64 APPLICATION OF THE METALS. CHAP. XVIII. 



first harvest of the mineral treasures of America 

 came, were as a nation most intensely imbued 

 with religious feelings. Whatever description 

 may be given to the chrktianity that had formerly 

 prevailed in Spain, it had in the contest of seven 

 centuries with the Moors who were settled among 

 them, and who possessed the most beautiful and 

 fertile portions of their country, been changed 

 into a chivalric feeling, having little connexion 

 with the common duties of life, but exciting them 

 to bold achievements, to the endurance of severe 

 privations, and to a strenuous exertion in such 

 enterprises as could inflict injury on the Maho- 

 metan unbelievers. Their piety was not that 

 of the humble, devotee fraught with feelings of 

 repentance, and accompanied with resolutions of 

 amendment, but of warlike partisans fighting for 

 the power or the purity of the holy virgin, or for 

 the excellence of real or imaginary saints, to whose 

 honour they had devoted their swords and their 

 zeal. To propitiate these beings, they vowed to 

 dedicate a portion of the spoil acquired by their 

 adventurous rapine ; and hence the churches, the 

 shrines, and the altars were decorated with the 

 gold and the silver collected by the first expedi- 

 tions to the American shores. 



The irruptions of the Mahometans into the 

 districts around them rendered the treasures of 

 the churches insecure, till the final conquest of 

 that race had produced internal tranquillity at the 



