push farther south, even to
the uttermost bound of the continent.

The writer is not of those who believe that the remote inhabitants of
America are unrepresented among the red men of the present age. In
European and American history the myths about exterminated races are
disappearing in the light of investigation. Our ancestors were not so
cruel as they have been painted. It is not likely that any nation was
ever cut off to a man. Men were too valuable to be destroyed beyond the
requirements of warfare or the demands of sanguinary religious customs.
Conquered nations, it is now agreed, were usually absorbed by their
conquerors, either as equals or serfs. In either event unity was the
result, as in the case of the Romans and Latins, the Scots and the Picts,
the Normans and the Saxons. The mound builders, in all probability,
survive in the Indian tribes of to-day, some of whom in the Southwest
were mound builders within the historic period, while the ruined cities
of Arizona and New Mexico were the product of a rude civilization,
admittedly inherited by the pueblos of the present generation.

* * *

There was nothing in the civilization of the most advanced American races
worth preserving, except their monuments. The destruction of the Aztec
and Peruvian empires was, on the whole, an advantage to humanity. The
darkest period of religious persecution in Europe saw nothing to compare
with the sanguinary rites of Aztec worship, and bigoted, intolerant and
oppressive as the Spaniards were they did a service to mankind in putting
an end to those barbarities. The colonial system established by Spain in
America was founded on the principle that dominion over the American
provinces was vested in the crown, not in the kingdom. The Spanish
possessions on this continent were regarded as the personal property of
the sovereign.

The viceroys were appointed by the king and removable by him at pleasure.
All grants of lands were made by the sovereign, and if they failed from
any cause they reverted to the crown. All political and civil power
centred in the king, and was executed by such persons and in such manner
as the will of the sovereign might suggest, wholly independent not only
of the colonies but of the Spanish nation. The only civil privileges
allowed to the colonists were strictly municipal, and confined to the
regulation of their interior police and commerce in cities and towns, for