“Columbus himself was spared to undertake one more voyage, and this time it was to be confined exclusively to the continent, he being absolutely forbidden to land at Hispaniola, where Nicolas Ovando, with a force of all sorts and conditions of men, numbering two thousand five hundred, had been installed as governor; and so jealous was he of any interference with his prerogatives that, when the admiral was driven by stress of weather to take shelter in the harbor of San Domingo, he was ordered to quit instantly.
“This proved the most disastrous of all his voyages. After exploring the coasts of Honduras and Central America generally, in search of the non-existent channel, until the provisions were in such a state that they could only be eaten in the dark, it was decided to land, despite the fierce opposition of the natives, and plant a permanent settlement under Bartholomew, who accompanied his brother. This, however, had to be abandoned; and on the way back the only remaining vessel ran aground in Dry Harbor in Jamaica, and became a total wreck, the most incredible suffering, aggravated by constant mutiny, being experienced, until the remnant of the crew was eventually relieved.
“Columbus having shown the way to the mainland, as well as the islands, it was left to others to reveal the vast extent and natural wealth of what he had discovered, and he died on the 20th May, 1506, in complete ignorance of many of the most important facts which his genius and tenacity permitted to be made known for the first time to the civilized world.
“Columbus and his immediate followers hit upon the most unpromising part of the American Continent, where the damp, hot atmosphere, with its resulting rank and profuse vegetation, makes human existence intolerable if not wellnigh impossible. As the land was known to contain gold, however, the most persistent efforts were made to settle in it, and two regular governments were established under Alonzo de Ojeda and Diego de Nicuessa respectively. Nothing but disaster resulted for many a long year, and the greatest difficulties were experienced in extending or enlarging them in any direction but coastwise.
“Narrow as the isthmus is in the part selected, it appeared impenetrable, until eventually the magic word gold encouraged a few bold spirits to overcome every obstacle. Wherever the adventurers went inland they heard of a great sea and vast abundance of the precious metal in an unknown land beyond. After incredible hardships, Vasco Nunez de Balboa and a handful of followers forced their way through the thickets and swamps, scaled the mountain range which runs like a backbone along the isthmus, and were rewarded for their pains when they reached the summit by the sight of the great southern sea lying at their feet. This occurred on the 26th September, 1513, and on the following day the party descended the western slopes; Vasco Nunez, as its leader and commander, taking possession of the Pacific Ocean on behalf of the King of Spain, with all the ceremonies and formalities customary on those occasions.
“How to take advantage of it was the question. Far south, beyond where vision could reach, lay the golden land. They were without ships or means of conveyance of any sort, and the shore upon which they were now stranded was dangerous as well as inhospitable. The observant and ingenious mind of Nunez, inferior only to that of Columbus, evolved the idea of transporting material across the isthmus for the construction of a fleet to undertake the subjugation of all countries bordering on the Southern Sea; and such was the work eventually accomplished, though not by Nunez, who fell a victim to the jealousy and treachery of Pedrarias Davila, a new governor dispatched from Spain. It was left to one of his lieutenants, Francisco Pizarro, to set forth on a definite expedition more than ten years later; and it was not until nearly twenty years had elapsed that Peru was discovered, and the rich kingdom of the Incas added to the spoils of the Castilian monarch.
“Meanwhile, exploration had been busy on the eastern side of the continent. Cuba, realized at length to be an island, was regularly colonized in 1511, and the governor, Diego Velasquez, being an enterprising and ambitious man, dispatched an expedition westward. The great peninsula of Yucatan was reached, and the officers of the little squadron were struck by the much higher state of civilization exhibited by the natives than by any others hitherto met with either in the islands or on the mainland. The news of this led to the subsequent expedition of Cortes, the story of whose conquest of Mexico reads more like a fairy tale than the narrative of actual events and hard realities.
“The years 1519, 1520 and 1521 were occupied by this, the greatest of all the enterprises undertaken by Spain in the New World. Nor was there any lack of activity in other directions. Juan Ponce sailed from Porto Rico, in 1512, in search of a spring whose waters insured perennial youth to whoever drank of them, and found and annexed Florida instead. More than one navigator cruised southward as far as the Rio de la Plata, and in 1520 Magellan reached the extremity of the southern continent, and passed through the straits which bear his name. Nor was Cortes idle after he had accomplished his great work. North and south he sought to add to the territory of New Spain, until all the countries of Central America on one side, and the peninsula of California on the other, were brought under its sway. In less than half a century from the day Columbus first set foot on San Salvador, the entire continent, from Labrador to Patagonia, had been visited, and by far the greater part of it annexed to, and nominally ruled by, the Castilian crown.
“To return, however, to Hispaniola. The rapid exhaustion which mismanagement produced there, joined to the absence of gold, led to the creation of other colonies. The discovery of the fisheries, first at Paria, and then in the islands of the Pacific, opened up an unexpected source of wealth; but it was not until Montezuma offered his munificent gifts to Cortes, to induce the latter to quit the shores of Mexico, that the first great reservoir of the precious metals was tapped. Still, it must be remembered that the great stores of gold discovered, first in Mexico, and subsequently in Peru, did not in themselves imply that these countries were capable of continuing to produce unlimited quantities. They were the accumulations of many years, possibly of many centuries; for, as there was no foreign trade, everything produced which could not be consumed had necessarily to be preserved or destroyed.
“It may be wondered what value gold possessed in the ideas of these people. That it was held in nothing like the same esteem as by Europeans is certain; but in Peru, at any rate, its production and preservation were assured, from the fact that it was regarded as tears wept by the sun, which was the god of the people, whose Incas, or rulers, were called the Children of the Sun. In neither case, then, is it surprising that the treasure was not clung to with more tenacity. Both Montezuma and Atahualpa set a higher value upon many other things; and the quantities seized by Cortes and Pizarro and their respective followers, vast though it appeared in their eyes, and as it really was in those days, was parted with, with scarcely a pang of regret. That secured by Pizarro was by far the greater spoil, and was supposed to be the price of the freedom of the Inca himself, who offered to fill a room 85 feet by 17, and as high as a man could reach, with gold plate in exchange for it. He did not quite succeed, because Pizarro treacherously put him to death before the task was completed, yet the amount realized for distribution was equivalent to something like three and a half millions sterling ($17,500,000) of the money of to-day, and enriched the commonest foot-soldier beyond the dreams of avarice.