No city of south america has been more frequently or more carefully depicted in views of all kinds than Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, a port on the northern coast of Brazil, which this year is celebrating the 300th anniversary of one of the great events in its history. The iconography of Recife begins with the Dutch, who are responsible for its growth as a town. Before their conquest of Pernambuco in 1630, Recife had been only a village of fishermen dependent upon the old Portuguese town of Olinda, located a short distance to the north. Olinda, however, lacked port facilities, for it was built on hills dominating an open beach. Recife, on the other hand, is located at the confluence of the rivers Beberibe and Capibaribe, where there is a deep harbor protected from the sea by reefs of sandstone, which gives the place its name. The situation was, therefore, ideal for the needs of the Dutch West Indies Company, which for commercial purposes had brought about the conquest of the rich sugar and dye-wood-producing Portuguese colony of Pernambuco.

Amid the mixed emotions with which Cortés prepared A% to enter the Mexican capital in early November, 1519, was the gnawing fear that his military position therein would be an untenable one. Even the most courageous and least professional military man among the invaders must have realized that a Spanish force of fewer than five hundred men, far within the interior of a hostile and strange land, literally had entered a lion’s den as it marched into the populous island-city of Tenochtitlán via the narrow and ever so vulnerable causeway that stretched some seven miles between it and the mainland. So it was that even as his courage and curiosity took him into Tenochtitlán, his military mind and his sense of responsibility for the welfare of his men led Cortés to seek a means whereby the Spaniards could dominate the waters of Lake Texcoco and the lacustrine communities, including Tenochtitlán itself. Only after the Spaniards had become masters of the adjacent countryside—in this instance the waters and shores of a lake—could they know that inner satisfaction and quiet confidence that comes from a sincere sense of physical security. Only when the Spaniards had established their mastery over the lake area could it be said that the initiative so important to continuance of the conquest rested in their hands. With his infantry, his cavalry and his artillery momentarily stalled in the insular setting in which they found themselves, Cortés needed to create a new military force which, when thrown into the balance, would tip the scales once again in favor of the Spaniards.

There have been numerous well-deserved tributes written recently about the late Professor Herbert Eugene Bolton. There can be no doubt that his work raised the standards and scope of western American historical scholarship to new heights. The development of a broadly viewed concept of the historical unity of the Americas was largely his own contribution. His long life (eighty-two years) and his persistent devotion to studies, both detailed and wide in scope, earned Bolton great prestige. At the University of California he nurtured a veritable “school” of California historians. A former student speaks of his remarkable achievements as those of “the most prolific of western historians both in his own writings and in the students whose work he guided….” Another of his one hundred doctoral fellows calls Bolton’s a career of “matchless enthusiasm and perseverance.”

During the early days of 1859, Port-au-Prince was busy with holiday celebrations, dramatic addresses and colorful events. Haitians possess a certain genius for properly observing a great day, and indeed it seemed that halcyon days had at last arrived in the Caribbean. Before the national legislature that April came a new president, a man for all the people. He was a person of medium height, rather slender and very erect and dignified. A mixture of Negro and mulatto elements, the new national hero had a very dark complexion, gray hairs befitting his fifty-three years, and courteous airs. In fact, his decorum was striking, set off as it was with a quiet gentleness, polish and evident idealism that seemed almost out of place in a Haitian warrior who had just dethroned an emperor.

The ownerless imperial crown, symbolic of the recently defunct regime, was brought before the restorer of the old Republic. Fittingly, the chief executive employed allegory to express his adventure into reform. After a long, flowery speech denouncing the exiled Emperor Faustin I, President Nicolas Fabre Geffrard swore fidelity to the popular government, announced some preliminary political changes, and took up a small gavel. With this he struck the crown three times, condemning the magnificent diadem and its regime as he inaugurated the Republic which must not waver. From that day on the crown of Soulouque became a museum piece, but what is symbolized could not be so easily defeated and discarded.

A NEW AND VIGOROUS INTEREST exists today in United States schools in the study of Portuguese and of Brazil. The accent has shifted both literally and figuratively. Until recent years Portuguese was studied largely by students of philology for the purpose of comparing it with other Romance languages. At present the language is approached by students as a key to the understanding of Brazil and its culture. Peninsular Portuguese has given way in the classroom to the carioca and paulista, or even the nordestino forms, in pronunciation and intonation, as well as vocabulary.

The interest in the Portuguese language in general and Brazil in particular has a long and honored history in the United States. The importance of the study of Portuguese has been emphasized by United States leaders since the early days.

The 400th anniversary of the entrance into Chile of the Order of Friars Minor, the Franciscans, is appropriately being commemorated by our presence here tonight. I am honored to have been asked to state briefly for you some of the highlights of their activities in that land during the colonial era.

It is a relatively unpublicized story, but one worthy of retelling by those better equipped for the task than I am. Coming from the field of Mexican studies, where in a comparable period one finds rich and extensive resources portraying the important role played by the Franciscans in New Spain, I was immediately impressed on looking into the Chilean matter that there are relatively few materials readily available even to reconstruct the narrative of the Franciscans in Chile. To fill that gap would be a very worthy project. One conclusion which grew out of these brief researches is that the role which Franciscans played in colonial Chile, especially in the sixteenth century, was perhaps a major one, and should be more widely known. In the short time at my disposal here, I can but hint at the outlines, revealed in printed works locally accessible. I ask your indulgence for what undoubtedly may turn out on further investigation to be major omissions.