selected, to the amount of a hundred thousand ducats", and Hernando Pizarro was appointed to be the bearer of them to Spain. He was to obtain an audience of Charles, and, at the same time that he laid the treasures before him, he was to give an account of the proceedings of the conquerors, and to seek a further augmentation of their powers and dignities. . . . . .

14. The business of melting down the plate was intrusted to the Indian goldsmiths, who were thus required to undo the work of their own hands. They toiled day and night; but such was the quantity to be recast, that it consumed a full month. When the whole was reduced to bars of a uniform standard, they were nicely weighed, under the superintendence of the royal inspectors. The total amount of the gold was found to be one million three hundred and twenty-six thousand five hundred and thirty-nine pesos* of gold, probably equivalent to about fifteen millions and a half of dollars at the present time. The quantity of silver was estimated at fifty-one thousand six hundred and ten marks.

15. History affords no parallel of such a booty-and that, too, in the most convertible form, in ready money, as it were— having fallen to the lot of a little band of military adventurers, like the conquerors of Peru. The great object of the Spanish expeditions in the New World was gold. It is remarkable that their success should have been so complete. Had they taken the track of the English, the French, or the Dutch, on the shores of the northern continent, how different would have been the result! It is equally worthy of remark, that the wealth thus suddenly acquired, by diverting them from the slow but surer and more permanent sources of national prosperity, has in the end glided from their grasp, and left them among the poorest of the nations of Christendom.

[The execution of Atahuallpa, the last of the Peruvian Incas, was the most atrocious of the cruel and wicked acts of the remorseless Pizarro. The Inca was at first condemned to be burned alive; but this was afterward commuted for the milder form of the garrote. The following anecdote has been related to account for Pizarro's malignant conduct toward the Inca, who, from first to last, had acted with singular generosity and good faith toward his Spanish captors.]

A peso was about $11.67 of our money.

Anecdote of Pizarro.-Prescott.

ONE day Atahuallpa, the Inca', requested one of the Spanish soldiers to write the name of God on his nail. This the monarch showed successively to several of his guards; and, as they read it, and each pronounced the same word, the sagacious mind of the barbarian was delighted with what seemed to him little short of a miracle',-to which the science of his own nation afforded no analogy. On showing the writing to Pizarro, that chief remained silent; and the Inca, finding he could not read, conceived a contempt for the commander who was even less informed than his soldiers. This he did not wholly conceal, and Pizarro, aware of the cause of it, neither forgot nor forgave it.

The Spanish Conquests in America.

[From a poem entitled the "West Indies," by James Montgomery.]
THE winds were prosperous, and the billows bore
The brave adventurer to the promised shore;
Far in the West, arrayed in purple light,
Dawned the new world on his enraptured sight:
Not Adam, loosened from the encumbering earth,
Waked by the breath of God to instant birth,
With sweeter, wilder wonder gazed around,
When life within and light without he found;
When, all creation rushing o'er his soul,

He seemed to live and breathe throughout the whole.

So felt Columbus, when, divinely fair,

At the last look of resolute despair,

The Hesperian isles, from distance dimly blue,

With gradual beauty opened on his view.

In that proud moment, his transported mind
The morning and the evening worlds combined,
And made the sea, that sundered them before,
A bond of peace, uniting shore to shore.

Vain, visionary hope! rapacious Spain
Followed her hero's triumph o'er the main,

Her hardy sons in fields of battle tried,

Where Moor and Christian desperately died.
A rabid race, fanatically bold,

And steeled to cruelty by lust of gold,

Traversed the waves, the unknown world explored,
The cross their standard, but their faith the sword;
Their steps were graves; o'er prostrate realms they trod;
They worshipped Mammon, while they vowed to God.

Let nobler bards in loftier numbers tell
How Cortez conquered, Montezuma fell;
How fierce Pizarro's ruffian arm o'erthrew
The sun's resplendent empire in Peru;
How, like a prophet, old Las Casas stood,
And raised his voice against a sea of blood,

Whose chilling waves recoiled while he foretold
His country's ruin by avenging gold.

That gold, for which unpitied Indians fell,

That gold, at once the snare and scourge of hell,
Thenceforth by righteous heaven was doomed to shed
Unmingled curses on the spoiler's head;

For gold the Spaniard cast his soul away,
His gold and he were every nation's prey.

The Discovery of the Mississippi River.—Bancroft.

[Introductory Remarks,-Twenty years after Columbus's first discovery, Ponce de Laon (pon'tha da la-on'), an aged Spaniard, accidentally discovered Florida, which received its name from the abundance of flowers with which its forests were adorned. The belief soon afterward became quite general among the Spaniards that this region abounded in riches; and, accordingly, De Soto (da so'to), who had acquired wealth and distinction as an associate of Pizarro, fitted out an expedition to explore and conquer the country. In 1539, he landed on its shores, and penetrated into the interior; and during his wanderings, which lasted nearly three years, he discovered the Mississippi River (1541). In the following extract from Bancroft's " History of the United States," an account is given of this event and of the death of the great explorer.]

1. ALL the disasters which had been encountered, far from diminishing the boldness of De Soto, served only to confirm his obstinacy by wounding his pride. Should he, who had promised greater booty than Mexico or Peru had yielded, now return as a defeated fugitive, so naked that his troops were clad only in skins and mats of ivy? The search for some

wealthy region was renewed; the caravan' marched still further to the west.

2. For seven days it struggled through a wilderness of forests and marshes, and at length came to Indian settlements in the vicinity of the Mississippi. The lapse of nearly three centuries has not changed the character of the stream. It was then described as more than a mile broad, flowing with a strong current, and, by the weight of its waters, forcing a channel of great depth. The water was always muddy; trees and timber were continually floating down the stream.

3. The Spaniards were guided to the Mississippi by the natives; and were directed to one of the usual crossing places, prob ably at the lowest, Chickasa (chick'a-saw) Bluff, not far from the thirty-fifth parallel of latitude. The arrival of the strangers awakened curiosity and fear. A multitude of people from the western banks of the river, painted and gayly decorated with great plumes of white feathers, the warriors standing in rows with bow and arrows in their hands, the chieftains sitting under awnings as magnificent as the artless manufactures of the natives could weave, came rowing down the stream in a fleet of two hundred canoes, seeming to the admiring Spaniards "like a fair army of galleys."

4. They brought gifts of fish and loaves made of the fruit of the persimmon. At first they showed some desire to offer resistance; but, soon becoming conscious of their relative weakness, they ceased to defy an enemy who could not be overcome, and suffered injury without attempting open retaliation. The boats of the natives were too weak to transport horses; almost a month expired before barges large enough to hold three horsemen each were constructed for crossing the river. At length the Spaniards embarked upon the Mississippi, and were borne to its western bank.

5. The Dahcota tribes, doubtless, then occupied the country southwest of the Missouri; Soto had heard its praises; he believed in its vicinity to mineral wealth; and he determined to visit its towns. In ascending the Mississippi, the party was often obliged to wade through morasses; at length they came,

as it would seem, upon the district of Little Prairie, and the dry and elevated lands which extend toward New Madrid.

6. Here the religions of the invaders and the natives came in contrast. The Spaniards were adored as children of the sun, and the blind were brought into their presence, to be healed by the sons of light. "Pray only to God, who is in heaven, for whatsoever ye need," said Soto in reply; and the sublime doctrine which, thousands of years before, had been proclaimed in the deserts of Arabia, now first found its way into the prairies of the Far West.

7. The wild fruits of that region were abundant; the pecan nut, the mulberry, and the two kinds of wild plums, furnished the natives with articles of food. At Pacaha (pa-caw'haw), the northernmost point which Soto reached near the Mississippi, he remained forty days. The spot cannot be identified; but the accounts of the amusements of the Spaniards confirm the truth of the narrative of their ramblings. Fish were taken, such as are now found in the fresh waters of that region; one of them, the spade fish,-the strangest and most whimsical production of the muddy streams of the west, so rare, that, even now, it is hardly to be found in any museum,-is accurately described by the best historian of the expedition.

8. An exploring party which was sent to examine the regions of the north, reported that they were almost a desert. The country still nearer the Missouri was said by the Indians to be thinly inhabited; the bison abounded there so much, that no maize could be cultivated; and the few inhabitants were hunters. Soto turned, therefore, to the west and northwest, and plunged still more deeply into the interior of the continent. The highlands of White River, more than two hundred miles from the Mississippi, were probably the limit of his ramble in this direction.

9. The mountains offered neither gems nor gold; and the disappointed adventurers marched to the south. They passed through a succession of towns, of which the position cannot be fixed; till, at length, we find them among the Tunicas, near the hot springs and saline tributaries of the Washita (wash-i