THE RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST.

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peace indeed, but of a peace more akin to death than life the peace not of smiling fields and busy arts and growing towns, but such peace rather as reigns in some pathless forest of the tropics, where the light of heaven is hid by unbroken masses of foliage, and the ground is choked by rank weeds, trailing and twisting between every mouldered trunk, where no breath of wind comes to stir the stifling air, heavy with noxious vapours, and ear and eye grow dull among the oppressive luxuriance of vegetation, swarming secretly with base and harmful creatures-a slumberous, sweltering, corrupting peace, broken only by the roar of the thunder and the crash of the earthquake.

If such evils came of the conquest of the cross, what might be expected of the conquests of the sword! Of these conquerors it may truly be said that only when they had made a desolation could they call it peace. They sowed dragons' teeth in the fields which they watered with blood, and they were to reap as they had sown. The history of Spanish America is a melancholy record of slavery and anarchy, of tyranny and revolution, of greed and poverty. Nowhere is the earth richer, yet nowhere is man more miserable than in the lands of gold and silver, of pearls and diamonds. Unable to conquer himself, he is powerless against nature, which still in these regions gives her strength to vegetable rather than to animal life, and sees the human soul dwarfed and withered amid her most

prodigal bounties. The blessings of religion and civilization seem here to have turned into a curse,

cursing alike those who brought and those who re ceived the fatal gifts. The Spaniards have been tainted by the degradation of their bondsmen, for the cry of the slave against his oppressor is never raised in vain, and the lash of the tyrant as surely debases him who holds it as the cringing form on which it falls. Nor did their mother country long prosper on the wealth which these colonists gathered with such guilty hands. Soon she was to afford a memorable example that not thus are the true riches of a nation to be counted. All the gold sent home to Spain was found but a source of weakness when priestcraft and kingcraft were sucking out her life. Surely, we exclaim, hearing of her greatness and beholding her fall, the Avenger of the innocent has made inquisition for the blood with which she thus polluted her conquests!

In many books you may read at length these tales, more marvellous than legends, of how the modern Argonauts went to seek a golden treasure in the west, how they carried the plagues of Christendom to desolate America, and how they sent back poisonous germs concealed among their spoil. Our story is of heroes of another kind, who learned in time to look for no windfalls of precious ore, but to address themselves manfully to honest and patient work, which, in the long run, is the only thing that pays the world and the workers.

LIMITS OF SPANISH COLONIZATION.

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III.

Within half a century from the discovery of America, the flood of Spanish invasion had spread over the West Indian islands and the coasts of central America, and was rapidly making its way upon the southern continent, while to the north the ancient empire of Mexico was submerged beneath the rising colony of New Spain. Vasco Nunez had crossed the isthmus and discovered the South Sea. His countrymen were beginning to have some notion of the geographical features of the New World, though as yet it was unascertained what seas and straits might not divide it into a vast group of islands. The Spaniards now held at least the outskirts of the countries occupied by their descendants at the present day, and were firmly fixed in advantageous positions from which they might extend their conquest in every direction.

But here their progress stayed; and the most prosperous and famous part of America, that part which is called America par excellence, was left to be peopled and subdued by another nation.

Several attempts, indeed, were made to explore to the north. Expeditions were sent towards California, in search of the gold which was to be discovered there three centuries later; others sought the blooming shores of Florida, where Ponce de Leon was the first to land in 1512. Of these expeditions the most celebrated is that of Ferdinand de Soto, which wandered for years in the interior of the country to the north of the Gulf

of Mexico, and left the body of their leader buried in the great waters of the Mississippi.

But the toils and hardships of these explorers produced no gold; the Spaniards, fearless in romantic perils and wild delusions, shrank back from the colder regions where nature refused to be conquered save by steady labour, and the sword was useless without the plough and the axe. Spain showed no readiness to push her settlements into North America, though, like a dog in the manger, she still claimed all the continent for her own. new claimant soon appeared in these vast lists, where a century might well pass before challenger and challenged could come face to face. In the north France was, from time to time, to spend pains in clearing the ground and planting settlements, the fruit of which would be reaped by another nation.

It is notable that so many of the leaders of discovery at this time were Italians, setting out under the auspices of foreign governments. Columbus, as we have seen, was born at Genoa. Cabot, who first came upon the mainland while employed by England, was a Venetian. From Florence came Amerigo Vespucci, who had the undeserved good luck of bestowing his name upon the new world, whereas he was only the first to visit the southern continent. There was clearly room for a good deal of difference in opinion as to which people had any special right from prior discovery; the only great nation of the day—if Italy might be called a nation -that does not seem to have put in any claim, was the one to different states of which these men belonged.

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FRENCH EXPLORATIONS IN CANADA.

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Another Florentine, Verrazzani, entered the field in behalf of the king of France, and in 1524 surveyed the coast of the United States, and brought back such a report that his royal master began to think these countries had not been created for the Spaniards alone. The name of New France was given to the northern part, whither the French had already been attracted by the fisheries of Newfoundland, an important industry wherever the fasts of the Catholic Church were observed. France and Spain were playing that game at which Francis I. lost all but honour to his rival Charles V. There was therefore every motive for colonising, and the famous Jacques Cartier was encouraged and assisted with means to explore Canada. He sailed up the St. Lawrence and gave its present name to the wooded eminence of Montreal. Cold and scurvy drove him away; but once more he returned to his self appointed task, and behind him came a viceroy attended by the sweepings of the jails, who were thought good enough for such a doubtful enterprise. Failure was again the result. No precious metals or stones having been found, the newly opened country had small chance of attention from the government at a time when France was distracted by long and bloody civil wars, carried on in the name of religion.

It was an ill season to found colonies, yet the very stress of the times led to an attempt which for us has a special interest. In the middle of the sixteenth century Frenchmen anticipated the design carried out by the English puritans two gene