Raleigh returned to England, a broken down old man. The Spaniards demanded his life of James as they had demanded it of Elizabeth after his first expedition, on the ground that in time of peace Raleigh had attacked the Spanish forces and invaded their country. Elizabeth had refused, but James yielded. Raleigh was executed, but Guiana became an English colony.
The gold and silver mines of Peru have failed; little gold has been found in Guiana, but its rich and fertile soil, watered by tropical rains, has been a source of greater wealth than the gold mines of Peru.
POPULATION OF SOUTH AMERICA.
As the countries of South America were all settled at about the same time and by the same race and have passed through a like history, they can be considered as a whole.
The United States and Canada, with a rough, uncongenial climate and sterile soil, were settled by the Anglo-Saxons, the remainder of the western continent by the Latin race and, excepting Brazil and Guiana, by Spaniards. In North America the Anglo-Saxon race has dominated, carrying civilization from the Atlantic to the Pacific, expelling and exterminating the aborigines. There has been no mingling of the Anglo-Saxon and Indian races, no backward step, but ever civil, religious and intellectual progress. The Latin race conquered Central America and South America, a perfect Eden of natural loveliness, one hundred years prior to the settlement of the Anglo-Saxon; yet to-day they constitute but a thin layer over a scarcely populated country. Their leaders were men of unbounded ambition, rapacious, of great endurance, but cruel and unscrupulous. They sought adventure, expecting it would bring them gold and silver. For that end they plundered, despoiled and enslaved the Indians. Gold and silver flowed into their hands; luxury, effeminacy, and weakness followed.
The Spaniards in America have scarcely retained the civilization they brought from the old world. They have intermarried with the Indians, and this mixed race is said to inherit the vices of each of their ancestors without the virtues of either.
A sparse population, mostly Spanish and foreigners, inhabit a zone ten to twenty miles in depth along the coast of South America, from the Bay of Panama to the Caribbean sea. All the cities and settlements, excepting a few in the Argentine Republic, are near the coast.
Back of this zone, on the Pacific, is a mixed Spanish-Indian population, much larger than the Spanish and foreign population; and on the Atlantic a population which is Spanish-Indian, Spanish-Negro, and Negro-Indian, occupies a zone from twenty to one hundred miles wide. Beyond the first zone a few Spanish families and foreigners are found at the gold and silver mines, on the pampas, at the cattle ranches, and on a few haciendas in Peru and Chili. In Brazil the Portuguese and some Englishmen and Germans raise coffee and sugar, and oversee the diamond and gold fields. On the Amazon there are a few small settlements to collect the India rubber and cacao of that valley.
Save these sparse settlements, the interior of South America is inhabited by wild tribes of Indians, uncivilized save for the presence of a few Catholic priests, who have given the Indians the cross and the image of the Virgin Mary, which they worship, mingling the Catholic religion with their old idolatries and barbarous rites. The natives are believed to be more idle and less civilized than when the Spaniards discovered America.
The Spaniards are the grandees of the country; too proud to work, they leave all business to the foreigners and all labor to the Indians, retaining in connection with the half-breeds all political power. When the regents appointed by Spain were expelled in the early part of the present century, republics were established, but they were republics only in name; the people were neither educated nor fitted for self-government. Their presidents generally exercised the powers of dictators and often assumed that title. They have rarely enjoyed a long rule, for their power and position were sought by others. Revolution in these countries has passed from the acute to the chronic stage.