LECTURE I

Summary

It is not my intention to occupy your time with the details of the military and political history of the establishment of the Spaniards in America. That romantic episode, if I may so call it, in modern annals has furnished abundant materials to the philosopher, the historian, and the poet. But the peculiar virtues and vices of the Spanish conquerors, their enterprise, their devotion, their lust of gold, their cruelty, although they have marked the narratives of the conquest with traits of unusual distinctness, may be said to have become rapidly obliterated after the first fury of success had subsided. They have left scanty traces, except in history. The development of the colonies, and of the great and numerous republics which have succeeded them, depended on other causes, and has proceeded under very different impulses. Cortes, Pizarro, Valdivia, and the other heroes of that period, passed over the surface of the earth as whirlwinds, clearing the way for other adventurers by the very devastation they created, but leaving no memorial of themselves except in the awe and wonder of their cotemporaries, which have coloured the traditions respecting them. After their era came that of the peaceful colonist, whose slow labours founded and consolidated the dominion of which they had only traced out the landmarks.