unhappily discovered in slight quantities in Hispaniola, but in
immense abundance in Mexico and Peru. It is impossible to
exaggerate the heroic valour and daring of Cortez, Pizarro,
Hernando de Soto, Orellana, and the rest of the conquistadores who
carved out in a single generation the vast Spanish empire in
Central and South America; but it is equally impossible to
exaggerate their cruelty, which was born in part of the fact that
they were a handful among myriads, in part of the fierce
traditions of crusading warfare against the infidel. Yet without
undervaluing their daring, it must be recognised that they had a
comparatively easy task in conquering the peoples of these
tropical lands. In the greater islands of the West Indies they
found a gentle and yielding people, who rapidly died out under the
forced labour of the mines and plantations, and had to be replaced
by negro slave-labour imported from Africa. In Mexico and Peru
they found civilisations which on the material side were developed
to a comparatively high point, and which collapsed suddenly when
their governments and capitals had been overthrown; while their
peoples, habituated to slavery, readily submitted to a new
servitude. It must be recognised, to the honour of the government
of Charles V. and his successors, that they honestly attempted to
safeguard the usages and possessions of the conquered peoples, and
to protect them in some degree against the exploitation of their
conquerors. But it was the protection of a subject race doomed to
the condition of Helotage; they were protected, as the Jews were
protected by the kings of mediaeval England, because they were a
valuable asset of the crown. The policy of the Spanish government
did not avail to prevent an intermixture of the races, because the
Spaniards themselves came from a sub-tropical country, and the
Mexicans and Peruvians especially were separated from them by no