[119] There has been formed in Lima a society for the protection of the Indians, but I could not learn that it has been able to do much in the parts of Peru that lie far from the capital.
[120] The sense of membership in a concrete community (a Visible Church) consisting of persons of whatever race who participate in the same sacraments is stronger in the Roman than in the Protestant churches; and as a member of a lower race who has been ordained a priest is thereby raised to a position which is in a sense above that of any layman, the race itself is raised in his person.
[121] An infusion of negro blood, sometimes met with in the coast towns of Peru, is regarded with less favour than a like infusion of Indian blood, for while the first negro ancestor must have been a slave, the Indian ancestor may have been an Inca.
[122] A few years ago in northern Mexico a truck carrying a load of dynamite for use at a mine was suddenly discovered to be on fire at a village station. The risk was imminent, so the driver of a locomotive engine picked the truck up and ran it away into the country at all the speed he could put on. He bade the brakeman jump off and save himself, adding, "I go to my death." When he had got a mile away, the dynamite exploded. Every window in the village was broken, and he was blown to atoms, but the inhabitants were saved. He was a pure-blooded Indian.
[123] Some of these now come south to work on Argentine farms.
[124] Though doubt has lately been thrown upon the letter of Toscanelli and upon the received belief that it was India that Columbus was seeking, he clearly believed on his return to Spain that it was India he had found.
[125] The question as to the truth of Amerigo Vespucci's account of his voyages, and especially of the first one (1497) in which he claimed to have discovered a new land 1000 leagues west southwest of the Canary Islands is still the subject of controversy among learned men, but the prevalent opinion seems to be that the account is unworthy of credence. The letters were translated into Latin and ran through several editions.
The name "Americus, Amerigo" is an Italianized form of Amalrich, a name borne by some of the Gothic kings mentioned by Jordanes, and also by two of the Latin kings of Jerusalem in the twelfth century. It is the German Emeric and the French Amaury.
[126] Each has, moreover, other currents of somewhat less climatic importance: the Japan current on the Pacific and the Arctic current on the Atlantic coast of North America, as well as the equatorial current on a part of the east coast of South America.
[127] Teutonic may appear to be no satisfactory term, considering not only the French-speaking population of eastern Canada, but also the large Celtic, Italic, and Slavonic elements within the United States. Nevertheless, the general social type of that country and of Canada is Teutonic, as are also their institutions and their language.