Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/501

473 The intelligence of this event excited a sensation in Spain, inferior only to that caused by the discovery of America. The great object which had so long occupied the imagination of the nautical men of Europe, and formed the purpose of Columbus's last voyage, the discovery of a communication with these far western waters, was accomplished. The famous spice islands, from which the Portuguese had drawn such countless sums of wealth, were scattered over this sea ; and the Castilians, after a journey of a {^w leagues, might launch their barks on its quiet bosom, and reach, and perhaps claim, the coveted possessions of their rivals, as falling west of the papal line of demarkation. Such were the dreams, and such the actual progress of discovery, at the close of Ferdinand's reign.

Our admiration of the dauntless heroism displayed by the early Spanish navigators, in their extraordinary career, is much qualified by a consideration of the cruelties with which it was tarnished: too great to be either palliated or passed over in silence by the historian. As long as Isabella lived, the Indians found an efficient friend and protector; but "her death," says the venerable Las Casas, "was the signal for their destruction." Immediately on that event, the system of repartimientos, originally authorized, as we have seen, by Columbus, who seems to have had no doubt, from the first, of the