the extinction of the natives was due to
new diseases and to the vices of civilization, but far more to the
heartless exploitation of them by the conquerors. Bartholomew de las
Casas, the first priest to come to this unfortunate island, tells
stories of Spanish cruelty that would be incredible were they not so
well supported. With his own eyes he saw 3000 inoffensive Indians
slaughtered at a single time; of another batch of 300 he observed that
within a few months more than half perished at hard labor. Again, he
saw 6000 Indian children condemned to work in the mines, of whom few or
none long survived. In vain a bull of Paul III declared the Indians
capable of becoming {437} Christians and forbade their enslavement. In
vain the Spanish government tried to mitigate at least some of the
hardships of the natives' lot, [Sidenote: 1537] ordering that they
should be well fed and paid. The temptation to exploit them was too
strong; and when they perished the Spaniards supplied their place by
importing negroes from Africa, a people of tougher fibre.

Spanish exploration, followed by sparse settlement, soon opened up the
greater part of the Americas south of the latitude of the present city
of San Francisco. Of many expeditions into the trackless wilderness,
only a few were financially repaying; the majority were a drain on the
resources of the mother country. In every place where the Spaniard set
foot the native quailed and, after at most one desperate struggle, went
down, never again to loose the conqueror's grip from his throat or to
move the conqueror's knee from his chest. Even the bravest were as
helpless as children before warriors armed with thunder and riding upon
unknown monsters.

But in no place, save in the islands, did the native races wholly
disappear as they did in the English settlements. The Spaniards came
not like the Puritans, as artisans and tillers of the soil intent on
founding new homes, but as military conquerors, requiring a race of
helots to toil for them. For a period anarchy reigned; the captains
not only plundered the Indians but fought one another fiercely for more
room--more room in the endless wilderness! Eventually, however,
conditions became more stable; Spain imposed her effective control, her
language, religion and institutions on a vast region, doing for South
America what Rome had once done for her.

The lover of adventure will find rich reward in tracing the discovery
of the