heads ; their ves- sels were large canoes made by hollowing-out the trunks of the ceiba trees. Their color was a reddish brown, and their stature short but sturdy. They compressed the heads of the children in infancy, so that the front of the skull was flat- tened, and inclined backward from the brows. The Cubans, of the same race, called themselves Ce- buynes, and were of the same inoffensive disposition as the Lucayos ; but owing to the rich soil of Cuba, which did not exist in the Bahamas, they were agriculturists, raising maize and manioc; they manufactured cotton fabrics, and pottery of a rude description. Their huts were large, and contained several families. They smoked tobacco, which even then was of excellent quality in Cuba, and they had a liking for personal ornament which did not obtain among the more primitive natives of the Bahamas. The people of Jamaica were of a similar kind, and all alike were unwarlike. Haiti was as populous when discovered as it is now ; it was divided into five parts, each with its cacique; but in the interior there was a mountainous region inhabited by Caribs, and said to be rich in gold. These Caribs occasionally came down from their heights and attacked the peaceful Arawaks. The religion of all the Arawaks was a worship of natural forces, and they seem to have had some conception of a su- preme deity. Borinquen, as Porto Rico was called by the natives, was partly inhabited by Arawaks, and partly by Caribs, who had advanced thus far in their invasion from the south. The Lesser Antilles were entirely under the THE WEST INDIES 343 sway of the latter, who were taller and of lighter color than the Arawaka, and of an aggressive and sanguinary temper ; they painted their faces and bodies to inspire terror, and they ate flesh ; often it was the flesh of human beings, which they devoured either because it was easier to get on the islands than any other kind, or because the practice was connected in some way with their religious beliefs. They dressed in jingling necklaces and girdles of bone and shells, with bunches of feathers at available points. These people would rather fight than eat, fond as they were of the latter indulgence ; and the Spaniards found them such sturdy foes, that they finally gave up the attempt to oust them from their crescent of islets. They spoke two languages, one derived from their mothers, who were generally women stolen from the Arawaks, and the other that of the Carib race proper, which was allied to the races of the main. In addition to the arts practiced by the Arawaks, they made ornaments out of metal, kindled fires by rubbing two sticks together, and made inscriptions on stone. Altogether they were more alert in mind as well as in body than their neighbors the vegetarians, and their conception of religion seems to have been somewhat higher: they built altars to the Unknown God. Their houses resembled the wigwams of our northern Indians; they were chaste and cleanly in their lives, and if it were not for their cannibal propensities, and their ad- diction to fighting, they might be regarded as a very decent and estimable race. It is needless to say that never, at their worst, did they compare with the bloodthirsty and licentious Spaniards. We have already noticed the blighting effects of Spanish domination. Coming with the thirst for gold already devel- oped, their first and chief thought was to obtain it; and to that end they sought the mines. But they would not do the work of mining themselves; they compelled the Arawaks to do it for them ; and as the latter were disinclined and unaccustomed to such toil, and incapable of supporting it, they died by thousands, and other thousands of them com- 344 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA mitted suicide rather than submit to the atrocious cruelties of their new masters. "To these quiet lambs," says Las Casas in his "Relacion," "endued with such blessed quali- ties, came the Spaniards like most cruel tigers, wolves and lions, enraged with sharp and tedious hunger; minding noth- ing else but the slaughter of these unfortunate wretches, whom with divers kinds of torment, neither seen nor heard of before, they have cruelly and inhumanly butchered; that of three million people which Hispaniola itself did contain, there are left remaining scarce three hundred persons." (This calculation is perhaps exaggerated; there were not many more inhabitants in all the Greater Antilles than Las Casas gives to the one island alone.) "And for the island of Cuba, which contains as much ground in length as from Valladolid to Rome" the island is about nine hundred miles long "it lies wholly untilled and ruined. The islands of St. John" (Porto Rico) "and Jamaica lie waste and deso- late. The Lucaya Islands" (Bahamas), "neighboring toward the north upon Cuba and Hispaniola, being above sixty or thereabout with those islands which are vulgarly called the islands of the giants, of which that which is the least fertile is more fruitful than the king of Spain's garden at Seville, being situate in a pure and temperate air, are now totally unpeopled and destroyed, the inhabitants thereof, amounting to about five hundred thousand souls, partly killed, and partly forced away to work in other places; so that there going a ship to those parts, to glean the remain- der of those distressed wretches, there could be found no more than eleven men." As fast as the population of one island was exhausted, the Spaniards proceeded to depopulate another; until at length they arrived at the Lesser Antilles, and were checked there by jthe indomitable Caribs. But labor must be had; and opportunely, the African slave-trade came into exist- ence. The African coast belonged to Portugal, according to the arrangement; but though the Spaniards could not legally follow the business, there were others who could THE WEST INDIES 346 and did; notably the English, under the lead of Sir John Hawkins, who made a fortune by importing cargoes of these creatures, who were not at that time regarded by any one as being real human beings with souls ; but a sort of connecting link between men and beasts, devoid of all natural rights, except the right to be worked to death without recompense. But they did not die so readily as the Arawaks, and were therefore in great demand ; and as many as four thousand of them were annually imported to the West Indies. So the mining industry went on, until the mines began to show signs of exhaustion, and the South American continent, rather than the islands, came to be looked to as the true hunting- ground for the precious metals. But the slaves were on hand, and they must work at something. Columbus had brought sugar-cane from the Cape Verde Islands, and it had taken to its new habitat with excellent results. Sugar had hitherto been a curious luxury in Europe, selling at an extravagant price, like some rare drug; but in the West Indies it could be produced by the cargo, and it soon became evident that fortunes were to be made out of it even more quickly than out of gold. Tobacco was also becoming exceedingly popular in Europe; and cotton was a profitable industry. Here, then, was work for the negroes ; and in order to get the full value of their riches, the Spaniards attempted to monopolize the trade in all these staples. This, like most of the rest of their colonial history, is an illustration of the result of killing the goose with the golden eggs. Had they opened the trade, they might have got by far the best part of it without trouble, and amassed wealth enough to satisfy even their greed ; but in trying to keep all other nations out, they opened the door to illicit traffic of all kinds, whereby they finally lost every- thing. England, .France and Holland could sail the seas as well as Spain, and they delighted to harass the Spanish trade, to swoop down upon her colonies, and to intercept her ships bearing gold and produce. Spain had a large fleet, but it was of course utterly inadequate to cope with such 346 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA foes, operating over so vast a space. Year by year, as the struggle went on, they lost fully half of each year's gains, either by capture or destruction. In a short time, smuggling and piracy became recognized industries in the Caribbean. Moreover, although Spain was conceded to be the legal pos- sessor of the whole archipelago, the knowledge acquired of its value by the pirates and corsairs led to Spanish rights being defied by other nations, and, in times of war (which were of constant occurrence in those ages), to the capturing of islands by the belligerents. And most of the money which the West Indies brought to Spain was spent in the effort to maintain her hold upon them. The attempt was temporarily successful as regarded the Greater Antilles; though later Spain lost both Haiti and Jamaica, and finally, as we of to-day have seen, Cuba and Porto Rico. Long before the end of the coming century, the beautiful islands which she oppressed and strangled so long will have shown the world of what prodigies they are capable. Piracy was the natural sequel of unlicensed trading with the settlers and natives ; when the latter did not feel inclined to purchase or exchange the goods the traders offered them, the traders took what they wanted, leaving the equivalent, or not, as might seem most expedient. The French corsairs led the way in these transactions; and gradually an irregular warfare arose which had the effect of rendering all property insecure, and all lives imperilled. In 1538, and again in 1554, Havana was attacked, burned and looted. The Span- iards built forts, many of which still remain, and they patrolled the seas with their ships; but the destruction of their trade went on. The really effective settlers kept pull- ing up their stakes and departing for more congenial fields on the mainland; and the Island colonies were much re- duced. In 1562 Hawkins began the series of voyages which made him rich, and a member of Parliament; he brought slaves from Africa, and took back cargoes of sugar and other commodities which commanded a good price in European markets. Francis Drake accompanied him on his third THE WEST INDIES 347 voyage, being then a youth of twenty ; the Spaniards sur- prised them while refitting at Vera Cruz, and they escaped with only one of their five ships. Drake, in after years, amply revenged himself for this mishap. He was the scourge of Spain in the Caribbean and on the Pacific coast for many years, and died at last with his armor on in Porto Bello. By the close of the sixteenth century, Spain was in evil case; Porto Rico was no longer inhabited, and the three other large islands were suffering for lack of labor, not to speak of the hostile corsairs and privateers. The era of discovery and conquest had not ended so brilliantly as it had promised to do when it began. England, being now Protestant, ignored the validity of the Papal gift to Spain; and France did the same, because she and Spain were at war. The Netherlands, after shaking off the Spanish yoke, were more than ready to take a hand in the game. Portugal claimed Brazil, and Spain could not say her nay. But the mainland still was Spain's; that is to say, practically the whole American continent, south and north; for the English colonies had not yet begun. But Eugland got a foothold in Guiana before the end of the century, and Holland established her Dutch West India Company in 1621. She also seized the small islands off the Gulf of Venezuela in 1634. Ten years before the English had taken St. Kitts and Nevis; and circumstances caused them to divide the former with the French. Later the mixed colony was driven out by Spain, and when the time came to return, England and France were at war. This is an instance of the inextricable tangle of ownerships which afflicted many of the islands of the archipelago for many years. All the European powers that were interested in them were chronically by the ears with one another; some- times they would change sides, like partners in a cotillion ; from year to year it was impossible to predict who would be foes and who friends next. One effect of the scramble and confusion was, that all the available islands became known; the rights of the natives were of course ignored 348 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA throughout, and they were exceedingly lucky if they escaped with their lives. In fact, this luck was denied them; and to-day there remains but a handful of the Caribs in one of the Lesser Antilles, and no Arawaks at all. The Bahamas had the best of the situation at this period; nobody seemed to care for them; indeed they were practically depopulated, and there was neither gold nor other valuable produce to be had there. But the English made a settlement in New Providence about 1630, though they did not hold on to it at the time, nor was it until late in the eighteenth century that they finally took possession. Barbadoes, which had never really been discovered by the Spaniards, was taken by the English as far back as 1605, and was colonized twenty years afterward ; and the English have held the place undisturbed ever since. Tobago was also appropriated by England, but Trinidad remained with Spain until much later. Jamaica had been reduced to a bloodstained wilderness by Spain early in the seventeenth century, and there were hardly three thou- sand inhabitants left in it, including fifteen hundred slaves. In 1655, Cromwell being then ruler of England, a fleet under Admiral Penn captured the island ; the Spanish residents fled to Cuba, and the negroes took to the woods and mountains, where their descendents still remain unconquered under the name of Maroons which being interpreted is mountain- dwellers. A rabble of English reprobates and Jews went out to colonize the place. The island of St. Thomas had been a stronghold of pirates, but was taken by a Danish trading company, and the two other Danish Islands were purchased by Denmark afterward. But altogether this story of the fight for the West Indies is a strange and stirring one, crowded with vicissitudes, and full of the wildest romance, and the most savage tragedies and dramatic passages. The whole truth of what happened in these two centuries can never be known ; but what we do know is stimulating enough, and in fact it has given a color to English romantic fiction which is perceptible even yet. It was in the seventeenth century that the buccaneers THE WEST INDIES 349 enjoyed their extraordinary predominance. Their name is derived from a peaceable verb or noun, referring to the process of curing meat by smoking it. This was first prac- ticed by the natives, and from them the wandering mari ners, with the quickness of their kind, caught it up; the French language then stepped in and called one who pre- pared meat by smoking, "boucanier," and the English fin- ished the matter by Englishing it into buccaneer. But it was not long before the last thing that any one thought of in speakirg of these wild outlaws was their meat-smoking habits. They were much too famous for other things. The thing began quite naturally, and without premedi- tation. The sea was full of roving vessels, crowded with crews most of whom had no home but salt water, and no moral or other restraints of any kind. Knots of these sav- age mariners would go ashore to hunt hogs and have fun with the natives; and many of them found the environment so agreeable that they never rejoined their ships. They might or might not be susceptible to the delicious beauty of the scenery; but they no doubt appreciated the charms of the soft and equable climate, and the voluptuous ease of life, which no labor was needed to support; or if any labor was to be done, were not the natives there to do it? If they wanted a wife, there was a dusky woman to bear and rear their children, and attend to their domestic comforts. And then, if they wanted (as of course nearly all of them did) to amass riches, with the vague idea of some time going home to spend it, there were Spanish galleons to be captured, and colonies to be raided. It was *' camping-out" in excel sis, with robbery and piracy thrown in as condiments. The first considerable settlement of them got together in Tortugas, off the northwest of Haiti, and they gradually collected quite a fleet of small vessels; and being attacked by Spaniards, they entered upon a war of reprisals. A sort of Freemasonry was established among them, which their common hatred of the Spaniards cemented, and they called themselves the Brethren of the Coast. They were also HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA known as freebooters, meaning free-plunderers, which was metamorphosed by the Spanish into Flibustier, from which we get our word filibuster. But under whatever name they figure, they made their mark, and a very bloody one it was; though one cannot help feeling a great deal of sympathy with outlaws so picturesque and audacious. When France attacked Haiti, in 1641, using Tortugas as a base, the buccaneers helped her; when Spain got pos- session of Tortugas, in 1654, the buccaneers became allies of the English in their expedition against Jamaica; and when Penn's fleet took the island, they established them- selves at Port Royal, on the spit of land guarding the en- trance of Kingston Harbor. Port Royal then became a place such as was never known in history before or since; a day spent there would have been as full of adventure and danger as a dozen ordinary lifetimes. The buccaneers were countenanced by the English owing to their hostility to Spain. They also had other gathering places, in the Bahamas and elsewhere ; and men arose who were regarded as their lead- ers. To be a leader of such a gang must have required qualities of no common sort. Montbar, a Frenchman, was one of them, and Lolonois was another. In Jamaica, Henry Morgan was their most famous captain; he was a Welsh- man, and he was in the habit of plundering cities on the main, and bringing his spoils to Port Royal. All went well until war between Spain and England ceased; and Morgan's exploit of burning the city of Panama was the last notable deed accredited to the Caribbean buccaneers. Morgan made his peace with the authorities, and lived to be twice Acting Governor of Jamaica; Charles II. bestowed upon him the honor of knighthood, and he died rich and at peace with the world. The buccaneers were succeeded iii the next century by pirates pure and simple, who were their natural heirs; for when there came to be great difficulty (owing to the treaties of peace and declarations of war between various nations getting mixed up) in knowing who your enemy was, the THE WEST INDIES 351 time was come for men who were enemies of all alike. The most notorious and picturesque of these blackguards was Edward Teach, called Captain Blackboard; no pirate who so thoroughly filled the role as he did has ever been known. He was the terror of the seas to all who sailed upon them, while he lived; and he died in character, in a fight with a British warship. They cut off his head, and fixed it at the end of the bowsprit. A description of him by one who had the pleasure of his personal acquaintance runs as follows: "His beard was of extravagant length; as to breadth, it came up to his eyes. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons, in small tails, after the manner of our Ramile wigs, and turn them about his ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders, with three brace of pistols hanging in holsters like bandeliers, and stuck lighted matches under his hat, which, appearing on each side of his face, his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful." His deeds were quite as terri- ble as his looks, and there is no feat of daring or brutality which he did not rival in his own career. He was the hus- band of as many wives as a Mormon elder of the old style; and the number of men he had killed with his own hand he could not himself have told within a score or so. Another great pirate was Bartholomew Roberts, who was the espe- cial foe of Dutchmen, and who has the unique distinction of having drawn up a set of very stringent and estimable rules for the discipline of his crews. They were not to play games for money; they were to turn in at eight o'clock; they were to have no women or boys on board; they were to keep their weapons clean, and they were to be shot if they attempted to desert. This code sheds an unexpected side-light upon the pirating industry. As for Captain Kidd, the best known of all pirates, not so much on account of what he "did, as he sailed," as by reason of the iniquitous trial which resulted in his condemnation, he began his career as a putter-down of piracy in the Caribbean ; but he seems to have found in the 352 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA vice something first to endure, then to pity, and finally to embrace; and though his exploits in piracy were not per- formed in the archipelago, their fame is wide enough, and the amount of treasure he is alleged to have buried would pay the English debt. After much confused fighting for possession of various islands between the belligerents, a determined struggle be- gan between England and France in 1756, and lasted seven years. At the outset, France held the southern Caribbees, except Barbadoes and Trinidad ; three years after war broke out, the English got possession of Guadeloupe, which had previously been French, and kept hold of it till the war was over. In 1762 Rodney, the famous English admiral, took a fleet of eighteen ships from Barbadoes to Martinique, and captured that island, Granada, Tobago, St. Vincent and St. Lucia. Spain siding with France, Admiral Pococke laid siege to Havana and captured it; which brought about peace the following year. By its terms, Cuba was returned to Spain in exchange for Florida, and the smaller islands were divided between England and France. But, in 1778, war broke out anew, owing to the alliance between France and the United States, then fighting Eng- land for their liberty. English and French fleets seized islands in the Lesser Antilles, belonging to each other; and Count de Grasse came over with a large fleet, and captured Granada and St. Vincent, before the English, under Ad- miral Byron, could arrive upon the scene. Things did not go well with the latter, and Rodney, though no friend of the then administration, was sent to supersede Byron and save the day. On his way out he captured a Spanish squadron off Cape Finisterre for Spain was again on the wrong side of the scrape and also destroyed a force at Cape St. Vin- cent; after sending part of his fleet to the Mediterranean, he arrived at St. Lucia in March, 1780. Here he tried to bring on a fight with a French fleet, double the size of his own, under Count de Guichen; but the count would not en- gage. Later in the year Holland got caught in the trouble, THE WEST INDIES 353 owing to her support of the United States, and Rodney im- proved the opportunity to seize the Dutch island of St. Eu- statius. This, however, did not stand, because there were English interests involved in the trade of St. Eustatius; and Rodney was in trouble with his home authorities in conse- quence. He came home, sick and angry, in 1781. Now fortune turned for a while against England, which was beaten in the United States, and was in danger of losing her West Indian acquisitions owing to the activity of De Grasse. There was nothing for it but to send out Rodney once more ; he might not be agreeable to the English cabi- net, but he could fight Frenchmen. He overtook the French fleet off Dominica, split it in two, and completely defeated it; for which, in spite of his enemies, he was made Lord Rodney with a pension of two thousand pounds. By the peace which followed, England got back all her islands except Tobago; but when war once more began, ten years later, she recaptured this, captured Martinique, St. Lucia and Guadeloupe, and took Trinidad from Spain, which was still fighting on the French side. England was now every- where victorious; and, in 1814, a peace was made by which she was allowed to keep Trinidad and St. Lucia, but Curacoa was restored to the Dutch. During the war, in 1805, Nelson had swept through the Caribbean in pursuit of the French, whom he chased to Spain and defeated at Trafalgar. It should not be forgotten, too, that Haiti gained its independ- ence in 1801, though the eastern part remained under French control till 1808, when Spain, with the help of England, got possession of it, and retained it till the revolution of 1821, which resulted in the establishment of an independent republic. The division of the islands was now as follows: Spain kept Cuba and Porto Rico; Haiti and San Domingo were republics of negroes ; Jamaica, the Bahamas and most of the Lesser Antilles were England's; France had Guadeloupe, Martinique, and other small islands; Holland kept Curacoa, Aruba, Buen Ayre, St. Eustatius and a few more; Denmark 354 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA retained what she had had from the first ; and so things re- mained until, in 1898, the war between Spain and the United States banished the former power from American waters forever. The attempt to abolish the African slave-trade in the West Indies was begun, late in the eighteenth century, by such men as Wilberf orce and Clarkson ; but it was not until long after that it ceased not only in name but in reality. The slaves of Englishmen were at this time worse treated than those of the Spaniards, for the reason that English owners in Jamaica were non-residents, and their overseers acted without restraint ; whereas the Spaniards actually lived on their plantations, and came into relations with their slaves more or less resembling those between our own Southern planters and their bondmen. Denmark, Great Britain, France, Holland, and finally Spain issued decrees abolish- ing the slave-trade, between the years 1792 and 1820; but it is estimated that half a million blacks were imported illicitly after the prohibition. The next step was to put an end to slavery itself; but this was regarded as Utopian. The emancipation in Haiti, however, caused agitation among slaves in the other islands, which was increased by the radi- cal influence of missionaries. But it was not until 1833 that the British Parliament declared that slavery in British col- onies 'must end on the first of August of the following year. France followed this example fourteen years later. Den- mark freed her slaves about the same time. Holland did not come into line until 1863, when a partial measure of re- lief was introduced, and complete emancipation was granted in 1873. Spanish slaves in Porto Rieo were freed the same year; but those in Cuba were not emancipated till 1886. The effect of these proceedings differed according to the local circumstances in various islands. It practically ruined the sugar business in Jamaica, and to a less extent Trinidad and Dominica suffered; in Barbadoes, where the free ne- groes had to work or starve, owing to the fact that all the land was under white ownership, there was little trouble. THE WEST INDIES 355 French islands were similarly affected, but suffered less, on account of the actual residence of many of the French plant- ers on their plantations; and in the Spanish islands, where there were more white than black inhabitants, little incon- venience was felt. But the great problem of the West In- dies is the existence there of millions of negroes, who cannot, in the majority of cases, be forced to work, and who consti- tute an idle and menacing element of vast extent throughout the archipelago. The example of Haiti shows the hideous results of allowing the negroes to take care of themselves. In Jamaica, there are more than sixty negroes for every white man, and the island, owing in part to the bounty on other kinds of sugar, is practically gone to waste. The mooted project of our taking it in exchange from England for our newly-acquired East Indian possessions cannot be too strongly condemned. The negroes cannot be deported, and they are by no means dying out quite the contrary; so that unless some means of dealing with the difficulty be found, they will in time crowd out the whites by regular natural increase. The outlook, in this direction, is not reassuring. Let us now look a little more closely at the character and condition of some of the more important islands. Cuba, as has been remarked, is about nine hundred miles in length, following the curve of its dorsal ridge, though between lati- tudes it is a hundred and forty miles less. Its width varies from one hundred and twenty-five miles to forty. It con- tains about forty-five thousand square miles of territory within its proper boundaries, and two thousand more in the adjoining Isle of Pines on the south coast. The geological formation is peculiar; a calcareous shell overlies a substra- tum of tertiary rocks, which in some places projects through the crust. The mountain range of the Sierra Maestra runs along the southern coast of the province of Santiago de Cuba, about on the twentieth parallel of north latitude, ascending in the Pico de Turquino to a height of over eight thousand feet. North and west of this mountainous region is a de- 16 356 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA pression, through which flows the river Cauto with its tribu- taries. Beyond this broad valley, still north and west, is a region of detached mountains and gorges ; but they prevail chiefly along the north coast, the south being lower, with fertile plains and numerous minor rivers. This brings us to about the centre of the island, where the breadth is scarcely seventy-five miles, and across which a trail, or trocha, formerly took its course; the region is low, with bordering marshes. Thence, proceeding west, there are more irregu- lar mountains, though seldom rising higher than a thousand feet; they reach the southern coast near the present town of Trinidad. Beyond this, the southern coast again becomes low, until beyond the fine harbor of Cienfuegos it sinks into marshes. The northern coast still rises in mountainous ele- vations toward Havana, on the north, and these elevations continue along the western extremity of the island, like a backbone. But the final tongue of western land, from the town of San Julian to Cape San Antonio, is marshy. The rivers are small; the largest, Rio Cauto, being but one hundred and thirty miles in length. Its course is nearly east and west, and it empties into the Gulf of Guacanabo. The other large river is Sagua La Grande, on the north coast, which reaches the sea on the eightieth meridian. The majority of the rivers vary according to the season in the amount of water they discharge; and owing to the calca- reous shell overlying the rock, and forming enormous cav- ernous regions underground, many of these streams disap- pear during their course, sometimes to reappear further on, but often vanishing completely, and seeking the sea by a subterranean passage. There are several lakes in different places, but fewer than would be the case but for these under- ground leakages. Large lagoons, however, exist in the low- lands along the coast, abounding in alligators and turtles. A great part of the Cuban coast is fringed with reefs of coral formation; the most considerable of these is on the north coast, west of Nue vitas, where a series of great cayos stretch along in a northwesterly direction, at a distance of from GUAYAQUIL HARBOR, ECUADOR VALPARAISO Spanish America, THE WEST INDIES 357 ten to twenty miles from the real shore. The total length of this series of cayos is about one hundred and fifty miles, with an average breadth of ten miles. Smaller islets and broken reefs lie along the greater part of the northern shore. Off the southern coast there is an immense quantity of small islets, spreading out over an area about one hundred miles in width. By far the largest of these is the Isle of Pines, already mentioned, which has several small hills upon it. There is a great growth of pines there a tree found nowhere else in the West Indies. The navigation of the Cuban coast is dangerous, but there are several fine harbors, such as Bahia Honda, Cabanas, Mariel, Havana, Matanzas, Car- denas, Nuevitas, Nipe and Malaguete on the north; and on the south, Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba, and Cienfuegos. Very little is known of the gold-producing capabilities of Cuba. Not much gold has been discovered, and such beds as were found were not of great extent. Silver and copper have been found, but in no sensational quantity. Iron also exists, but to what extent is unknown. Good bituminous coal is present in many places, and deposits of pitch. Slate quarries are worked near Havana, and marble and jasper are also found. What is first required is thorough exploration and scientific surveys; almost nothing is yet known of the Cuban interior; there are twenty million acres of unclaimed land, and thirteen million acres of it are virgin forest, abounding in mahogany and ebony and other precious woods. Fruits, farinaceous plants, and maize are abundant, and many spices also grow in the forests. The soil is of enormous richness, and hospitable to all manner of exotics. Of animals there are few; the raccoon was indigenous; dogs and cats were brought by the Spaniards, and there are also European deer. There are alligators or caimans, many kinds of land lizards, snakes, one at least of which is venomous; scorpions and tarantulas, unpleasant companions, but not so deadly as in Central America. There are ants of all kinds and in vast quantities, and another troublesome inhabitant is the land crab, which is large and of a restless and investi- 358 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA gating disposition. There are about two hundred species of birds, and of these many are humming-birds. The vulture and turkey buzzard are numerous, and are not molested, on account of their activity as scavengers. The climate is delightful except during the height of the rainy season, and is healthy in the upland regions at all times. The rainy season, which is also the warm period, lasts from May to October; it is dry and comparatively cool from November to April. It does not rain heavily for more than a part of the wet season, and there are occasional showers during the dry season. The heaviest rains are on the northeast coast. The heat seldom is as high as 90, and in winter the temperature sinks as low as 58. With proper drainage, there would be no unhealthy districts in Cuba, and the higher ground is always healthy. In addition to the political divisions of fehe island, it is also referred to in common speech by names applied to the various component regions. Thus the Vuelta Abajo is the end west from Havana; from Havana east to Santa Clara is Vuelta Arriba ; next to this is the Cinco Villas section ; and the part lying east of Puerto Principe is Tierra Adentro. The town of Havana was founded in 1519, and its cathe- dral was built in 1714. Velasquez had made a settlement near Baracoa in 1511; but Hernando de Soto was the first royal governor, appointed in 1538. He fortified Havana before setting out on his expedition to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Both the Morro and the Castillo de la Punta were built before the seventeenth century, and often strength- ened afterward. During the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries there was but little progress in the col- ony; cattle raising was the chief industry up to 1580, when tobacco and sugar were cultivated; but the buccaneers so paralyzed trade that the prosperity of these industries, des- tined to be so great, was slow in coming. Still more destruc- tive to well-being of an industrial or commercial sort was Spain's own stifling policy, and the wholesale robbery car- ried on by the officials sent from Spain to govern the island. THE WEST INDIES 359 After the Seven Years' War, matters began to mend, estates were taken up, and the discovery was made that fortunes were to be won by their cultivation. The white population was increased, many Spanish peasants being induced to emi- grate. Governor Don Luis Las Casas, appointed in 1790, made improvements in trade and industry, and the Count of Santa Clara, who followed him, strengthened the defences of the ports. The revolution in Haiti caused numbers of Frenchmen from that island to take up their residence in Cuba, with beneficial results. When, in 1808, Napoleon denied to Ferdinand the right to ascend the Spanish throne, the members of the Cuban Cabildo all took the oath of alle- giance to the latter, thereby earning for the island the title of the "Ever-Faithful." But the government of the colony was in a rotten condition, and Cuba was really on the verge of revolt. In 1825 the powers given to the governor were practically absolute, as under martial law; he was called captain-general, and was always of the rank of lieutenant- general in the regular army. He was answerable for his acts only to the sovereign of Spain ; his power was supreme not only in military matters, bu^ in civil and ecclesiastical as well. The six subordinate provincial governors were also military officers appointed by the crown, and they were sub- ject to the captain-general's orders. There were thirty-four lesser captaincies, and each town had its ayuntamiento and mayor; but all were under orders of the head at Havana. A more compact and arbitrary despotism could not be con- ceived. There were two military departments of Havana and of Santiago; the navy had five stations at points on the coasts; the peace footing of the army was twenty thousand men; there was a bishopric at Santiago which had exclusive jurisdiction up to 1788. The Havana diocese was then cre- ated, and Santiago afterward became an archbishopric. The Inquisition had been in operation since the sixteenth century. There was a supreme court at Havana, and two superior courts, of which one was at Puerto Principe. The number 360 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA of judicial districts was twenty-six, and there were many local magistrates. All the higher and most of the lower offices were filled by Spaniards, according to the Spanish policy. Corruption was notoriously rife among them all. Even the rector of the university was subject to the captain- general. The greater part of the Cubans were illiterate, in spite of educational regulations. The salary of the captain- general was the same as that of the President of the United States; the archbishop received $18,000, and each provincial governor $12,000. All charges were paid by the revenues of the island, in addition to six million a year sent to the home government. The taxes, nevertheless, were to a great extent stolen by the officials. It is little wonder that under such a system the Cubans, who were deprived of all power to better their condition, were unable to make any progress in productivity. The six provinces of the island divide it into sections running north and south. Pinar del Rio is the westernmost of these; then comes Havana, which includes the Isle of Pines. The best tobacco region is in Pinar del Rio, which is about conterminous witlj Vuelta Abajo. Matanzas has no southern coast-line, Santa Clara coming in beneath it; it has the best sugar plantations, and is comparatively well cultivated. Santa Clara, besides sugar, grows many fruits and is supposed to have mineral deposits. Puerto Principe is in the low middle of the island, partly mountainous how- ever on the north, and overgrown with woods ; here too are the most extensive caverns. Most of the revolutionary ris- ings have had their rendezvous in this region, the fastnesses of which are impenetrable. Santiago de Cuba covers the east end of the island, and has copper and iron deposits. Havana, chief city of Cuba and of the "West Indies, lies on the western shore of a fine harbor, the entrance to which is through a narrow, well-defended channel. The bay is partly surrounded by low hills. A wall surrounded the city on the land side in old times, and the intramural and extra- mura) cities are still distinguished from each other. There THE WEST INDIES 361 are several public buildings, in addition to the churches, and there are handsome prados and gardens. The hotels are numerous but bad; there are four theatres and innumerable cafes. The town is the centre of the tobacco business, and has many manufactories of cigars. The population is in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand. The town of Pinar del Rio, in the interior, has twenty thousand inhabitants and is surrounded with tobacco plantations; there are mineral springs near San Diego, in the Organos hills; Guines, also inland, is the centre of the agricultural interest. Matanzas, east of Havana, has ninety thousand inhabitants and a splendid harbor; it is named from a massacre of natives which took place on its site. Its business is exporting sugar and molasses. Cardenas is still further east, and is called the American city, owing to the number of Americans in business there as manufacturers and traders ; it has railway connections with all important parts. Further east, the chief ports of trade are on the south coast. Cienfuegos has what has been called the finest harbor hi the world, but the town was not built until 1819. Trinidad, a much older town, is inactive owing to its inferior situation at the end of a series of small bays. There is a fine tobacco region in this vicinity. Santa Clara, inland, is surrounded by valuable mineral veins. Puerto Principe is not a port, but stands midway between the two coasts; Nue vitas, its port, originally bore its name. San- tiago was founded by Velasquez in 1515 and was at first the Cuban capital ; its harbor is but a hundred and eighty yards across at the mouth, but runs inland six miles, with the town at its furthest extremity. The cathedral was built in 1523. The town of Manzanillo is at the mouths of the Rio Cauto, and is a port for sugar export and tobacco, and also for honey and wax. Finally, Baracoa, though the original landing-place of Velasquez, and four hundred years old, has but five thousand inhabitants, and deals only in cocoa and bananas. It is on the northern coast, near Cape Maisi. This wonderful island lay practically dead until this cent- ury. In 1774 the total population was but one hundred and 362 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA seventy- two thousand, half of which was slaves. The plan tation owners were few, and there were few small holders. The French immigrants, who introduced coffee, somewhat stimulated the movement of things, and this was carried on for a while by the surprising conduct of Napoleon in Europe, which led people to think that anything was possible even increase of personal liberty in Spanish colonies. With one thing and another, the Cuban population had increased by 1811 to some six hundred thousand persons of different col- ors and degrees of servitude; and for a dozen years the island had real prosperity; the returns from coffee aloiu/ were twenty million dollars per annum. The population continued to increase, but, singular to say, the whites out- numbered the blacks; until, at the outbreak of the late war, out of an estimated population of sixteen hundred and fifty thousand, nine hundred and fifty thousand were white, and only half a million negroes; the rest were Spaniards born in Spain. The negroes were little better off than when they were slaves ; the brown people occupied a position be- tween the negroes and the Creoles in social estimation ; the Creoles were not admitted to social equality with the Span- iards, but had an exclusiveness of their own, and a certain local patriotism. Although trustworthy statistics do not exist, owing to the negligence of the Spanish rulers, it is estimated with probable reason that half the island is still covered with for- est; and that out of the thirty million cultivatable acres, only two million are actually employed in productive agri- culture. The possible mining resources are still unknown, and though there are forty known varieties of valuable woods, besides many that are unclassified, their utilization has hardly begun. The railway system is only rudimentary, and other means of travel are deficient in proportion. In this respect Cuba compares badly with Jamaica, which has a magnificent system of roads traversing the island in all directions, and kept in constant repair at great expense. In short, we might say that Cuba has been hitherto not so much THE WEST INDIES 363 dead as unborn. When one considers that, with only one- fifteenth of the soil under cultivation, the agricultural prod- uct of the year 1892 reached the total of one billion dollars' value, we may form a conjecture as to what the result would be if all the available soil were utilized, and were, moreover, treated with scientific knowledge and economy. As to what the mineral returns might be, we have no data for making any estimate whatever. The Creoles are upon the whole an intelligent people, and some of them obtain education abroad; their intellectual calibre compares very favorably with that of the Spaniards. The men are largely free-thinkers, though the women are kept in unquestioning submission to the Church. The life of the white peasants is very primitive, and the tendency is to adopt the habits of the negroes. They have no spirit, no principle, and no brains. Yet it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that, under proper stimulation, they might finally become useful members of the community, in their own lowly sphere. "We shall trace the events which led up to the Cuban insurrections in a later chapter. Of Jamaica there is not much to be told in a history of Spanish America; for the Spaniards occupied the island only from 1509 to 1655, and did little there worth mentioning. The island as to its phys- ical features resembles Cuba; but has minor peculiarities of its own. It is much more broken up by mountains and ravines; insomuch that few level spaces can be found throughout its extent. Its soil is fertile, though hardly equal to that of Cuba; and on the limestone mountains, which constitute the greater part of the area, it is compara- tively thin. On the northeast coast, on the uplands, grows the pimento tree, from whose berries allspice is made; the silk-cotton tree is abundant, there are many species of palm ; and mahogany and ebony, and other woods of great hard- ness, throng the forests, many of which are still virgin and but little explored. In fact, the exceeding difficulty of trav- ersing the perpendicular hills and headlong gorges, and the 364 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA danger involved in the "sink-holes" vertical pits or cylin- drical cavities in the limestone, of all sizes and diameters, from two or three feet to a hundred or more make travel in the forest unusual; and there is probably more space rela- tively in Jamaica which has never been trodden by human foot than in any of the other islands. The sink-holes, being wholly hidden by the dense vegetation, are only discovered when the explorer is about to plunge into them ; and doubt- less many persons have perished in this manner whose fate will never be known. Skeletons of animals, tusks of wild boars, and similar remains, are often found at the bottom of these holes, telling their silent story. None of the West Indian islands contains, in an equal space, so much scenery of entrancing beauty as does Jamaica; and the atmospheric effects are equally varied and fascinating. The climate dur- ing the greater part of the year is near perfection, if it does not quite attain it. The same products that characterize Cuba can be grown here, though of course the available area is indefinitely less ; coffee flourishes on the mountain sides ; there are numbers of sugar plantations, though that industry mostly ceased with the abolition of slavery and the appear- ance of beet sugar. Oranges grow wild all over the island, and of many varieties; certain kinds are the most delicious of all oranges known ; but no attempt has ever been made to classify or cultivate them. Mangoes also flourish every- where, and in many varieties; they are a staple food with the negroes, but for whites the taste must be acquired. The forests are filled with the bread-fruit; and in several parts of the lower lands there are vast plantations of bananas and plantains; but the trade in these suffers from over-competi- tion. In mineral wealth Jamaica has never made any notable show ; there has been a plentiful lack of scientific investiga- tion in this direction; but it is hardly likely that anything of much value would reward such research. In any case, there is greater wealth in the soil than under it, if the means be taken to bring it forth. The first Spanish colony in Jamaica was near the Bay of THE WEST INDIES 365 St. Ann, on the north coast ; it was named Sevilla del Oro, and was founded in 1509 by Juan d'Esquival. Another and more important settlement was that of Santiago de la Vega, now called Spanish Town, on the south coast, twenty miles east of Kingston. Diego Columbus built it in 1525. Two or three attacks upon the island were made by the English prior to Cromwell's time, but no permanent foothold was ob- tained until 1655. The Spaniards spread themselves sparsely over the island, but accomplished little beyond exterminating the native population. The chief crop cultivated was cacao. As we have seen, the resident Spaniards fled to Cuba when the British took possession, and the slaves became "Maroons" hi the recesses of the Blue Peak range, in the eastern end. Haiti was the Hispaniola of the Spaniards ; it is next in size to Cuba, and is probably quite as fertile, and might be made to produce almost as much wealth. It is the most mountainous of the Greater Antilles ; is of irregular shape, contains an area of more than twenty-eight thousand square miles, and has a coast line of fifteen hundred miles. There are several good harbors, and the Bay of Samana is thirty miles long by ten wide; a number of small islands adjoin the coast. The mountains near the centre of the island reach a height of nine thousand feet, and some other peaks which have never been explored are believed to be a thousand feet higher yet. Magnificent mountains and mountain chains are found in all parts of the island. There are also more important rivers in Haiti than in any of the other Antilles. The substance of the island is solid rock, through which water cannot find its way, as it does through the limestone crust of Cuba and Jamaica. There are numerous superb valleys through which great streams flow to the sea; the sands of the River Ozama are flecked with gold, and at its mouth, in consequence, the eager Spaniards founded the city of Santo Domingo. There is probably much gold in the country, but no effort has been made to discover its locality. There are no regular roads in the country even to this day, and the negroes have for the most part lapsed into a state 3fi6 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA worse than primitive savagery. All the vegetable products that grow in Cuba are equally susceptible of profitable culti- vation here ; but nothing has been done in the way of sys- tematic farming. The range of temperature between the highlands and the lowlands is greater than in any other of the islands, but the climate at the proper elevation is deli- cious and healthy. Earthquakes have been not uncommon, but there has been no volcanic upheaval within historic times ; and the hurricanes lose their power before they reach Haiti. In the early days of the discovery, Ovando founded the town of Salva Tierra near where Aux Cayes now stands; but Santo Domingo was the chief settlement, and most of the other Spanish towns were not far distant from it. Santo Domingo was captured by Drake, in 1585, and suffered other disturbances ; and the French succeeded in obtaining a foot- hold at Petit Goave on the north side of the southern penin- sula at the western end of the island. They established plantations, traded with the buccaneers, and by means of the simple expedient of importing women slaves along with the men, succeeded hi replenishing their stock without con- stant new importations. They raised the ordinary crops, and defended their settlement by building a fort which they called Port au Prince. So firmly were they established that at the Peace of Ryswick, Spain was obliged to concede to them the right to remain. This colony took the name of St. Dominique. When the blacks got their independence, they called the Spanish part of the island Haiti, while the French part received the appellation of Santo Domingo. But in the popular mind, there is small distinction between the two; they are both a fantastic parody on popular government. The boundary between the two is still indeterminate; but the French colony was the more successful, and soon became the more populous. The black revolution was precipitated by that of the French. The white citizens were ready for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity; but they of course had no idea of including the negroes in that arrangement. The French Assembly in Paris, however, being lavish with the- THE WEST INDIES 367 ory, decreed that all persons of color born of free parents should be admitted to the rights of French citizenship. Hereupon trouble began, and not only the children of free negroes, but the slaves themselves, assumed a menacing at- titude. The Assembly now made matters worse by revok- ing their decree. Commissioners came but could effect noth- ing; and the Spaniards attacked Santo Domingo from the land side, while the English assailed it from the sea. In August of this year (1793) one of the commissioners got upon a stump and declared, out of the fulness of his own heart and the emptiness of his head, that everybody was free without distinction. Then arose Frangois Dominique Toussaint, called Toussaint L'Ouverture, a full-blooded Af- rican, but a man of parts. His father had been a prince in his native country, and Toussaint was a natural leader of men. Under his command the native forces ran the Spanish and English out of the country ; France recognized his rank, and in 1795 he became dictator. He showed that he could rule in peace as well as hi war; a constitution was made after his suggestions, free trade was established, and he was chosen president for life. Still, the new state was nominally at least in subjection to France. Unfortunately for poor Toussaint, Napoleon came into power at this time, and he objected to having an ex-slave assuming dictatorial airs within his dominions, no matter how vehemently he might protest that he was only governing under the wing of France. He sent an army of thirty thousand men to co- erce the black champion; the commander of the force, Leclerc, attempted at first to get hold of the dictator by stratagem, but he would not be limed. "War then began; but the French fought at a disadvantage, and were besides threatened by yellow fever. Leclerc finally succeeded in getting his hands upon Toussaint by means of deceptive representations; though there is little doubt that Toussaint would not have delivered himself up had he not felt that he was beaten, and hoped to placate his conqueror by submit- ting betimes. This was in 1802. He was taken to France 368 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA in July of the same year on a charge of conspiracy, and was kept in prison until his death about nine months later. Meanwhile Leclerc stayed in the island and ruled it with an iron and a bloody hand; but the revolt could not be quenched, and new leaders arose to take Toussaint's place. Bloodhounds were sent over to help the French; but the negroes had a far more terrible ally in the shape of yellow fever and other diseases; and the French soldiers were at last cornered in Cape Haitien, reduced to extremities, and filially forced to surrender. This victory ended French power in the island. Dessalines, one of the negro gen- erals, was chosen president; he promptly made himself emperor, ordered the murder of every Frenchman on the island, and in general conducted himself in so savage a manner that he was in turn murdered by his own retinue. He was succeeded by rivals, little if at all better than him- self, and all wishing to be kings. Finally, in 1820, Boyer became president of the whole island, and was acknowl- edged by France upon promising to pay ninety thousand francs indemnity for property destroyed. As might have been expected, the money was a long time in getting paid. For twenty- two years after 1822 the two republics of Haiti and Santo Domingo were under one ruler; after which the separation of the latter was decreed, and has been ever since maintained. The subsequent history of the two states has been a more or less revolting tale of despotism, murder, brutal ignorance, grotesque pretensions, and general chaos; one hideous and absurd figure after another rising to power, and being again hurled down to destruction. It is hardly worth while to examine the "constitution" of a country like this. Whatever laws are good, are not enforced; each so- called president is in fact a murderous despot, and the entire administration is corrupt. All the inhabitants of Haiti are black, or nearly so ; no white man is allowed to own prop- erty in the island. The religion is a ghastly mixture of Voudooism and cannibalism; infants are cut to pieces on the altars and devoured with frightful rites, and the pagan THE WEST INDIES 369 orgies which take place would be incredible, were they not too well attested. Sexual virtue and social and commercial honor do not exist in the community ; the towns are shabby and ruinous, the roads practically non-existent, and the finances ridiculous. Amid the prevailing squalor and filth- iness we see ape-like creatures stalking about in tawdry finery, and rejoicing in far-resounding titles of honor. Of the two republics, Santo Domingo is by far the more respectable or perhaps we should say, the less scandalous. Here there are several thousand inhabitants of pure Spanish blood, and numerous quadroons and other half-breeds. The Catholic religion still retains a hold upon the inhabitants, and voudooism is proportionally less rampant. Upon the whole, Santo Domingo is superior to Haiti precisely in meas- ure as its inhabitants are of white blood, or of mixed descent. The moral of the story is plain. Negroes are incapable of self -government ; and any attempt to give it to them, so far from tending to raise them in the scale of civilization, surely results in degrading them far below the level of native Afri- can savagery. This lesson should not be lost upon our gen- eration ; in more ways than one we are approaching a period when we shall be forced to take decisive action upon it. A few years ago no one would have supposed that Amer- icans would ever feel much interest in Porto Rico; but the results of our war with Spain have brought the island vio- lently into the foreground. It is to be the future home of many of us, and the basis of the commercial interests of many more; and whatever information is to be had con- cerning it, is pertinent. But inasmuch as it has been from the first an almost undisturbed Spanish possession, there is not as yet much to tell about it. The island stands in the path which leads from the Atlantic to the Isthmus, with deep water on all sides of it. The Mona Passage, between it and the eastern extrem- ity of Santo Domingo, is that through which commerce would naturally proceed. Its strategic value is therefore obvious. It is of an oblong figure, forty miles wide and a 370 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA hundred miles in length, diminishing in breadth toward the east, and ending there in a blunt promontory. The bays or inlets are few. A few miles off the eastern end lies Crab Island, appertaining to Porto Rico, about seventeen miles by five in dimensions ; and the islet of La Culebra lies due north of Crab. Tiny islets of no importance are distributed in the vicinity. The area of Porto Rico is rather less than that of Jamaica, but much more of the space is available for habi- tation and cultivation. A low mountain chain traverses it from east to west, with spurs running northward from it; its height is about fifteen hundred feet only. The Sierra de Luquillo in the northeast has at its culmination an altitude about two thousand feet higher than this. The hills are cov- ered with soil, and nowhere save in the peak of El Yunque does the rocky substratum appear through the surface. In this respect the formation is entirely unlike the other Greater Antilles. Forests clothe the hills, and there is a layer of limestone, sometimes hollowed out in caves, over the lower rock. Many rivers flow through the land, some of which are of considerable size ; most of them run north or south. The largest are the Arecibo and the Cayagua. The rainfall on the north side of the island is heavy, owing to its direct exposure to the trades; whereas, in the south, irrigation has occasionally to be practiced. The chief northern ports are Arecibo and San Juan de Porto Rico; on the west coast are Mayaguez and Aguadilla; Guanica, Guayanilla, La Playa and Arroyo are on the south, and Humacao and Fajardo on the east. Hardly any mining has been done in the island, which has always been an agricultural region ; but precious metals are known to exist under the surface, and gold, copper and iron have been produced in small quantities. Lignite and limestone are also found. The forests afford the usual tim- ber peculiar to the West Indies, and there is also a tree called Sabino, which is said to be a special product of the island. Fruits and plants of all kinds grow in rich profusion, owing to the favorable surface, and there are innumerable ferns, THE WEST INDIES 371 some of large size, which add to the prevalent and remark- able greenness of the landscape. Birds, insects, and snakes are few, and of quadrupeds only the armadillo and the agouti are indigenous. The products of the island are to- bacco, maize, cotton, cacao, yams, plantains and bananas, oranges, coffee and sugar. The summer climate is warm and moist, and August and September are relaxing, and there are occasional thunderstorms of appalling fury, and more rarely hurricanes. Upon the whole the climate is sa- lubrious, and with proper drainage in low and wet districts, there should be almost entire freedom from diseases. When Columbus discovered the island in 1493, he dis- carded the native name of Borinquen and substituted that of San Juan Bautista ; the population at that tune was peace- able and numerous. There was serenity for fifteen years after this, for no more Spaniards appeared during that time; but in 1510 Ponce de Leon, under the persuasion that gold was to be had there, came over from Hispaniola and took possession. He founded the city on the north coast toward the east which he called San Juan Bautista de Porto Rico; it stood within the largest and best harbor of the island, and has remained its capital ever since. Porto Rico came in time to be the name applied to the entire island. Ponce de Leon adopted the repartimiento system in apportioning the island to his followers, and it resulted as usual in the extermination of the natives, who offered a passive resistance to slavery. The Caribs were the only ones who attempted resistance; and Ponce on his side attempted to clear them out of the Lesser Antilles ; with disastrous results. He soon afterward set out through the Bahamas and Florida on his search for the Fountain of Youth, and was miserably slain by the arrows of the Indians. Meanwhile, and for a long time afterward, Porto Rico made small progress ; being attacked by Caribs, Dutch, French and English at different times; and San Juan was sacked by Drake in 1595. Nevertheless, the Spanish held on to the island; but they made no effort to develop the ulterior resources. As late as 1765 there were 372 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA less than fifty thousand inhabitants on the island; and it would doubtless have been captured from Spain by some one of her many enemies, had any one suspected how valu- able it really was. In the latter part of the eighteenth cent- ury, Spain sent out slaves and Spanish peasantry to occupy the land, and the little place began a season of prosperity. Here, as in Cuba, the whites exceeded the blacks in number; and when the revolutions on the main occurred, many per- sons spontaneously sought Porto Rico for peace and quiet. The island presently grew to be the most populous of the group in proportion to its size; the latest estimate making the population about nine hundred thousand, of whom two- thirds were white, and of the remainder there were more mulattoes than blacks. The harbor of San Juan is entered by a winding channel, and is roomy and deep within ; tall hills are visible in the background, but the immediate coast is low. The Morro and other fortifications are so close to the city, that the latter is exposed to attacks by modern long-range guns. The town is compact and crowded, being built on the island at the east side of the channel ; the houses are of the usual stuccoed, two-story kind; the ground story being occupied by negroes and other poor folks, the upper by "society peo- ple." Rain furnishes the only water supply, and there is only surface drainage; in consequence of which the town is dirty and unwholesome. The Marina, with its commer- cial buildings, lies below the town on the bay, and there is a small suburb, Puerta de Tierra, on the main road inland. Arecibo stands some distance inland, on a shallow river; it serves as port for the fertile region to the south. Agua- dilla is on the other side of the cape Ahujerada, on the west end of the island ; it ships sugar and coffee. South of it is Mayaguez, also some way back from the actual coast, but it has a considerable export trade in oranges and other fruits. Guanica is in a marshy district on the south coast ; but the harbor is a good one, and it is the port of a productive region. Ponce is a town of some pretension, and the largest in the THE WEST INDIES 373 island; it has handsome houses, mineral springs, and baths at Coamo. East of it is Guayama, near the port of Arroyo ; further east, the island is sparsely populated ; and the towns stand back from the coast, there being no harbors and con- stant winds. There are salt marshes along the south coast, where salt is prepared for the market. The interior towns of the country are of importance only as repositories for produce destined for the ports. Porto Rico never was a place of large plantations ; the holdings were small and numerous, and the proportion of peasant proprietors was large. The slaves were relatively few and well treated, and after emancipation lived comfort- ably with the whites. Until "the beginning of this century there were hardly any large settlements, and the population, scattered about the surface of the island, seldom saw one another except on days of religious festival. Even to-day, most of the inhabitants are country people, living along the valleys, and cultivating their fields by the methods of a by- gone age. Modern farming tools are unknown; but such is the fine quality of the soil, that with proper management tobacco equal to the best Cuban kinds could be raised; and it is said that more sugar could be produced to the acre than in any of the other islands. The lower levels are given up to sugar cultivation, with tobacco on higher ground inland, and coffee on the slopes of the hills. The means of transpor- tation are deficient; much of the carrying is done in baskets on the heads of the women and men. There is only one good road, connecting San Juan with Ponce, a distance of eighty miles. In other places, such roads as there are get washed out in the rains, or choked up by the tropic vege- tation, which is like a living wild creature, pushing in wherever it is not kept constantly in check. The population is upon the whole of a low order, though some of the Creoles are fairly well educated; but the peas- antry and the negroes are wholly illiterate. The latter live on their holdings, and their needs are so primitive that they buy little in the markets. Meat is seldom eaten by them ; 3?4 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA they subsist and thrive on fruit and vegetables. To civilize such people will not be easy ; they are spiritless and unenter- prising; artificial wants will have to be created for them, and even then they will be slow to take any personal trouble to fulfil them. If there were not so many of them, they would readily be absorbed and disappear in the more active and intelligent population which is now likely to immigrate to Porto Rico; but as it is, there will be difficulties. Inertia is even more embarrassing to deal with than active hostility. After making all due deductions, however, Porto Rico is a possession well worth having, and must grow more valuable every year. PART III WE have already remarked that it was the overturn of established ideas and institutions in Europe, and especially in France, that gave the impulse to change in Spanish America. The success of the North American Revolution had left the Spanish colonies appar- ently unmoved, although certain individuals among the people had been thereby induced to consider the possibility of improving the condition of their country. But the French Revolution had results which practically compelled the colo- nies to action ; it was not so much a question of choice as of necessity. The people did not rush into revolution; they were driven into it, and for a time they would not regard themselves as enemies of the mother country. But when they were once embarked in the business, they fought with fury, and hatred of the bitterest sort replaced their original loyalty. They had witnessed the cruel murder of Tupac Amaru, and the fruitless agitations of Miranda, and had seemed to acquiesce in the result. But these things had no doubt sown seeds of actions which were as yet hidden from themselves. "When at last the time to fight came, they be- came conscious that there had long been latent in their minds a preconception of the issue. Let us once more glance at the causes which led up to the crisis. After the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, there ensued a period of reaction; and conservatives hoped that all the old order, with its abuses, might return once more, and continue as if nothing had happened. This, of (375) 376 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA course, was absurd; but it is certain that France sbowed signs of repentance, and the desperation which had urged on the people to their bloody excesses, dying away, left a tendency to retract and compromise. It was at that epoch that the character of Napoleon proved to be decisive. He had shown himself an unexampled soldier, and he had come to be regarded, both in himself, and as the favorite leader of the army, as the commanding figure of the time. The civic chiefs feared him, and also thought that he alone had the strength to restore and maintain order. He was elected consul, and was not long in making himself emperor. Eu- rope was at his feet, with the exception of still unconquered England; and he had made his arrangements to subjugate her likewise. His far-reaching plans had not forgotten the Americas; Spain could not resist him, and he designed through her to gain control of her colonies. Portugal happened at that juncture to have formed an alliance with the one power that Napoleon had cause to fear, and which he chiefly hated England. To his profound intelligence a plan immediately presented itself whereby he might turn Portugal's opposition into a means of arriving at the realization of more schemes than one. Portugal lay on the further side of Spain; in order to reach it by land, he must lead his army across Spain. The subjugation of Port- ugal was a trifling matter ; it might have waited, or it might have been foregone altogether. But the complete control of Spain was of importance, and Napoleon used his supposed designs on Portugal as a pretext for getting his hands on Spain's throat without a struggle. All he had to do was to request permission to bring his army across the country, in order to attack Portugal; and then, upon arriving at Madrid, he would have the Spanish king in his power, and could make him do his bidding. This stratagem was no sooner conceived than it was acted upon. Manuel Godoi was the favorite of the queen Maria Louisa, who had raised him up from an obscure officer of the guards to the most influential position in the kingdom. Godoi was no friend THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 377 to the Spanish people, nor did they love him ; but he was the man for Napoleon's purpose. The latter had no difficulty in obtaining from him the safe-conduct that he required; and early in 1808 the French army was in Madrid. Spain was at this time in a state of apparently hopeless disorganiza- tion. Queen Maria Louisa was acting as ruler for her imbe- cile husband Charles IV., through her creature Godoi, and there were parties in the country for and against her. Napo- leon fancied that this internal dissension was his opportunity ; he had decided to make his elder brother Joseph king ; Charles was forced to abdicate, and his son Ferdinand was preparing to succeed him, when Joseph was put forward. But Napo- leon had not calculated upon the aversion of the Spanish people, of whatever party, to any such manufactured sover- eign as Joseph ; they resented the expulsion of the Bourbons to a man. There was an English army in Spain at this time, for England was ready to assist that country against the common enemy; but Napoleon sent two hundred and fifty thousand men, and though Soult was worsted in the battle of Corunna, on January 16, 1809, Sir John Moore was killed and the English were compelled to retreat. English reinforcements, however, were already on their way to Lis- bon, with Sir Arthur Wellesley in command, and English money had been sent to induce Austria to make a diversion on the Danube. This compelled Napoleon to withdraw his best troops from Spain, to fight and win the battle of Wag- ram ; but meanwhile the English were defeating the remnant of the French army in the Peninsula. Charles IV., after ab- dicating, had intimated a wish to reconsider his act; but to this Ferdinand, who was his mortal enemy, would not con- sent, and popular opinion supported him. Ferdinand himself however was powerless, and was interned in France. Joseph was on the throne, though he had no liking for it. Had the Spanish colonists but known it, he might have proved their best friend, for he was a democrat at heart, and opposed to all oppression. But the colonists never stopped to think of that; they were fired with loyalty and patriotism; and in 378 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA spite of the cruel wrongs which they had suffered from the House of Bourbon, they would hear of no king but Ferdi- nand. He was the anointed sovereign; he was monarch by right Divine. There is something quite pathetic in this attitude; it is another indication of the lamentable state of ignorance and superstition in which the colonists were sunk. The House of Bourbon had never shown any consideration for them ; on the contrary it had murdered, robbed and mal- treated them from the outset; had denied all their humble entreaties for mercy, and a chance to breathe and live; had kept them from all voice in the management of their own affairs; had imposed upon them an insolent and cruel body of office-holders who had no sympathy with them ; had para- lyzed the development of their country by iniquitous regula- tions of commerce, trade and industry ; had forbidden them to profit by their own crops, or to even raise certain crops which might interfere with monopolies elsewhere ; had taxed them to death, and in every way outraged and rebuffed them. And Ferdinand, the present representative of this evil House, was one of the most vicious, selfish and hidebound members of it; he did not even possess courage, but cowered and whined under Napoleon's eye, and dared make no attempt to grasp the power which legally was accorded to him. Such was the creature whom the American colonists, of all people in the world, extolled and worshipped, and preferred to hon- est Joseph Bonaparte. It is a pitiful and humiliating spec- tacle, and it carried its own penalty. But the phantom of a regency was raised up, and Fer- dinand, the object of this purblind loyalty, was a prisoner. What was to be done? How could the colonists be faithful to a king who did not reign? That made no difference : they would wait until he came to his own again. But meanwhile how would they be governed? by the regency? No: for they doubted the good faith of the regency ; for aught they knew, it might be secretly in league with the treacherous French. The French continued to occupy Spain with their army; and though the soldiers of the regency had fought THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 379 with this army, they had been defeated, and it was possible that they were being sacrificed for hidden ends. The colo- nists, therefore, would submit neither to Joseph nor to the regency, or juntas ; and all that was left for them to do was to elect juntas of their own, to rule while Ferdinand was in abeyance. And such juntas, being elected by the people, and of them, would introduce the reforms for which the country had so long been groaning. There was no thought or even wish for independence. This arrangement was then natural and indeed inevita- ble; but it encountered a stubborn obstacle. The country was full of Spanish office-holders, who clearly perceived that a junta government would mean their dismissal, and the consequent stoppage of their system of highway robbery. They represented to the juntas in Spain that the colonies were guilty of infidelity. Anything would be better, in their opinion, than to allow the thin edge of the wedge of reform to be inserted. The spoils were too rich to be surrendered without a life-and-death struggle. Here were thousands of Indians being held to labor in the mines, under circum- stances of horrible inhumanity, but profitably from a finan- cial point of view : were they to be set free? Was the right of cultivating grapes, tobacco, and olives to be surrendered to the people? Were the huge duties levied upon manufac- tured goods to be lightened, and the importation of them taken away from the Cadiz merchants who now controlled it? Were the revenues of the colony to be handled in a man- nsr which would prevent every thieving official from sticking his fingers into them? Was the tithes system to be abolished? These tithes were supposed to be distributed in fourths, one each to archbishops and bishops, to deacons and canons, to curates, and to church-building funds; but as a matter of fact, much of them went into the king's pocket, and the rest were farmed out to various persons, all of whom took toll from them : was this agreeable arrangement to be put an end to? And were the vast grants of territory made by the Spanish government to favorites, thereby placing the whole 17 380 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA country under the control of a few rich and ruthless men were these to be discontinued, or revoked? Not if the Span- ish office-holders could prevent it! Spain herself, however, could at the moment do little to help her royalists in America, by reason of her feebleness and degradation at home. The "Council of the Indies" had transferred the Spanish provinces to Napoleon, who had, in May, 1810, dispersed the central junta in Spain. Rather than submit to the requirements of the colonists, the Spanish office- holders would have given their fealty to the Corsican. But the colonists' movement was widespread; the causes of it were the same, from Mexico to Chili. We have to multiply many-fold the aggravation occasioned in our North Ameri- can colonies by King George's Stamp Act, in order to appre- ciate what these Spanish Americans had endured. And yet redress of intolerable grievances was all they asked. Their juntas acknowledged Ferdinand as king, and in opposing the rule of the Spanish juntas, they did not oppose the royal authority, whenever it should be exercised. Let it be per- mitted them to cultivate what their soil would bring forth, to open their ports to the commerce of all nations, to enjoy free trade among themselves and with Spain, to suppress monopolies in favor of the king and the public treasuries, to be allowed to work their own quicksilver mines, to be eligible equally with Spaniards to offices of rank and employ- ment : such were their very moderate requests. Moderate or not, they were regarded by the Spanish authorities (or what then passed for such) as monstrous and rebellious. Nor were these authorities mollified by the fact that the colonies had freely impoverished themselves in order to give help in the war against France. They were intent upon reve- nue only, and anything that interfered with that was treason. The struggle began in 1809; for the attempt of Ubalde in Peru, in 1805, had had as untoward a fate as that of Tupac Amaru in the previous century. But in April, 1809, a junta was formed in Caracas, Venezuela, and this example was followed in July of the same year in Peru; at Quito THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 381 in August. Santa Fe and Buenos Ayres followed in May of the next year, Santiago de Chili in September, 1810, and Mexico about the same time. It was only after the first fighting had taken place that the smaller states of Central America took up arms, and nearly half a generation had passed before the independence of the colonies was conceded by Spain. In the interval much blood was shed, and many names were made and lost. A few survived, and still shed renown upon the cause which they supported. But at the beginning, the Spaniards had the advantage; for the colonists had been slaves so long that they did not know how to adopt practical measures to be free. After a short but bloody struggle, all the juntas were suppressed except those in Colombia and in Buenos Ayres. The ideas which had called them into being, however, could not be obliterated, and the revolt continued, with this difference, that the sentiment of the people was now against Spain and Spain's king, instead of being merely reformatory within the limits of loyalty; what they wanted now, and perceived that they must possess, was absolute separation from the mother country, and total independence. This was a far stronger motive than the original one, because its aim was more in- spiring and noble, and the penalties of failure were more terrible. If there could but be loyalty to one another, and an intelligent combination between the various parts of the colonial empire, it ought not to be difficult to win success. Unfortunately, as we know from the experience of our own Revolution, united action is the very thing which revolution- ists, especially at the inception of their attempts, find it most difficult to secure. It was especially difficult in the present case ; there was no ready means of communication between the colonies in different parts of the country, and there was much ignorance to be enlightened, as well as many personal ambitions to be accommodated. And first of all was needed a really great man, the magic of whose words and acts might cause all warring factions to unite with him. Such a man, very nearly, was Simon Bolivar, who, with San Martin and 382 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA O'Higgins, did more than any others to carry the long and desultory war to a successful conclusion. It is worth while to examine a little into Bolivar's origin and history. He was born at Caracas, Venezuela, on the 24th of July, 1783. In 1810, therefore, he was but seven and twenty years of age. His early years were spent in comfort on his father's estates, the latter being a wealthy man, possessed of consid- erable landed property. But the elder Bolivar died when Simon was three years old; his mother did not very long survive him. Simon, however, received a fair education, considering the age and place. A certain Don Simon Rodri- guez was his first instructor : a gentleman, it would appear, of no little learning, and of homely and simple exterior, which led to his receiving the nickname of Diogenes. Un- der him the boy continued until his fifteenth year, when he passed to the care of the sages of the Church. His only surviving relative, and uncle, Don Carlos Palacios, Marquis Palacios, assumed the position of guardian to the youth, and decided that the best thing to do with him was to send him to the mother country to complete his education. For sev- eral years accordingly we may imagine him studying law in the Spanish capital, and making acquaintance with life in general. Like many South Americans, he showed a pre- cocity which is not so common among us ; and before he was twenty he knew the world (after the fashion that precocious youths know it), and had begun to form opinions upon vari- ous important subjects. "Whether the opinions were as im- portant as the subjects, is another matter. Leaving Spain, he travelled over Europe, making the grand tour, as fashion and his own pleasure demanded. He saw other countries, and compared them with his own, no doubt drawing con- clusions therefrom. No country in Europe at that time, not even England, was a wholly Paradisiacal spectacle; but there are degrees of imperfection, and certainly a native of Venezuela, not quite blinded by local prejudice, must have seen things in Europe which made him reflect that there was room for improvement at home. But through THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 383 whom was the improvement to come? He had seen some- thing of the Spanish court, and had even enjoyed a personal acquaintance with Ferdinand himself, then a child, and had on one occasion struck him on the head with a racket. He long afterward referred to this incident, interpreting it as an omen that he was one day to "wrench from his crown its most precious jewel." But Ferdinand's behavior upon the occasion could not have given Bolivar any assurance that he, as king, would be apt to be the one who should dispense justice to the colonies. Who should do it then? Did Bolivar have any presentiment that he would ever do it himself? He was in Paris at the close of the French Revolution, being still only nineteen years old ; and that spectacle may well have inclined him to doubt whether popular govern- ment was an altogether lovely thing, either. As between despotism and democracy, there were faults on both sides. Bolivar now returned to Madrid and married a young lady who is described as "beautiful and accomplished." She was -but sixteen; and these two children, as we might call them, set out for Venezuela, expecting to spend their wedded life there upon the Bolivar estates. The good-looking and wealthy young people, who ardently loved each other, might well look forward to a life of felicity in the lovely scenery and climate of northern South America; but Providence would not have it so. Bolivar had other duties awaiting him than to be happy in peaceful seclusion with his wife. Had she lived, he might never have heard the call of a higher love than the domestic one. His young wife died, soon after landing, of yellow fever; and there is no reason to doubt that upon his thoughtful and passionate nature this unexpected and grievous loss produced a profound and per- manent effect. He could not bear to live on in the place where he had looked forward to living with her; and for five years he resided in Paris, whither he had returned immediately after her death. "I loved my wife much," he afterward said, "and at her death I made a vow never 384 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA again to marry. I have kept my oath. Perhaps, had I not lost her, my career would have been different. I might not, then, have been General of the Liberators. My sec- ond visit to Europe would never have been made. The ideas which I imbibed during my travels would not have come to me; and the experience I have had, the study of the world that I have made, and of men and things all this, which has so well served me, would never have been. Politics would never have attracted me. But the death of my wife caused the love of my country to burn in my heart ; and I have followed the chariot of Mars rather than Ceres' plow." Many young men before Bolivar, and after him, have declared, when their first love died, that love of woman was forever past with them ; and have discovered later that they spoke too quickly. But, with Bolivar, the forecast was a true one. In the company of his old friend and preceptor, Diogenes Rodriguez, he left Paris hi 1805, and went to Italy. At that time Napoleon was in the midst of his astonishing career, and some men called him a god, some a demon, but all held him to be unmatchable and unprecedented. Bolivar made the passage of the Alps on foot, following the trail which Napoleon and his army had made six years before; and he had the fortune to be present when the Man of Des- tiny placed on his own brows the iron crown of Lombardy, uttering the defiant words, "God has given it to me!" He witnessed, also, the emperor's review of that army by whose aid he had conquered the world. These were memorable sights. Pondering them, he journeyed on to other Italian towns to Venice, to lovely Florence, and finally to Rome, capital of the world. Throughout, the sage Rodriguez was his fellow traveller. In Rome we may imagine him meditating over the ashes of an empire that had perished in its iniquities, and marvel- ling over that new empire of the spirit which had arisen in its place. The aspirations which had long been working silently in his mind began to seek expression. One day he THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 385 proposed to his companion that they visit Monte Aventino, from whose summit the immemorial city, with its ruins and its churches, was visible in the morning light, an epitome of human power and frailty. The scene, by some subtle asso- ciation, recalled to Bolivar his native Caracas. Rome was the grave of a mighty history past; might not Caracas be- come the birthplace of a famous history to come? The curse that waits on mortal pride had fallen upon Rome ; might not Caracas take the first step in throwing off the curse which mortal greed and oppression had caused to weigh her down? and might not Bolivar himself be the instrument to bring this to pass? As these thoughts entered his brain, a sudden passion seized upon him; he grasped Rodriguez's hand. "This is the Sacred Mount," said he; "let us, standing here, pledge our lives to the liberation of our country!" The incident has a Byronic flavor; but "Childe Harold" was not written till six years later; and we are also to re- member that this vow, youthful and grandiloquent though it reads now, was one at least of the predisposing causes of South American Independence. We may now, therefore, regard Bolivar as having a defi- nite object in life, of as high a sort as can fall to any man. He was to live and, if need be, die for his country ; he was to cast off her yoke of centuries, and see her arise free and happy. A great purpose is for many men a regeneration ; it makes them over anew, on a higher plane. Bolivar had missed the tenderer side of life; his strong affections had been bereft of their first object, and now they seized with multiplied energy upon this new object which could never be taken away. It would mold all his future actions and designs, and it contained the seed from which were to spring the events of his career. Little, indeed, did the young man imagine what lay before him ; had he done so it is possible that he might have hesitated to go forward upon a path so rugged and stormy, not unattended by episodes neither glo- rious nor noble. But what man could have the courage to exist, did he know all that the day was to bring forth? The 386 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA future is mercifully hidden ; but the purpose and the hope are with us, and with those we make shift to fight our way. Bolivar's destiny was, to arrive, after trials and efforts which would have crushed most men, to a bright summit of power and honor; but it was not to be his destiny to die at that great moment. His end was to come to him in sadness and exile; in his life of seven and forty years he was to experi- ence all vicissitudes. But looking back upon all that had been, at the last, he may well have told himself that the good overtopped the evil; and the welcome thought may have come to him that his country was the better because he had lived. And happiness, in this world, is an approving conscience, or it is nothing. Bolivar sailed for the West in 1809, passing through the United States on his way home, to observe the working of Republican institutions, which at that time were doing fairly well under the benign superintendence of Thomas Jefferson. Bolivar seems to have thought highly of our Constitution, and resolved to adopt it in the Republic which he meant to call into being in the south. It is to his credit as a judicious person, although so young, that he preferred it to the bois- terous promises and protestations of the French democracy. But youthful generosity-, rather than judgment, was shown in his invitation to Miranda to enter Caracas with him. This unlucky hunter of shadows was at that time living in much retirement and discredit in London, contending as best he might with the difficulties of proving that his untimely disappearance from the naval engagement of Bonair reflected no dishonor upon his personal heroism. Bolivar had been in communication with the juntas in Venezuela, and they had prudently counselled him to have nothing to do with Miranda; the country, they surmised, would be safer without the aid of patriots of his sort. Boli- var, however, at that stage of his development, was willing to believe that the devil might not be so black as he was painted; he thought that possibly Miranda might have been the victim of circumstances, and merited to be triad once THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 387 more. Accordingly, he sent him the invitation which was fated to have consequences much more important than either of them anticipated. For the moment, everything turned out favorably. Miranda was an old man for those days approaching sixty and his fiasco at Bonair was three years in the past, and the facts concerning it had never been thor- oughly established. On the other hand, there was no deny- ing that he had achieved a certain distinction in the world; native Venezuelans who showed above the level were rare, and one must make the best of what one has. Moreover, the conflict with the Spanish viceroy had already begun, and need was of all the patriots that could be got together. Revolution had broken out in La Paz, on the summits of the Bolivian Andes; the Spanish officials there had been deposed, and a junta established. Another junta was formed at Quito the following August, and meanwhile Spanish forces were marching against the La Paz rebels from Buenos Ayres and Peru. The La Paz junta raised an army, and gave battle to the enemy; but they were soundly defeated, and the victors inflicted upon them such tortures and outrages as the Spanish genius has ever been fertile in. The leaders were captured and executed. Quito's turn came next; the patriots were able to make no head against the royal troops. But while these successes were attending the Spanish efforts in the north, trouble broke out in Buenos Ayres, in the rear; Cisneros, the viceroy there, was compelled to abdicate, and a junta assumed power. For a time, these people were unchecked, for the royalists were fully occupied elsewhere. There were minor conflicts in Montevideo, in Uruguay, and elsewhere, and then the junta made a compact of alliance with the Portu- guese of Brazil, which was then embroiled with Spain over a question of boundaries. Before these events, Caracas had followed the general example ; and by the time Bolivar and Miranda made their entry into the city, war was in the air, and the excitable populace was eager to hail somebody it mattered not much who as champion and rescuer. Bolivar 388 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA and Miranda, riding side by side into the city, answered tl;e requirements as well as anybody. They were greeted with acclamations, and Miranda received full as hearty a welcome as the practically unknown Bolivar. Miranda was not the man to neglect so good an opportunity of recommending and exalting himself. He soon had convinced all who would listen to him that his defeats had been moral victories, and that what had seemed poltroonery was but a sublimer kind of courage. The uprising of the people occurred in April of this year, and Miranda rode upon the crest of its wave. An electoral college was created in the town to elect representa- tives to congress, to settle the question as to whether inde- pendence should be announced. It was the first assembly in South America which had acted at the instance of the colonists, instead of in obedience to the crown. As a mat- ter of course, the renowned Miranda was chosen one of the deputies, and was given the rank of lieutenant-general of the Army of the Provinces. He regaled all and sundry with tales_of how he had foreseen and prophesied this event, and intimated that the prophecy had been father to the fact. Every one was excited and enthusiastic, as is apt to be the case when danger is ahead but has not yet assumed material form. Miranda was "hailed" as the venerable apostle of liberty. As for young Simon Bolivar, he held himself in reserve, and watched the course of things, lending a hand when chance offered. He had not yet suffered glorious de- feats, like his elderly colleague ; but he was ready to do what he could for Caracas and South America, as soon as anything should present itself to be done. South Americans date the beginning of independence from this 19th of April, 1810. It is impossible to affirm what purposes were or were not in the minds of the junta at that time ; but in the light of subsequent events they persuaded themselves that they intended freedom from Spain from the first. As a matter of fact, nations, like individuals, are led along from one point to another, with very little idea as to where they will ultimately bring up. Every one was shout- THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 389 ing, every one was making an oration on all manner of ab- stract topics ; and of course all manner of things must have got themselves uttered. It is very possible that, among these things, the immediate independence of Caracas may have been suggested. What is certain is that the local cap- tain-general, Emparan, had no intention of abandoning his position as representative of Spain ; and he had been unable to persuade himself that these shouting and gesticulating lunatics were in the least in earnest in their vaporings. He would imprison or perhaps behead two or three of them, and all would be peaceful and quiet once more. Of the three parties into which the inhabitants divided themselves, Em- paran could reasonably count upon the support, active or passive, of two: the royalists, who favored Ferdinand, and the imperialists, who were for Napoleon. The third party, the so-called patriots, among whose leaders was this young Simon Bolivar, were hardly worth considering, in Emparan's opinion. He noted down the names of the most conspicuous of them, for future reference. The existence of a regency at Cadiz had been announced at Caracas by commissioners on April 18th, and the Vene- zuelans had been duly admonished to look upon the regency as the true representative of the king. But Simon Bolivar was moved to deliver himself of certain opinions and senti- ments upon this occasion, which history has preserved. He said: "This power which fluctuates in such a manner in the Peninsula, without making itself secure, invites us to estab- lish, here in Caracas, a junta of our own, and to be governed by ourselves. " The word was spoken; the thought which had been latent in many minds had declared itself. The people went home and slept upon it if we can suppose that there was sleep under such pregnant circumstances and the following morning, which was Holy Thursday, the corpora- tion of the city assembled at the church to celebrate the holy ceremony, as good Catholics should. Emparan, the captain- general, received their invitation to attend with them. Em- paran was careful of his dignity ; it was his custom to declare 390 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA that he governed Caracas absolutely, with no reference to any other power; and when he and the corporation met, and he was given to understand that a junta was being mooted, he was naturally in a state of high indignation. But the church services were about to begin. "I will talk with you after the divine offices in the church, ' ' said he, ominously ; and turned upon his heel and stalked away, like the grandees of the drama. The longer the holy office continued, the more full of evil rage did Emparan become ; and it may be sur- mised that the corporation awaited the result of his medita- tions with some anxiety. This was the first time any of them had ever bearded a captain-general, and they knew not what might come of it. They were left in suspense for an hour or more. Perhaps the next event would be their arrest, and heaven knows what after that. In this predicament, why not take the law into their own hands ; it might be their last chance. By the time Emparan met them in the council chamber, the Rubicon had been crossed; the council had made up their minds that Caracas was independent, and that Emparan, consequently, was out of a job. They re- ceived him politely, however, and began suggesting that he co-operate in the formation of a supreme junta. The man was so astounded, or so choked with passion, that he made little or no reply; whereupon the council, taking silence for assent, was on the point of offering him the presidency of the junta. But before this matter could be put to the vote, there was an unexpected and important interruption. Into the council chamber suddenly burst an excited figure clad in priestly vestments, who was at once recognized as Jose Cortes Madariga, a Chilian, and deacon of the cathe- dral. The aspect of him, declare the chroniclers, was as that of a prophet. He advanced to the centre of the floor and threw up his arm. The captain-general frowned upon him, pale and haughty. The councillors paused in their proceed- ings. For a moment there was a painful silence. "I appear before you," then said Madariga, in a strained voice, "as the deputy of the clergy of this realm. I speak THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 391 with the voice of the Church in Venezuela. Beware what you are about to do ! Are you so blind as once more, at this supreme moment, to put yourself in the power of Spain? Will you again deliver yourselves bound hand and foot into the keeping of that man?" He pointed at the captain-gen- eral, and his voice gained depth and power. "Beware! Im- peril not the fair prospect, offered by Providence, of popular sovereignty; turn not away from this divine gift of freedom and self-government ! Who is there in Spain to claim your obedience? The rightful king is an exile, if not a prisoner. The regency is but the corrupt favorite of the queen, mas- querading as the royal representative. An alien sits on the Spanish throne, hated and denounced by the people he as- sumes to govern. I tell you there is none who can demand your fealty. You are masters of yourselves at this hour : it is the hour of your emancipation." Then, summoning up all his energies, he once more faced the captain-general. "I demand the deposition of this man!" he shouted. "I de- mand it in the name of the public good. Aye, in the name of justice I demand it, and of my country, and of liberty!" These loud and bold words echoed through the silent chamber, where the councillors sat, not knowing what might be coming next. But the Spanish governor rose up, porten- tous with indignation. Outside the building a great crowd had been collecting during the session, and the sunny square was filled with them from side to side, and their murmur was audible through the open windows. Reiving upon the prestige of his personal power, Emparan resolved upon the instant to appeal to them There was a balcony leading from the chamber, and overlooking the square ; to this Em- paran hastened ; but Madariga had divined his purpose, and instantly followed him. They appeared upon the balcony together; and the priest was almost as well known to the populace as was the captain-general. The former stood behind the other, who, in the fierceness of the crisis, did not perceive him. Emparan's words were few, but to the point. "Vene- 392 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA zuelans," he cried out, "answer me are you content with my administration?" He stood, the centre of a thousand eyes, awaiting their verdict, upon which, perhaps, the future of Spanish America depended. But those eyes, looking past him, perceived the dark figure of the priest, who silently raised his arm, and made an emphatic gesture of negation. Every man caught the significance of the motion, and responded to it. "No no!" roared the people, as with one voice, pressing forward and tossing themselves tumultuously. "No we want you not we will have governors of our own : we want you not!" The haughty Emparan glared down upon them, clinch- ing his fists, his face red, then pale. He could do nothing; his power was gone, and he knew it. There was hardly a man in all that crowd whom he had not wronged personally ; and that turbulent outcry, with the growl of menace in it, admonished him to restrain himself. "You do not want me?" he said, in hoarse and heavy tones, grasping the marble railing of the balcony to still the quivering of his hands. He paused to gain his self-posses- sion; and then, with the words, "Neither do I want you!" he turned, and slowly withdrawing, was seen no more. So fell the power of Spain in Caracas. The junta was forthwith proclaimed as an independent power, qualified to choose its own form of government, and pledged not to recognize the regency at Cadiz. It still affirmed itself prepared to recognize the authority of Ferdi- nand, should he recover the throne; but it decreed mean- while the banishment of Emparan, with the payment of his expenses for the journey to the United States. In effect, Venezuela had revolted. After Emparan had gone, the provinces elected their rep- resentative congress and the deputies met at Caracas. The absorbing question now was, whether this congress would vote to sever the province from Spain and proclaim its in- dependence to the world. The general trend of opinion was THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 393 radically patriotic; yet there were not wanting many who would fain make haste slowly. An association calling itself the Patriotic Club of Caracas was formed, of which the lead- ing men of the province were members, and which soon was recognized as the leader of thought in that part of the coun- try. The legislative body itself was influenced by its decis- ions, for the most weighty members of the legislature were affiliated with the society. Those who had been conversant with the events of the French Revolution saw in this Patri- otic organization a reminiscence of the famous clubs which had decreed such momentous things during that bloody epoch. Timid minds saw in the simultaneous existence of the Club and of the legislature a possible source of dispute and friction; and dreaded lest the former might take advan- tage of its lack of legal responsibility to lead the country into rash excesses. The Club held a meeting on the 4th of July, 1811, and in the midst of great general excitement Simon Bolivar arose to address the assembly. "Patriots," he began, "we have heard it said that there are two congresses here in Caracas, one of opinion, the other of action. It is not so; yet both opinion and action are needed, and there need not be, and there is not, any discord between them. The crisis demands both that we think and that we act. We, who realize the necessity for the union of all hearts and minds at this hour we dread no schism. Patriots, what we desire and what we aim at, in our struggle for liberty, is union of mind and heart. The hour we have prayed for is here. Yesterday, to linger in the arms of apathy was shameful only; to-day, it is treason! The Voice of the people speaks, and it will be heard. Our sovereign Con- gress, assembling, debates what action it shall take at this crisis; and what is its decision? that we should embark upon the new order of our destiny with a confederation? Are we not already confederated against foreign tyranny? That we should await the results of the policy of Spain? Await them? What care we, my countrymen, whether Spain sells her slaves to Bonaparte, or keeps them to do her 394 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA own bidding, if we ourselves are resolved to be free? What matters it to us, I say? These are unworthy considerations : they are the fruit of our long and sorrowful subjection. Are we told that great projects must develop calmly? Calmly! Are not, then, three centuries of servitude preparation suffi- cient for decisive action? Calmly! Must we endure three hundred years more of tyranny before we are men? Friends, this Patriotic Society of ours gives due respect to the august Congress of the new nation; but let that Congress remember that our Society is in harmony with the heart of the People : it is the focus of light in the cause of the Revolution. Pa- triots, let us here lay without misgiving the foundation-stone of South American liberty! To hesitate, is ruin! Venezue- lans, I move that a committee be appointed from this body to convey these sentiments to the Sovereign Congress. ' ' Gallant ideas were these, fitly expressed : though not, as we observe, in the style that would be expected on the floor of the English House of Commons, or even in our own Con- gress. But the Latin races have their own ways of doing things, and all we need concern ourselves about is to note how they prosper in the doing. When the sensation caused by Bolivar's speech had somewhat subsided, up sprang a deputy and moved that the motion be adopted. It was car- ried by acclamation; and to one Dr. Miguel Pena was in- trusted the task of reducing to writing the petition to the Congress, expressing the views of Don Simon Bolivar, and of submitting it to them. The doctor, it appears, worked with such diligence that on that very evening the petition was read in the legislative hall. The impression it produced was profound. The night passed, however, without any action having been taken upon it; but the news had got abroad, and the air was electric with suspense. On the 5th of July, Congress assembled and was addressed by its presi- dent. "We have now," he said, "reached the moment most opportune for considering the question of absolute independ- ence. 1 suggest to the deputies that the discussion should begin at once." The galleries of the House were filled with THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 395 people, who applauded vehemently. The question was put "Shall the motion to give freedom to Venezuela be adopted?" The motion was carried with no dissentients. And then, with the remarkable promptness which, on this occasion, marked the proceedings of a people whom we are apt to re- gard as over- prone to postpone till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day, the Venezuelan analogue to our own Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence was prepared and promulgated before midnight. A very meritorious document it is, as the reader shall see for himself : "In the name of the all-powerful God: "We, the representatives of the United Provinces of Caracas, Cumana, Varinas, Margarita, Barcelona, Merida and Truxillo, forming the American Federation of Vene- zuela, in the south continent, in Congress assembled, con- sidering the full and absolute possession of our rights, which we justly and legally recovered, from the 19th of April, 1810, in consequence of the occurrences in Bayona, and the occu- pation by conquest of the Spanish throne, and the succession thereto of a new dynasty, constituted without our consent are desirous, before we make use of the rights of which, for more than three centuries, we have by force been deprived, but which are now restored to us by the progress of political events, to make known to the world the reasons that have been generated by these occurrences, which authorize us to make free use of our sovereignty." That is a good long sentence, in which Jefferson bears his part, but complicated with the desire of the Caracan imitator to get in all that referred to the local situation ; nor should we forget the circumstances of hurry and agitation under which the whole matter was conducted. To resume; "We do not however desire to begin by alleging the rights inherent in every subject country to recover its prop- erty and independence ; we generously forget the long series of ills, injuries and privations which the grievous right of conquest has occasioned to all the descendants of the discov- 396 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA erers, conquerors and settlers of these countries; driven as they were to misery by the very country which should have ministered to their comfort. We draw the veil over the three centuries of Spanish domination in America; and we now present only the authentic facts of disorder and conquest which have disrupted the Spanish nation, and which have deprived her of her last pretext for continuing to oppress us. "Ever deaf to our demands for justice, the governments of Spain have tried to discredit us by declaring us criminal, and by stamping with infamy and rewarding with the scaf- fold each attempt which at various periods certain Ameri- cans have made to secure the happiness of their country. Such an attempt was that which concern for our welfare recently prompted us to make, thereby guarding ourselves against being drawn into the disorders which we foresaw; and hurried to that hideous fate which we are now about to remove from our horizon forever. By an atrocious policy, the governments of Spain have succeeded in making our own kith and kin insensible to our misfortunes; have armed them against us; have erased from their hearts the sweet sentiments of friendship and consanguinity, and converted a part of our own family into our deadly foes. "At the very time when we, faithful to our vows, were sacrificing our security and civic dignity to preserve the rights which we had generously accorded to Ferdinand the Bourbon, we have beheld him cement by ties of blood and friendship the enforced ties which bound him to the French emperor; in consequence wh&reof even the govern- ments of Spain have already announced their resolution to acknowledge him conditionally. "Embarrassed by this lamentable alternative, we have remained for three years in a state of political ambiguity and indecision, so perilous that this alone would justify us in the resolve which, nevertheless, our promises and the bonds of brotherhood caused us to defer to the last moment. Now, however, constrained by the hostile and unnatural con- duct of the governments of Spain, which have disburdened THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 397 us of our oath, we have gone beyond the limit which we had at first proposed, and thus are called to the august attitude which we at present adopt. "But we who glory in basing our conduct upon lofty principles desire not to win happiness at the cost of our fellow-men; and we do therefore declare to be our friends and sharers of our felicity all those who are of our blood, language and religion, who have heretofore suffered like evils as we, provided they acknowledge our absolute inde- pendence of Spain and of all other powers; that they help to maintain it with their lives, fortunes and honor; and that they hold Spaniards in war enemies, in peace friends and brothers. "In view of these substantial reasons of policy, which urge the necessity of recovering our national dignity; and in accord with the rights enjoyed by every nation to destroy pacts or associations which do not answer the purpose for which governments were instituted, we believe that we neither can nor ought to preserve the ties which have hitherto bound us to the governments of Spain; that, like all other nations, we are free, and authorized not to depend upon any other authority than our own ; and to take among the nations of the earth the place of equality to which the Supreme Being assigns us, and to which we are called by the progress of events, and urged by our own good and utility. "Though conscious of the difficulties which beset and the obligations imposed upon us by the rank we are about to assume in the political order of the world ; as well as of the strong influence of the forms and habitudes to which we have unfortunately become inured: yet we know neverthe- less that shameful submission to them, when we can throw them off, would be yet more ignominious to us and more fatal to our posterity than our long and painful slavery; and that it is now our imperative duty to provide for our own safety and felicity by radically altering the form of our late constitution. 398 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA "In consequence whereof, believing that, by the reasons adduced, we have satisfied the respect which we owe to the opinion of the human race and the dignity of other nations, among whom we are about to enter, and on whose commu- nion and friendship we rely : "We, the representatives of the United Provinces of Venezuela, calling on the Supreme Being to witness the justice of our proceedings and the rectitude of our inten- tions, do implore His divine and celestial help; and rati- fying, at the moment in which we are born to the dignity which His Providence restores to us, the desire we have of living and dying free, and of believing and defending the Holy Catholic and Apostolic religion of Jesus Christ; we therefore in the name and by the will and authority which we hold for the virtuous people of Venezuela, do declare solemnly to the world that its United Provinces are, and ought from this day to be, by act and right, FREE, SOVEREIGN, AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that they are absolved from every submission and depend- ence on Spain, or on those who do or may call themselves its agents or representatives; and that a free and independ- ent state, thus constituted, has full power to take that form of government which may be conformable to the general wish of the people; to declare war, make peace, form alli- ances, regulate treaties of commerce, limits and navigation; and to do and transact every act in like manner as other free and independent states. And that this our solemn dec- laration may be held valid, firm and durable, we hereby mutually bind each province to the other, and pledge our lives, fortunes, and the sacred tie of our national honor. "Done in the Federal Palace at Caracas, signed by our hands, sealed with the great Provincial Seal of the Confed- eration, and countersigned by the Secretary of the Congress, this Fifth Day of July, 1811, of our Independence the first." It only remained to adopt the tricolor flag formerly born by the ever- vainglorious Miranda, and the new little republic THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 399 was finished and ready for business; and of course the first business she was called on to undertake was the shedding of much blood, her own and other people's. That is the way freedom is born in the world. Nearly a year passed, however, in comparative tranquil- lity. The Declaration had not been received with unanimous approval ; for already one of the mam weaknesses of all at- tempts to found republics in Spanish America had appeared : the mass of the common people were so far below the edu- cated leaders in intelligence, and so alien from them in aims and ideas, that these leaders stood in a small group by them- selves, constituting an oligarchy whether they desired it or not. The commonalty were superstitious, lethargic and ob- stinate; timid as hares and yet inert. They did not know enough to co-operate, and they could not be stimulated by an appeal to high and generous principles. They had known nothing but despotism all their lives, and were unable to understand what self-government portended; they were dis- posed to believe that it meant only a new and possibly yet more grinding form of tyranny. On the other hand, the leaders were full of theories, and of personal political ambi- tions ; and thus the gulf between them and their constituen- cies dug itself, so to say, and became deeper and wider every day. An untoward event, in these circumstances, might cause the people to change their merely inert attitude for one of active hostility; and then the cause of freedom would be in serious jeopardy. During the interval, the Constitution was written, and presented the usual features of such documents; we need only remark that the Holy Inquisition was abolished, titles of nobility abrogated, torture forbidden, and the slave-trade condemned. An army was decreed, and for its commander, Miranda was chosen. Needless to say he accepted the ap- pointment. It involved posing on horseback, in a showy uniform, at the head of the troops, and uttering grandilo- quences in and out of season. His star was well aloft, and he had reason to congratulate himself upon the contrast 400 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA between his present position, and his long sojourn in cheap lodgings in London. We are not informed that he expressed gratitude to Bolivar for having rescued him from the lat- ter; probably he thought the young man had been but the ignorant instrument of judicious Providence. The sudden apparition upon the scene of one Juan Do- mingo Monteverde, at that time unknown, but soon to make for himself an evil name, disturbed the serenity of affairs in the early spring of the year 1812. Monteverde was a native of Teneriffe, born in 1772, and now therefore about forty years of age. He was an adventurer pure and simple, with- out any warrant to be in Venezuela; but he had energy enough in him to make himself erelong one of the most prominent royalist fighters of the war, and easily got an appointment as general in the royalist army. It was not a time for Spain to pick and choose among those who offered her their assistance; she was glad to take what she could get. Monteverde had little education, but ample self-assur- ance; and he landed in Venezuela with the conviction that as between Spain and her colonies, Spain was the one to back. Accordingly he announced himself as a supporter of Ferdinand; collected together those like-minded with him- self, and was soon at the head of a small army ; which must have contained good fighting material, for it found no diffi- culty in defeating such forces as the patriots were able at the moment to bring against it. A battle took place at Carora, a small town fifty or sixty miles east of Lake Maracaibo, which resulted badly for the Venezuelans ; and Monteverde thereupon declared himself the champion of the Royal cause in South America. Anything was possible in such times; and it was therefore possible that this soldier of fortune might succeed in making himself viceroy of the continent. It was worth trying for. He was aided, almost at the beginning of the campaign, by what seemed a providential event; one of the most mem- orable that ever befell in South America. Acting upon the superstitious character of the common people, it might easily THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 401 have been decisive. The 26th of March of this year was Holy Thursday. It is never very cool in Venezuela, which at best gets its head only about ten degrees above the equator ; but on this day the heat was noticeably oppressive; we should say, in our scientific pride, that the humidity was enormous ; drops of rain actually fell, though the sky was cloudless; the atmosphere was quite motionless ; not an atom of a breeze to be had anywhere, by rich or poor. The sun had that red- dish hue which reminds one of heated iron, and the watery vapor through which he shone was so dense that it was pos- sible to look at his disk without winking. The morning was intolerable ; but as noon parsed the temperature became por- tentous, and a deep physical uneasiness seized upon every one; causing the heart to thump painfully, and setting the nerves on edge. People felt anxious, and were yet unable to explain what they were anxious about. Being Holy Thursday, the Church monopolized the atten- tion of the people, and all the sacred buildings were thronged with great crowds ; though in the heated and darkened inte- riors the air soon became foul, and many women faulted. But the pallid priests intoned the service, and the people bowed themselves and murmured their responses. Four o'clock had just passed when the great calamity came. It began with a sudden sensation on the part of each per- son that his brain was swimming: that the centres of his being were dissolving. The very pavement of the churches, and the solid earth, seemed to be swaying and reeling. But as each stared bewildered in his neighbor's face, all saw that it was no delusion but a reality; and at the same moment a deep and muffled sound was heard, followed by an appalling detonation, long-drawn and rumbling, as if the world were shaken on its foundations, and were giving way. It was not the sound of thunder; it came not from above, but from the depths. The congregations started to their feet, stagger- ing and white with fear. The awful detonations continued ; the tall arches nodded, and the solid roofs collapsed. The priests stopped terror-stricken in the midst of their ceremo- 402 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA nies; there was a wild and frenzied turmoil on all sides; the masses of people swung hither and thither, striving to es- cape; but none can escape the earthquake. They crushed together; they were hurled against the stone walls, which came down upon them in deadly ruin. The pavement be- neath their feet yawned open with horrible noises; mephitic vapors arose, and into the abysses the wretched victims tumbled headlong. Out of doors the case was hardly better. The buildings on each side of the narrow streets cracked and crumbled; the breadth of the broad square opened in fright- ful crevasses, and sank in dusty tumult. There was no ref- uge anywhere, no hope nor mercy. Strange sounds, like titanic groanings and shriekings, broke in moaning ulula- tions on the ear. The air was thick with smoke or dust; the sun, half way down the western sky, hung like a ball of sullen fire over the widespread desolation and destruction. In a few minutes the city of Caracas, and many another town in Venezuela, had ceased to exist, and full ten thou- sand people had perished. Vast numbers, with their houses, were utterly engulfed in the earth, and seen no more. Nature, according to philosophy, is nothing but a middle- term between creature and Creator, and has no reality save what is given to it by our physical senses. Nevertheless, physical sense occasionally dominates our higher faculties; and there are few men who preserve their serenity of soul undisturbed throughout an earthquake. We are so much in the habit of regarding the earth as the most solid and trustworthy of things, and God as merely a remote possi- bility, that when the earth gives way, it seems to us that God Himself is not likely to be of much avail in the prem- ises. We call upon his name, no doubt; but more as a mat- ter of unconscious habit than with any hope of practical benefit. Individuals exist, however, whom even an earthquake cannot dismay ; and such a one, according to the chroniclers, seems to have been our young friend Simon Bolivar. He had attended the services, along with hundreds of others, THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 403 in the church of Saa Jaciiito. When the building collapsed, a shapeless ruin filled with death, Bolivar was there, but he was unhurt. The first we hear of him is from the lips of one who knew him, a man by the name of Diaz, who in clamber- ing over the heaps of rubbish intermingled with corpses, came upon the young man, with his coat off, burrowing amid the stones and timbers in the effort to drag out some bodies which still seemed to retain life. Bolivar recognized him, and uttered, according to Diaz, the following rather remark- able words: "If nature opposes herself to us, we will wrestle with her, and compel her to obey. ' ' Diaz regarded the speech as being "Impious and extrava- gant"; but his point of view was that of a simple-minded Catholic, who could see in the earthquake nothing less than the expression of the Divine wrath. Bolivar, on the other hand, looked upon it as merely a physical phenomenon, due to the explosion of pent-up gases under the crust of the globe, or to a sudden shifting of strata. His remark may have been, in the circumstances, injudicious; but there does not seem to be anything impious about it. And it is historically pertinent as showing him to be a man who was not to be scared by mortal accidents, but held himself above the brute convulsions of the physical plane. He could be stirred by the struggle of emancipation of a nation, but not by the destruction of some thousands of human beings by a natural accident. Death can never do any harm to those who die; but a life of slavery may injure people beyond remedy. We must concede to Bolivar the possession of a stout heart and a clear brain. But to the survivors of the catastrophe the earthquake had a far different significance. Those who believed, as most men did at that time, that kings are a divina institution, to meddle with whose "rights" is sacrilege, had already had their doubts as to whether the revolt of Venezuela might not involve the chastisement of Heaven upon its promoters; and this calamity was precisely in line with their forebodings. God was angry with them for abandoning Ferdinand, and 18 404 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA He had taken this way of intimating it. The priests natu- rally encouraged this conviction, and the leaders of the revo- lution found themselves in great disfavor. If they were not the direct cause of the earthquake, what was? To settle the matter, six hundred patriot soldiers had been among those who perished ; they were crushed in the barracks in Caracas ; and six hundred more, who were on the march to the town of San Felipe, utterly disappeared from the face of the earth, along with San Felipe itself and all its inhabitants. Nor was this all. At the town of Barquisimeto, on the fatal day, there had been a review of the forces there, which was attended by twelve hundred people ; they too had been swal- lowed up. The only pious conclusion that could be drawn from these events was, that any one who countenanced re- bellion against Spain was doomed to the infernal regions by a very painful route. Moreover, as luck would have it, the evil-minded Monte- verde and his army had escaped scot free; and he was not slow in perceiving and taking advantage of his opportuni- ty. He was marching against Caracas at the time, and had been expecting some opposition; but the earthquake cleared the way before him. Instead of finding foes to fight, those who might have attacked him nocked to his banner. He took possession of Barquisimeto and sacked San Carlos. A second earthquake on the 4th of April confirmed any remain- ing doubters as to the attitude of Providence in this matter. And Miranda was generalissimo! Miranda proceeded to do the most foolish thing that the conditions admitted. He sent for Bolivar and instructed him to go to Porto Cabello, a fortress in which royalist pris- oners were confined, and take the command of it. He was not to be trusted to do any fighting in the open ; that must be reserved for the matchless warrior that Miranda had so often proved himself to be. Bolivar was mortified of course ; but he was bound to obey his superior, and to Porto Cabello he went. Meanwhile Miranda marched at the head of an army of twelve thousand men against Monteverde, who had THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 405 with him but a handful, comparatively; and prepared to show the world how a great soldier can fight. Monteverde had less experience in the field than his dis- tinguished adversary; but he was not, like the latter, a white rabbit, and his idea of war was to fight. As Miranda with his host was marching to meet the enemy, some trifling vol- cano or other, in the remote distance, emitted a noise which reached the generalissimo's rabbit ears, and caused him to suspect that an enemy had fired a gun ! A gun meant danger. Miranda instantly commanded the army to halt. If that gun had been nearer, and had contained a bullet, Miranda's life might have been in peril. And what waa that smoke in the distance. After a long and agitated pause, report was brought that the smoke and the noise had both a natural origin, wholly disconnected with the enemy. Should the army continue its march? Miranda was doubt- ful as to that. There was no telling what might happen; Monteverde must be somewhere over yonder. At length he reluctantly permitted his troops to move forward a little. By this time not a few of his men had begun to lose faith in the venerable Apostle of Liberty, and there were deser- tions, which distressed Miranda exceedingly. So distressed did he become, that, instead of any longer advancing, he retreated. He came across the town of Maracay in the course of this flight from nothing, and ensconced himself there, announcing to his astonished army that the campaign would "henceforth" be a defensive one. But Maracay, it seems, was not defensive enough ; the hero fell back to La Victoria, which was as far as he could go. Monteverde made a demonstration, which some of the patriot soldiers repulsed; and Miranda was besought to follow up this ad- vantage ; but he utterly declined to do anything of the kind. Meanwhile came an urgent message from Bolivar in Porto Cabello, announcing that the fortress was threatened by the enemy, and that it was totally without defenders, though full of valuable military stores, which would fall into the enemy's hands, should they attack. Would Miranda send 406 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA a few of his twelve thousand men to secure the place? Mi- randa would not; he thought he had too few soldiers, as it was, to defend him. The next thing he heard was that the prisoners at Porto Cabello had broken loose, joined a royal- ist force, and turned the guns of the fort on the harbor and the town, and had both ships and citizens at their mercy. Bolivar, with forty faithful men, had attempted to defend the place; but when news arrived that Monteverde was marching against him, the faithful forty gave up the strug- gle, and departed each his own way; nothing was left for Bolivar but surrender or flight ; he had no idea of surrender- ing, so he jumped aboard a brig and was off to La Guayra. Just a year, to a day, had passed since the Declaration of Independence at Caracas. Miranda, shivering in his quar- ters, began to think, probably, that those London lodgings had their merits after all. But his troubles were still on the rise ; report came that an army of freed slaves was heading for Caracas. Miranda was now ready for anything always excepting a fight! It is said that the devil always appears to a man when he is ready to be tempted. The devil now appeared to Miranda in the guise of a certain reputed patriot named Don Antonio Fernandez de Leon, and addressed him as follows: "You see where you stand; Caracas is in ruins and threatened with attack; Porto Cabello is in the enemy's hands; the population is quelled by Monteverde and the earthquake. You cannot contend against Spain. Why not end this fratricidal war by proposing an honorable peace ? I will give you the means of getting safely away; and I will myself arrange the terms with Monteverde. You have no time to consider; it is now or never. What do you say'?" Miranda cleared his throat, and replied in a feeble voice that he was "willing." And the wretched creature at- tempted to defend his cowardice by declaring that Bolivar's loss of Porto Cabello proved him to be a traitor. It seemed that there was to be no infamy of which the Apostle of Lib- THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 407 erty was not to be guilty. Monteverde in due time dictated terms to Miranda, who accepted them ; and the Republic of Venezuela was apparently a thing of the past. Miranda made his way to La Guayra, where he met Bolivar and a few other patriots. He had intended to set sail that night, and the ship lay ready in the harbor; but, at the suggestion of the patriots, he consented to stay on shore till the morning. It had been determined to arrest him. At two o'clock in the morning, Miranda being then asleep, a party of men entered his room, wakened him, and bade him dress and follow them. They escorted him to Fort San Carlos, where he was locked up in a cell. The reason of this action was that they believed, not without reason, that Miranda was a traitor, and intended to betray the pa- triots to Monteverde. He had not ratified the treaty with his signature; the treaty contained a passage promising par- don to all who had taken part in the revolution ; if he had left the country without signing, Bolivar and all the rest of the patriots would have been liable fc> execution. They had hopes and purposes for the future, and did not regard the present subjection of their country as final. But all was over for Miranda. It is impossible to excuse this man for what he did and left undone; but we need not follow him with reproaches; for his punishment was great. He was passed on from one prison to another; the Spaniards got hold of him; he was taken to Porto Rico and from there to Cadiz in Spain, where a British officer saw him, "tied to a wall, with a chain about his neck, like a dog." He lingered four or five years, dying on the 14th of July, 1816. He could have made himself the greatest hero of South America, had he used the materials which were intrusted to his hands. But he was an empty windbag; a man with no heart, no courage, and no reality. He talked and vaunted himself until the moment for prov- ing himself came; then he collapsed like a pricked bubble, and there was nothing left. His is a pitiable story; but it lacks the dignity of tragedy ; and his conduct cost his country 408 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA years of anguish and thousands of lives. Few men so prom- inent have been so thoroughly disgraced. After Miranda's imprisonment, Bolivar fled to Curacoa, where for a time he remained as a refugee. But he occupied his time in devising means for renewing the struggle; he enlisted other refugees in Cartagena, and before 181 :} was ready to make his new attempt. In Cartagena he had been assigned to the command of a little station called Barranca, which was under the control of an adventurer called Labutut. But Bolivar had no notion of settling down in such a posi- tion, and he took advantage of a movement which was on foot to march against Santa Marta, and joined himself to it, though in a subordinate position. "I disregarded rank and distinction," he afterward said, "because I aspired to a more honorable destiny to shed my blood for the liberty of my country." The Anglo-Saxon is inclined to smile at this sort of rodomontade; but after all, the test of a man is what he does, not what he says; and Bolivar did enough in all con- science to justify his worst extravagances of speech. We must allow him his peculiarities; they did no harm, and may, at the time and place, have done some good. Mean- while, in spite of his professed willingness to play second fiddle, it proved impossible to keep his superior ability and dash in the background. He became the soul of the cam- paign. He moved quickly, and took the enemy by surprise. New Granada was quick to give him the recognition which had hitherto been denied him in his native state. He was appointed general, and the small force with which he had at first operated increased in size, till it merited the title of an army. His objective point was now Magdalena, which was held by the Spaniards, and was of strategic importance. He captured the place, and advanced into the interior, driv- ing the enemy before him. The Spaniards had declared that flags of truce would not be respected; but Bolivar had no flags of truce to offer them. He defeated them in every engagement, made his way into Venezuela, and on the 6th of August, 1813, he entered Caracas in triumph. He was THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 409 met by a vast crowd of enthusiastic people, estimated at thirty thousand, who welcomed him with shouts of "Long live the savior of Venezuela!" A bevy of handsome young women, clad in white and carrying laurel crowns in their hands, advanced through the crowd and took the bridle of his horse. Bolivar dismounted, and was, says the historian Larrazabel, "almost overwhelmed by the crowns cast upon him. The people wept for joy." lu December of this year a battle took place between three thousand five hundred men commanded by Bolivar, and a force of the enemy, on the field of Araure. After a severe engagement, when the Spaniards seemed to be having the better of it, Bolivar, by an unexpected diversion, threw them into confusion, and completely routed them; they left a large quantity of arms and ammunition behind them, and three thousand prisoners. It was at this battle that the incident occurred which gave the name of Conquerors of Araure to a regiment which had fallen into disorder at a critical moment in a previous engagement, and had thereby incurred the reprobation of Bolivar. Anxious to retrieve their reputa- tion, this "Battalion without a name," which was in the centre of the line of battle, charged headlong upon a triple line of artillery, infantry and cavalry, and captured a flag. Bolivar witnessed the charge, and afterward complimented them upon their bravery, and bestowed upon them the title aforesaid. "Whereupon," says the ingenuous Larrazabel, "the battalion received the flag from the hands of the Lib- erator with a concert of joy and enthusiasm, giving vivas to the genius of victory!" But notwithstanding these successes, victory was far from constant to the patriots. A Spanish general named Boves took the field against him, and after devastating the coun- try, met the Liberator at La Puerta and defeated him. Boves' policy was to exterminate all South Americans, and his army ably seconded his efforts. "When he gained a vic- tory, Boves would remark that his policy had been success- ful ; there were so many Americans less than before the 410 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA battle. And when he was defeated, he would still declare that his policy was victorious; for another batch of Amer- icans had been slain. And Montalvo, the Spanish war min- ister, reported of him that "he does not distinguish between guilty and innocent combatants and non-combatants. All alike are killed for the crime of being born in America." In a massacre at Aragua "children were murdered on the very breasts of their mothers : the same knife split the heads of both. Or they were flayed alive, and then thrown into poisonous and pestilential swamps." Thus Boves prepared the way for his remote successor and rival, Weyler. Bolivar, after this reverse, retired to New Granada, where he raised and organized a new army ; but he fell into disputes and difficulties with a rival chief, Castillo, and in the end gave up his command to General Palacios and sailed for Jamaica, where his assassination was attempted by a negro. But it so happened that on the night appointed for the deed, another person slept in Bolivar's bed; and the negro, supposing all was right, drove his knife through the vitals of this innocent person, and departed flushed with the pride of fancied success. Bolivar was not born to die in that manner. He was already plotting another blow for Venezuela. "I want to see America the greatest nation in the world," he said at this time, referring of course to America below the Isthmus. "The states from the Isthmus to Guatemala shall form an association. This magnificent position between the two oceans will make it the emporium of the world. Its canals will shorten the distances round the earth. Let the Isthmus be to us what that of Corinth was to the Greeks. God grant we may one day convene there a congress of rep- resentatives of the republics, kingdoms and empires to dis- cuss peace and war with the nations of the globe!" Bolivar visited Haiti and made the acquaintance of the negro patriot Petion, who gave him help in fitting out his new expedition, and advised him, as a first step after landing in his country, to free the slaves, "for how can you found THE REVOLT AGAINST SPAIN 411 a republic where slavery exists?" advice which Bolivar fol- lowed. "With six ships and a hundred and fifty men he set out to conquer back Venezuela from Spain once more. He landed at Margarita, where he had the fortune to capture a couple of Spanish vessels; and found the people still ready to believe in him and follow him. But he returned to Petion for more aid; and it was not until the 1st of January, 1817, that he finally landed at Barcelona, never more to be driven from the country. His time had come at last. HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA II THE FINAL STRUGGLE BARCELONA is a small town at the foot of the Mari- time Andes, on the northern coast of Venezuela. Bolivar was open to attack here, but hoped to gather a sufficient force from various parts of the country to offer resistance. His plan was to march through Santa Fe in Granada to Peru. Marino, a patriot general who was oper- ating in the south, gave him twelve hundred men ; but while the liberating army was penetrating the interior by way of the Orinoco, a Spanish force besieged Barcelona, captured it, and massacred the inhabitants. Bolivar and Marino had a quarrel, and Piar, another patriot general, conspired against him. The Spanish general Morillo came up from Santa Fe intent upon annihilating the patriot armies. Piar was ar- rested by Bolivar, condemned and shot ; but there is no doubt that the Liberator regretted the necessity for this action. He now convened a Council of State at Angostura, which pro- vided for the election of a congress ; this congress, meeting on January 1, 1819, elected Bolivar President with dictatorial powers. The general opinion was that a policy of wearing out the enemy was most advisable for the patriots, but Boli- var was not of a temperament to carry out such a plan. "Fabius," he remarked, "was prudent, but I am impetuous." He resolved to lead his army across the Andes into Vene- zuela, and conquer that country, already so often conquered by both parties, once more. The crossing of the mountains was a terrific enterprise, the idea of which had perhaps been suggested to Bolivar by the example of Napoleon, whose steps we have seen him following across the Alps. He set out on the 22d of June, and after severe hardships, during THE FINAL STRUGGLE 413 which many of his men perished, he passed the lofty crest of the frozen mountains, and descended, as if from the sky, into the plains on the other side, where he was joined by the army of Granada. General Barreiro was the commander of the Spanish troops; the antagonists met on the 25th of July. With Bolivar ifc was a question of conquer or die; and largely by the inspiration of his personal example, he kept his men to their work until the Spaniards fled with a loss of five hun- dred men. The victory placed Granada at his back; and the really wonderful achievement of his little army aroused great enthusiasm. Bolivar pursued the remnant of Bar- reiro's force, which at length turned to give battle again. The Spaniards had three thousand regulars to Bolivar's two thousand volunteers; but there was more dash and impet- uosity in the patriots' ranks, and they finally drove their enemy with great slaughter, capturing many prisoners, Bar- reiro among them. The Spanish viceroy was at this time in Bogota, the home of the legendary El Dorado; Bolivar pressed on thither, but the viceroy had heard the news and escaped. Bolivar occupied the city, issued his proclamation, and saw himself master of two republics. He perceived the advantage of uniting them in one, and immediately set out for Angostura now Ciudad Bolivar, just south of the Ori- noco. He arrived there early in December, and on the 14th of that month he met Congress, was saluted with twenty- one guns, and made an address. After briefly describing what he and his army had accomplished, and eulogizing the patriotism of the inhabitants of New Granada, he proposed the union of that country with Venezuela. "It is the vote," he declared, "of the citizens of both countries, and it is the guarantee of the liberty of South America. ' ' Zea, president of the Congress, replied in an exalted strain. "If Quito, Santa Fe and Venezuela," said he, "are joined in one single republic, who can calculate the power and pros- perity of such a combination? May Heaven bless this union, whose consummation is the object of my vigilance, and the desire of my heart!" Three days later the creation of the 414 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Republic of Colombia was approved by Congress, and Simon Bolivar was unanimously chosen its Chief Magistrate. Desultory fighting now went on for a year or more, when an armistice was agreed upon ; upon its expiration, in March, 1821, Bolivar informed General Torres, who had taken the place of Morillo, that he was about to attack him. He had fifteen thousand men. The Spaniards were at Carabobo, near Valencia, on the high Andes. Bolivar, with eight thousand troops, appeared there on the 24th of June. At a council of war, held before the attack, a guide informed him that there was a little known footpath by which a body of men could be sent to turn the enemy's right. Bolivar intrusted the conduct of this movement to General Paez, who was supported by cavalry. The path was of exceeding difficulty, but the ascent was accomplished, and the soldiers, falling impetuously upon the Spaniards, carried them off their feet, and chased them into the fort of Porto Cabello. Paez, who was a llanero (an Indian of Apache stock), had already achieved distinction in war as a cavalry officer; and for this exploit he was presented by Congress with a golden sword, and raised to the rank of Major-General. When, subsequently, Venezuela retired from the republic of Colom- bia, Paez, who is said to have been instrumental in that se- cession, was elected its president, and continued in office for seventeen years. He survived till 1873, and died in New York. Bolivar now proceeded to Caracas, which he once more entered in triumph, though the Spaniards had reduced the city to desolation. But Bolivar had freed the northern states, and was now about to co-operate to secure the free- dom of the south. Argentina, under the viceroyalty, was an immense terri- tory, now divided up into the republics of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and the Banda Oriental del Uruguay. In 1806, General Beresford captured Buenos Ay res; but was after- ward defeated by Linares. Montevideo was taken by Sir Samuel Auchmuty in 1807; but Whitelock's attempt to cap- THE FINAL STRUGGLE 415 ture Buenos Ayres the following year was unsuccessful. When Joseph was raised to the Spanish throne, the people of this country refused allegiance to him, and in 1813 a con- gress assembled and chose Posadas Dictator. The Uruguay- ans supported Ferdinand ; but in the course of the next two or three years the cause of independence gained ground. On the 9th of July, 1816, the independence of Argentina was formally declared, with Pueyrredon for president. Para- guay, Uruguay and Bolivia established independent govern- ments. Spain, otherwise occupied, offered little resistance to these proceedings; but what was needed was a supreme directing mind to bring these new states into some sort of political accord and organization. The occasion produced the man, in the person of Jose de San Martin. He was born in Yapeyu Missiones, in 1778. He was educated in Spain, and at the age of twenty took part in a campaign against the Moors. He met Miranda in Europe, and imbibed from him the conception of South American liberty. San Martin is, upon the whole, the most commendable figure which the struggle for South American independence produced ; if his genius was not equal to Boli- var's, he was free from the latter's faults of commission and omission. He was not so headlong a believer in the capacity of men for self-government ; but he was singularly free from the taint of personal ambition, and his life was passed in the work of liberating his countrymen. He died in voluntary poverty and retirement, having refused Chili's offer of ten thousand ounces of gold. In person he is described as tall and well formed, and of soldierly aspect; his complexion was dark, his features expressive, his hair and eyes black. His bearing was grave and courteous, and as a general he was cautious, sure and resolute, with an especial talent for organization. His first work was to bring the military resources of the country into effective form. His trained talents were soon apparent, and he was called to take the place of Belgrano, who had heretofore been the chief general of the patriots. 416 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Under his influence the loyalty to Ferdinand insensibly waned and the idea of absolute independence gained strength. San Martin had early formed the purpose of crossing the Andes and aiding in the liberation of Chili and Peru. He got the appointment of governor of Cuzco, and the work of assembling the army began at Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes. Sau Martin's plan was to cross not by the road to Upper Peru', but by the Pass of Upsallata, over an eleva- tion of thirteen thousand feet. But for the present he kept his designs to himself, and left his colleague, General Alvear, to command tne Army of the North, while he himself gave his whole attention to the Andean force. It was in 1814 that he was made governor of Cuzco. He lived with great simplicity, and returned half his salary to the public treasury. As a disciplinarian he was rigid, yet he was rich in quiet acts of kindness, which bound his men to him. The material for an army in this Andean region was of the best; rugged mountaineers, accustomed to hardships, and indifferent to danger; with a physical strength which was not without its value in that compara- tively primitive era of warfare. The expenses of the army were generously subscribed for ; women giving their jewels, and men denying themselves luxuries for the cause. There was a magnetism in the leader which kept enthusiasm awake. Chili had already as we shall presently see been fighting for her liberty, and, after a temporary success, had been defeated; and Peru was also in sore straits. San Mar- tin was convinced that, if he could rescue Chili, the cause of South American independence would be won ; Peru could not hold out against a victorious army approaching from the south. By degrees, as he saw his army assuming form and strength, he permitted glimpses of his designs to appear, and the grandeur of the conception stimulated the patriotism of both army and people; while the discipline which San Martin enforced rendered his soldiers the most formidable body of troops that had ever been organized for battle against the Spaniards. THE FINAL STRUGGLE One of the most picturesque and singular figures of this epoch is that of Luis Beltran, the mendicant friar, who was of those who had repudiated the commands of their superiors at the time of the reaction against Spanish cruelties at Lima. He was a native of Mendoza ; and though vowed to the ser- vice of the Church, he possessed a remarkable mechanical talent, and was free of the forge; so that he was given the post of overseer of the horse-shoeing and mechanical depart- ments of San Martin's army. He had already served as an artillerist in Chili, and when the patriots were defeated there he crossed the mountains to his birthplace, carrying on his sturdy shoulders a bag of tools which he had made him- self. In addition to the commission already mentioned, he was made chaplain of the army, and was ordered to establish an arsenal, with three hundred workmen under him. He took the bells from the church belfries, and melted them down to make cannon; and in 1816 this modern Vulcan unfrocked himself, and took the rank of an officer of artillery. On the 17th of January, 1817, San Martin held a review of his army, preparatory to undertaking his march. The women of Mendoza presented to San Martin a flag which they had made, bearing the emblem of the sun. The gen- eral, standing on a platform in the square of Mendoza, took the flag in his hands and called on the crowd to behold the "first flag of independence which had been blessed in South America. " Amid cheers, he bade his soldiers swear to mam- tain it through all perils. This flag was carried along the Pacific coast through Chili and Peru, and after sixty years it formed the funeral pall for the body of San Martin him- self. But before following its course, we must pass in review the events which had occurred on the western slopes of the Andes since the war with Spain broke out. In 1809, the general sentiment in Chili had been favor- able to the claims of Ferdinand ; and the cabildo took counsel how best to carry on government during his exile. Two parties were developed; that of the godos, or Spaniards, 418 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA headed by the president and supported by the Audiencia, the clergy and the officers of government, who wished the recognition of the Spanish juntas; and the patriots, who advocated the creation of a junta nacional de gobierno, to rule till the king should return. The leading Chilian families were of this party, and they were denounced as rebels by the other. In 1810 several leading patriots were arrested by order of the captain-general, Carrasco; the people demanded their release, but they were hurried off to Valparaiso. This led to greater agitation, which the news from Buenos Ayres strengthened. Carrasco finally was compelled to resign, and Mateo de Toro Zambrano, an old soldier of eighty, was made president in his stead. He was a moderate revolutionist, and was pledged to oppose the French regency, and to re- serve Chili for Ferdinand. But finally the more radical element gained him over, and he consented to the calling of a congress, which created a junta de gobierno on the 18th of September, 1810 the day quoted as that of the beginning of Chilian independence. A lawyer, Dr. Rozas, was at the head of the junta; he had already distinguished himself in revolutionary affairs. He began the organization of a military force, and opened the ports of Chili to free commerce. The office of captain- general was abolished ; and arrangements were made for the election of the congress. During this election, an armed clash took place between troops under command of Figueroa, and a body of patriots led by Carrera, in which the latter were successful, and Figueroa was afterward executed as a conspirator. The congress assembled, and passed laws in the public interest, abolishing many abuses, and establishing military schools. A revolutionary newspaper was published at this time, edited by the friar Camilo Henriquez. But dis- sensions in the congress itself broke out; the election had not secured an even representation from the different parts of the colony ; and the Santiago district was conservative, while Concepcion and the south were radical. Rozas, leader of the radical element, finally withdrew to Concepcion, and the THE FINAL STRUGGLE 419 Santiago faction thereupon named a new junta composed of its supporters. Meanwhile Carrera and his friends were plotting to gain control of the government. He forced Congress to select a new junta, by the aid of which he expelled the Santiago deputies and put radicals in their place, with supreme power tor himself. Rozas at the same time effected a revolution at Concepcion, and established a radical junta there. Radicals were now in control of the country; but they soon turned against each other, and Carrera and Rozas led the warring factions. For a while Bernado O'Higgins averted strife be- tween the two ; but the division of sentiment remained. The country was disorganized; Valdivia and Chiloe gave their adherence to the viceroy of Peru; and Santiago and Con- cepcion were arrayed under Carrera and Rozas respectively. Carrera improved an opportunity to stir up a riot in Concep- cion, and succeeded in procuring the banishment of Rozas to Mendoza, where he soon after died. But though this gave Carrera undivided authority, Chili was far from being tran- quil. To allay trouble, he put forward a constitution in 1812, which professed to control the executive by another body and proclaimed various reforms. It had no perma- nent value, but at this juncture danger from another quar- ter took the minds of the revolutionists off these squabbles of their own. Abascal, viceroy of Peru, learning that Carrera was as- suming illicit powers in Santiago, resolved to suppress him. He sent General Pareja with a force of two thousand men to Concepcion, where he was reinforced by the garrison of that place, which gave him four thousand in all. A body of Araucanians also joined him, and he deemed himself able to do what he pleased with Chili. The Carreras Miguel and Juan got together twelve thousand untrained men, and marched against him. Three actions took place in quick succession; in the two first, the patriots drove the enemy; in the third there was a stubborn fight, in which both sides lost heavily; but the royalists were finally obliged to 420 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA give way before superior numbers. They took refuge in Chilian and made preparations to resist the siege which was begun ; Pareja died, and was succeeded in the command by Colonel Sanchez, under whom the Spaniards made a long defence. Upon the whole, the royalists fared very badly in this campaign ; except the force in Chilian, they were driven out of the country. On the other hand, there was dissension between the Carreras and the junta; which ended in the former being displaced, and the command of the army given to O'Higgins, then under forty years of age; he was the natural son of Ambrosio. He had been educated in Eng- land, and, on his return to Chili, lived on his estates; but when the revolution broke out, he declared in its favor. He won the title of El primer Soldado de Chili. "When the Carreras were deposed, they started for Santiago to plan new schemes, but were captured on the way by the Span- iards and taken to Chilian. About the same time, royalist reinforcements arrived from Peru, giving the Spaniards the advantage. A new campaign was begun with great energy by General Gainza, who had brought the reinforcements. A brush with the Chilians under O'Higgins and his lieu- tenant Mackenna resulted in the discomfiture of the Span- iards on the 19th of March, 1814, at a place near Chilian. Gainza, however, pushed on toward Santiago, with O'Hig- gins after him; and the two armies encamped on opposite sides of the River Maule, in sight of each other. O'Higgiiis left his camp standing, in charge of a small force, spread out so as to seem large ; and with his main force forded the river at night, and appeared in a strong position for attack in the morning. Gainza was obliged to retreat, and O'Higgins was able to open communications with Santiago, and to cut the Spanish line of communications with Chilian. The war, however, had become wearisome to the Chilians, and the government of the junta became unsatisfactory. It was deposed, and a former governor of Valparaiso, Colonel de Lastra, was invited to become supreme director another of the amusing variations of title by which these unbaked THE FINAL STRUGGLE 421 democrats tried to avoid betraying to themselves that what they really wanted was a bona-fide king. Lastra was a worthy gentleman, well thought of on all hands; and the best thing he could think of doing to improve the situation was to propose a peace. The terms suggested were that Gainza should return to Peru within two months, while Chili agreed to maintain a government which acknowl- edged allegiance to Spain. Members were also to be sent from Chili to the Spanish Cortes. Hostages were exchanged between the contracting parties, and the treaty was con- cluded; but on the part of Spain it was but a pretext to gain time. Nor did Chili herself pay much respect to its provisions. The Carreras, liberated by its provisions, repaired to Santiago and restored the deposed junta, abolishing at the same tune the office of Colonel Lastra. But this act proved unpopular, and O'Higgins was summoned to the capital. He came, with an army at his back; Carrera met him with another at Maypo, and there was an indecisive conflict between the two parties of the ' ' patriots. ' ' A more serious battle was prevented by the news that the viceroy of Peru had repudiated the treaty, and that a Spanish force under Osorio and Mariano, one of the best soldiers of the royalists, was then on the march for Chili. The quondam antagonists were united by the common danger, and advanced against the Spaniards, whom O'Higgins encountered at the River Cachapoal; he was driven back, and was again worsted at Rancagua, Carrera giving no assistance. Of two thousand patriots all but three hundred perished. Carrera fled to Buenos Ayres, O'Higgins to Mendoza, while the victorious Osorio entered Santiago triumphant. He distributed punishments of all degrees of severity right and left ; and for more than two years Chili experienced all the rigors of a royalist government. Had Chili been treated with consideration and justice, she might have remained loyal, for there was a large party opposed to a republic; but the severity was so great that loyalists became republicans. By 1817, all was ready for 422 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA another revolt; and it was at this juncture that help came from across the Andes; for Buenos Ayres perceived that if she did not help Chili that country's fate would be her own; they must stand or fall together. And San Martin was prepared to bring the needed succor in person. San Martin's principal force was cavalry, in which ser- vice his gauchos were eminent. He made a feint of crossing the mountains by way of Planchon, thereby inducing the royalist army, which was now under the leadership of Cap- tain-General Marco del Ponte, to concentrate at Talca ; while San Martin actually crossed by the apparently impossible route of Putaendo and Cuevas. San Martin led his army in person ; each horseman carried, besides his bag of provis- ions, his musket, cartridge-pouch and poncho, and nothing else. The very shortness of supplies caused the march to be made with extraordinary speed ; three hundred miles of the most preposterous climbing and sliding were accomplished in less than a fortnight. The army, foot and horse, to the number of four thousand, collected at Villa Nueva, and on the 7th of February had their first skirmish with the ene- my's outposts at Chacabuco. Driving these before them, and advancing through a country whose inhabitants greeted them with joy and thrust food into their hands, they came upon the enemy, to the number of two thousand, strongly posted near Aconcagua. The latter had neglected to in- form themselves as to the strength of the patriots ; thinking it impossible that any infantry could have arrived so soon, they arranged their force only to repel cavalry. Too late they discovered their error. The whole patriot army rushed upon them, O'Higgins leading the cavalry charge, and the enemy fled in total rout, hardly waiting to fire a shot. They were pursued, and could not be rallied; the officers escaped to Valparaiso, where many were captured. The ease of the victory surprised the patriot leaders, and expecting a more resolute opposition, they advanced with caution. But San- tiago had been abandoned, and was entered by San Martin on February 15, 1817. Another junta was formed; but San THE FINAL STRUGGLE 423 Martin refused to be made supreme director, having an eye on an invasion of Peru. O'Higgins, therefore, assumed that dignity, and complete independence of Spain was de- clared. Numbers of prominent royalists, who had been in- strumental in the cruelties practiced upon the Chilians, were executed or otherwise punished. An army was sent against Ordonez in the south, and he was defeated and shut up in Talcahuano. All Chili was now practically in the patriots' hands. But three thousand five hundred veteran soldiers had arrived from Spain, and the Peruvian viceroy Abascal set about dispatching another army to the new republic. Its command was given to Osorio. He landed at Talcahuano, then the last royalist foothold in the country, in the first days of 1817. His unexpected arrival checked San Martin's preparations for invading Peru. Osorio advanced rapidly toward Santiago with three thousand four hundred veterans ; San Martin, uniting his forces, had an army more than twice as numerous, but comparatively undisciplined. The two armies met first near Talca ; and while the patriots were executing a manoeuvre, Ordonez fell upon them impetuously, and in fifteen minutes had them on the run. San Martin fell back on San Fernando with the right wing; O'Higgins was wounded, and with difficulty reached Santiago. He was soon joined there by San Martin, who revived the courage of the people by his assured bearing. During the next three weeks, by enormous efforts, the army was collected and re- habilitated, and took up a position nine miles from Santiago, near the Maypo. The royalists appeared on the 5th of April, and massed themselves in a formidable line, a mile in length. Each side numbered about five thousand men. The battle began shortly before noon with artillery, and soon all the troops were engaged, the fiercest fighting being round a farmhouse, which was often taken and retaken. Osorio gained during the day, and by evening it seemed that the patriots must be defeated. But as the famous Burgos regi- ment, on the roytilist right wing, was forming in square to 424 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA charge, there was a momentary disorder, which was taken advantage of by Colonel O'Brien of the patriot cavalry, who charged with the reserves and drove the Burgos regiment headlong. At the same time the left wing of the royalists gave way, and the centre soon followed. More than two thousand of Osorio's troops were killed and wounded, and the rest were made prisoners, with the exception of Osorio himself and a few of his officers, who escaped to Peru. It was a decisive and most important victory; it freed Chili, broke the power of Abascal in Peru, and showed San Martin to be the best general in South America. He immediately returned to Mendoza to begin recruiting a fresh army for the Peruvian invasion. Meanwhile a couple of war vessels were secured as the nucleus of a Chilian navy, and in an action with two Spanish men-of-war soon afterward the latter were nearly captured, and were put to flight. Another ship, named the "San Martin," with sixty-four guns, was then purchased, and the fleet was put under the orders of Commodore Blanco Encelada. A consignment of Spanish troops, with convoys, had been sent out from Spain, but had become scattered by a storm, and a frigate and a transport put into Concepcion. The "San Martin" attacked the frigate and captured her; the transport, with three others, was captured ; and before the end of 1818, the Chilian navy numbered some fifteen ships. Lord Thomas Cochrane was invited to command it, and he promptly set to work to man and equip it. The design was, of course, to open the way for the invasion of Peru. In January of 1819 he was ready, and set sail for Callao. For a year he harried the Peruvian coast, and did great service for Chili, which was not adequately recognized at the time. In February, by a brilliant action, he took the town of Valdivia. "We know something of the Spanish ar- tillery practice; and this may partly explain how the gal- lant Englishman succeeded in the teeth of seemingly over- whelming difficulties. Though exposed to a tremendous fire for many hours, he lost but seven killed and nineteen wounded. Valdivia was a Gibraltar in* strength, having THE FINAL STRUGGLE 425 no less than fifteen forts and one hundred and twenty- eight guns. All this while O'Higgins, despite many obstacles, was governing Chili with a strong and able hand, and great ef- forts were made to raise a force to accompany San Martin in his invasion of Peru. O'Higgins showed himself quite as skilful a diplomatist and statesman as he was a soldier, and by 1820 Chili and Buenos Ayres were in accord, and their resources were thoroughly brought out. The executive de- partment shifted its place to Valparaiso, as being a more convenient point from which to co-operate with the land and naval forces; and in spite of the lack of funds in the country, the expedition was ready by August 15th. The army em- barked at Valparaiso, and extra arms were taken to equip the volunteers who were expected to join in Peru. Fifteen transports and eight warships conveyed the army of about five thousand men. On the 7th of September they got ashore at Pisco, the Spaniards falling back on Lima. Colonel Are- nales went forward with a thousand men, and an armistice was agreed upon, to discuss possible terms of peace; but San Mar- tin would consent to nothing short of complete independence, and nothing was concluded. After the expiration of the ar- mistice, Admiral Cochrane resumed his aggressive campaign along the coast ; and among other exploits he performed the daring feat of cutting out the Spanish frigate "Esmaralda" from her berth in the harbor of Callao, and carrying her off in triumph under the fire of the shore batteries. Cochrane's policy was always aggressive, while that of San Martin was to delay, and give the enemy a chance to give up without bloodshed. Both policies were right; for Cochrane, by the prestige which he gave the patriot cause, induced the Peru- vian population to declare in favor of San Martin, and dis- couraged the royalists; while San Martin kept his army intact, and avoided the bitterness which great bloodshed would have caused. Months passed in this way, and on the 6th of July the royalist authorities quitted Lima and took refuge in Cuzco; San Martin took possession, and proclaimed 426 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Peru's independence on the 28th. He assumed the title of Protector of Peru, appointed a governing staff, and the Span- iards soon after peacefully evacuated the country. The following year he made his preparations to capture Guaya- quil ; but Bolivar, who had invaded Quito, was now heading in the same direction; and an interview between the two men took place. Though Bolivar had fought more battles than San Mar- tin, and had consequently made a more sensational and con- spicuous record, he was not so accomplished a soldier, or so trustworthy a man; but merit does not always tell in national affairs. The very greatness of San Martin, however, enabled him to perceive that Bolivar would have a better chance of uniting the country than he; and he had the magnanimity to waive recognition of his own vast services in favor of his rival. The two men met at Guayaquil on the 25th of July, and had a private interview. What they said to each other is not known; but the result was that San Martin handed over the government to Bolivar, and resolved to leave South America. There was a grand banquet and a ball, which San Martin rather deprecated, but which Bolivar, who loved to glitter before the public eye, rejoiced in. San Martin's toast at the banquet was, "To the speedy end of the war; to the organization of the republics, and to the health of the Liberator of Colombia." To Bolivar he afterward wrote, "I have convened the congress of Peru, and I shall go to Chili the day after its assembling, for I believe that my presence is the only obstacle in the way of your occupying Peru." In his address of abdication he added, "The pres- ence of a fortunate general in the country which he has conquered is detrimental to the state. I have won the inde- pendence of Peru, and I now cease to be a public man." Speaking, privately, of Bolivar, he said, "He is the most extraordinary character of South America; one to whom difficulties but add strength." History records few acts of so great abnegation and true patriotism. San Martin went to Europe with his daughter THE FINAL STRUGGLE 437 Mercedes, and for nearly thirty years dwelt there in con- tented obscurity and poverty. But after his death, South America partly realized the nobility of his character, and caused his body to be brought to Buenos Ayres, where it lies to-day in a tomb, one of the most beautiful and impressive in the world. An urn or sarcophagus of black marble, sur- mounted by a sword and mantle, with a laurel wreath aud a military hat of bronze, is supported on a massive pedestal of red marble; round whose base stand three superb female figures, representing the Argentine Republic, Chili and Peru. It is a splendid monument; but the man's deeds are a better one, and more enduring. Bolivar entered Lima in September, 1823, and was made dictator of Peru. General Miller, an Englishman, was his chief of staff, and Sucre, whom he dubbed "the soul of the Army," was his alter ego in battle. It was Sucre who, after many other distinguished services, won the battle of Pichincha, giving Ecuador to the patriots. The liberating army, numbering ten thousand men, assembled at Huarez, where the final campaign was prepared for : for the Spanish viceroy was to make another attempt to win back the country. The Spanish army counted about thirteen thou- sand men. After a preliminary skirmish at Junin, in which the patriots had the advantage, Bolivar left the decisive battle to the care of his subordinates, and re- turned to Lima to attend to the affairs of state. The battle took place on the plain and surrounding hills of Aya- cucho, the royalists being in the plain, the patriots on the summit of the ridge. The viceroy commanded in person. Miller led the van of the patriots. On the morning of Decem- ber 4th Sucre briefly addressed his men, and then ordered General Cordova to charge. There were no manoeuvres in this conflict; the issue was never in doubt after the first charge, and within an hour the royalist army was utterly routed and in flight. Fourteen hundred of them were killed and seven hundred wounded a somewhat singular propor- tion, suggesting that there was little quarter shown to the 19 428 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA defeated. The royalist general capitulated on the field ; the viceroy was wounded. This event completed the liberation of the continent, and raised Bolivar to his apogee. The Argentine Republic, which had hitherto claimed Upper Peru, now relinquished it, and it was made into a separate state, to which the name Bolivia was given. The Assembly of Peru voted a million dollars to the dictator, who used much of it in liberating slaves in Bolivia. He made a tour through the country, arousing great enthusiasm, as might be expected from such a population, at such a time. Sucre was made president of Bolivia; and all that remained was to give the people of the liberated continent an education in their duties as citizens. The lesson is always a difficult and a long one; and without prejudice to the scholars in this instance, we may admit that they are still learning. We must now take a glance at the progress of liberal ideas in Mexico. In its first steps toward inevitable free- dom, Mexico was guided by two remarkable men, Hidalgo and Lorelos. Hidalgo, born in 1753, was the son of a farmer, went to school at Valladolid, and became the head of the College of San Nicholas. In 1779 he was made curate in Mexico ; but he was interested in farming, established a brick manufactory, and secretly cherished heretical opinions in both politics and religion. He was a great favorite with the peo- ple, however, and inoculated many with his views. A cer- tain Ignacio Allende was one of his intimates, and Aldama was another. The suspicions of the government were finally aroused ; but Hidalgo, instead of taking flight, decided to act. He might be called the John Brown of Mexico ; though, in view of his extraordinary success for a time, we might regard him as a sort of masculine Joan of Arc. There was some- thing almost miraculous in his campaign; but an army which, like his, is a mere rabble of untrained and ill-armed people occasionally accomplishes wonderful things by mere accident. They have the single advantage of numbers and enthusiasm; they cannot stand against resolute attack by disciplined soldiers; but should any chance panic occur THE FINAL STRUGGLE 429 in their enemy's ranks, or should they themselves, by some fortuity, happen to do the right thing at the right moment, instead of the wrong one, they may win astonishing victories. In the end of course they must succumb, unless they have been able actually to exterminate their foe while they were in the way with him. Hidalgo started out with ten men on the 15th of Septem- ber, 1810, from his home in the little town of Dolores; he was accompanied by Allende and Aldama and his own brother. They had a battle-cry, which is known as El Grito de Dolores: it was "Up with true religion, down with false government!" They made their way to San Miguel el Grande, their numbers rapidly increasing as they went; by the time they had reached Celaya they were fifty thou- sand men. "With this force Hidalgo ventured on the attack against Guanajuato, which he captured after a confused struggle, the stronghold being set on fire by a small boy, who protected himself against bullets by holding a tile over his head. He was now joined by further crowds of peas- antry, and by not a few soldiers; and on the 17th of October, Hidalgo with his grotesque army entered Valladolid. Mean- while the bishops had excommunicated him, and the new viceroy, Venegas, was getting an army together to destroy him. But Hidalgo was unterrified, and with a following of not less than a hundred thousand men, he advanced against the city of Mexico. The inhabitants were terror- stricken, and began to prepare for the worst; but the viceroy sent forward his trained troops, and a battle forthwith took place. The royal artillery did great execution; but the rabble did not know enough about war to appreciate its peril, and kept on fighting, till by sheer force of numbers it overcame the regulars, slaughtered them right and left, and drove them from the field. Now was the moment for Hidalgo to rush forward and possess himself of the city ; but, like other amateur soldiers, he was not aware of the value of the oppor- tunity; and thinking that he might be again attacked by 430 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA reinforcements, he withdrew to Queretaro; there he was assailed by some troops under Calleja, suffered a reverse, and as if by magic his vast horde melted away, and he was left, with a few followers, alone. He fled to Valladolid; Allende was pursued by Calleja to Guanajuato. Hidalgo assembled another horde, but was met on the 16th of Jan- uary at the Puente de Calderon by Calleja, who utterly defeated him. With Allende and some other rebel chiefs, Hidalgo tried to escape across the boundary to the United States; but they were overtaken by the Spaniards, carried to Chihuahua, and shot. Their heads were then cut off and fastened upon the gate of the Alhondiga de Grenaditas, where they remained for ten years. Afterward they were reverently buried, as relics of martyrs, in the church at Mexico. The career of Morelos did not differ widely from Hidalgo's. He was a younger man than Hidalgo, and had at one time been his pupil ; he was the son of a carpenter, and till he was thirty followed the calling of a muleteer. It was after he reached thirty that he began his education, and was ordained to the church; but after a little experience of curacies, the Grito de Dolores was sounded, and he cast in his fortunes with the rebels. His operations were chiefly on the Pacific coast, where he met with many successes, and evinced a talent for handling troops. He seems to have been ambi- tious of military distinction, and was perhaps inflamed by the example of Napoleon, who turned the heads of many likely young men in those days. He made his way to the town of Cuatla, about eighty miles from Mexico, where he sustained a long siege by Calleja, finally escaping with his men by night. After this, till the end of 1812, he gained many smaU victories; and he captured the fortress of San Diego in August, 1813. A month later he called together the first Mexican congress at Chilpantzingo, which issued a declaration of independence. He then advanced against Valladolid, which was strongly garrisoned, and commanded by Agustin de Iturbide. He summoned the town to sur- THE FINAL STRUGGLE 431 render, but Iturbide gave him battle and routed him, and his army was dispersed. The congress began to quarrel; Morelos was closely pursued by the royalists, and finally captured ; he was shot at St. Cristobel Ecatepec on the 22d of December, 1815. His memory is greatly revered by the Mexican people ; and Valladolid changed its name to Morelia in his honor. The rebellion was now apparently extinguished; but, it need not be said, it was only smouldering out of sight. Vin- cente Guerrero had joined the revolutionists in 1810, and still continued to keep in the field ; he was in a hundred engage- ments, in some of which he was defeated, while in others he gained the advantage ; thus he held out for ten years, always managing to escape capture. But in 1820 Ferdinand, who had regained his throne, was obliged to make liberal changes in his administration, which aroused Mexico to de- mand reforms. Iturbide, who had hitherto fought in the royalist ranks, and had attained the rank of colonel, now declared himself in favor of the complete separation of Mex- ico from Spain. At this very time he had been appointed to lead a force against Guerrero in the south; after several minor engagements, he entered into correspondence with the rebel leader, and told him that he desired to proclaim Mex- ican independence. Guerrero thereupon handed over his own command to the renegade, and the "Plan of Iguala" was drawn up on the 24th of February. It provided for the exclusive preservation of the Roman Catholic Church, the absolute independence of Mexico under a moderate monarchy with some member of the House of Bourbon on the throne^ and the amicable union of Spaniards and Mexicans. These principles found general favor among the rebels to the exist- ing government, and the army of the Three Guarantees, as it was called, gained great strength in the south, and advanced upon the capital, where the viceroy, Apodaca, was indignantly preparing to exterminate it. But the people were against him, and his orders were not obeyed, and finally a deputation from his troops informed him that he was de- 432 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA posed. He left for Spain with his family at once. A sub- inspector of artillery, Novella, was installed in his place ; but though he issued orders in due form, no one attended to them. Santa Anna, at Vera Cruz, joined Iturbide, and many royalists did the same; there seemed to be no oppo- nents to the new regime; when unexpectedly a new viceroy, sent to supersede Apodaca, of course without knowledge of what hacl happened, landed at Vera Cruz and there took the oath of office. His name was Juan O'Donoju, a Spanish disguise which but awkwardly veils the origin of its bearer. Iturbide, who desired no unnecessary trouble, met the viceroy on his way to the capital, and prevailed upon him to accept the revolution. The two then went forward together, and, after receiving the capitulation of Novella, entered Mexico in triumph with sixteen thousand men, and without firing a shot. A few Spanish families left the country upon the instal- lation of the new government, but for the most part it was agreed to, and went into active operation. Guatemala joined Mexico for a time, but later set up for itself. The Mexican Congress had its first session in February, but got into a tangle at once; great differences of opinion were developed, and it became plain that the party of Iturbide was not dis- posed to carry out the provision of the "Plan" which would place a Bourbon on the throne. While the quarrel was at its height, news came that the Spanish Cortes declared the Mexican government null and void. Iturbide at once caused himself to be proclaimed emperor, and compelled the con- gress to accept him as such. On the 19th of May he assumed his dignity. It was the end which he had contemplated ever since he held his first treasonable correspondence with Guer- rero. As Agustin I. he was crowned in the cathedral on the 21st of July. But, as might have been anticipated, such a coup de theatre could have no security. Hardly any one really wished the adventurer, who had done nothing to en- dear himself to the country, to be its ruler. Feeling that a struggle was before him, he dissolved the congress, and THE FINAL STRUGGLE 433 attempted to carry on the government personally. On De- cember 6th, the Republic was proclaimed at Vera Cruz, with Santa Anna at the head of the movement. It was every- where received with favor, and Agustin, seeing himself deserted, bowed to the storm, and retired. The congress re- assembled, and banished him from Mexico with an annuity. He wrote from London to the Mexican government that there was a plan afoot in Europe to reinstate the Spanish power in Mexico, and offered his services; they were refused, from motives of prudence, and it was announced that he would suffer death should he return. But the unlucky Iturbide, counting upon a favorable answer to his letter, did not wait to receive the answer, but embarked on a British ship and landed at Soto la Marina, with all his family, July 14, 1824. He was at once arrested and informed that, in accordance with the decree, he must die. In spite of his protestations that he had not been aware of the decree, he was taken to the capital, tried, condemned, and immediately shot. Noth- ing in his life so well became him as the way he left it. "Mexicans," said he, "I die because I came to help you. I die gladly, because I die among you. I die with honor, not a traitor. I leave to my children no stain of treason. No I am not a traitor!" It was a mistake to kill him ; he had done less mischief than most agitators and revolutionists do, and he seems to have loved his country. Personally, he was a vain man, fond of show, brave, animated, and handsome. Long after his death he was called Libertador de Mexico, which he was not; but neither did he deserve to be made a martyr. After his removal, the most notable figure of the revolu- tion in Mexico made his appearance in the foreground. Santa Anna was born in 1792, and was therefore at this time well under thirty years of age. It was a season of plots and coun- terplots, the country being full of men each of whom had his plan for a government, and most of whom wished to be at the head of it. General Victoria was the first president under the new constitution, and held on for two years ; but 434 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA after his retirement the conservatives and the liberals joined issue with energy. Guerrero was the liberal candidate, but his opponent, Pedraza, was elected by a majority of two; upon which Santa Anna declared that Guerrero was the true choice. Mutiny broke out in Mexico City, and Pedraza fled, and the city was set on fire and pillaged. Guerrero was finally called to Mexico and given the presidency. Meanwhile Spain was sending troops to establish her authority, though the Republic had already been acknowledged by the United States. Santa Anna marched against the invading Spanish army, and forced their capitulation ; and Spain accepted this reverse as final. Santa Anna was made war minister and commander-in-chief by the president; upon which he turned Guerrero out of the presidency, and put General Bustamente, who was vice-president, in the supreme place. Guerrero resented his dismissal and took to the mountains, where he levied war of the guerilla sort upon his enemies. He was captured by a ruse, and handed over to the government, which shot him. He was one of the few men of undoubted honesty of this epoch. Santa Anna soon tired of Busta- mente, deposed him, and consented to assume the office him- self. How he was able to do all these things, no one could explain; he was the "Boss" of Mexico. From president he was soon made dictator. The further adventures of Mexico, up to the time of its war with the United States, were internal ones, and need not detain us. Before the date at which we have now arrived (1833) Simon Bolivar had caused to be convened at Panama an international congress; his idea being that all American re- publics should get together to insure the peace and liberty of the continent. It was intended to offset the European congresses which met to arrange international matters in the eastern hemisphere. The first object of the Spanish American congress was to take measures for their common protection against Spain. The United States, whose so- called Monroe Doctrine had showed her to be opposed to the establishment of monarchies in the west, or to the in- THE FINAL STRUGGLE 435 terference of European monarchies in western affairs, was among those invited to send delegates. The United States did not respond, but representatives of Mexico, Central America, Colombia and Peru were present at the meeting, which took place on the 22d of June, 1826. Agents from Great Britain attended for purposes of observa- tion. Ten meetings were held, and the following agreement was arrived at: "The republics of Colombia, Central Amer- ica, Peru and the Mexican States do mutually ally and con- federate themselves in peace and war in a perpetual compact, the object of which shall be to maintain the sovereignty and independence of the confederated powers against foreign sub- jection, and to secure the enjoyment of unalterable peace." But it was tolerably evident from the first that the congress was, to say the best of it, premature. The American States were in no visible peril of subjection by Europe ; their con- stant and pressing danger was in their mutual and internal jealousies and conflicts. Their history for the fourscore years of their existence has been one confused record of mutinies, revolts, coups de main, assassinations, usurpations, and res- torations. In several of them, life and property have never been secure, and capitalists who have attempted to develop their resources have found to their cost that concessions and franchises granted by their governments are not worth the paper on which they are written ; because the next day, or the next year, the existing government may be overthrown, and the succeeding one repudiates all contracts entered into by the other. The time may come when a more stable con- dition of affairs may be established; and in some of the re- publics there is already reasonable security; but the prob- abilities are that there will finally be a new distribution of political power, with guarantees of permanence. Four years after this ineffective congress, Bolivar's power came to an end. General Mitre, the statesman and historian of South America, who was born at Buenos Ayres in 1821, and died there in 1894, draws up a striking resume of the fate of the leaders of Spanish American revolutions. He 436 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA says: "The first revolutionists of La Paz and of Quito died on the scaffold. Miranda, the apostle of liberty, betrayed by his own people to his enemies, died, alone and naked, in a dungeon. Moreno, the priest of the Argentine revolution, and the teacher of the democratic idea, died at sea, and found a grave in the ocean. Hidalgo, the first popular leader of Mexico, was executed as a criminal. Belgrano, the first champion of Argentine independence, who saved the revolution at Tucuman and Salta, died obscurely, while civil war raged around him. O'Higgins, the hero of Chili, died in exile, as Carrera, his rival, had done before him. Iturbide, the real liberator of Mexico, died a victim to his own ambition. Montufar, the leader of the revolution at Quito, and his comrade Villavicencio, the promoter of that of Cartagena, were strangled. The first presidents of New Granada, Lozano and Torres, fell sacrifices to the restoration of colonial terrorism. Piar, who found the true base for the insurrection in Colombia, was shot by Bolivar, to whom he had shown the way to victory. Rivadavia, the civil genius of South America, who gave form to her representative in- stitutions, died in exile. Sucre, the conqueror of Ayacucho, was murdered by his own men on a lonely road. Bolivar and San Martin died in banishment." This, we say, is an effective piece of rhetoric; but after all, its historic or ethical value is small. It is easy to get up such enumerations, and they may be made to tell either way. Most men who are concerned in wars and revolutions die in a comparatively sensational manner ; but the manner of their deaths has no special significance. General Mitre would apparently have us infer that all liberators are martyrs. Some of them are; more of them may seem to be at a hasty glance; but the majority have little to complain of. It would not be at all difficult to make out a list of patriots and agitators who were quite as prominent as any named by Mitre, who died peacefully in their beds, and in good odor and repute. As for Bolivar, he was charged with aiming at perma- nent power in January, 1830, and, by way of disproving the THE FINAL STRUGGLE 437 charge, he resorted to the somewhat threadbare expedient of resigning his "perpetual dictatorship." He was, promptly and according to programme, re-elected. His chief oppo- nents in the congress were those who advocated a disrup- tion of the Colombian union ; Peru and Bolivia had already declared against him. It was finally voted in the congress to give him a pension of three thousand dollars a year, on condition of his leaving the country and residing henceforth abroad. This hurt his pride, as it was doubtless designed to do; he resigned, and went to Caracas, intending to sail for England. His friends suggested his heading a movement to restore the union of Colombia; but his health was failing, and he had no longer any of that fierce energy which had brought him through so many adventures. He died at Santa Marta, on the sea-shore, saying, with the petulance and the grandiloquence which were characteristic of him, "The peo- ple send me to the tomb; but I forgive them!" The man who looks for gratitude for doing his duty forfeits all claim to it. The cause of Bolivar's death was not the people, but consumption, perhaps hastened by pique. However, a man cannot always be equal to his best self ; and we may remem- ber that Bolivar, at his best, was one of the greatest sons of South America, and did his country immeasurable service. The Argentine Republic, when it was constituted in 1816, did not include all the territory originally known as Argen- tina; three states were cut out of it, under the names of Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. After the fighting in Chili and the north was over, an Argentine constitution was for- mulated in 1825. The two political parties which then arose were the Unitarians, answering to our Republicans, and the States' Rights party. Rivadavia was made president; he was a centralist. There was strong opposition to him dur- ing his presidency; and presently the name of a certain Juan Facundo Quiroga began to be notorious. This man was a peasant by birth, and by nature a desperado and out- law, with a touch of sinister genius. He exercised remark- able influence over men's minds, and became a sort of free- 438 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA booting dictator. He murdered, or caused to be "executed," scores of men, his own son among them. He assumed and exercised governmental powers to which he had not the shadow of a legal claim. Rosas, a man of somewhat similar character, became governor of Buenos Ayres ; he was at one time on friendly terms with Quiroga; but in 1834 they quar- relled, and Quiroga was hunted down and killed. Rosas became the tyrant of Buenos Ayres, but his rule, though bloody, was not devoid of good features. Commerce and industry flourished; but finally, in a war with Brazil about Paraguay, he was defeated and fled to England, where he died. His most distinguished successor was General Mitre, already mentioned, under whom Argentina enjoyed great prosperity, and Buenos Ayres became a great commercial centre. The early history of Paraguay was a singular one. After the separation of the state from the Argentina, a govern- mental junta was formed in 1811, of which one Jose Gaspar Rodriguez Francia, a doctor of law, was a member. He was a man of original force, and gloomy and lonely tempera- ment, who, far from all sources of culture, thought his own thoughts and arrived at his own conclusions. He possessed a domineering will, and the power to control men; together with a high administrative faculty. He had been opposed to the oppression of Spain, but he did not share the prevalent belief that republicanism was the panacea for the ills of tbe people. "What they needed, he thought, was a strong hand to guide and constrain them ; and it was not long before he himself supplied the needed element. His ability and deci- siveness caused him to take the lead in public affairs, and to dominate his colleagues; he was made consul in 1811, and six years afterward he became dictator, with a life tenure of the office. His despotism was absolute ; but in all public affairs he acted for the good of the people, as he understood it; and though he was cruel upon occasion, he was uniformly just, and his authority was never seriously questioned. The laws he made as to intercourse with foreign nations and in- THE FINAL STRUGGLE 439 dividuals were most strict ; any one who entered the country did so at the risk of his life; nevertheless a few Europeans were permitted to live and carry on business there. All that is known of him, therefore, is derived from the accounts of some of these residents, chiefly as digested and reproduced by the genius of Thomas Carlyle, whose essay on Dr. Francia is one of his most interesting productions. "Our lonesome Dictator," he says, "living among Gauchos, had the great- est pleasure, it would seem, in rational conversation with Robertson, with Rengger, with any kind of intelligent hu- man creature, when such could be fallen in with, which was rarely. He would question you with eagerness about the ways of men in foreign places, the properties of things unknown to him. All human interest and insight was in- teresting to him. Only persons of no understanding being near him for the most part, he had to content himself with silence, a meditative cigar, and a cup of mate." He gov- erned until his death, in 1840. His two nephews, Alonso and Carlos Lopez, were elected consuls after Francia's death. But in 1844 there was a new constitution, under which Carlos was made dictator for seven years. Dying in 1862, he was succeeded by his son Fran- cisco. He is regarded as the worst character in later South American history. Charles A. "Washburn, resident minister of the United States at Asuncion, describes him thus: "In person he was short and stout ; he dressed with great care and precision, and endeavored to give himself a smart and natty appearance. His hands and feet were very small, in- dicating his Indian origin. His complexion was dark, and gave evidence of a strong taint of Guarany blood. He also had many of the tastes peculiar to the savage. Before going to Europe, he dressed grotesquely, but his costume was al- ways expensive and elaborately finished. He wore enormous silver spurs, such as would have been the envy of a Gaucho, and the trappings of his horse were so completely covered with silver as almost to form a coat of mail. After his re- turn from abroad, he adopted a more civilized costume, but HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA always indulged in gorgeous display of gold lace and bright buttons. He conversed with fluency and had a good com- mand of language, and when in good humor his manners were courteous and agreeable. His eyes, when he was pleased, had a mild and amiable expression; but when he was enraged the pupil seemed to dilate till it included the whole iris, and the eye did not appear to be that of a human being, but rather of a wild beast goaded to madness. He had however a gross animal look that was repulsive when his face was in repose. His forehead was narrow and his head small, with the rear organs largely developed. He was an inveterate smoker of the strongest Paraguayan cigars. His face was rather flat, and his nose and hair indicated more of the negro than of the Indian. His cheeks had a fulness that extended to the jowl, giving him a sort of bulldog expression. In his later years he grew enormously fat, so much so that few would believe that a photograph of his figure was not a caricature. He was very irregular in his hours of eating, but when he did eat, the quantity he consumed was enormous. His drinking was in keeping with his eating; he always kept a large stock of foreign wines, liquors and ale, but he had little discrimination in the use of them. Though he habitually drank largely, yet he often exceeded his own large limits, and on such occasions he was liable to break out in the most furious abuse of all who were about him. He would then indulge in the most revolting obscenity, and would sometimes give orders for the most barbarous acts. When he had recovered from these de- bauches he would stay the execution of his orders, if they had not already been enforced. . . . The cowardly nature of Lopez was so apparent that he scarcely took pains to con- ceal it. He never exposed himself to the least danger when he could possibly avoid it. He usually had his headquarters so far in the rear that a shot from an enemy could never reach him. He had another house built close adjoining the one in which he lived, surrounded on all sides with walls of earth at least twenty feet thick, and with a roof of the same ma- THE FINAL STRUGGLE 441 terial. "While all was still along the enemy's lines Lopez would bravely remain in the adjoining house; but so surely as any firing was heard in the direction of the enemy's near- est batteries, he would instantly saunter out in feigned care- lessness, trying hard to disguise his fear, and slink into his hole, and not show his face again outside until the firing had ceased. At the very time he was thus hid away from danger, he had his correspondents around him, writing the most extravagant articles in praise of his valor, his sacri- fices, and his generalship; and declaring that the people of Paraguay could never pay the debt they owed him, who, while they were living in security and abundance, was daily leading his legions to battle." All this gossip is interesting, because Lopez had absolute control over the lives and welfare of hundreds of thousands of people. It is sometimes salutary to reflect what would happen in this world if we were given up without restraint to our basest impulses. This miserable little half-breed wal- lowed up to his neck not only in all manner of bestial indul- gences, but in blood. It is said that he caused the death, directly or indirectly, of scores of thousands of men and women. His own brother died by his hand, and he caused his mother and sisters to be tortured. It would serve no purpose to go into further details of his conduct in this respect. His political actions were in keeping with his pri- vate ones. By interfering in a dispute between Brazil and Uruguay, he brought about the war of the Triple Alliance, the facts concerning which are briefly as follows : He seized a Brazilian passenger steamer at Asuncion in November, 1864, and invaded Matto Grosso, a state of Brazil bordering on Bolivia. Early in the following year he sent a force across Argentine territory against the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul, and captured Argentine vessels; but two months later his fleet was annihilated by the Brazilian squad- ron near Corrientes. A triple alliance between Brazil, Uru- guay and The Argentine was formed, and the Paraguayan army which had invaded Rio Grande do Sul was besieged 442 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA in Uruguayana, and six thousand men capitulated. Cor- rientes was then occupied by the allies, and Paraguay was invaded. There ensued a desperate campaign, in which there were successes and defeats on both sides, but the Para- guayans were gradually forced back into the northern part of the state; and the final battle took place at Pikysgry. Lopez made his headquarters on a hill whence he could see for miles on all sides, and sat on horseback behind his adobe fortification, prepared to fly should his army be worsted. The army fought with valor, and the conflict lasted four da3 T s, when the Paraguayans were nearly exterminated. Lopez perceived that there was no hope, and leaving his men, he sought safety in flight. "While crossing a stream, he was overtaken and shot; he struggled up in the muddy water, and was still staggering toward the further bank, when he was pierced by a lance. His last words, worth preserving under the circumstances, are said to have been, "I die for my country!" At all events, his death brought the wholly wanton war to an end, and terminated the tyranny which had hitherto cursed Paraguay ; so, in another sense than he intended it, his words were true. It is claimed that in many of his most revolting atrocities he was influenced by his mis- tress, an Irish woman known as Madam Lynch. The history of Paraguay is almost disconnected from that of the other South American states; it did not take part in the general movement for independence ; it is still only on the threshold of industrial and commercial development, and its only town is its capital, Asuncion. It is rich in timber, and its other staple products are oranges and matd a drink which is popular throughout South America. The present population is supposed to be half a million ; fully three hundred thousand perished during the wars, and most of the records were lost, so that it is difficult to get secure titles to land ; for this rea- son, and because there are almost no roads or means of trans- portation, emigrants have been few. But the country is one of the healthiest in South America, and its fertility is bound- THE FINAL STRUGGLE 443 From the year 1822, when O'Higgins assembled the first Chilian congress, party dissensions were rife; the aristocratic and the liberal parties being fundamentally opposed to each other. Upon the whole the oligarchical tendency in affairs has been the stronger throughout. In 1823 there was a sep- aration between northern and southern Chili. O'Higgins left the country and General Freire finally consented to take the office of supreme director. He was disposed however to refer all vital questions to Congress, and to avoid personal responsibility ; which had a bad effect. All efforts to create an oligarchical republic were futile; it became evident that the country was to have another revolution. In 1824, Freire dissolved Congress, and became dictator. His immediate difficulty was to raise revenue; the expenses of the state were more than double its income. Valuable rights were sold to foreign corporations for terms of years, and other dangerous expedients were tried; but public discontent be- came constantly more pronounced. After several ominous transformation scenes, a new congress met in 1826, and appointed Admiral Blanco Encelada director, vice Freire, resigned. It attempted to adopt the federal system of gov- ernment as against the oligarchical, and established provin- cial assemblies; but these all acted from motives of local self-interest, and strong efforts were made to revert to cen- tralization. On the 8th of May, 1827, General Pinto was chosen chief of the state with the title of president ; his poli- tics were liberal. In 1828 a new constitution was adopted unfavorable to the oligarchs; and party spirit ran so high that it seemed impossible to carry on the government. Pinto resigned, and in November, 1829, Francisco Ramon Vicuna was elected president; but during the next few months there were no less than six presidents in and out of power. Con- tending parties took the field, and the -fighting and plunder- ing put a stop to business. In 1830 was fought the battle of Lircay, between liberals led by Freire and conservatives under Prieto; the former were defeated, and Prieto was made president. A conservative constitution was now manu- 444 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA factured, giving the president dictatorial powers, yet making him the creature of an oligarchy; and this document is still the organic law of Chili. Freire made an unsuccessful effort to overthrow the government in 1836, getting supplies and aid from Peru ; after his discomfiture, a war of revenge upon Peru was undertaken. Peru itself was at this time the scene of civil war, owing to a plot to unite Peru with Bolivia, of which Santa Cruz was the leading spirit. In two battles, the plotters were successful, and Santa Cruz proclaimed the confederation. Upon this state of affairs, the Chilians in- vaded Peru, captured the Peruvian fleet, and marched to Arequipa; but there they were cooped up by Santa Cruz and forced to capitulate and declare peace. The treaty, however, was at once broken by Chili, which made preparations for a new invasion, opposed, however, by the liberals. After suppressing the mutiny at home, the Chilian army marched on Lima; the army of the Peruvian president Orbegosa was defeated; there were three factions in Peru, each opposed to the others, so that the country was at a disadvantage. Finally, the confederation organized by Santa Cruz was broken up, and he fled the country. Chili then entered upon a period of comparative tranquillity and progress; in 1841 a steamship line, the first in the Pacific, operated by the enterprising American, William Wheelwright, began to run between Valparaiso and Callao. The government receipts now began to exceed expenses. A few years later the discovery of gold in California created a demand for Chilian wheat and flour, and mining industries had a great development. General Bulnes was president during these years; his government, though a strong military oligarchy in effect, was favorable to the national welfare. But the conservatives were losing favor gradually, and when Manuel Montt, also of the conservatives, was made president in 1851, civil war again broke out. After months of bloody struggle, during which industry and commerce suffered seriously, the liberals were defeated in the battle of Loncomilla, on Decem- ber 8th. Montt wisely granted amnesty to the defeated party, THE FINAL STRUGGLE 445 perceiving that it was still too powerful to be defied. He governed however with great strictness, and finally alienated the clergy, who had heretofore supported the conservatives. The liberals made up their differences, and during four months of 1859 war was waged with great fury. The lib- erals had many successes, but were ultimately defeated in all parts of the country. The leaders of the revolt were banished. In 1861, Jose Joaquin Perez was elected president, and took both liberals and conservatives into his cabinet, at the same time issuing a decree of amnesty to refugees. Rail- ways were built, and educational matters received attention; but, in 1864, a dispute arose between Spain and Peru, in which Chili took a marked interest against Spain, leading to a demand on the part of that nation for an apology. It was refused, and an alliance was formed between Chili, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, against Spain. This war, which had no intelligible basis, dragged on for many years ; it was carried on by the navies of the countries concerned, and its most striking incident was the bombardment of Valparaiso by the Spanish fleet, destroying ten millions of dollars' worth of property, all but one million of which belonged to foreign- ers. Spain was not long after obliged to quit, though the war never came to a definite or satisfactory termination. In 1871, Errazuriz, a conservative, was chosen president; but he gradually became more liberal in his politics ; and his successor, Pinto, was also disposed to reform. A dispute about a boundary with the Argentine Republic threatened trouble, but was referred to arbitration, and was not finally settled till 1881. The finances were not in an altogether satisfactory condition ; but the receipts from guano and from the nitrate beds of the Atacama desert were very large, and helped the nation over many difficulties. Disputes with the Church were acrimonious, but were finally settled favorably to the government. A reform was also made in the marriage laws, which were very oppressive. A Protestant marrying a Catholic must execute a bond to educate all his children 446 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA in the Catholic faith; and the lady was compelled to give two hundred dollars to the Home for Fallen Women infer- ring that she herself was no better than she should be. An- other difficulty was with the Araucanian Indians, who ever since the creation of the Republic had been making trouble on the borders, and had never been finally subdued. Pinto sent troops to the frontier, but did not succeed in quelling the discontent of the savages. In 1879 war broke out with Bolivia, and subsequently with Peru, owing to breaches of treaties. Chili had made claims to nitrate regions in Bolivia, and also in Peruvian territory. They seized Antofagasta in Bolivia; Peru offered to mediate when Bolivia declared war, but her offer was declined by Chili, who declared war on Peru. The latter country and Bolivia entered into alliance. The war lasted till 1883, ending unfavorably to the allies; Bolivia was forced to cede all her coast region to Chili, and Peru had to give up Tarapaca. Important guano properties were also given over to Chili ; and her troops then evacuated Lima, October 22, 1883. The only considerable Spanish colony which had not suc- ceeded before this time in getting free from Spain was Cuba. The colonists were rendered restless by the revolutions on the main, but could effect no betterment of their condition. In 1823 there was a revolutionary movement operated by a political association calling itself "Soles de Bolivar"; but it was soon put down. Refugees in Mexico plotted to get Bolivar himself to head an invasion of the island soon after, but this too miscarried. The "Black Eagle" association was formed in 1827, but was opposed by the Creole slaveholders on the island, and was dissolved. In 1835 Spain was asked to permit Cuba to send members to the Cortes ; a pretence was made of complying with the request for a time ; but it was soon rescinded. A slave insurrection was threatened nine years later, resulting only in the conviction of thirteen hundred suspected conspirators, nearly eighty of whom were shot. Agitation for annexation of the island to the United States was then begun, and was supported by the Southern THE FINAL STRUGGLE 447 slave-holders in this country; and in 1848 President Polk offered to buy the island from Spain for ten million dollars; the offer was curtly rejected, much to the subsequent regret of Spain. In 1849 Narciso Lopez, a Venezuelan, tried to rouse up a revolution in Cuba; he was prevented, but escaped to New York, and returned with an "army" of six hundred filibusters. He landed at Cardenas in 1850 ; but could not hold his ground, and was chased back to Key West by a Spanish man-of-war. He made another attempt in 1851, with Colonel Crittenden to help him, and four hundred and fifty men ; he landed thirty miles west of Havana, where he was attacked by Spanish troops and defeated. Crittenden was shot, and Lopez was garroted. These doings made bad blood between the United States and Spain ; and when the steamer "Black Warrior," according to her custom, called at Havana to land and take on mails and passengers, with- out declaring her cargo (as by written order of the Spanish authorities she was allowed to do), she was seized, her cargo confiscated, and a fine of twice its value imposed. The cap- tain of the ship refused to pay, and made his way home, leaving his ship in the harbor. Claims for three hundred thousand dollars' damages were made by the ship's owners against Spain, and, after five years' wrangling, they were paid. The "Ostend Manifesto" of 1854, declared that Cuba ought to belong to the United States, and that under cer- tain conditions we would be justified in taking it by force. Our government did not sustain the manifesto, though Pres- ident Buchanan again proposed to Congress the purchase of the island. During our Civil War, matters remained quiet in Cuba : but the emancipation of our slaves again awakened the spirit of revolt. The Spanish government had been con- stantly growing more oppressive and corrupt. The colony was being bled to death to nourish the anaemia of the mother country. The organization of the Cuban Volunteers, com- posed exclusively of Spanish residents of the island, increased the ill-feeling; and in 1867 a new revolutionary conspiracy 448 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA was formed by Carlos de Cespedes, at Bayamo. It came to a head in 1868, when the revolution in Spain occurred. The Cuban revolutionists adopted their constitution in 1869, and Cespedes was chosen president of the republic. For two years the revolutionists met with success, gaining possession of the eastern part of the island ; but the Spanish kept send- ing reinforcements, and a desultory but inhuman struggle was kept up for many years; Cespedes was killed in 1873. In the same year occurred the "Virginius" affair. The ves- sel was a cruising tramp steamer, registered as American, with a crew partly composed of Americans. She had reg- ularly cleared from the port of Jamaica for Port Limon ; but off the Jamaican coast she was seized by the Spanish cruiser "Tornado," and brought to Santiago charged with piracy. There was absolutely no ground for the charge, and the American consul protested; but the crew were put through the form of a trial and fifty-three of them were summarily shot. Castelar was at the time president of the Spanish Republic (as it then was), and he refused to inter- fere until our minister, Sickles, demanded his passports. Spain was compelled to salute our flag, give up the re- mainder of the crew, and pay eighty thousand dollars in- demnity to the families of the men who were killed. This episode induced our government to take measures to stop the war in Cuba; and General Grant, then president, sug- gested intervention. Finally, in 1878, Spain made a treaty with the insurgents, promising general amnesty, and politi- cal reforms, including representation in the Spanish Cortes which, however, amounted to nothing. General Campos conducted the negotiations. The war had lasted ten years, and had cost Spain two hundred million dollars and upward of eighty thousand men. The promises of reform were not kept, and the state of the island soon became worse than be- fore ; the cost of the war was put upon Cuba, and the debt of the island was increased from three millions of dollars to one hundred and seventy-five millions. Corruption was shameless, and General Pando himself, in the Cortes, men- THE FINAL STRUGGLE 449 tioned forty million dollars stolen by Spanish office-holders; and the custom-house frauds were reckoned at one hundred million in seventeen years. The revolution, though sup- pressed, was not crushed out; there were forty thousand Cuban refugees in this country, and others in other parts of the world; and a Grand Junta was formed in New York to raise money and lay plans for a renewal of the struggle. But the discussion of these matters must be deferred to our next and final chapter. 450 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA HI PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE THE affairs of Mexico and of the United States began to be tangled up together as early as 1836, when Santa Anna marched six thousand men into Texas to quell the insurrection there. After a few successes, he was routed and taken prisoner by Sam Houston and sent to the United States, where he was kept till the next year, and then allowed to go home; he was received rather coldly. He remained in retirement on his Jalapa estates until the French invaded Mexico. He drove the enemy out of Vera Cruz, losing a leg in the action, and arranged a peace by the payment of a sum of money. In 1840 General Mejia headed a revolt, which Santa Anna put down, and shot the leader. Still another revolution occurred the following year, with four parties to it; Bustamente, who was then president, Santa Anna, Valencia and Paredes. Each of these men had his own ends to attain ; while the people of the country looked on with entire indifference. Santa Anna was victorious in the end, and entered Mexico with a great escort, but amid a total absence of enthusiasm. Bustamente retired to Europe, and did not return until after the fall of Santa Anna in 1845. Such little revolutions as the one above mentioned were of constant occurrence throughout Spanish America, and were of no importance except to the ambitious individuals directly concerned. They interfered, of course, to some extent with the growth and prosperity of the countries in which they took place, yet not so much as might be supposed. The countries were large, and the men small; the common peo- ple minded their affairs, and could not have told, at any given moment, who were their rulers. Such political chess- games, with their little episodes of bloodshed and executions, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 461 banishments and pronunciamentoes, hardly rise to the dig- nity of history, and will be for the most part ignored in our narrative. The social conditions in the capital at this period are described in the journals of the wife of the Spanish ambas- sador to Mexico, Madame Calderon; and fifty years have not made any great changes in the spectacle. The Paseo is still thronged every evening with the carriages of people in society, with gentlemen on horseback or sauntering afoot, with soldiers and beggars. The flower markets are still fra- grant, quaint and beautiful ; every one is still indolent and pleasure-loving. Such a scene as the following may be beheld by any visitor to Mexico of to-day, with only minor variations. "The most beautiful and original scene," writes Madame Calderon, "was presented toward sunset in the great square. The Plaza even on ordinary days is a noble square, and but for its row of shops, which breaks the uni- formity, would be nearly unrivalled. Every object is inter- esting. The eye wanders from the Cathedral to the House of Cortes, and thence to a range of fine buildings, with lofty arcades, to the west. Prom a balcony we could see the dif- ferent streets that branch out from the square filled with gay crowds pouring in that direction to see a procession which was expected to pass in front of the palace. Booths filled with refreshments and covered with green branches and garlands of flowers were to be seen in all directions, surrounded by crowds quenching their thirst with orgeat, lemonade, or pulque. The whole square is covered with thousands of figures in their gayest dresses ; and as the sun poured his rays upon the gaudy colors they looked like armies of living tulips. Here was a group of ladies, some in black gowns and mantillas ; others, now that their church- going duties were over, equipped in velvet or satin, with their hair dressed and beautiful hair they have! some leading their children by the hand, dressed alas, how those children were dressed! Long velvet gowns trimmed with blonde, diamond earrings, high French caps befurbelowed 20 452 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA with lace and flowers, or turbans with plumes of feathers! Now and then the head of a little thing hardly able to wad- dle alone might have belonged to an English dowager duch- ess in her opera-box. Some had extraordinary bonnets, and as they toddled along, top-heavy, one would have thought them little old women, but for the glimpse of their lovely little brown faces and blue eyes. The children here are very beautiful; they have little color, with swimming black or hazel eyes, and long lashes resting on the clear, pale cheek, and a mass of fine dark hair plaited down behind. As a contrast to the senoras with their overdressed beauties were the poor Indian women, trotting across the square, their black hair plaited with dirty red ribbon, a piece of woollen cloth wrapped round them, and a little mahogany baby hanging behind, its face upturned to the sky, and its head jerking along, somehow, without its neck being dislocated. The most resigned expression on earth is that of a Mexican Indian baby. All these groups are collected by hundreds; the women of the shopkeeper class in their small, white em- broidered gowns, with white satin shoes and neat feet and ankles, rebozos or bright shawls thrown over their heads; the peasants and countrywomen with short petticoats of two colors, generally scarlet and yellow, thin satin shoes and lace- trimmed chemises; or bronze-colored damsels crowned with flowers, strolling along, tinkling light guitars. Add to this crowd men dressed in the Mexican style with large orna- mented hats and serapes, or embroidered jackets, saunter- ing along, smoking their cigars; leperos in rags, Indians in blankets, officers in uniform, priests in their shovel hats, monks of every order; Frenchmen exercising their wit upon the passers-by; Englishmen looking on cold and philosophi- cal; Germans gazing mild and mystical through their spec- tacles ; Spaniards seeming pretty much at home, abstaining from remarks. Suddenly the tinkling of a bell announces the approach of Nuestro Amo (the Host). Instantly the crowd are on their knees crossing themselves devoutly. Disputes are hushed, flirtations arrested, and to the hum PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 453 of voices succeeds a deep silence, filled only by the rolling of coach wheels and the sound of the little bell." Madame Calderon was a good observer. She also refers to the prevalent brigandage, the result of the disorders occa- sioned by the civil wars, which made travel anywhere in Mexico dangerous at that period. It has since then been extirpated by Diaz, who agreed to pay the leaders of the brigands as much as they got by robbery, in the shape of wages for preventing disorders throughout the country. The thieves became mounted policemen, and travel in most districts is safe. But a time was at hand when Mexico was to learn what war really is. They had escaped almost entirely the experi- ence which the other Spanish American colonies had under- gone, of serious fighting against the soldiers of the mother country by which at least they might have learned what fighting against regular troops means. They had been pitted only against one another, and of course, one Mexican was as good or as bad as another ; and the only result of these con- flicts was to familiarize them with bloodshed and the smell of gunpowder. Of the science of modern warfare they knew very little. They were destined to learn something of it at the hands of the only real republic of the west; and the result was to be salutary and explicit. It was to apprise them that, instead of wasting their time and their lives in foolish and empty fratricidal quarrels, they would better turn to and develop the resources of the magnificent coun- try, sink their petty differences, and try to become a real nation. The trouble arose in this wise: Prom the era of the 'Twenties, American colonists had been pouring into the vast, indeterminate region of Texas, until the Americans there greatly outnumbered the Mexicans. These colonists occupied lands regularly granted to them by the Mexican government; they were occupied with their own affairs, and paid no heed to the chopping and changing governments in Mexico City. Finally, in 1844, they resolved to erect them- 454 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA selves into an independent republic, and by the help of Sam Houston they did so, in spite of all that Santa Anna could do to prevent it. The next step was to become annexed to the United States; but here the Texans were confronted with the opposition not of Santa Anna so much as of the anti-slavery party in this country, which feared an exten- sion of slavery in Texas. The annexation took place never- theless; and for some sentimental reason apparently, for there was no reason based on law, Mexico regarded the act as an affront to her. She announced that she regarded the ratifi- cation of the treaty of annexation as an act of war on our part against her. Incredible as it would seem, had we not the more recent example of Spain's folly before our eyes, Mexico undoubtedly believed that she was able to bring us to our knees and exact what penalty for our "insult" to her honor she saw fit. Of common soldiers she certainly pos- sessed a sufficient supply, and they were hardy and spunky little creatures ; of officers she had far too many ; but they were not educated in the science of their trade, and were nearly all accomplished thieves, in this respect rivalling the Spaniards themselves; their stealings of course being from the resources of their own government. The arms of the army were for the most part not of the latest pattern, and were not kept in good order. Navy there was none. One advantage over us they had: The war was popular with them, whereas our Northern States were seriously opposed to it. It was carried on, therefore, chiefly by troops from our South, though they were led by officers from both sides of Mason and Dixon's line. The war began in the spring of 1846, General Taylor being the commander on our side. In consequence of the ambuscading of a reconnoitring party which Taylor had sent out along the Texan side of the Rio Grande, which was followed by the crossing of that river by the Mexican army, Taylor gave them battle at Palo Alto and at Resaca de la Palma, totally defeating them on both occasions. Camp equipage, personal baggage, correspondence, and everything PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 455 else was abandoned in the enthusiasm of their flight, and more than a thousand dead hodies of Mexican warriors were left upon the field. The war might have ended then and there, had not the Mexican president, who proposed a con- ference with a view to peace, been superseded by a new president before our commissioners could reach the Mexican capital to conclude the matter. The war had to go on ; and now that American blood had been spilled, there was no difficulty in any part of the States about supporting our army in the field. The Mexicans being no longer in Texas, the only thing to do was to follow them into their own country. As we have already observed, the territory of "New Spain" covered originally the vast regions now occupied by the States not of Texas only, but of New Mexico, California and Arizona. Our plan in the war was to invade the heart of the enemy's country, and dictate terms of peace at the city of Mexico ; and meanwhile to take possession of all these outlying regions, and hold them as indemnity. Accordingly we sent a fleet to the Californian coast, which took possession of the town of -Monterey, and hoisted the American flag; Colonel Fremont was also in California, and the fleet acted in conjunction with him. There was no resist- ance to these acts, for there was no power of resistance among the scattered Mexican inhabitants. It was a mere bloodless occupation of the country; and never perhaps was so rich a territory so easily captured from an enemy before. Rein- forcements had meanwhile been dispatched to Taylor, who advanced to the large inland town also called Monterey, in the State of Nueva Leon. Here was General Ampudia with ten thousand men and plenty of ammunition, and the moun- tainous ridge above the city and other natural features ren- dered it easily defensible. The Americans had but sixty-five hundred men, not enough to invest the place : and the Mexi- cans were certain that this time they were sure to annihilate us. The Americans attacked, and kept up the assault for four days, when the citadel was taken, and the Mexicans 45 G HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA who were left alive fled to Saltillo. The impossible had been accomplished with the loss of but one hundred and twenty officers and men killed on our side, while fully one thousand of the enemy fell. But Ampudia, as soon as he had recov- ered his breath from his flight, issued a proclamation account- ing for the defeat by ascribing it to a series of extraordinary accidents, and assuring his countrymen that, as soon as his army got seriously to work, it would have no difficulty in exterminating the invaders. As for Monterey, he asserted that the place had no value. The Mexican army itself, how- ever, had begun to entertain a suspicion that possibly Amer- ican soldiers could fight after all; and meanwhile Ampudia continued his retrograde movement to San Luis de Potosi. At this stage of the game a curious interlude took place. Paredes, president at this moment, planned to change the form of government to a monarchy; and busied himself at the capital wholly with preparations to carry out this scheme, letting the invasion of his country and the rout of his army pass without notice. Santa Anna, then in Havana, hearing of this design, and disapproving of it, sent word that he sup- ported the constitution of 1824, and would, if invited, come over and argue the matter in the field. Upon this news be- ing conveyed to Washington, Polk, who wished to avoid all needless bloodshed, and of course deprecated the establish- ment of a monarchy on western soil, proposed that Santa Anna should be supported as against Paredes, and to that end should be permitted freely to enter Mexico. This was good diplomacy; but it showed ignorance of the character of Santa Anna. The latter landed at Vera Cruz, the gar- rison of which pronounced in his favor, as did the population of the capital, and Paredes was made prisoner. But Santa Anna now declared himself opposed not only to Paredes, but to the United States likewise; and he further announced that he came to fight at the head of the army, and not to accept political power. He was enthusiastically received, and marched with an army to San Luis de Potosi, where he proceeded to organize resistance to the Americans. PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 457 But nothing availed. Santa Anna lost the battle of Buena Vista, and General Winfield Scott landed at Vera Cruz with another army and began that extraordinary series of victories which brought him at last to the valley of Mexico. At every step, peace was offered to the Mexicans, but they were bent upon their own destruction, and refused to treat. The great difficulty was to raise funds; and it was finally decided to levy on the enormous property which the Church had been laying up for ceulniries. The priests of course protested as vehemently as they dared, and there was a reluctance on the part of the people to force them ; besides, much of the prop- erty was in real estate, which could not at once be turned into cash. Little was therefore obtained by this device, though, later, the Church lost most of its wealth through government exactions. But Santa Anna, in one way or an- other, managed to keep an army in the field; and having accepted the presidency after his defeat at Buena Vista, hur- ried to oppose Scott's advance along the road from Vera Cruz. He met his second defeat at Cerro Gordo, and fell back to Puebla; but his army had dissolved, and he could not persuade the Poblanos to support him with another. Scott, therefore, occupied the place without a battle. Santa Anna fled to Mexico City, where he felt that he must make a success or fail for evermore. To avert jealousies, he re- signed his presidency, and was rewarded by being made dictator. He then made his final appeal to the country, and it was answered with an army of twenty-five thousand men; and once more the Mexican heart was fired with hope. Surely these barbarous invaders would fail to capture the capital, defended by the whole strength of the country ! And if they could but be defeated, not one of them should reach home alive. Scott came quietly along, and reached the environs of Mexico in August. Santa Anna had fortified the bridge and church of Churubusco, four miles south of the city, and erected a barrier across the road by which the Americans must advance; but General Worth caused the same Indians 458 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA who had erected it to tear it down again. On the 18th of August the battle took place, and the defeat of the Mexicans was if possible more than usually thorough. Many of their most eminent men perished; and the Mexicans afterward, not having any victory to celebrate, actually celebrated this defeat by the erection of a monument to the fallen; appa- rently on the principle that the more men are killed in a bat- tle, the greater is the glory of losing it. There was plenty of glory of this kind for the Mexicans in> the war. Molino del Key, under the guns of Chapultepec, was the next strong- hold to fall. Chapultepec itself alone remained, and it was considered wholly impregnable; but it had already been es- tablished that nothing was impregnable which was defended by Mexicans and attacked by Americans. The place was captured by General Pillow on the 13th of September: the city was entered a few days later, and the war was over, all but the negotiations over the peace treaty. In this the Mexicans showed to better advantage than on the field ; and though Mexican territory was restricted to its present dimen- sions, Santa Anna contrived to induce our government to pay fifteen million dollars under the name of indemnity. Thus was exemplified the truth of the remark by Tennyson, that "the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that honor feels"; especially when the honor is of the Spanish strain. We have lately applied the same salve to wounded Spanish suscepti- bilities in the matter of the Philippine Islands. But the Mexicans little knew what they were disposing of for this price. No sooner had California become ours than, as if to show her satisfaction, she opened her bosom, and revealed incalculable wealth of gold. Every acquisition of territory which we have made has turned out to be fortunate beyond all anticipation. There is no reason to fear that our latest ones will be otherwise. From 1848 to 1857 there was little notable in Mexican affairs, though during that time Santa again came to the surface for a moment as dictator; Herrera and Arista exer- cised the powers of government moderately and beneficially, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 459 and Benito Juarez, an Aztec Indian, proved .himself an able and liberal ruler, with a strong conviction that Church prop- erty, of the non-spiritual sort, should be handed over to the State. A new constitution, declaring that the source of gov- ernment was in the people, was introduced at this time, arid might have been generally accepted, but for the episode of the French intervention. Mexican enemies, chiefly of the clerical and military par- ties, had exiled themselves to Europe when President Juarez and his liberal constitution came to power; and there they set to work to plot against him. Napoleon III. was made privy to their consultations, and a scheme was formed to im- pose upon Mexico a sovereign selected from some reigning family; he was to be enthroned by French influence and power, and his empire would be, in effect, a French empire. In other words, Napoleon was planning for his own exalta- tion and the glory of the French nation ; and the other plotters were willing to accept help on any terms, provided only that Jaurez and his liberalism were done away with. Turning now to the practical side of the matter, it was seen that the United States could offer no substantial resist- ance, because she was over head and ears in her Civil War; and should the issue of that struggle be in favor of the South, it was unlikely she would ever interfere at all; in any event, she would hesitate before disturbing a fait accompli. The Monroe Doctrine was nothing but a doctrine, and there was nothing to show that the United States would spend blood or money to uphold it. It only remained therefore for Napo- leon to find a pretext for getting a foothold in Mexico; that done, the rest could be made to follow with seeming inevi- tableness. The pretext was at hand ; Mexico had borrowed sums of money from European governments during her time of need, and Napoleon would demand guarantees for the repayment of the debts due to France, meanwhile landing troops to remain pending settlement. In order to lend dig- nity to this impudent proceeding, England and Spain, who also held Mexican bonds, and many of whose subjects resided 460 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA in Mexico, were requested by the shrewd French emperor to associate themselves with the French in a "demonstration" nothing of course being hinted as to the ulterior object of the enterprise. They accepted the suggestion in good faith, and a combined French, English and Spanish fleet entered the harbor of Vera Cruz, and summoned the Mexican presi- dent to comply with their demands. Juarez was not un- versed in diplomatic resources, and he somewhat took the wind out of the sails of the allies by at onde acceding to their proposition. The English and the Spanish thereupon retired ; but the French renfained, pretext or no pretext ; and grad- ually the real cause of their presence began to leak out. As soon as it was realized, Mexico divided up into two hostile camps, one opposing the invaders, the other favoring them. Napoleon sent reinforcements, and many Mexican troops, un- der the leadership of General Miiamon, ranged themselves with them. Juarez was forced to fight, and he raised a small army, which valiantly disputed the French advance on the capital ; and on the 5th of May occurred a battle at Puebla in which the patriots under General Zaragoza defeated a su- perior French force under General Lorencez. This "Cinco de Mayo" is still celebrated by the Mexicans, who, in truch, have few episodes in their military history which so well justify self-congratulation. But they had no chance against the French; and the latter soon after captured the Cerro de Borrego by a brilliant surprise, recalling Wolfe's exploit at Quebec. Soon after, the French entered the capital, and it was all over. It was a very clever, contemptible little plot, deftly carried out. Meanwhile Napoleon had selected his puppet emperor in the person of Maximilian, a prince of the house of Austria; a mild, innocent, romantic youth, a religious bigot, and a helpless prey to the feeble vanities of imperialism. This lamentable being ascended the throne of the Montezumas with all available pomp and ceremony; and he would have remained nothing more than a historical absurdity to this day, had he not, in the sequel, been digni- fied by the sentence of death which was pronounced and PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 401 executed upon him by the leaders of the revolution which OA^erthrew him. He was from the first at war with perhaps a majority of his alleged subjects; and in 1867, when the United States had settled its internal troubles, it conveyed a strong hint to Napoleon that unless French troops were immediately withdrawn from Mexican soil, the terrible army of veterans which had just finished the greatest war of the century would be let loose upon them. Napoleon, who was seldom a fool, took the hint at once; and Maximilian was thus left unprotected. He was shot at Queretaro on the 19th of June, 1867. Juarez now resumed his interrupted administration, and was made dictator; but died suddenly in 1872. Then began the last chapter, up to this time, of Mexican history. Dur- ing the midsummer of 1876 a fresh revolution suddenly broke out, with Porfirio Diaz at its head. This man was an Indian like Juarez, and his career as a soldier had been honorable and distinguished. He had fought against the French in- vasion, and after the death of Maximilian had been a candi- date for the presidency; and when Juarez defeated him he ranged himself with the opposition. He was now in the prime of life, and was possessed of far more ability of various kinds than his best friends yet gave him credit for. The war was waged after the usual manner of these civil conflicts in Mexico; Diaz prevailed, and in 1877 he was chosen president for three years. Save for an interlude in 1880 to 1884, dur- ing which his friend and creature Manuel Gonzales occupied the office, Diaz has been the actual and visible head of the so-called republic; and his reign has been almost entirely beneficial. There have been no more revolutions, "plans" or pronunciamentoes. The country has immensely increased in prosperity and civilization; and had the other Spanish American states equalled or even nearly approached Mexico in progress and development, there would be good ground for hoping that the Latin race in America might have a future. It still remains to be seen what will happen after Diaz's death: and he is now all but seventy years of age. 462 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA We can hardly expect a successor like himself ; but possibly the people have grown wise during their long peace, and have lost that fatal proclivity for "plans" and their sequels which were the curse of the country for more than half a century. Central America is a term applied collectively to the republics of Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, which, from 1823 to 1839, formed a federal republic. Their political history since then has been full of petty vicissitudes, quarrels between rival presidents, and over disputed boundaries. None of these disputes or wars has had any permanent significance beyond the interest of those immediately concerned, except that they have para- lyzed to a great extent the industrial life of the inhabitants, and have prevented the employment of foreign capital in exploiting their resources. The name Guatemala was orig- inally applied to a region including all the present Central American States, and the Isthmus of Panama and Yucatan. Modern Guatemala declared its independence in 1821, joined Iturbide, and formed part of the Confederation from 1823 to 1847, when it was established as an independent republic ; it has had several wars with Honduras and Salvador. Hon- duras was a member of the Central American union from 1824 to 1839, since when it has been independent. Besides its own political revolutions, it has waged wars with Salva- dor, Nicaragua and Guatemala. It is a country of many mountains and plateaus, where the climate is temperate and agreeable, and exceedingly healthful. It has a quadrennial president and one house; it would be an excellent field for investment were its government stable. Its inhabitants are chiefly Mestizos or Indians. The modern history of Salvador is much like that of Honduras, and it has been almost con- stantly embroiled during its existence either with its rulers or its neighbors. Its inhabitants are mainly Indian or half- breeds, only five per cent being white; it has no manufact- ures to speak of, and its exports are coffee, hides, sugar, indigo and Peruvian balsam. Costa Rica is a mountainous PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 463 country, whose chief export and business is coffee. It bor- ders on the Caribbean, and was one of the "rich coasts" which aroused the golden dreams of the Spanish discover- ers; but little of value to the world has been derived from it as yet. Finally, there is Nicaragua, which circumstances have brought into prominent notice for many years past, and concerning which we may speak more in detail. The capital of Nicaragua is Managua, and its chief city is Leon, both on the Pacific coast ; but the state has also a Caribbean shore. From southeast to northwest it is trav- ersed by a depression, which includes the river San Juan and lakes Nicaragua and Managua; thus giving a water- way from the Caribbean to the Pacific, with the exception of a few miles. The eastern coast is low; the country con- tains many volcanoes, and is subject to earthquakes. It produces gold and silver, and exports the usual Central American products. It is governed by a president chosen for four years, and its congress consists of a senate and a chamber of deputies. It has been an independent republic since 1840, and has enjoyed the inevitable series of revolts and wars which belong to the region. In 1855 it was invaded by William Walker, the famous filibuster, who took advan- tage of its distracted condition to realize his purposes of con- quest. He had with him fifty-eight men; but he defeated the local commander, Guardiola, on September 3d, and cap- tured Granada, the capital. The next year he was made president; but the other states combined against him, and he was constantly defeated, and finally he burned and aban- doned Granada in 1857, and fled to Panama. Two efforts to recover the country failed, and in I860 he was captured and shot in Honduras. So far back as the last century the idea of making a canal through Nicaragua has been entertained and discussed, and vast sums of money have been spent in preliminary surveys and tentative excavations. Manuel Galisteo, in 1781, made an exploration and survey with this aim in view, at the instance of the Spanish Cortes; in 1826 De Witt Clinton had 464 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA a full survey made; O. W. Childs of Philadelphia did the same in 1851, with Cornelius Vanderbilt to help him. Gen- eral Grant, when president, caused a commission to report on the cost of the work, and the commission determined it to be about one hundred and forty million dollars. But by none of these suggesters or promoters were any steps taken to carry the enterprise to realization. They looked it over, and then left it. In 1849, 1858, and 1880 the government of Nicaragua granted concessions to American and French parties to dig the canal; but nothing came of them. In 1884 a contract was signed for the building of the canal by the United States, but the Senate refused to ratify it. In 1887 the Nicaraguan government gave a 100-year concession to the Nicaraguan Canal Company; which the latter transferred to the Mari- time Canal Company in 1889; the canal was to be completed in five years. The route decided upon was from San Juan del Norte on the Caribbean to Brito on the Pacific, about one hundred and seventy miles. One hundred and seventeen miles of this was to be through the lake and the San Juan River; the actual digging would not be over twenty-seven miles. There were to be two canals, one from Ochoa on the river to the port of San Juan del Norte about thirty-five miles including river basins; and the other from Lake Nica- ragua, at the mouth of the river Lajas, to Brito. Each canal would have three locks in order to bring the water to a level with that of the lake one hundred and ten feet. The deep- est excavation, one hundred and forty-one feet over a distance of three miles, would be across the divide on the eastern sec- tion. Subsidiary works would be a dam at Ochoa, improve- ment of the lake, channels and harbors, and the construction of a short railway line for transporting machinery. Upon this programme the Company got to work in 1889; but its advertisements for subscriptions in London, Paris and New York were entirely unfruitful; the project was blacklisted as a financial investment everywhere. Work on the canal ceased in 1891, and then the Company turned to the United PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 4=65 States government for help although it had originally de- clared that it would be absolutely independent of all outside assistance. Congress appointed a commission to inquire into the merits of the affair; their report was a very ambig- uous recommendation: they opined that the "enterprise is full of promise, unless hindered by obstacles or sinister influ- ences, such as would, if permitted to weigh, forbid the suc- cess of all ventures." This was taking back with one hand what was held out with the other; but there was good ground for caution. The estimates made by the company, compared with those made by our government engineers, differed so much at every point that the discrepancy became suspicious. Thus, the estimate of the Company for the completion of the Greytown harbor was two million one hundred and fifty-one thousand dollars; that of our government, four million four hundred and eighty. Our government estimated the Brito terminal at a cost of four million three hundred and ninety- eight thousand dollars; the Company, at one million nine hundred and twenty. The estimate of the Company for the completion of the San Juan River division was one million nine hundred and seventy-five dollars; that of our govern- ment, fourteen million eight hundred and sixty-six thousand a discrepancy of not less than twelve million and odd dol- lars. The natural conclusion from this showing is, that the Company deliberately underestimated the cost of its under- taking; and in consequence both houses of Congress ad- journed without taking any action upon the bill. Moreover, a communication was received from the min- ister of Nicaragua and the allied republics, in January, 1897, pointing out that the Company had violated its contract in various material points, thereby voiding its charter, and add- ing that, since it was evident that the Company could not raise money to fulfil its contract unless the United States should furnish it, the governments concerned should come to a direct understanding on the subject of the construction of the canal, on the basis of a former treaty made between them, and try to reach an arrangement with the Company 466 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA so that it might renounce a concession whose conditions it could not fulfil. And certainly there seems to be no reason why our government should not control and administer the funds for the canal, if it itself provides them. No private corporation is needed in the premises. It is a fortunate cir- cumstance on the other hand that the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican governments have always showed themselves well disposed to the enterprise; for the destruction of this canal would be a matter of no difficulty. Not being built, like those of Suez and Corinth, on the sea-level, but complicated with an elaborate system of locks, dams and special struct- ures, its value could easily be destroyed by even a single person working for an hour with an axe and spade. Its preservation amid a hostile population would be impossible. Even under the most favorable conditions, it would always be at the mercy of an earthquake, and might be seriously endangered by the heavy rains, which on the east coast fall to the annual depth of fifteen feet, and render the lower part of the San Juan River entirely impracticable for the use of the canal, as its raging torrent during the rainy season would be beyond all control. The commission above quoted made the recommendation that another survey and estimate of the proposed work be made, in order that a final and authoritative conclusion might be reached as to whether the work were, upon the whole, feasible. Since then, President McKinley has caused such a survey and estimate to be made; and though some minor complications have arisen, it is probable that the canal may be dug and controlled by our government. There must always remain a slight element of risk in the work; but its utility would be so vast, and the commercial returns so great, that possible obstacles should not be permitted to weigh too heavily against it. The Panama Canal project is quite as well known as the Nicaraguan one, and not long ago its chances of being real- ized seemed greater. Numerous surveys were made, from 1828 onward, both by the United States and others; and in PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 467 1877 the Colombian government, within whose jurisdiction the region of the canal would lie, granted to a Frenchman named Wyse a concession for its building. The chief backer of the scheme was Ferdinand de Lesseps, at whose invitation an internatioal scientific congress met at Paris, in May, 1879. De Lesseps had the prestige of the Suez Canal to bank on, and he inspired great confidence. The American delegates to the congress refrained, however, from joining in the final vote, which was taken after a short session, and without considering alternative schemes. It decided on the Panama route, and a company was at once formed. De Lesseps then visited the Isthmus in person, and asserted, as an engineer, that the work could easily be accomplished. The Wyse con- cession was purchased, an international technical committee decided that the cost would be one hundred and sixty-nine million dollars, shares were placed on sale and eagerly bought up, and the digging began. The chosen route was close to the Panama Railroad, crossing the winding Chagres River six times, and involving a long and deep cut through the Central Cordillera. The Chagres River is liable to deep floods dur- ing the rainy season, but it was designed to control these by dams. Numbers of negroes from Jamaica and elsewhere were employed in the work, which was carried on, with some interruptions, from 1881 to March of 1889; at which time the company went into liquidation. Up to that time it had spent more than two hundred and sixty million dol- lars, the major part of which had been contributed by the middle classes in France, together with the proceeds of lot- teries authorized by the French government. This enormous sum had sufficed for the digging of twelve miles only of the fi^-four which were to be excavated; and the part thus fin- ished did not include the more difficult portions. The cost of the Suez Canal was about one million dollars per mile, and the estimated cost of the Nicaragua not much more; but the Panama Canal was costing at the rate of more than twelve million dollars per mile. It seemed plain that there had been gross frauds connected with the business; and in 468 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA 1892 De Lesseps and the engineer Eiffel were arrested on charges of dishonesty. Their trial showed that a large part of the funds had been used in subsidizing the French press and in bribing members of the legislature. There are still not wanting advocates of the Panama route; but it is un- likely that it will be preferred before that of Nicaragua by responsible persons. The Nicaraguan is more convenient for the United States, and that fact alone would be enough to determine the question. It is practically certain that, wherever the canal is built, and by whomsoever the work is done, the control of it must be vested solely in the United States. Our ships, both in peace and in war, must have the right of way through it, and the power to deny that right, upon occasion, to the ships of other nations. In South America, within recent times, the most con- spicuous event has been the disgraceful civil war in Chili, between President Balmaceda's party and that of the Con- gress. The war took place in 1891, but the causes leading up to it had, of course, been long brewing. Elections had long been "scenes of riot and bloodshed. In 1882 two men were killed and seven wounded; seventeen were killed and one hundred and sixty-five wounded in 1885; and in 1886 forty-six were killed and one hundred and sixty wounded. The voting population was only one-fiftieth of the number of males in the country, which makes this show- ing so much the more remarkable. Balmaceda was the mau chosen in the 1886 election, he having had the support of the retiring Santa Maria government. With his advent to power came rumor of various reforms such as we are constantly hearing promised in our own political campaigns. Subsidies were voted for the completion of railways ; telephones were put up, and educational affairs were promoted. In spite of all expenditures, the government was able to show a good balance sheet. Import duties were lowered in 1889 and 1890, a new line of steamers was subsidized. But all this had not the effect of quieting opposition ; it was said by PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 469 conservatives that the money spent in internal improvements should have been used to pay the public debts ; Balmaceda was denounced as a tyrant; and when it was learned that he had selected San Fuentes as his successor (a man very unpopular with many) the outcry became violent, and even suine of the liberals joined in it. Serious trouble was on the way. The constitution of 1833, amended in 1874, was still the law of the land, but had been often strained in one place, and suffered to become inoperative in another. By its pro- visions the president has far more personal power than with us; if he chooses, he can be practically autocratic. Should a president arise who disagreed with congress, their only defence against him would be their power to withhold money supplies. In other ways he was their master and that of the country. Balmaceda gradually became hostile to the con- gress, and by January of 1891 he was supported only by those liberals who were office-holders or otherwise personally concerned in offices; the rest of the party, and of course the conservatives, were against him. He was as obstinate as a Spanish mule, and quite as intelligent. He was as wedded to "his policy" as ever was our own Andrew Johnson. Min- istry after ministry resigned; special sessions were called; supplies were refused; the ugly and childish spectacle of one branch of the government trying in all ways to paralyze the action of the other was presented in all its forms. Early in January, 1891, the congress had ceased to have any legal existence, and it had deposed Balmaceda, who was exercising dictatorial functions. Jorge Montt of the navy was empowered by the non-existent congress to assume pro- visional command ; and upon this absurd state of things, civil war broke out. The navy declared for congress ; the army followed the president. This was a disappointment to the navy, which had expected to have the army with them; the army had followed Balmaceda, however, not from any patriotic motives such would have been out of place in Chili but from jealousy of the navy, and from regard to their 470 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA own pockets, Balmaceda having increased their pay. There were seven ships in the navy, including two ironclads; they gathered at Quintero. Pisagua was the first point of attack, important on account of its nitrate trade; it was easily cap- tured; but was recaptured by a party of government (Bal- macedist) troops, who had just defeated an undrilled con- gressionist force. But the fleet, after a heavy bombardment, took the place once more. A detachment of government troops was about the same time defeated by revolutionists at San Francisco; the remnant retreated upon I pique, which was the real objective of the navy party. But the Ipique garrison had left the place in order to support the defeated detachment ; and during its absence, Ipique was occupied by the revolutionists. Another government force under Colonel Soto then carried Ipique by assault ; but the fleet was at hand to bombard him out of it again. There were five thousand government troops scattered about the neighborhood, against two thousand of the enemy ; but there was no co-operation. Boys, playing at soldiers, could have done better. Ipique surrendered with two million rounds of ammuni- tion. It was occupied with all haste by three thousand con- gressionist troops; for it was the key of the situation. But the attack by the government army was delayed by bad management; finally a battle was fought outside; Robles, the government leader, was mortally wounded, and his troops were cut to pieces. This defeat demoralized the supporters of Balmaceda ; everybody ran away from him. He had started with the odds in his favor; they were now against him. Many of the army officers joined the congress party. Kor- ner, a Prussian tactician, sold his services to congress, and there was no one to match him on the president's side. Four provinces, including the rich Tarapaca nitrate desert, were in the congressionists' hands. Balmaceda had the big towns, but the revolutionists had the source of wealth ; and they busied themselves in assembling, furnishing and drill- ing an excellent army. Balmaceda indeed had contrived to raise more men, but their morale was poor; he had been able PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 471 to obtain but three ships. He perceived that he could gain nothing by waiting, and might lose everything, for the dis- orders in the country were atrocious. It was, says a writer in "Blackwood's Magazine," "overrun with spies; private correspondence was not sacred, freedom of speech was for- bidden, the press was almost suppressed, and no one sus- pected of being unfavorable to the government was in safety. Imprisonment, floggings, tortures, and inspection of houses at all hours of the day or night were of frequent occurrence." Balmaceda had been technically in the right in his original quarrel with congress, which arose over a question of appointments ; but his assumption of dictatorial powers was inexcusable. He must act, or disappear. Two of his three ships were torpedo boats; and they succeeded in torpedoing the enemy's flagship "Blanco En- calada, " which sank with two hundred and forty-five men in three minutes. Then they attacked a transport, which escaped with heavy loss. This exploit caused government stock to rise a little, and the rest of the enemy's fleet kept out of the way. One of the torpedo boats and the other government ship, the "Imperial," then made a cruise along the coast, but did little damage. The revolutionists bribed three 01 the crew of a government torpedo launch, the "Aldea," to take the boat out to sea and ieliver her to one of their warships; they did their part of the work, but the warship was late, the launch was discovered by the torpedo boat, and the three bribe-takers were shot. Such was the character of the men engaged in this war. The term of the congress expired and the new one favored Balmaceda, who now chose as his successor Claudio Vicuna. But this had no effect upon the war; only that it was held desirable by the revolutionists to win a decisive battle before Vicuna came into power. They brought down their army from the north and landed it at Quintero without opposition; though the government troops numbered nearly four times as many as theirs. But there were many men in the south who were only awaiting the arrival of the northern army to 472 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA act with it; and Balmaceda's troops were scattered all over the country, in the vain endeavor to protect the whole of it at once. The two armies which finally met at Concon each numbered about nine thousand men. After a little manoauvring, the government troops were feinted into a position where they were exposed to a cross fire, and also to the guns of two ironclads which crept up the river. After several hours' exposure to this murderous fire, Balmaceda's men fled, leaving three thousand dead and wounded behind them. The total loss of the other side was under one thou- sand. But these are huge figures, when we consider that but eighteen thousand men in all were engaged. And all for what? Balmaceda still had twenty thousand men in reserve; had he had them on the field of battle the issue would have been different. Canto, the revolutionary general, advanced on Valparaiso. The government generals Barbosa and Al- zerreca, after a private quarrel as to whether to fight at once or to await reinforcements, decided to meet Canto's twelve thousand confident men with their nine thousand disheartened ones. Indeed, just before the battle, four hun- dred of them deserted to the enemy. Barbosa, however, had a strong position on a ridge, with artillery. Canto advanced steadily, with Korner to advise him. The government right wing was so hard pressed that the artillery in the centre was directed thither to help it ; when Korner by a detour turned the government's left ; the cavalry charged, and the day was won. Twenty-five hundred men were killed and wounded on the loser's side, and fourteen hundred on that of the win- ner. Barbosa and Alzerreca both fell. Many Balmacedist refugees sought shelter on board the United States ship "Baltimore" ; our country had sympathized with Balmaceda in the war. There was a great slaughter in the city, and five hundred corpses were picked up in the streets next morning; the houses had been sacked, and drunken men and women had danced in the midst of the massacre. At Santiago the same scenes occurred. Balmaceda shot himself on the 18th PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 473 of September. A junta del gobierno ruled the country till November, when Captain Moutt was chosen president. Vicuna escaped to the United States. The feeling against our country among the successful revolutionists was bitter ; we had given moral support to the government, had chased the "Itata" ironclad for violating neutrality laws, and had allowed the "Baltimore" to be used as a refuge by the de- feated. A number of "Baltimore" men were attacked in the streets of Valparaiso and stabbed. President Harrison demanded an apology, which was made by Chili, and sev- enty-five thousand dollars was paid to the families of the murdered sailors. A treaty between the two countries was signed the next year. We have treated this affair at some length, not because it has any dignity or importance in itself, but because it affords a good illustration of the character of the Spanish Americans of South America. The Chilians are considered to compare favorably with the other South American people ; they have an appearance of energy and progressive- ness. But they are untrustworthy, and cannot be considered civilized. At any moment, by a wanton outbreak of sav- agery, they are liable to undo the work of years. Were it not for the strong influence of German, English and Ameri- can residents, they would probably have destroyed them- selves long since. Peru has been gradually recovering from the effects of her war with Chili ; and the Argentine Republic is again on the road to prosperity, after the serious overthrow of her finances some years ago. The smaller northern states have done nothing to attract attention of late, beyond their usual internal dissensions; but Venezuela came near bringing on trouble between England and the United States, owing to the arbitrary and unjust conduct of England over a boun- dary question. President Cleveland interfered with extraor- dinary bluntness, and it seemed for some months as if war were inevitable; but England kept her temper, as she is apt to do when there is good reason for it, and the trouble blew 474 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA over. Concerning Brazil, which is a Portuguese country by conquest and occupation, though long since independent, this history can have nothing to say; but it may be remarked that there is an opening for foreign capital in that vast country which may, in the course of years, prove more attractive than most other South American investments. We have now to consider the present condition of Porto Rico and Cuba. A general description of Porto Rico has already been given ; but as it is the only one of the "West Indian islands which has come into the possession of this country, it merits some further attention. Although Ad- miral Sampson had dropped a few shells into San Juan, while cruising in search of Cervera's fleet, no attempt to occupy the island had been made up to the date of the sur- render of Santiago de Cuba. Major-General Miles then set out for the place with transports containing about thirty-five hundred men; these had been sent out originally to serve in Cuba; but the conquest of that island having been accom- plished without need of them, they were headed for the smaller dependency. The expedition started on the 21st of July, and was understood to be bound for San Juan ; but Miles altered the destination of the fleet, in order to surprise the Spanish defenders, and landed his troops on the south coast, at Guanica, on the 25th, meeting with no resistance. From Guanica as a base he advanced on Ponce, which sur- rendered with a show of enthusiasm. Another expedition had meanwhile left from points on our coast, and another landing was effected on the east coast, bringing the total of our forces in the island up to seventeen thousand men. Miles's plan was now to bring these forces together on con- verging lines upon San Juan, passing through some chief towns on the way. He aimed first at Aibonito, while Gen- eral Brooke marched toward Cayey, and General Wilson went north toward Arecibo. The enemy had fallen back, and was not overtaken till shortly before the middle of Au- gust, when Spanish troops were discovered in a fortified PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 475 position on a pass over the hills. The attack was just about being delivered, when a messenger arrived bringing the news that a protocol had been signed outlining terms of peace between Spain and the United States, and that hostilities were therefore at an end. Six commissioners, three on a side, met at San Juan on the 6th of September to settle the details of the cession and evacuation by the Spanish of the island. Schley, Brooke and Gordon represented the United States, and the confer- ences were easy and amicable; the American flag was hoisted on the 18th of October. Eight thousand American troops were assigned to duty on the island under Brooke, who was presently succeeded by General Guy V. Henry. The task before us is to educate the inhabitants to a moral and intellectual level where they may be enabled to govern themselves according to the laws of the United States Constitution. For the present the island is on the footing of a territory, and the government is of the military sort; but it is not contemplated to continue this situation permanently. The great proportion of the islanders are of white blood; but neither during their occupation of Porto Rico, nor while they were still denizens of the Spanish peninsula, did they have any experience of the working of democratic principles. The relation between rulers and people was, for them, always that between master and ser- vant; and if we trace the Latin race back to the earliest times, we shall always find this principle in force. It is deeply seated in their blood; and we have seen by instances adduced in this volume that when the attempt has been made by revolted colonies of Latin blood to rule themselves, the re- sult has been, at best, the letter of democracy without the spirit: the form without the substance. It has seemed to be impossible for them to be quiet except when ruled by the strong hand, and deprived of every responsibility of govern- ment; just in such measure as they have been permitted to manage things for themselves, have these people misman- aged them. Education has had little or no effect in abating 21 476 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA this characteristic ; there are many Latins who in intellect- ual calibre and cultivation are the equals of the most accom- plished Anglo-Saxons; but such men have been just as far from the idea of true democracy as have the ignorant un- derlings. They have been content either to obey the com- mands of an appointed sovereign, or to exercise sovereign powers over others; but to rule themselves in equality and peace has never been possible to them. Just the opposite has always been the case with the Anglo-Saxon. From the moment when he first appears upon the stage of history, we find him self-respecting and personally independent. Whenever his liberties have been infringed, he has been in a state of either actual or potential rebellion. His freedom is not impaired by the name and outward form which he may choose to bestow upon his gov- ernment ; whether it be a limited constitutional monarchy as in England, or a monarchy of a stricter and more preten- tious aspect as in Germany, or an explicit republic as in the United States, the practical result is the same; each citizen is his own owner and sovereign. He could not endure, and he has never been able to endure, the feeling that any other man was his master. On the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon race, especially the British branch of it, has shown remark- able ability to rule other races with a vigorous but, upon the whole, just and temperate hand. The British people are the result of a natural growth, continued through many centuries ; the people of the United States are the result of an extreme theory carried into practical working; and though this theory has accompanied an enormous progress and prosperity, many critics still doubt whether it can ulti- mately succeed. The United States has accepted immi- grants from all parts of the world, and has assimilated them with her population. Notwithstanding this vast influx of heterogeneous material, the Anglo-Saxon predominance in the country has not been overcome; though it may be sur- mised that so far as the principle of popular government here has failed to realize the benefits expected from it, the cause PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 477 may be sought in the large Latin mixture in the population. Those Latins who are our citizens require several genera- tions before they can be regarded as thoroughly inoculated with Anglo-Saxon conceptions; and during these generations their blood has been modified by Anglo-Saxon infiltrations, so that they can no longer be called pure Latins; besides which they have had the benefit of dwelling in the midst of the great democracy. But our English, Irish and German immigrants have needed no such apprenticeship ; they have embraced and comprehended the democratic idea at once. If Porto Rico prove to be valuable as a commercial pos- session and a centre of agriculture and other industries, it is certain to attract many settlers from this country ; and they will inevitably give the tone to its population, and subdue and mold it to themselves by natural process. The Spanish Creoles will accommodate themselves to the novel conditions; and when the present generation has passed away, and their children and children's children have succeeded them, the lesson of self-government will have been tolerably well learned. But should American settlement in the island be for any -reason discouraged, it may well be doubted whether the native Porto Ricans will ever become fitted to take their place as full-fledged American citizens. They will have to be governed much after the fashion that England governs India. We shall find it futile to apply to them the same principles which are natural to ourselves. They will do as they are told, but they will not learn to tell themselves what to do. Wo can give them the material benefits of political and religious liberty, but we cannot implant in their souls the instinct which would prompt them to exercise in an or- derly and consistent manner the functions of which liberty is the fruit. Should we leave them to their own devices, they would make themselves the prey of alternate despotism and anarchy, as we have seen their blood-brethren do in Central and South America. The only conclusion we can form on these premises seems to be, that the political situa- tion in the Spanish Americas cannot be permanent. There 478 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA will never be internal peace and settled order in those coun- tries so long as they are left to their own guidance. But in- asmuch as they include some of the richest and most desir- able regions on the globe, it is not to be expected that they will always be left to themselves. The situation already mentioned in Chili, where foreigners conduct and keep going the industrial and commercial activities, will obtain more and more with each generation, until at length the term Spanish America will become a mere historical remi- niscence, instead of a contemporary fact. The Spanish Cre- oles will be absorbed and will disappear, and the Anglo- Saxon will take their place. These considerations should be borne in mind when we study the prospects of the island of Cuba, the richest and most attractive of the Antilles, which is now just about em- barking on its experiment of independence, not without many misgivings, even among the Cubans themselves. After the peace of 1878, which was no peace, but an inter- lude brought about bj r false promises of reform, Cuba for a time sank out of public view. Taxes were imposed in wan- ton disregard of all reasonable or indeed rational economic principles; life for the inhabitants was brought to such a pitch of peril, poverty and general discomfort that anything was preferable to its continuance. The revolutionary juntas had accordingly been diligently employed in preparing for a new revolution, which should be final and decisive. The struggle was never to be given up until either Spain aban- doned the island, or all its inhabitants were dead. The head of the plotters was one Jose Marti, born in Cuba but edu- cated in Spain and further educated by a long sojourn in this country. He was a man of intelligence and determination, and he had the organizing and leading faculties which were needed for his function. Confident that the hostility to Spanish rule was common to all parts of the island, he arranged for a general and simultaneous uprising hi every province, to take place on the 24th of February, 1895 ; and it was his purpose to leave for PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 479 Cuba with three vessels and as large a force of armed men as could be obtained ; the point of embarkation being Fer- nandina, Florida. The United States, however, was well sown with Spanish spies, and news of this intended expedi- tion was conveyed not only to Spain, 'but to our own govern- ment ; which, bound by international law, was under obliga- tions to prevent the ships from sailing from any United States port. They were prevented accordingly; and Marti was compelled to adopt Santo Domingo as the base for his operations. He there had a conference with General Max- imo Gomez and other patriots, who had been distinguished in the former rebellion. It was decided to keep to the orig- inal date for the uprising; but when the time came, the response was only partial ; Santiago and Matanzas took up arms ; but it was evident that the inhabitants of the other provinces were waiting to see whether the movement was likely to be successful before taking the step by which alone success could become possible. By way of stimulating the sluggish and timid, Marti and Gomez issued a proclamation late in March, and the two Maceos, Antonio and Jose, to- gether with Dr. Agramonte and a few more, succeeded in landing in the neighborhood of Baracoa on March 31st. Marti and Gomez followed two weeks later with eighty men, getting ashore at Cape Maisi. The time was not unfavor- able ; for the Spaniards had less than twenty thousand sol- diers in the island; and the martial law which had been declared in the revolting provinces had not had the effect of quelling the trouble. Reinforcements to the number of seven thousand men were brought over from Porto Rico, and Martinez Campos returned from Spain with further regi- ments, arriving a few days after the landing of Gomez and Marti. Nevertheless, a quick and general response to the summons of the revolutionary leaders might have resulted in wiping the Spaniards off the island, and thus gaining at least a great initial advantage. But the Cubans, though tenacious and troublesome fighters in their own way, had it not in them to make any decisive and unanimous movement; 480 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA there were plenty of people, mostly negroes, who were ready to take up arms ; but the raising of a regularly drilled and appointed army or system of armies, who should conduct operations in the field according to rules of scientific warfare this was not to be ' accomplished. On the other hand, Marti was fully alive to the advantage which would accrue from recognition of the Cuban Republic by the United States ; and he accordingly made it his first care to call a meeting of the leaders and draw up a form of government, and select representatives to form a constituent assembly. He also designed to visit Washington in the hope of persuading the United States government to take the step of recognition; but he was killed on the way to the coast by a Spanish party. Nevertheless, on the 15th of September Cuban independence was declared at Jimaguayu, and a provisional constitution was adopted. Betancourt and Masso were chosen president and vice-president. Gomez was appointed commander-in- chief, Maceo lieutenant-general. Estrada Palma was to be foreign agent. A capital was established in the Cubitas mountains, and a form of administration was put in practice. The first encounters between the Spaniards and the pa- triots took place in the east, where the Spanish general Santo- cildes was slain in a skirmish near Bayamo ; and the Cuban general Lacret landed a force from Jamaica, and another arrived from Key "West. In order to secure the capital, Campos rebuilt the old trocha across the island, and erected forts and block-houses; his impression being that the insur- rection was confined to the east, and that, by maintaining a strong force along this fortified line, the movement could be easily checked and put down. But the tactics of the Cubans rendered these measures of little value. They did not mass themselves together, but spread themselves among the hills and forests in small bodies, moving rapidly, always appearing where they were least looked for, cutting off small Spanish detachments, slipping unobserved at night past the fortified lines, destroying the plantations which were furnish- ing supplies to Havana, and constantly increasing their PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE . 481 numbers, either by accepting those who came voluntarily, or forcing the reluctant to join. The Spanish, by Novem- ber, had been reinforced with forty thousand more troops from Spain; but these did not much improve the situation, though they added greatly to the cost of the war, and the difficulty of the commissariat. Large armies cannot be made effective in a bushwhacking contest. The Cubans gained the west end of the island, and even advanced within twelve miles of Havana: their numbers could not be determined, but it is said that they had as many as sixteen thousand men in the field. They would not stop long enough to be counted, or even to be killed. Campos had hoped to make progress by adopting measures of conciliation; but he found it impos- sible to effect any conferences, or to spread abroad his good intentions. The Cubans had not been through their former revolution for nothing; and would not readily place faith in any promises that Spain could make. This was annoying to Spanish pride, and the discontent concentrated itself against Campos; for Spain always holds its officers guilty for failures, never its policy or the condi- tion under which the officers were compelled to act. Campos resigned in January, 1896, and in February arrived General Weyler, who was also a veteran of the former war, and was quite confident that he had a sure recipe for the putting down of any rebellion. Meanwhile a new trocha had been placed across the island west of Havana; but Maceo had succeeded in evading it, and the provinces of Matanzas and Havana still continued to suf- fer. The Spaniards held most of the large towns in Cuba, and these tactics of the rebels were calculated to deprive the garrisons of the means of subsistence, except such as might be brought in from other sources outside of Cuba. But Wey- ler reflected that the Cuban army, after all, contained but a small fraction of the inhabitants of the country ; there were hundreds of thousands of non-combatants, or pacificos as they were called, who were just as much Cubans as the fighting men were ; consequently, so long as the rebellion lasted, they 482 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA were just as much enemies of Spain. Were they all de- stroyed, the fighting men could not long maintain the con- flict ; since the pacificos were the cultivators of the ground, and upon their labors the Cuban army must be absolutely dependent. Therefore he determined that all pacificos must die. He did not design to slaughter them all, for that might arouse the protest of civilized nations, without considering the waste of ammunition. The more prudent and economical plan was to.let them perish by the operation of natural causes, which in this case meant to let them starve to death. Two- thirds of the pacificos being women and children, it was evi- dent that by destroying them he would not only add that number of victims to the present war, but he would also obviate the possibility of the existence of Cubans for all time to come. A race cannot propagate itself without women; let all the women be killed, and the men would in course of time die out, even without the aid of Spanish bullets. The island, by dint of this policy, would become ere long a tabula rasa, to be hereafter colonized by a new supply of settlers, who would be free from rebellious notions. The theory was irreproachable; only, how was the starvation process to be carried out? For this, also, Weyler was prepared. He ordered the military authorities of the various towns to command all the country inhabitants of their neighborhood to leave their plantations and collect in the town environs, where a zone of cultivation was to be marked out, and picketed, within which they were to remain and support themselves; any one attempting to go outside the picket-line was to be shot, and none of the supplies issued to the troops was to be given these reconcentrados, as they were termed. Moreover, they were to be* deprived of farming tools, and of grain to sow. Under this system, the zones of cultivation soon became areas of starvation, filled with skeleton mothers holding skeleton babies to their lifeless breasts. From time to time, the bones of the dead (or of the dying very often) were swept into trenches and covered with soil; and no objection was PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 483 offered if the pickets or other soldiers should amuse them- selves with trying the accuracy of their aim upon the help- less victims, or should slice them in pieces to prove the keen- ness of their machetes. In one way or another, therefore, Weyler's policy speedily proved its effectiveness; and the murders which lie at his door may be reckoned by the hun- dred thousand. The exact number can never be known, inasmuch as there was no trustworthy census by which to estimate it; but it is thought that it cannot be less than half a million, most of whom were children and women. The cost to the government was of course absolutely noth- ing. Weyler was naturally proud of the success of his de- vice, and the authorities at Madrid were deeply gratified. This was the true way to put down a rebellion, and at the same time to make sure provision against any rebellions in the future. It was thoroughly characteristic of the Spanish genius, and proved that in the four centuries of their Amer- ican dominion their hand had lost none of its cunning. Fighting in the field was not vigorously prosecuted during Weyler's regime, for reasons satisfactory to him. The war was to him a source of income; every year of its contin- uance meant to him a new fortune. All Spanish colonial administrators have been thieves; but none of them had ever amassed money at Weyler's rate. He made no scruple of starving his own soldiers by pocketing the sums sent him to provide for them; for since he did not care to fight, what was the use of soldiers? If they were fed and taken out to battle, they would be killed, and the value of the food lost. Better let them forage for them- selves; and only when both the Spanish army and the Cuban population were extinct would Weyler return, to receive the well-earned thanks of his country. This project may seem to the reader imaginative and fantastic; but it is sober historical fact; and the Spanish captain-general might still be collecting revenues in the E^er-Faithful Isle, had it not been for the fastidiousness of this country. Indeed, our people had long been restive un- 484 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA der the spectacle, although few of them really believed that things could be as bad as they were said to be. But it was at least evident that the war was not being pushed properly ; the island was given up to desolation, and commercial inter- ests were suffering. The rebels were unable to drive the Spanish from their country, and the Spanish were either unable or unwilling to bring the rebellion to a close. Cuba was close to our doors, and the stench of the corpses scat- tered under the tropic sun was offensive to our civilized nos- trils. Our government, like all governments, was reluctant to interfere ; it hoped for the best, and waited over-long for it; it discredited the worst rumors of cruelty and barbarism, and feared to yield too readily to popular passion. But the consuls of the United States in the island, from General Lee at Havana down, persisted in sending in reports of what horrors came under their personal observation; and occasion- ally some parts of these reports would find their way into the newspapers. Newspaper reporters were sent over, and sent back concise and emphatic reports, telling the exact truth though, precisely because they were so true, they were largely disbelieved. And yet, no effective or convinc- ing denials were promulgated. Weyler, indeed, as each fresh ten thousand skeletons of reconcentrados were shov- elled into their trench, announced that this or that district had been pacified, and that the war was practically over. But uniformly, after one of these proclamations from head- quarters, would follow news of the destruction of a town by the rebels, or the defeating of a Spanish force ; if the rebel- lion were at an end, at all events men were still getting shot throughout the country. The pressure of public opinion upon the authorities at Washington at last became so strong that action was indispensable. It was intimated to Spain that it might be well if the war were brought to a close within some reasonable time. It had become inconvenient to the United States, and were it to continue indefinitely, might become insufferable. At this juncture an event occurred in Madrid which had the effect of introducing a change. PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 485 This was the assassination of Canovas, the Spanish prime minister, who had all along supported and justified Weyler in his policy. The successor chosen was Sagasta, who, if for no better reason than to justify his selection, proceeded to put another policy into execution. He recalled Weyler, and sent out General Ramon Blanco in his place, with in- structions to adopt mild and pacificatory measures. Let the erring colonists be won by love, and let all needed reforms in the administration of the island be promoted. Of course these instructions were never intended to be obeyed; they were issued simply in order to quiet American prejudices; the secret understanding was, that, under cover of gentle- ness, the same methods were to be continued. The recon- centrados still went on starving, and the murder of inoffen- sive pacificos who inadvertently failed to observe impossible rules was kept up as briskly as before. But a scheme of autonomy was put forward, though it had not yet received the approval of the Spanish Cortes; providing for a Cuban parliament with powers so restricted as to be useless. The revolutionists utterly repudiated this scheme, and those in- habitants of the island who did not perceive its delusive quality denounced it as impracticable. Americans also were quick to see through its insincerity. Meantime the consti- tution originally adopted by the Cuban Republic having reached the end of its appointed two-years' term, another was adopted, and Masso and Capote were chosen president and vice-president. Gomez and Garcia continued to com- mand the army. In December, 1897, McKinley spoke of Cuba in his message to Congress, remarking that it was still inexpedient to "recognize" the Republic; but stating that we might be forced to put an end to the war in the interests of humanity and civilization. This message caused anger in Havana, and hostility was evinced toward Americans. Act- ual danger being apprehended, the battleship "Maine" was sent to Havana harbor, ostensibly on a mere visit of friend- ship, but in effect to protect American lives and interests. She arrived on the 25th of January, and was assigned by 486 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA the harbor-master, acting under Blanoo's instructions, to an anchorage which was afterward discovered to be over a sunken mine, which was connected with the shore by a wire, and could be exploded at any moment by an electric discharge. The "Maine's" presence caused an immediate improvement in the manners of the Spaniards in Havana toward the resident Americans; but underneath the show of courtesy there was a feeling of murderous enmity. Sub- sequent evidence goes to show that it was by Weyler's order that the mines in the harbor had been placed ; and since the Cubans had no navy, it could only have been with the view of possible complications with the United States that this step had been taken. On the 15th of February, 1898, about nine o'clock in the evening, at the moment when the tide caused the battleship to swing at her moorings so that her bow was brought just above the mine, it was exploded from the concealed switch-board on shore; and the ship, with over two hundred and sixty of her crew, was blown up and totally destroyed. Captain Sigsbee and most of his officers were on board at the time, but being in their quarters at the stern of the ship, they were not destroyed ; discipline was maintained, and the survivors were safely taken off. An inquiry into the cause of the explosion was then instituted, and sat for a long time at Key West, making visits also to the scene of the wreck in Havana harbor; their conclusion was, as had from the first been anticipated, that the ship was blown up from below, with signs that the occasion of the disaster had been a mine. The Spaniards then made a perfunctory examina- tion, and immediately issued the report that the "Maine" had been destroyed by careless management on board on the part of the officers or crew, which had resulted in setting fire to the magazine. This explanation was not accepted by our government ; and as no improvement had taken place in the war situation, it was finally decided to intervene by furce. On April 5th Consul-General Lee retired from his post in Havana, warning all Americans to do the same; on the llth of the same month McKinley sent to Congress a PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 487 special message, asking for authority to intervene; and on the 19th a joint resolution was adopted declaring the inde- pendence of Cuba, directing Spain to withdraw forthwith from the island, and bidding the president to employ the land and naval forces of the United States to carry these resolutions into effect. At the same time the Spanish min- ister left Washington, and General Woodford, who up to this moment had been a determined advocate of peace, received his conge at Madrid. The war was on. We had taken advantage of what small opportunity we had to add some vessels to our navy by purchase from other countries before war was declared; and our position at sea was more favorable at the moment than on land. It was evident however that the war would be largely a naval con- test. The two nations were thought to be nearly on an equality in this respect, though the "man behind the gun'* was believed to be superior on the American ships as the sequel abundantly proved to be the case. Spain had many more soldiers than we; our regular army was but about twenty-six thousand men ; but there were the various State G uards, and any required number of citizens were ready and anxious to volunteer, the war being an exceedingly popular one in this country. One hundred and twenty-five thousand troops were called for by the president a number far in ex- cess of what was required; indeed, the regular army alone would, as it turned out, have been amply sufficient to defeat the Spaniards in Cuba and Porto Rico. Wo greatly over- estimated our enemy's strength and fighting qualities. Our first step was to blockade the Cuban ports, and minor actions took place in the harbors of some of the coast towns, in which the casualties on either side were small. It was afterward said that had Havana been immediately bombarded, it would have fallen, the defences being then inadequate; but Blanco diligently applied himself to erecting defences both on the sea and the land sides of the city, and presently had made it as nearly impregnable as possible. A Spanish squadron, commanded by Admiral Cervera, had meanwhile sailed from 488 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA Spain, and some anxiety was aroused along our coast by the uncertainty as to what might be the destination of these ships ; our coast defences were practically non-existent, and any one of our great cities on the Atlantic seaboard might have been successfully attacked. Cervera, however, was bound for Cuba, his intention being to enter the harbor either of Cienf uegos or of Santiago ; he considered his fleet incompetent to cope on equal terms with ours, and had no wish to risk an engagement. The aim of our fleet, which was divided into two squadrons, under the command of Schley and of Sampson respectively, was to intercept Cer- vera and fight him ; but though a watch was kept up, the Spaniard contrived to elude us, and slipped safely into the long and narrow harbor of Santiago, which was eminently defensible, the entrance to the channel being but a few hundred yards wide, with forts and batteries at points of vantage. It was some time before it was certain that the Spanish fleet was in this cul-de-sac ; as soon as the fact was ascertained, most of the American fleet blockaded the en- trance, resolved that it should not get out without a battle. The Morro castle at the mouth of the harbor was sub- jected to several bombardments, but it proved impossible entirely to silence the batteries; and as the channel was known to be mined, it was deemed inexpedient to attempt sailing in to attack the Spanish fleet at its anchorage. The first ship to enter would be blown up, and its hulk would prevent any of the others from going in. Need was of a land force to attack the town from within. "While this land force was getting ready a process which proved tediously long, owing to incompetence of various offi- cers and officials concerned a heroic exploit was performed by Lieutenant Hobson, who with a few volunteers as brave as himself took a steamer, the "Merrimac, " directly into the mouth of the Santiago channel, where it was narrowest, in the teeth of the fire of all the Spanish batteries, and there blew her up and sank her; the object being, of course, since we could not enter the harbor, to prevent Cervera from get- PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 489 ting out, and thus set free our fleet to perform other func- tions than the wearisome one of blockade duty. The feat was done, and the heroic men who did it were not killed by the explosion, or by the Spanish fire; but the ship did not occupy a position exactly across the channel, so that it might be possible for the Spanish fleet to pass her in daylight. Hobson and his men clung to the wreck of the steamer dur- ing the night, and were captured next morning by Cervera himself, who came out in a steam launch to view the scene. They were imprisoned in Morro, in such a position that the fire of the American fleet directed against that fortification might make them its first victims ; but after a few days Cer- vera had them removed to the town of Santiago, where they remained until exchanged for Spanish prisoners, after the investment of the town by the American army. The sinking of the "Merrimac" had taken place on June 3d. On the 10th of that month six hundred marines were landed at Caimanera, in the Bay of Guantanamo, where they had a sharp engagement with the enemy ; several were killed by sharpshooters, and their bodies were foully muti- lated, in the same manner that the Chinese had mutilated the bodies of Japanese soldiers in the war between those powers. But the Spanish were finally driven off, and for twelve days the marines held their position, waiting for the arrival of the main body of our troops from Tampa. They came on the 22d, twelve thousand men, forming the Fifth Army Corps; a landing was effected east of Santiago on June 24th, and in an action at Las Guasimas we lost sev- eral men, one or two of whom were well known in New York. The army moved into position facing the fortifica- tions of Santiago, the line extending several miles. On the 1st of July orders were issued to capture the outlying de- fences; but General W. R. Shafter, whose duty it was to direct the attack, he being the commander of the expedition, remained several miles to the rear during the days of the fighting, pleading illness. The battle was fought and won by the rank and file of the regular army and volunteers, and 490 HISTORY OF SPANISH AMERICA by their regimental officers. The hills of San Juan and of El Caney were captured by heroic charges in the face of a severe fire, with a loss of nearly two thousand men. The ships of Cervera, in the harbor, had assisted the defending army by their great guns. But after the heights were taken, and it was evident that the next attack would result in the fall of Santiago itself, Cervera resolved to depart ; or possi- bly he received orders from Madrid ordering him to make the attempt. The time he selected was the morning of Sun- day, the 3d of July. The world is familiar with what fol- lowed. With the exception of the flagship "New York," with Admiral Sampson on board, which had gone down the coast to the east to enable Sampson to confer with General Shaf ter, the American fleet was in position ; and the action was begun by Commodore Schley the moment the first Span- ish ship appeared through the mouth of the channel. The Spaniards headed toward the west along the coast, the Americans running beside them on a gradually converg- ing line; the firing on both sides being all the while very heavy. Within a few minutes all but one of the Spanish ships were sunk or disabled and set on fire ; the remaining one was destroyed after a chase of forty miles. All the crews, and Cervera and his subordinate officers, were either killed or captured. Cervera and the other survivors were afterward taken to the United States, and finally sent to Spain. With the exception of Dewey's victory in Manila Bay, there never was a naval battle in which the enemy has been so swiftly and totally defeated. Only one American sailor was killed. The war was now at an end, so far as the fighting went; on the 17th of July Santiago was sur- rendered, a peace protocol having already been agreed upon. The final treaty of peace, however, stipulating for Spain's evacuation of the West Indies and the Philippines, was not signed till nearly a year later. It only remained to create a permanent native govern- ment in Cuba. Meanwhile the island was governed by Gen- eral Brooke at Havana. Order could not be immediately PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 491 restored; some remains of Spanish influence still survived; and the country outside the towns was infested with bands of brigands, which made life and travel unsafe. There was, moreover, a large part of the population which inclined to prefer annexation to the United States to the perils and difficulties of an independent government; but the United States, at the beginning of the war, had pledged herself to give Cuba to the Cubans, and was resolved to carry out her promise at the earliest possible moment. Whether or not the experiment will succeed is still to be proved. But there is good ground for believing that, from one cause or another, the Cubans will ultimately find it to their advantage to be- come united to this country; and although the benefit of Cuban trade and the wealth to be derived from the devel- opment of the resources of the island would be little aug- mented by annexation, it may nevertheless prove necessary to let Cuba follow the example of her sister island of Porto Rico, and become an American territory. In any event it is probable that within a decade there will be more Ameri- can inhabitants of Cuba than native. The United States seeks no empire over foreign lands; but she is mindful of the obligations which civilization and the maintenance of peace impose; and if the day's work demands it, she will not shrink from them. THE END. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL UBRARYFACIUTY A 000 676 336 1