o such consideration we find but little that is
characteristic or even interesting. It is not to Spanish-founded
countries that we must look for the greatest advances in the status or
culture of women; in such lands there has ever been stagnation and even
retrogression, while there has rarely been any marked individuality of
personal or national trait. Nor must it be forgotten that the phrase
"the Women of South America," even in the limited meaning of those of
Spanish blood, covers an exceedingly broad field.

In noting the history of woman in South America, it is pleasant to
relate that one of the first of the sex of whom we have record is
chronicled as having performed a vast service to posterity, even though
it were one which would have been done by others had she not been the
pioneer. It is recorded that the first wheat ever sown in South America
was carried to Lima, in the year 1535, by Dona Maria de Escobar, though
the quantity was only a few grains. When the crop came to ripeness, the
lady called together all her friends to celebrate the first harvest of
wheat ever gathered in the New World; and although she was in error as
to this,--wheat having been produced in Mexico in 1528 by a negro slave
belonging to Cortes, who accidentally found a few grains mingled with
the rice supplied to the soldiers and sowed them,--she is none the less
deserving of being held in honorable remembrance as the benefactor of
generations yet to come. While speaking of benefactors among South
American women, one may be mentioned who is remarkable both for her race
and for the form of one of her bequests. This was Catalina Huanca, an
Indian, who was so rich--being a cacique--that she left at her death
much money to be expended in various charitable bequests, among them
being the still existing hospital of Santa Ana at Lima; but the
extraordinary bequest to which allusion is made was a sum to be used for
forming and maintaining a body guard for the viceroy, the guard to
comprise both infantry--halberdiers, as the foot then were in such a
body and cavalry, and to consist of a hundred men. It is difficult to
say whether this bequest was not a malicious hit at the poverty of show
among the high Spanish officials as compared with the state held by the
Indians in their ceremonials; but the viceroy did not care to inquire
too curiously into the donor's meaning, but preferred to accept with
gratitude the goods with which the gods had provided him