632 SPANISH DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



able and even adorable image of female loveliness and virtue, would have 

 led to that result. 



But far exceeding the Crusades in effect, more distinct in its origin, 

 Discover of s i nce ^ directly resulted. from the tone of thought which the 

 America by Arabs had introduced, lasting in the influence that it has ex- 



the Spaniards. ^^ and ^ forever exert on the d est i n i es Q f ^ w j lite 



race, was the discovery of America by the Spaniards in 1492. This con- 

 tinent, four hundred years before, had been visited repeatedly by the Ice- 

 landers and Norwegians ; but the shores they discovered being less hos- 

 pitable and less tempting, their expeditions unsupported by a powerful 

 home government, and the results little attractive, the very remembrance 

 of them seems almost to have passed away. Had it not been for the 

 magnetic needle, and other instruments of navigation introduced from the 

 East, the passage of the tropical Atlantic could never have been accom- 

 plished, and probably would never have been attempted. Moreover, we 

 must not overlook the fact that the rapid conquests of the Saracens, and 

 even the Crusades themselves, had introduced a largeness of conception, 

 and had familiarized the public mind with undertakings to be accom- 

 plished in regions that were very remote. The successful return of Co- 

 lumbus from his first voyage found all Europe ready to rush into West- 

 ern enterprises, and this event may be truly regarded as a grand epoch 

 in the history of the white race, since it more than quadrupled the geo- 

 graphical surface over which they might spread, and presented to. their 

 unmolested occupation climates from the equator to the extreme north 

 and south. 



In the prodigious emigration that ensued, Spain led the way, and did 

 Colonial em- so to her ruin. In vain she received and scattered over Eu- 

 pire of Spain. r0 pe the wealth of Mexico and Peru ; she gave in exchange 

 for it what was to her of infinitely more value the most enterprising 

 and bravest of her people. The drain of this class produced an effect 

 from which she has never recovered. It left her without energy and im- 

 becile. In vain she founded a greater, and, for the time, more prosperous 

 colonial empire than history has ever recorded, carrying her influences 

 through a large part of South and much of North America, from the At- 

 lantic to the Pacific Ocean. Her emigrants, unable to withstand the in- 

 fluences of a tropical climate, and intermarriages and connections with 

 the native races among whom they were thrown, soon lost the enterprise 

 that had once distinguished them, and the descendants of the Spaniard 

 in America exemplify at this day the universal imbecility that is exhib- 

 ited in the mother country. 



In her pursuit of the wealth of America Spain was a fearful oppress- 

 The fan of the or. Bartholomew de las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapa, to use 

 Spanish power. kj s QWn ex p ress i on , charged her "before the tribunal of the 



