Observations and Reflections 359 



it, but a cul-de-sac in which the spent invasions of 

 Europe from the north and the east found a final rest- 

 ing place. Across the narrow strait swarmed Phoeni- 

 cians, Carthaginians, Berbers, Arabs, Copts, Touaregs, 

 Syrians; from the north and the east came Romans, 

 Franks, Goths, Visigoths, and Vandals. All mingled 

 in time with the old Iberian stock; except where, in 

 the mountain fastnesses of the Pyrenees, the ancient 

 people, to-day known as the Basques, kept themselves 

 more or less aloof from the invaders. 



The discovery of the New World evoked in this 

 exceedingly complex people the spirit of adventure and 

 daring. They found their way across the Atlantic and 

 took possession of the newly found lands. They in- 

 termarried with the conquered races. Their leaders 

 in Mexico and Peru took to themselves as wives the 

 daughters of Indian princes. The soldiery were con- 

 tent with less exalted unions. In time there took 

 place an importation of Africans to till the soil. The 

 process of racial amalgamation went further. The 

 result is something unlike what has occurred in any 

 other region of the globe. To quote again from the 

 same author who has just been cited : 



From the negro bozal recently imported from Africa to 

 the quinteron, the offspring of slaves purified by successive 

 unions with the whites; from the Indian who mourned his 

 monotonous servitude in the solitude of the mountains, to 

 the colored student of the universities, we find in the 

 Seventeenth Century as in the Twentieth, in the colonies as 

 in the republics, every variety of this mixture of Iberians, 

 Indians, and Africans. 1 



The result of this great fusion of bloods represents 



'Calderon, /. c., p. 50. 



