MAP OF DARIEN AND TIERRA FIRME
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HISTORY OF CENTRAL AMERICA.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
SPAIN AND CIVILIZATION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
General View—Transition from the Old to the New Civilization—Historical Sketch of Spain—Spanish Character—Spanish Society—Prominent Features of the Age—Domestic Matters—The New World—Comparative Civilizations and Savagisms—Earliest Voyages of Discovery.
How stood this ever changing world four hundred years ago? Already Asia was prematurely old. Ships skirted Africa; but, save the northern seaboard, to all but heaven the continent was as dark as its stolid inhabitants. America was in swaddlings, knowing not its own existence, and known of none. Europe was an aged youth, bearing the world-disturbing torch which still shed a dim, fitful light and malignant odor.
Societies were held together by loyalty to civil and ecclesiastical rulers; not by that coöperation which springs from the common interests of the people. Unhallowed were all things real; divine the unsubstantial and potential. Beyond the stars were laid out spiritual cities, and under foot the hollow ground was dismal with the groans of the departed. Regions of the world outlying the known, were tenanted by sea-monsters, dragons, and hobgoblins. European commerce crept forth from walled towns and battlemented buildings, and peradventure, escaping the dangers of the land, hugged the shore in open boats, resting by night, and trembling amid-ships by day. Learning was chiefly confined to the clergy. Feudalism as a system was dead, but its evils remained. Innumerable burdens were heaped upon the people by the dominant classes who gave them little protection in return. Upon the most frivolous pretexts the fruits of their industry were seized and appropriated by their masters. It was a praiseworthy performance for a hundred thousand men to meet and slay each other to gratify the whim of a state minister or a king's concubine. Then came a change, and by reason of their revised Ptolemies, their antipodal soundings, and new geographies, their magnetic needles, printing machines, and men-killing implements, learning began to revive, and the people began in some faint degree to think for themselves.
Under the shifting sands of progress truth incubates, and the hatched ideas fashion for themselves a great mind in which they may find lodgment; fashion for themselves a tongue by which to speak; fashion for themselves a lever by which to move the world.
TRANSITIONAL EPOCH.
The epoch of which I speak rested upon the confines of two civilizations, the old and the new. It was a transition period from the dim twilight of the dark age to the brightness of modern thought; from an age of unquestioning faith to one of curiosity and scepticism. It was a period of concretions and crystallizations, following one of many rarefactions; religion was embracing science; astrology was merging into astronomy; magic into physics; alchemy into chemistry. Saltpetre was superseding steel in warfare; feudalism having fulfilled its purpose was being displaced by monarchical power; intercourse was springing up between nations, and international laws were being made. Even the material universe and the realms of space were enlarging with the enlargement of mind. Two worlds were about that time unveiled to Spain, an oriental and an occidental; by the capture of Constantinople ancient Greek and Latin learning was emancipated, and the Christian religion became settled as the faith of Europe; while toward the west, the mists of the ages lifted from the ocean, and, as if emerging from primeval waters, a fair new continent ripe for a thousand industries stood revealed.