From what has been stated, it will be seen that Spain, now decrepit and decayed, was one of the most powerful of all nations four hundred years ago. Other leading powers were England, France, and Holland, and all of them soon began a scramble for new lands on the other side of the Atlantic. Spain, having been the first, had a great advantage, and she was wise enough to use all the means at her command. We will first trace the explorations made by that nation.
In 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, a lawless rogue, hid himself in a cask on board of a vessel in order to escape his creditors, and was not discovered by the angry captain until so far from land that he could not be taken back again. As it turned out, this was a fortunate thing for the captain and crew, for Balboa was a good sailor, and when the ship was wrecked on the coast of Darien he led the men through many dangers to an Indian village, where they were saved from starvation. Balboa had been in the country before and acquired a knowledge of it, which now proved helpful.
The story of Spain in America is one long, frightful record of massacre, cruelty, greed, and rapine. Ferocious by nature, her explorers had not sufficient sense to see that it was to their interest to treat the Indians justly. These people, although armed only with bows and arrows, at which the Spaniards laughed, still outnumbered them a thousandfold and could crush them by the simple force of numbers. Besides, they were always provided with food, which they were eager to give to their pale-faced brothers, who were often unable to obtain it, but whose vicious nature would not permit them to be manly and just.
CARAVELS OF
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
(After an engraving published in 1584.)
Moreover, the Spaniards were crazy after gold, which they believed existed in many places in prodigious quantities. The sight of the yellow ornaments worn by the natives fired their cupidity, and they inquired eagerly in the sign language where the precious metal could be found. One of the Indians replied that six days' travel westward would bring them to the shores of a great sea, where gold was as plentiful as the pebbles on the beach.
DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC.
This information, as may be believed, set the Spaniards wild, and, engaging a number of the natives as guides, they plunged into the hot, steaming forests, and pressed on until one day they came to the base of a mountain, from the top of which the guides said the great sea could be seen. Balboa made his men stay where they were while he climbed to the crest of the mountain alone. This was on the 26th of September, 1513, and, as Balboa looked off to the westward, his eyes rested upon the Pacific Ocean, the mightiest body of water on the globe.
He had made a grand discovery, and one which led to the conquest of Mexico and Peru and the colonization of the western coast of our country. Spain sent her armed expeditions thither, and in time they overran the sections named, their footprints marked everywhere by fire and blood. Many remains exist to-day in the Southwest of the early visits of those rapacious adventurers, during the first half of the sixteenth century. In Santa Fé, New Mexico, is a building made of adobe or sun-dried clay which was built in 1582.
THE FIRST CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE.