The Heroes of Young America.

THE ARGONAUTS.

I.

WHо can tell what a thrill ran through the patient heart of Columbus on that memorable moment when at last he saw a light twinkling before his little bark, and knew that the guiding star of his faith was rising upon the horizon of ordinary men! What must have been the wonder, the joy, the self reproach of his timid and mutinous sailors, as with the day the land dawned upon them from that dark world of waters on which for weeks they had been wandering in despair! Words cannot express the emotions of that sunrise. The dreams of poets, the guesses of philosophers, the dim legends of old adventurers had indeed come true, and the eyes of Europe were dazzled by the light of the New World.

Columbus was to die without knowing rightly what he had discovered; still less did he foresee all that would come of his discovery. It was a time when the mind of the civilized world was at springtide; and great waves of new energy, already struggling against the old limits of thought and action, were gathering ready to rush into the channel which

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THE POWER OF SPAIN.

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he had to hawk about his mighty project, and saw age coming upon him before he could find a patron. From Genoa to Venice it went a begging; Portugal, which already took the lead in African discovery, had the refusal of America; it was France's or England's for the asking; and the grudging of a few thousand crowns had almost lost to Spain the mines of Mexico and Peru. The man was at last successful, and the country may be called fortunate that with so small a stake won this great prize at the very time when it found itself able to turn it to account. But, in the case of nations as of men, it depends on themselves whether good fortune shall be built up into true prosperity, or prove but the surer means of weakness and decay.

It is difficult for us, who see what Spain is now, to realize the part which it played in Europe then. Yet at the beginning of the sixteenth century the position of this country was not unlike that held by our own at the beginning of the nineteenth. A long course of internal dissension and foreign encroachment, which had both called forth and employed its energies, was at last brought to an end by the conquest of the Moors and the union of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella. The state thus formed of various races had many sources of strength ready to the hand of a wise government. Strange as it may sound, the principles of constitutional liberty were nowhere more at home in those days. In literature and the arts Spain was in advance of most of her neighbours. She had a bold and industrious population, and

strong natural defences. The national spirit was martial and chivalrous; before long, the Spanish infantry were to be dreaded on many a European battlefield; and their great captain Gonsalvo de Cordova was the Wellington of the age. It would have been strange if their large seaboard had not tempted such a people to maritime adventure. They were beginning to rival the Portuguese in their career of discovery, while the commercial enterprise of both these nations was threatening the prosperity of the Italian ports, hitherto the chief markets of the world. In the romances of the Peninsula, ships and sea fights first figured largely among the giants, dragons, and enchanted castles that had filled older stories of the kind. A people's character may best be learned from what they love to read, and the popularity of Amadis de Gaul tells as plain a tale as the popularity of Captain Marryat. It was Hispania that in these times aspired to rule the waves, and before long it was to be the Spanish dominions over which men might say that the sun never set.

So when Columbus returned with his wonderful news, the Spaniards were both able and willing to enter upon the work thus set before them. They hastened to claim and to take possession of the new lands whose extent and features were yet unknown. It was long supposed by these navigators that they had reached one side of India, as the Portuguese approached it from the other. The Pope, who was then held to have at his disposal all parts of the world belonging to no Christian prince, granted

THE WONDERS OF THE NEW WORLD.

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America to Spain, leaving Africa to their rivals and neighbours. An imaginary line was drawn down the Atlantic to the west of this the Spaniards were to be masters, to the east the Portuguese. Thus, pushing on their discoveries from either side, they would in time, as they thought, meet in the Spice Islands or the mysterious country of Prester John. This arrangement was not always observed by the Portuguese; still less heed did the French and English mariners give to it; but in the main the history of the settlement of America is for almost a century the history of Spanish enterprise.

The Spanish character was marked by a strong tinge of romance; and the people who delighted in the gorgeous descriptions and wild adventures of Don Quixote's library, were ready to receive the most exaggerated accounts of the marvels of the tropical world. These exuberant forests and glowing skies seemed a very fairydom in the eyes of Cervantes' countrymen. Its fruits and flowers were wonderful and beautiful as those which hung in the enchanted garden of Apollidon. Strange and terrible as griffins were the huge reptiles which recalled the monsters imported into European fiction through the influence of the East. Each vast lake and impenetrable thicket might well be the abode of some such mysterious sage as Urganda the Unknown. These stupendous volcanoes, these earthquakes and hurricanes, were like the work of malignant and powerful sorcerers.

Here was cloudland made firm earth. Bold men hastened to try the chances of that magic region.