Already their lands and goods had been taken from them by
apostolic authority. [Sidenote: The American tragedy.] Their persons
were next seized, under the text that the heathen are given as an
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. It
was one unspeakable outrage, one unutterable ruin, with out
discrimination of age or sex. Those who died not under the lash in a
tropical sun died in the darkness of the mine. From sequestered
sand-banks, where the red flamingo fishes in the grey of the morning;
from fever-stricken mangrove thickets, and the gloom of impenetrable
forests; from hiding-places in the clefts of rocks, and the solitude of
invisible caves; from the eternal snows of the Andes, where there was no
witness but the all-seeing Sun, there went up to God a cry of human
despair. By millions upon millions, whole races and nations were
remorselessly cut off. The Bishop of Chiapa affirms that more than
fifteen millions were exterminated in his time! [Sidenote: The crime of
Spain.] From Mexico and Peru a civilization that might have instructed
Europe was crushed out. Is it for nothing that Spain has been made a
hideous skeleton among living nations, a warning spectacle to the world?
Had not her punishment overtaken her, men would have surely said, "There
is no retribution, there is no God!" It has been her evil destiny to
ruin two civilizations, Oriental and Occidental, and to be ruined
thereby herself. With circumstances of dreadful barbarity she expelled
the Moors, who had become children of her soil by as long a residence as
the Normans have had in England from William the Conqueror to our time.
In America she destroyed races more civilized than herself. Expulsion
and emigration have deprived her of her best blood, her great cities
have sunk into insignificance, and towns that once had more than a
million of inhabitants can now only show a few scanty thousands.

The discovery of America agitated Europe to its deepest foundations. All
classes of men were affected. The populace at once went wild with a lust
of gold and a love of adventure. Well might Pomponius Laetus, under
process for his philosophical opinions in Rome, shed tears of joy when
tidings of the great event reached him; well might Leo X., a few years
later, sit up till far in the night reading to his sister and his
cardinals the "Oceanica" of Anghiera.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Vasco de Gama. African c