The Dremn of El Dorado fades. 15 



peace Raleigh had attacked the Spanish forces and invaded their 

 country. Elizabeth had refused, but James yielded. Raleigh 

 "was executed, but Guiana became an English colony. 



The gold and silver mines of Peru have failed ; little gold has 

 been found in Guiana, but its rich and fertile soil, watered by 

 tropical rains, has been a source of greater wealth than the gold 

 mines of Peru. 



PoPULATio:^? OF South Ameeica. 



As the countries of South America were all settled at about the 

 same time and by the same race and have passed through a like 

 history, they can be considered as a whole. 



The United States and Canada, with a rough, uncongenial 

 climate and sterile soil, were settled by the Anglo-Saxons, the re- 

 mainder of the western continent by the Latin race and, except- 

 ing Brazil and Guiana, by Spaniards. In North America the 

 Anglo-Saxon race has dominated, carrying civilization from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific, expelling and exterminating the aborigines. 

 There has been no mingling of the Anglo-Saxon and Indian races, 

 no backward step, but ever civil, religious and intellectual prog- 

 ress. The Latin race conquered Central America and South 

 America, a perfect Eden of natural loveliness, one hundred years 

 prior to the settlement of the Anglo-Saxon ; yet to-day they con- 

 stitute but a thin layer over a scarcely populated country. Their 

 leaders were men of unbounded ambition, rapacious, of great 

 endurance, but cruel and unscrupulous. They sought adventure, 

 expecting it would bring them gold and silver. For that end 

 they plundered, despoiled and enslaved the Indians. Gold and 

 silver flowed into their hands ; luxury, effeminacy, and weakness 

 followed. 



The Spaniards in America have scarcely retained the civiliza- 

 tion they brought from the old world. They have intermarried 

 with the Indians, and this mixed race is said to inherit the vices 

 of each of their ancestors without the virtues of either. 



A sparse population, mostly Spanish and foreigners, inhabit a 

 zone ten to twenty miles in depth along the coast of South 

 America, from the Bay of Panama to the Caribbean sea. All 

 the cities and settlements, excepting a few in the Argentine Re- 

 public, are near the coast. 



Back of this zone, on the Pacific, is a mixed Spanish-Indian 

 population, much larger than the Spanish and foreign population; 



