school of important
_Indian authors_. It would be an irreparable loss to knowledge of the
true history of America if we were to lose the chronicles of such Indian
writers as Tezozomoc, Camargo, and Pomar, in Mexico; Juan de Santa Cruz,
Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua, in Peru; and many others. And what a gain
to science if we had taken pains to raise up our own aborigines to such
helpfulness to themselves and to human knowledge!

In all other enlightened pursuits which the world then knew, Spain's
sons were making remarkable progress here. In geography, natural
history, natural philosophy, and other sciences they were as truly the
pioneers of America as they had been in discovery. It is a startling
fact that so early as 1579 a public autopsy on the body of an Indian was
held at the University of Mexico, to determine the nature of an epidemic
which was then devastating New Spain. It is doubtful if by that time
they had got so far in London itself. And in still extant books of the
same period we find plans for repeating firearms, and a plain hint of
the telephone! The first printing-press did not reach the English
colonies of America until 1638,--nearly one hundred years behind Mexico.
The whole world came very slowly to newspapers; and the first authentic
newspaper in its history was published in Germany in 1615. The first one
in England began in 1622; and the American colonies never had one until
1704. The "Mercurio Volante" (Flying Mercury), a pamphlet which printed
news, was running in the City of Mexico before 1693.

When the ill reports of Coronado had largely been forgotten, there began
another Spanish movement into New Mexico and Arizona. In the mean time
there had been very important doings in Florida. The many failures in
that unlucky land had not deterred the Spaniards from further attempts
to colonize it. At last, in 1560, the first permanent foothold was
effected there by Aviles de Menendez, a brutal Spaniard, who
nevertheless had the honor of founding and naming the oldest city in the
United States,--St. Augustine, 1560. Menendez found there a little
colony of French-Huguenots, who had wandered thither the year before
under Ribault; and those whom he captured he hanged, with a placard
saying that they were executed "not as Frenchmen, but as heretics." Two
years later, the French expedition of Dominique de Gourges captured the
three Spanish forts which had been built there, and hanged the colonists
"not as Span