298 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OP THE CONTEMPLATION OF 



the violence and all the horrors wliich conquerors, the so- 

 called extenders of civilisation, spread over the earth. Yet 

 it would be an indiscreet and rash boldness which, in the 

 interrupted history of the development of humanity, should 

 venture to decide dogmatically on the balance of good or 

 ill. It is not for men to pronounce judgment on events 

 which, slowly prepared in the womb of time, belong but 

 partially to the age in which we place them. 



The first discovery of the middle and southern parts of 

 the United States of America by the Scandinavians almost 

 coincides in point of time with the appearance and myste- 

 rious arrival of Manco Capac in the highlands of Peru; it 

 preceded by almost 200 years the arrival of the Aztecs in 

 the valley of Mexico. The foundation of the principal city, 

 Tenochtitlan, dates fully 325 years later. If these coloniza- 

 tions by Northmen had been more permanent in their 

 results, if they had been fostered and protected by a power- 

 ful and politically united mother country, the advancing 

 Germanic race would have still found many wandering 

 tribes of hunters, ( 455 ) where the Spanish conquerors found 

 settled agriculturists. 



The period of the conquista, the end of the 15th and 

 oeginning of the 16th centuries, is marked by a wonderful 

 coincidence of great events in the political and moral life of 

 the nations of Europe. In the same month in which 

 Hernan Cortes, after the battle of Otumba, advanced to be- 

 siege Mexico, Martin Luther burnt the papal bull at Wit- 

 tenberg, and laid the foundation of the Reformation, which 

 promised to the mind of man freedom and progress in almost 

 untried paths. ( 456 ) Somewhat earlier, those long buned 

 glorious monuments of ancient Grecian art, the Laocoon, 



