OCEANIC DISCOVEKIES. 675 



The age of the Conquista, which comprises the end of the 

 fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, indi- 

 cates a remarkable concurrence of great events in the political 

 and social life of the nations of Europe. In the same month 

 in which Hernan Cortez, after the battle of Otumba, advanced 

 upon Mexico, with the view of besieging it, Martin Luther 

 burnt the Pope's bull at Wittenberg, and laid the founda- 

 tion of the Reformation which promised to the human mind 

 both freedom and progress on paths which had hitherto 

 been almost wholly untrodden.* Still earlier, the noblest 

 forms of ancient Hellenic art, the Laocoon, the Torso, the 

 Apollo de Belvidere and the Medicean Venus, had been 

 resuscitated as it were from the tombs in which they had so 

 long been buried. There flourished in Italy, Michael Angelo, 

 Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, and Raphael; and in Germany, 

 Holbein and Albert Durer. The Copernican system of the 

 universe was discovered, if not made generally known, in the 

 year in which Columbus died, and fourteen years after the 

 discovery of the new continent. 



The importance of this discovery, and of the first coloni- 

 sation of Europeans involves a consideration of other fields of 

 enquiry besides those to which these pages are devoted, and 



Quito, Peru, and Chili. These herds constituted the riches of the nations 

 who were settled there, and were engaged in the cultivation of the soil; in 

 the Cordilleras of South America there were no "pastoral nations/' and 

 ''pastoral life" was not known. What are the "tame deer," near the 

 Punt a de St. Helena, which are mentioned in Herrera Dec. II. lib. x. 

 cap. 6, (T. I. p. 471, ed. Amberes, 1728)? These deer are said to have 

 given milk and cheese, " ciervos que dan leche y queso y se crian en 

 casa r From what source is this notice taken 1 ? It cannot have arisen 

 from a confusion with the llamas (having neither horns nor antlers) of 

 the cold mountainous region, of which Garcilaso affirms that in Peru, 

 and especially on ttie plateau of Collao, they were used for ploughing. 

 (Comment reales, P. I. lib. v. cap. 2, p. 133. Compare also Pedro de 

 Cieca de Leon. Chronica del Peru, Sevilla, 15o3, cap. 110, p. 264.) 

 This employment of llamas appears, however, to have been a rare excep- 

 tion, and a merely local custom. In general the American races were 

 remarkable for their deficiency of domesticated animals, and this had a 

 profound influence on family life. 



* On the hope which Luther in the execution of his great and free- 

 minded work, placed especially on the younger generation, the youth of 

 Germany, see the remarkable expressions in a letter written in June, 

 1518. (>Teander ; de Vicelio, p. 7.) 



2x2 



