pioneering of America up to the end of the first decade of
the sixteenth century,--a series of gallant and dangerous voyages (of
which only the most notable ones of the great Spanish inrush have been
mentioned), resulting in a few ephemeral colonies, but important only as
a peep into the doors of the New World. The real hardships and dangers,
the real exploration and conquest of the Americas, began with the
decade from 1510 to 1520,--the beginning of a century of such
exploration and conquest as the world never saw before nor since. Spain
had it all to herself, save for the heroic but comparatively petty
achievements of Portugal in South America, between the Spanish points of
conquest. The sixteenth century in the New World was unparalleled in
military history; and it produced, or rather developed, such men as
tower far above the later conquerors in their achievement. Our part of
the hemisphere has never made such startling chapters of conquest as
were carved in the grimmer wildernesses to our south by Cortez, Pizarro,
Valdivia, and Quesada, the greatest subduers of wild America.

There were at least a hundred other early Spanish heroes, unknown to
public fame and buried in obscurity until real history shall give them
their well-earned praise. There is no reason to believe that these
unremembered heroes were more _capable_ of great things than our Israel
Putnams and Ethan Allens and Francis Marions and Daniel Boones; but they
_did_ much greater things under the spur of greater necessity and
opportunity. A hundred such, I say; but really the list is too long to
be even catalogued here; and to pay attention to their greater brethren
will fill this book. No other mother-nation ever bore a hundred Stanleys
and four Julius Caesars in one century; but that is part of what Spain
did for the New World. Pizarro, Cortez, Valdivia, and Quesada are
entitled to be called the Caesars of the New World; and no other
conquests in the history of America are at all comparable to theirs. As
among the four, it is almost difficult to say which was greatest; though
there is really but one answer possible to the historian. The choice
lies of course between Cortez and Pizarro, and for years was wrongly
made. Cortez was first in time, and his operations seem to us nearer
home. He was a highly educated man for his time, and, like Caesar, had
the advantage of being able to write his own biography; while his
distant cousin Pizarro could neither rea