Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/78

58 wrong them, and to convey to them the rich gifts sent to them by the sovereigns.

The first greeting between the people of the Old and the New World, the white men and the red men, was exchanged by a company of one hundred and twenty rude and rebellious sailors, on the three small vessels of Columbus. The second company of adventurers embraced at least fifteen hundred, on seventeen vessels. Many of them were nobles and gentlemen; but these qualities do not imply the obligation of any higher restraint upon the passions of greed and cruelty, as the titles borne by Spanish grandees answered on the roll of honor only to a scale of degrees in rapacity, license, and immunity. The definition of the term “hidalgo” is said to be, “a son of somebody,” — not, however, in the general sense that every human being has had a paternity, but that that somebody had a name.

When the zeal and rapacity of Spanish hidalgos and great captains were stirred to a fever glow for further discovery and conquest of the Indies, the King Fernando and his daughter Juana, Queen of Castile and Leon, sought vainly to extend, by some show of responsibility, the semblance of humanity towards the wretched natives. The work of tyranny and devastation, which had begun at the islands, was now rapidly extended to the mainland, in the region where the northern and southern portions of the continent were united between the two great oceans. Vasco Nuñez, on a predatory excursion from the Isthmus of Darien, had in September, 1513, climbed alone a mountain height, from which, so far as we know, he the first of all Europeans looked out upon the so-called South Sea, — the vast expanse of the Pacific, which takes in more than half the surface of the globe. The sublime and awing spectacle moved him to prostrate devotion and prayer by himself. He then summoned his followers to the same ecstasy of amazement, and to lift with him the Te Deum.