CHAPTER I.
SPANISH DISCOVERERS AND INVADERS.
A lively, indeed a dramatic, interest attaches to the
occasion and the incidents which first brought together for
recognition, for sight and intercourse, representatives of
the human family that had been parted by oceans for
unknown centuries. Neither of these branches of a common
stock had knowledge of the other. There was to be a first
meeting, as of strangers. In view of all the dismal and
harrowing results which were to follow, burdening with
tragedies of woe and cruelty the relations between the
white man and the red man, especially those of the
Spaniards and the natives of the American islands, one might
be tempted to wish that the ocean had been impassable.
The more grateful, therefore, is it to recall the fact, that
the very first contact and recognition between those of the
Old World and the New, when the time had come that
they were no longer to be deferred, present to us a sweet
and lovely picture. Would that its charm and repose of
simple peacefulness might have been the long perspective
of the then following ages!
The great-hearted Admiral had kept his high resolve and hope through all the weary delays of his course over unknown seas, with panic-stricken and mutinous sailors. They might reckon over what part of the expanse of waters they had passed in their poor vessels, but knew not how much remained. But signs of land had appeared in sea-
