Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/79

 guese under Alvarez Cabral had by mere accident made the coast of Brazil; Bastidas and De la Cosa had discovered the coast of Tierra Firmè; in his fourth voyage, Columbus had reached Porto Bello in Panama; Pinzon and De Solis discovered Yucatan, and in a second voyage extended their route southward beyond the Rio de la Plata; Ponce de Leon had discovered Florida; and Balboa in Darien had discovered the South Sea. These were grand steps in discovery towards those mighty kingdoms that were soon to burst upon them. Cordova discovered the mouth of the river Potonchan, beyond Campeachy; and finally, Grijalva ranged along the whole coast of Mexico from Tabasco to the river Panuco. Of their transactions on these coasts during their progress in discovery, nothing further need be said than that they were characterized by their usual indifference to the rights and feelings of the natives, and that, finding them for the most part of a more warlike disposition, several of these commanders had suffered severely from them, and some of them lost their lives.

But a strange and astounding epoch was now at hand. The names of Cortez and Pizarro, Mexico and Peru, are become sounds familiar to all ears—linked together as in a spell of wild wonder, and stand as the very embodiment of all that is marvellous, dazzling, and romantic in history. Here were vast empires, suddenly starting from the veil of ages into the presence of the European world, with the glitter of a golden opulence beyond the very extravagance of Arabian fable; populous as they were affluent; with a new and peculiar civilization; with arts and a literature unborrowed of other realms, and unlike