in search of
amusement. The reports these pioneers brought back of the _naivete_,
politeness, and gullibility of the natives, and the cheapness of
existence in their cities, caused a general exodus from the western to
the eastern hemisphere. Most of the Americans who had used up their
credit at home and those whose incomes were insufficient for their wants,
immediately migrated to these happy hunting grounds, where life was
inexpensive and credit unlimited.

The first arrivals enjoyed for some twenty years unique opportunities.
They were able to live in splendor for a pittance that would barely have
kept them in necessaries on their own side of the Atlantic, and to pick
up valuable specimens of native handiwork for nominal sums. In those
happy days, to belong to the invading race was a sufficient passport to
the good graces of the Europeans, who asked no other guarantees before
trading with the newcomers, but flocked around them, offering their
services and their primitive manufactures, convinced that Americans were
all wealthy.

Alas! History ever repeats itself. As Mexicans and Peruvians, after
receiving their conquerors with confidence and enthusiasm, came to rue
the day they had opened their arms to strangers, so the European peoples,
before a quarter of a century was over, realized that the hordes from
across the sea who were over-running their lands, raising prices,
crowding the native students out of the schools, and finally attempting
to force an entrance into society, had little to recommend them or
justify their presence except money. Even in this some of the intruders
were unsatisfactory. Those who had been received into the "bosom" of
hotels often forgot to settle before departing. The continental women
who had provided the wives of discoverers with the raiment of the country
(a luxury greatly affected by those ladies) found, to their disgust, that
their new customers were often unable or unwilling to offer any
remuneration.

In consequence of these and many other disillusions, Americans began to
be called the "Destroyers," especially when it became known that nothing
was too heavy or too bulky to be carried away by the invaders, who tore
the insides from the native houses, the paintings from the walls, the
statues from the temples, and transported this booty across the seas,
much in the same way as the Romans had plundered Greece. Elaborate
furniture seemed especially to attract the new arrivals