114 LECTURES. 



lican and imperial successors, and it remains a debatable matter ta 

 this day. The whole empire of Brazil is still surrounded by bound- 

 ary disputes springing from that contest. 



As among the different sovereign powers, so also among individual 

 Spanish discoverers, questions of this sort were a fruitful source of 

 contention. The Spanish kings, in their contracts with their so-called 

 '^ conquistador es," used to promise them that they should become 

 governors, commonly hereditary ones, of the new countries within the 

 limits of their discoveries or conquests. These limits differed greatly 

 according to the different views which the conquistadores themselves 

 entertained of their own merits and the extent of the fields of their 

 activity. 



Hence arose the famous quarrels between Cortes, the conqueror of 

 Mexico, and Garay, the discoverer and governor of the countries north 

 of the Mexican Gulf. Cortes wished to carry the limits of his pro- 

 vince as far north, and Garay as far south, as possible. Similar dis- 

 putes existed for some time between Bastidas and Ojeda, and between 

 Columbus, or his heirs, and all the other discoverers. 



Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, had a similar quarrel with his 

 companion, Almagro, the conqueror of Chile. When the three great 

 conquerors of Cundinamarca — Quesada, Benalcazar, and Federman — 

 marching into the Magdalena valley from different sides, met on the 

 high plateau of Bogota, a question arose as to how the new country 

 should be divided. This they finally agreed to submit to the decision 

 of the King of Spain. During the ensuing lawsuits^ maps were made 

 and produced which showed the limits and extent of the several dis- 

 coveries ; and on the decisions based upon these documents rest the 

 boundaries of provinces and empires to this very day. 



When, at a later period, the French began to extend their conquests 

 in Canada and the English their settlements ©n the Atlantic coast, a 

 whole series of collisions respecting the boundaries of the different 

 powers commenced. At first between France and England, about the 

 limits of Canada towards the south, and of what was called Virginia 

 towards the north. Afterwards between France and Spain, about the 

 extent to be given to the newly created province of Louisiana. And 

 again between England and France as well as Spain, respecting the 

 boundaries of the countries beyond the Alleghany mountains, and 

 likewise in Florida and in Nova Scotia. 



We may. say that during the whole of the seventeenth and eigh- 

 teenth centuries no war was carried on in Europe which was not partly 

 a war for the extension of colonial boundaries in the New World, and 

 no treaty of peace was concluded which did not comprise articles on 

 the same subject. On all these occasions American maps were of the 

 greatest use, and were on all sides much sought after. The French 

 and English commissioners, for instance, who discussed, in the middle 

 of the last century, at and after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the 

 question of the limits of Nova Scotia, collected, used, and criticised 

 as many at least as fifty American maps of the earliest as well as 

 the latest date. 



Some of these boundary questions, in the unfinished state in which 

 they were left, were afterwards inherited by the great North American 



