were ready to rise
against them and become allies of the Spaniards. In a few months of
crowded battle and massacre they lay broken and helpless at the feet of
the audacious conqueror, who promptly sent to Spain a glowing account
of his new empire and a tribute of gold and silver. Albert Duerer in
August, 1520, saw at Brussels the "things brought the king from the new
golden land," and describes them in his diary as including "a whole
golden sun, a fathom in breadth, and a whole silver moon of the same
size, and two rooms full of the same sort of armour, and also all kinds
of weapons, accoutrements and bows, wonderful shields . . . altogether
valued at a hundred thousand guidon. And all my life," he adds, "I
have never seen anything that so rejoiced my heart as did these things."

[Conquest of Peru]

If an artist, familiar with kings and courts and the greatest marts of
Europe could write thus, what wonder that the imagination of the world
took fire? The golden sun and the silver moon were, to all men who saw
them, like Helen's breasts, the sun and moon of heart's desire, to lure
them over the western waves. Twelve years after Cortez, came Pizarro
who, with a still smaller force conquered an even wealthier and more
civilized empire. The Incas, unlike the Mexicans, were a mild race,
living in a sort of theocratic socialism, in which the emperor, as god,
exercised absolute power over his subjects and in return cared {440}
for at least their common wants. The Spaniards outdid themselves in
acts of treachery and blood. In vain the emperor, Atahualpa, after
voluntarily placing himself in the hands of Pizarro, filled the room
used as his prison nine feet high with gold as ransom; when he could
give no more he was tried on the preposterous charges of treason to
Charles V and of heresy, and suffered death at the stake. Pizarro
coolly pocketed the till then undreamed of sum of 4,500,000 ducats,[1]
worth in our standards more than one hundred million dollars.

[Sidenote: Circumnavigation of the globe, 1519-22]

But the crowning act of the age of discovery was the circumnavigation
of the globe. The leader of the great enterprise that put the seal of
man's dominion on the earth, was Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese in
Spanish service. With a fleet of five vessels, only one of which put a
ring around the world, and with a crew of about 275 men of whom only 18
returned successful, he sailed from Europe. [Sidenote: Sept