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The body of the world-finder was buried in Valladolid, Spain, but was several times transferred to new resting-places. It is claimed that his dust now lies, with that of his son Diego, in a chapel of the cathedral of Havana; but this is doubtful. We are not at all sure that the precious relics were not retained and interred on the island of Santo Domingo, whither they certainly were brought from Spain. At all events, they are in the New World,--at peace at last in the lap of the America he gave us.

Columbus was neither a perfect man nor a scoundrel,--though as each he has been alternately pictured. He was a remarkable man, and for his day and calling a good one. He had with the faith of genius a marvellous energy and tenacity, and through a great stubbornness carried out an idea which seems to us very natural, but to the world then seemed ridiculous. As long as he remained in the profession to which he had been reared, and in which he was probably unequalled at the time, he made a wonderful record. But when, after half a century as a sailor, he suddenly turned viceroy, he became the proverbial "sailor on land,"--absolutely "lost." In his new duties he was unpractical, headstrong, and even injurious to the colonization of the New World. It has been a fashion to accuse the Spanish Crown of base ingratitude toward Columbus; but this is unjust. The fault was with his own acts, which made harsh measures by the Crown necessary and right. He was not a good manager, nor had he the high moral principle without which no ruler can earn honor. His failures were not from rascality but from some weaknesses, and from a general unfitness for the new duties to which he was too old to adapt himself.

We have many pictures of Columbus, but probably none that look like him. There was no photography in his day, and we cannot learn that his portrait was ever drawn from life. The pictures that have come down to us were made, with one exception, after his death, and all from memory or from descriptions of him. He is represented to have been tall and imposing, with a rather stern face, gray eyes, aquiline nose, ruddy but freckled cheeks, and gray hair, and he liked to wear the gray habit of a Franciscan missionary. Several of his original letters remain to us, with his remarkable autograph, and a sketch that is attributed to him.

FOOTNOTES:

As he himself complains: "The very tailors turned explorers."

MAKING GEOGRAPHY.

England did not treat her one early explorer well; and in 1512 Cabot entered the more grateful service of Spain. In 1517 he sailed to the Spanish possessions in the West Indies, on which voyage he was accompanied by an Englishman named Thomas Pert. In August, 1526, Cabot sailed with another Spanish expedition bound for the Pacific, which had already been discovered by a heroic Spaniard; but his officers mutinied, and he was obliged to abandon his purpose. He explored the Rio de la Plata for a thousand miles, built a fort at one of the mouths of the Para?a, and explored part of that river and of the Paraguay,--for South America had been for nearly a generation a Spanish possession. Thence he returned to Spain, and later to England, where he died about 1557.

Of the rude maps which Cabot made of the New World, all are lost save one which is preserved in France; and there are no documents left of him. Cabot was a genuine explorer, and must be included in the list of the pioneers of America, but as one whose work was fruitless of consequences, and who saw, but did not take a hand in, the New World. He was a man of high courage and stubborn perseverance, and will be remembered as the discoverer of Newfoundland and the extreme northern mainland.

After Cabot, England took a nap of more than half a century. When she woke again, it was to find that Spain's sleepless sons had scattered over half the New World; and that even France and Portugal had left her far behind. Cabot, who was not an Englishman, was the first English explorer; and the next were Drake and Hawkins, and then Captains Amadas and Barlow, after a lapse of seventy-five and eighty-seven years, respectively,--during which a large part of the two continents had been discovered, explored, and settled by other nations, of which Spain was undeniably in the lead. Columbus, the first Spanish explorer, was not a Spaniard; but with his first discovery began such an impetuous and unceasing rush of Spanish-born explorers as achieved more in a hundred years than all the other nations of Europe put together achieved here in America's first three hundred. Cabot saw and did nothing; and three quarters of a century later Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake--whom old histories laud greatly, but who got rich by selling poor Africans into slavery, and by actual piracy against unprotected ships and towns of the colonies of Spain, with which their mother England was then at peace--saw the West Indies and the Pacific, more than half a century after these had become possessions of Spain. Drake was the first Englishman to go through the Straits of Magellan,--and he did it sixty years after that heroic Portuguese had found them and christened them with his life-blood. Drake was probably first to see what is now Oregon,--his only important discovery. He "took possession" of Oregon for England, under the name of "New Albion;" but old Albion never had a settlement there.

Sir John Hawkins, Drake's kinsman, was, like him, a distinguished sailor, but not a real discoverer or explorer at all. Neither of them explored or colonized the New World; and neither left much more impress on its history than if he had never been born. Drake brought the first potatoes to England; but the importance even of that discovery was not dreamed of till long after, and by other men.

But when we turn to Spain, what a record is that of the hundred years after Columbus and before Plymouth Rock! In 1499 Vincente Ya?ez de Pinzon, a companion of Columbus, discovered the coast of Brazil, and claimed the new country for Spain, but made no settlement. His discoveries were at the mouths of the Amazon and the Orinoco; and he was the first European to see the greatest river in the world. In the following year Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese, was driven to the coast of Brazil by a storm, "took possession" for Portugal, and founded a colony there.

As to Amerigo Vespucci, the inconsiderable adventurer whose name so overshadows his exploits, his American claims are extremely dubious. Vespucci was born in Florence in 1451, and was an educated man,--his father being a notary and his uncle a Dominican who gave him a good schooling. He became a clerk in the great house of the Medicis, and in their service was sent to Spain about 1490. There he presently got into the employ of the merchant who fitted out Columbus's second expedition,--a Florentine named Juanoto Berardi. When Berardi died, in 1495, he left an unfinished contract to fit out twelve ships for the Crown; and Vespucci was intrusted with the completion of the contract. There is no reason whatever to believe that he accompanied Columbus either on the first or the second voyage. According to his own story, he sailed from Cadiz May 10, 1497 , and reached the mainland eighteen days before Cabot saw it. The statement of encyclopaedias that Vespucci "probably got as far north as Cape Hatteras" is ridiculous. The proof is absolute that he never saw an inch of the New World north of the equator. Returning to Spain in the latter part of 1498, he sailed again, May 16, 1499, with Ojeda, to San Domingo, a voyage on which he was absent about eighteen months. He left Lisbon on his third voyage, May 10, 1501, going to Brazil. It is not true, despite the encyclopaedias, that he discovered and named the Bay of Rio Janeiro; both those honors belong to Cabral, the real discoverer and pioneer of Brazil, and a man of vastly greater historical importance than Vespucci. Vespucci's fourth voyage took him from Lisbon to Bahia, and thence to Cape Frio, where he built a little fort. In 1504 he returned to Portugal, and in the following year to Spain, where he died in 1512.

These voyages rest only on Vespucci's own statements, which are not to be implicitly believed. It is probable that he did not sail at all in 1497, and quite certain that he had no share whatever in the real discoveries in the New World.

The name "America" was first invented and applied in 1507 by an ill-informed German printer, named Waldzeem?ller, who had got hold of Amerigo Vespucci's documents. History is full of injustices, but never a greater among them all than the christening of America. It would have been as appropriate to call it Walzeem?llera. The first map of America was made in 1500 by Juan de la Cosa, a Spaniard,--and a very funny map it would seem to the schoolboy of to-day. The first geography of America was by Enciso, a Spaniard, in 1517.

It is pleasant to turn from an overrated and very dubious man to those genuine but almost unheard-of Portuguese heroes, the brothers Gaspard and Miguel Corte-Real. Gaspard sailed from Lisbon in the year 1500, and discovered and named Labrador,--"the laborer." In 1501 he sailed again from Portugal to the Arctic, and never returned. After waiting a year, his brother Miguel led an expedition to find and rescue him; but he too perished, with all his men, among the ice-floes of the Arctic. A third brother wished to go in quest of the lost explorers, but was forbidden by the king, who himself sent out a relief expedition of two ships; but no trace of the gallant Corte-Reals, nor of any of their men, was ever found.

Such was the pioneering of America up to the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century,--a series of gallant and dangerous voyages , 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.

But while Pizarro was greatest, all four were worthy the rank they have been assigned as the Caesars of America.

Before we come to the great conquerors, however, we must outline the eventful career and tragic end of the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, Vasco Nu?ez de Balboa. In one of the noblest poems in the English language we read,--

"Like stout Cortes, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise, Silent upon a peak in Darien."

But Keats was mistaken. It was not Cortez who first saw the Pacific, but Balboa,--five years before Cortez came to the mainland of America at all.

Balboa was born in the province of Estremadura, Spain, in 1475. In 1501 he sailed with Bastidas for the New World, and then saw Darien, but settled on the island of Espa?ola. Nine years later he sailed to Darien with Enciso, and there remained. Life in the New World then was a troublous affair, and the first years of Balboa's life there were eventful enough, though we must pass them over. Quarrels presently arose in the colony of Darien. Enciso was deposed and shipped back to Spain a prisoner, and Balboa took command. Enciso, upon his arrival in Spain, laid all the blame upon Balboa, and got him condemned by the king for high treason. Learning of this, Balboa determined upon a master-stroke whose brilliancy should restore him to the royal favor. From the natives he had heard of the other ocean and of Peru,--neither yet seen by European eyes,--and made up his mind to find them. In September, 1513, he sailed to Coyba with one hundred and ninety men, and from that point, with only ninety followers, tramped across the Isthmus to the Pacific,--for its length one of the most frightful journeys imaginable. It was on the 26th of September, 1513, that from the summit of the divide the tattered, bleeding heroes looked down upon the blue infinity of the South Sea,--for it was not called the Pacific until long after. They descended to the coast; and Balboa, wading out knee-deep into the new ocean, holding aloft in his right hand his slender sword, and in his left the proud flag of Spain, took solemn possession of the South Sea in the name of the King of Spain.

The explorers got back to Darien Jan. 18, 1514, and Balboa sent to Spain an account of his great discovery. But Pedro Arias de Avila had already sailed from the mother country to supplant him. At last, however, Balboa's brilliant news reached the king, who forgave him, and made him adelantado; and soon after he married the daughter of Pedro Arias. Still full of great plans, Balboa carried the necessary material across the Isthmus with infinite toil, and on the shores of the blue Pacific put together the first ships in the Americas,--two brigantines. With these he took possession of the Pearl Islands, and then started out to find Peru, but was driven back by storms to an ignoble fate. His father-in-law, becoming jealous of Balboa's brilliant prospects, enticed him back to Darien by a treacherous message, seized him, and had him publicly executed, on the trumped-up charge of high treason, in 1517. Balboa had in him the making of an explorer of the first rank, and but for De Avila's shameless deed might probably have won even higher honors. His courage was sheer audacity, and his energy tireless; but he was unwisely careless in his attitude toward the Crown.

While the discoverer of the greatest ocean was still striving to probe its farther mysteries, a handsome, athletic, brilliant young Spaniard, who was destined to make much more noise in history, was just beginning to be heard of on the threshold of America, of whose central kingdoms he was soon to be conqueror.

Hernando Cortez came of a noble but impoverished Spanish family, and was born in Estremadura ten years later than Balboa. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the University of Salamanca to study for the law; but the adventurous spirit of the man was already strong in the slender lad, and in a couple of years he left college, and went home determined upon a life of roving. The air was full of Columbus and his New World; and what spirited youth could stay to pore in musty law-books then? Not the irrepressible Hernando, surely.

The landing of the Spaniards caused as great a sensation as would the arrival in New York to-day of an army from Mars. The awe-struck natives had never before seen a horse , and decided that these strange, pale new-comers who sat on four-legged beasts, and had shirts of iron and sticks that made thunder, must indeed be gods.

Having founded Vera Cruz, Cortez caused himself to be elected governor and captain-general of the new country; and having burned his ships, like the famous Greek commander, that there might be no retreat, he began his march into the grim wilderness before him.

It was now that Cortez began to show particularly that military genius which lifted him so far above all other pioneers of America except Pizarro. With only a handful of men,--for he had left part of his forces at Vera Cruz, under his lieutenant Escalante,--in an unknown land swarming with powerful and savage foes, mere courage and brute force would have stood him in little stead. But with a diplomacy as rare as it was brilliant, he found the weak spots in the Indian organization, widened the jealous breaches between tribes, made allies of those who were secretly or openly opposed to Moctezuma's federation of tribes,--a league which somewhat resembled the Six Nations of our own history,--and thus vastly reduced the forces to be directly conquered. Having routed the tribes of Tlacala and Cholula, Cortez came at last to the strange lake-city of Mexico, with his little Spanish troop swelled by six thousand Indian allies. Moctezuma received him with great ceremony, but undoubtedly with treacherous intent. While he was entertaining his visitors in one of the huge adobe houses,--not a "palace," as the histories tell us, for there were no palaces whatever in Mexico,--one of the sub-chiefs of his league attacked Escalante's little garrison at Vera Cruz and killed several Spaniards, including Escalante himself. The head of the Spanish lieutenant was sent to the City of Mexico,--for the Indians south of what is now the United States took not merely the scalp but the whole head of an enemy. This was a direful disaster, not so much for the loss of the few men as because it proved to the Indians that the Spaniards were not immortal gods after all, but could be killed the same as other men.

As soon as Cortez heard the ill news he saw this danger at once, and made a bold stroke to save himself. He had already strongly fortified the adobe building in which the Spaniards were quartered; and now, going by night with his officers to the house of the head war-captain, he seized Moctezuma and threatened to kill him unless he at once gave up the Indians who had attacked Vera Cruz. Moctezuma delivered them up, and Cortez at once had them burned in public. This was a cruel thing, though it was undoubtedly necessary to make some vivid impression on the savages or be at once annihilated by them. There is no apology for this barbarity, yet it is only just that we measure Cortez by the standard of his time,--and it was a very cruel world everywhere then.

It is amusing here to read in pretentious text-books that "Cortez now ironed Montezuma and made him pay a ransom of six hundred thousand marks of pure gold and an immense quantity of precious stones." That is on a par with the impossible fables which lured so many of the early Spaniards to disappointment and death, and is a fair sample of the gilded glamour with which equally credulous historians still surround early America. Moctezuma did not buy himself free,--he never was free again,--and he paid no ransom of gold; while as for precious stones, he may have had a few native garnets and worthless green turquoises, and perhaps even an emerald pebble, but nothing more.

Just at this crisis in the affairs of Cortez he was threatened from another quarter. News came that Pamfilo de Narvaez, of whom we shall see more presently, had landed with eight hundred men to arrest Cortez and carry him back prisoner for his disobedience of Velasquez. But here again the genius of the conqueror of Mexico saved him. Marching against Narvaez with one hundred and forty men, he arrested Narvaez, enlisted under his own banner the welcome eight hundred who had come to arrest him, and hastened back to the City of Mexico.

When Cortez came back with his eight hundred strangely-acquired recruits, he found the whole city with its mask thrown off, and his men penned up in their barracks. The savages quietly let Cortez enter the trap, and then closed it so that there was no more getting out. There were the few hundred Spaniards cooped up in their prison, and the four dykes which were the only approaches to it--for the City of Mexico was an American Venice--swarming with savage foes by the countless thousands.

The Indian makes very few excuses for failure; and the Nahuatl had already elected a new head war-captain named Cuitlahu?tzin in place of the unsuccessful Moctezuma. The latter was still a prisoner; and when the Spaniards brought him out upon the housetop to speak to his people in their behalf, the infuriated multitude of Indians pelted him to death with stones. Then, under their new war-captain, they attacked the Spaniards so furiously that neither the strong walls nor the clumsy falconets, and clumsier flintlocks, could withstand them; and there was nothing for the Spaniards but to cut their way out along one of the dykes in a last desperate struggle for life. The beginning of that six days' retreat was one of the bitterest pages in American history. Then was the Noche Triste , still celebrated in Spanish song and story. For that dark night many a proud home in mother Spain was never bright again, and many a fond heart broke with the crimson bubbles on the Lake of Tezcuco. In those few ghastly hours two thirds of the conquerors were slain; and across more than eight hundred Spanish corpses the frenzied savages pursued the bleeding survivors.

After a fearful retreat of six days, came the important running fight in the plains of Otumba, where the Spaniards were entirely surrounded, but cut their way out after a desperate hand-to-hand struggle which really decided the fate of Mexico. Cortez marched to Tlacala, raised an army of Indians who were hostile to the federation, and with their help laid siege to the City of Mexico. This siege lasted seventy-three days, and was the most remarkable in the history of all America. There was hard fighting every day. The Indians made a superb defence; but at last the genius of Cortez triumphed, and on the 13th of August, 1521, he marched victorious into the second greatest aboriginal city in the New World.

Safely established in this high authority, Cortez crushed a plot against him, and executed the new war-captain, with many of the caciques .

No, Cortez was not cruel to the Indians; but as soon as his rule was established he became a cruel tyrant to his own countrymen, a traitor to his friends and even to his king,--and, worst of all, a cool assassin. There is strong evidence that he had "removed" several persons who were in the way of his unholy ambitions; and the crowning infamy was in the fate of his own wife. Cortez had long for a mistress the handsome Indian girl Malinche; but after he had conquered Mexico, his lawful wife came to the country to share his fortunes. He did not love her, however, as much as he did his ambition; and she was in his way. At last she was found in her bed one morning, strangled to death.

Carried away by his ambition, he actually plotted open rebellion against Spain and to make himself emperor of Mexico. The Crown got wind of this precious plan, and sent out emissaries who seized his goods, imprisoned his men, and prepared to thwart his secret schemes. Cortez boldly hastened to Spain, where he met his sovereign with great splendor. Charles received him well, and decorated him with the illustrious Order of Santiago, the patron saint of Spain. But his star was already declining; and though he was allowed to return to Mexico with undiminished outward power, he was thenceforth watched, and did nothing more that was comparable with his wonderful earlier achievements. He had become too unscrupulous, too vindictive, and too unsafe to be left in authority; and after a few years the Crown was forced to appoint a viceroy to wield the civil power of Mexico, leaving to Cortez only the military command, and permission for further conquests. In 1536 Cortez discovered Lower California, and explored part of its gulf. At last, disgusted with his inferior position where he had once been supreme, he returned to Spain, where the emperor received him coldly. In 1541 he accompanied his sovereign to Algiers as an attach?, and in the wars there acquitted himself well. Soon after their return to Spain, however, he found himself neglected. It is said that one day when Charles was riding in state, Cortez forced his way to the royal carriage and mounted upon the step determined to force recognition.

"Who are you?" demanded the angry emperor.

Whether the story is true or not, it graphically illustrates the arrogance as well as the services of Cortez. He lacked the modest balance of the greatest greatness, just as Columbus had lacked it. The self-assertion of either would have been impossible to the greater man than either,--the self-possessed Pizarro.

At last, in disgust, Cortez retired from court; and on the 2d of December, 1554, the man who had first opened the interior of America to the world died near Seville.

There were some in South America whose achievements were as wondrous as those of Cortez in Mexico. The conquest of the two continents was practically contemporaneous, and equally marked by the highest military genius, the most dauntless courage, the overcoming of dangers which were appalling, and hardships which were wellnigh superhuman.

Francisco Pizarro, the unlettered but invincible conqueror of Peru, was fifteen years older than his brilliant cousin Cortez, and was born in the same province of Spain. He began to be heard of in America in 1510. From 1524 to 1532 he was making superhuman efforts to get to the unknown and golden land of Peru, overcoming such obstacles as not even Columbus had encountered, and enduring greater dangers and hardships than Napoleon or Caesar ever met. From 1532 to his death in 1541, he was busy in conquering and exploring that enormous area, and founding a new nation amid its fierce tribes,--fighting off not only the vast hordes of Indians, but also the desperate men of his own forces, by whose treachery he at last perished. Pizarro found and tamed the richest country in the New World; and with all his unparalleled sufferings still realized, more than any other of the conquerors, the golden dreams which all pursued. Probably no other conquest in the world's history yielded such rapid and bewildering wealth, as certainly none was bought more dearly in hardship and heroism. Pizarro's conquest has been most unjustly dealt with by some historians ignorant of the real facts in the case, and blinded by prejudice; but that marvellous story, told in detail farther on, is coming to its proper rank as one of the most stupendous and gallant feats in all history. It is the story of a hero to whom every true American, young or old, will be glad to do justice. Pizarro has been long misrepresented as a blood-stained and cruel conqueror, a selfish, unprincipled, unreliable man; but in the clear, true light of real history he stands forth now as one of the greatest of self-made men, and one who, considering his chances, deserves the utmost respect and admiration for the man he made of himself. The conquest of Peru did not by far cause as much bloodshed as the final reduction of the Indian tribes of Virginia. It counted scarcely as many Indian victims as King Philip's War, and was much less bloody, because more straightforward and honorable, than any of the British conquests in East India. The most bloody events in Peru came after the conquest was over, when the Spaniards fell to fighting one another; and in this Pizarro was not the aggressor but the victim. It was the treachery of his own allies,--the men whose fames and fortunes he had made. His conquest covered a land as big as California, Oregon, and most of Washingtonie im letzten Akte auf der B?hne erscheinen. Die Spieler waren in der Stellung dargestellt, wo sie mit den Queues gerade zum Stosse ausholen, mit ein wenig zur?ckgezogenen Armen und gekr?mmten Beinen, als ob sie soeben einen Luftsprung gemacht h?tten. Unter diesem Bilde befand sich die Inschrift: >>Hier ist eine Schenke!<< Hie und da standen unter freiem Himmel auf der Strasse Tische mit N?ssen, Seife, und Honigkuchen, die gleichfalls wie Seife aussahen. Etwas weiter befand sich eine Gark?che, auf deren Aush?ngeschild ein m?chtiger Fisch abgebildet war, in dem eine Gabel steckte. Am h?ufigsten aber begegnete man den zweik?pfigen schwarzen Staatsadlern, welche heute bereits durch die lakonische Inschrift: >>Ausschank<< ersetzt sind. Das Pflaster war ?berall ziemlich schlecht. Der Herr warf auch einen Blick in den st?dtischen Garten, der aus ein paar d?nnen B?umchen bestand, welche offenbar sehr schlecht fortkamen und unten von Pf?hlen gest?tzt wurden, die ein Dreieck bildeten und mit gr?ner ?lfarbe angestrichen waren. ?brigens hiess es von ihnen in den Zeitungen, obwohl sie kaum Schilfh?he erreichten, bei Beschreibung einer Illumination: >>Dank der F?rsorge unseres Zivilgouverneurs ward unsere Stadt durch einen Garten voller breitkroniger, schattenreicher B?ume versch?nt, die an heissen Sommertagen angenehme K?hle spenden.<< Weiterhin hiess es: >>Es sei r?hrend anzusehen, wie die Herzen der B?rger in ?berquellender Dankbarkeit erzitterten und Tr?nenstr?me in warmer Anerkennung der Verdienste unseres verehrten Stadtoberhauptes verg?ssen.<< Der Herr erkundigte sich bei einem Polizisten ausf?hrlich nach dem k?rzesten Wege zur Domkirche, zu den Amtsgeb?uden, zum Gouverneur und begab sich schliesslich zum Fluss hinab, der mitten durch die Stadt floss. -- Unterwegs riss er einen Reklamezettel ab, der an einer Plakats?ule klebte, um ihn zu Hause in Ruhe durchzulesen. Dann betrachtete er aufmerksam eine Dame von recht angenehmem ?usseren, die auf den Holzbrettern des B?rgersteiges an ihm vor?berging, begleitet von einem Knaben in milit?rischem Aufputz, der ein B?ndel in der Hand trug. Und nachdem er noch manchmal einen Blick auf das Ganze geworfen hatte, wie um sich die ?rtlichkeit gr?ndlich einzupr?gen, ging er nach Hause und stieg geradewegs die Treppe zu seinem Zimmer empor, gefolgt vom Kellner, der ihn hierbei leicht unterst?tzte. Nachdem er seinen Tee getrunken hatte, setzte er sich an seinen Tisch, liess sich eine Kerze bringen, nahm das Plakat aus der Tasche und begann zu lesen, wobei er sein rechtes Auge ein wenig zukniff. ?brigens stand nicht viel Bemerkenswertes auf dem Zettel. Man gab ein Drama von Kotzebue, in dem ein Herr Popljowin den Rolla und ein Fr?ulein Sjablowa die Kora spielten. Die ?brigen Personen waren noch unbedeutender. Trotzdem las er s?mtliche Namen durch, bis auf die Preise der Parterrepl?tze und erfuhr, dass der Zettel in der st?dtischen Buchdruckerei hergestellt worden war; dann drehte er ihn um, um sich zu ?berzeugen, ob nicht noch etwas auf der R?ckseite stehe. Aber da er nichts fand, rieb er sich die Augen, faltete ihn sorgsam zusammen und legte ihn in das K?stchen, in dem er alles aufzubewahren pflegte, was ihm unter die Finger kam. Ich glaube der Tag wurde mit einer Portion kalten Kalbsbratens, einer Flasche Kislischtschi und einem festen Schlaf beschlossen, den ein Schnarchen begleitete, ?hnlich dem Geknarr eines Pumpenkrahns, wie man sich in einigen Gegenden unseres ger?umigen russischen Vaterlandes auszudr?cken pflegt. --

Der ganze folgende Tag war Besuchen gewidmet. Der Reisende stellte sich allen Honoratioren der Stadt vor. Er machte dem Gouverneur einen Achtungsbesuch, der, wie sich's herausstellte, ebenso wie Tschitschikow weder dick noch d?nn war, den Annenorden im Knopfloch trug und, wie man sich erz?hlte, selbst Pr?tendent des Sternes war; im ?brigen war er ein gutm?tiger alter Herr, der sich sogar bisweilen in T?llstickereien versuchte. Sodann begab er sich zum Vizegouverneur, zum Staatsanwalt, zum Gerichtspr?sidenten, zum Polizeimeister, zum Branntweinp?chter und Direktor der staatlichen Fabriken ... leider ist es nicht ganz leicht, all die Gewaltigen dieser Welt aufzuz?hlen; genug, unser Reisender entwickelte eine lebhafte Gesch?ftigkeit im Besuchemachen: er ging sogar zum Inspektor der Sanit?tsverwaltung und zum Stadtbaumeister, um ihnen seine Aufwartung zu machen. Und lange noch sass er in seinem Wagen, bei sich erw?gend, wem er wohl noch einen Besuch machen k?nne, aber leider fand sich in der Stadt kein Beamter mehr, den er nicht schon begl?ckt h?tte. Im Gespr?ch mit den Machthabern verstand er es vorz?glich, einem jeden von ihnen eine Schmeichelei zu sagen. Zum Gouverneur sagte er wie beil?ufig, wenn man in seine Provinz komme, glaube man sich im Paradiese, die Wege seien herrlich, es sei einem, als f?hre man ?ber Samt; und er f?gte hinzu, die Regierung, welche es verst?nde, weise M?nner auf verantwortungsvolle Stellen zu setzen, verdiente das h?chste Lob und die gr?sste Anerkennung. Dem Polizeimeister sagte er etwas h?chst Schmeichelhaftes ?ber die st?dtischen Polizisten und den Vizegouverneur und den Gerichtspr?sidenten, die erst Staatsr?te waren, nannte er im Gespr?che zweimal wie im Versehen >>Exzellenz<<, was ihnen sichtlich Freude bereitete. Der Erfolg von alledem war, dass der Gouverneur ihn noch am selben Tage zu einer kleinen Abendgesellschaft in seinem Hause einlud; auch von den ?brigen Beamten erhielt er Einladungen, vom einen zum Diner, vom andern zu einer Partie Boston oder einer Tasse Tee.

?ber sich selbst viel zu reden, vermied der Reisende offenbar. Und wenn er etwas sagte, so waren es meist Gemeinpl?tze. Er dr?ckte sich mit einer auffallenden Bescheidenheit aus, und sein Gespr?ch bewegte sich in diesen F?llen in Redewendungen aus der B?chersprache, wie etwa folgende: er sei ja nur ein unbedeutender Wurm auf dieser Welt, nicht wert, dass man sich viel um ihn k?mmere. Er habe in seinem Leben schon viel erfahren und durchgemacht, f?r die Wahrheit gelitten und sich viele Feinde erworben, die ihm sogar nach dem Leben trachteten. Jetzt sehne er sich nach Ruhe, und daher suche er sich endlich ein Pl?tzchen, wo er ungest?rt leben k?nne. Er habe es bei seiner Ankunft in dieser Stadt f?r seine erste Pflicht gehalten, die hervorragenden Repr?sentanten des Beamtenstandes aufzusuchen und ihnen seine Hochachtung auszusprechen. Das war alles, was man in der Stadt ?ber den Fremden in Erfahrung bringen konnte, der nicht z?gerte, bei der Soiree des Gouverneurs zu erscheinen. Die Vorbereitungen zu dieser Abendgesellschaft nahmen gute zwei Stunden in Anspruch, und hierbei legte der Reisende eine solche peinliche Aufmerksamkeit f?r seine Toilette an den Tag, wie man ihr nur selten begegnet. Nach einem kurzen Nachmittagsschl?fchen liess er sich ein Waschbecken reichen und rieb sich hierauf lange Zeit beide Wangen mit Seife, wobei er die Zunge von innen gegen die Backe dr?ckte. Dann nahm er dem Hausdiener das Handtuch von der Schulter, trocknete sein rundliches Gesicht ?berall sorgf?ltig ab, indem er bei den Ohren anfing und dem Diener zuvor zweimal gerade ins Gesicht prustete. Dann trat er vor den Spiegel, um sich das Vorhemd anzulegen, riss sich zwei aus der Nase hervorragende H?rchen aus und stand gleich darauf in einem preisselbeerfarbenen roten gesprenkelten Fracke da. Nachdem er so seine Toilette vollendet hatte, bestieg er seine eigene Equipage und fuhr durch die ungemein breiten Strassen, welche von dem sp?rlichen Lichte beleuchtet wurden, das aus einigen Fenstern fiel. Das Haus des Gouverneurs war indessen so gl?nzend erleuchtet wie bei einem Ball; vor dem Hause standen Wagen mit hellen Laternen, sowie zwei Gendarmen. Aus der Ferne klangen die Rufe der Vorreiter her?ber; mit einem Wort, es war alles so, wie es sich geh?rte. Als Tschitschikow den Saal betrat, musste er die Augen f?r einen Moment schliessen, weil der blendende Glanz der Lichter, der Lampen und Damentoiletten geradezu ?berw?ltigend war. Alles war wie mit Licht ?bergossen. Schwarze Fr?cke schwirrten einzelssession,--which the United States bought from France over a century later yet.

So when Verazzano--the Florentine sent out by France--reached America in 1524, coasted the Atlantic seaboard from somewhere about South Carolina to Newfoundland, and gave the world a short description of what he saw, Spain had circumnavigated the globe, reached the southern tip of the New World, conquered a vast territory, and discovered at least half-a-dozen of our present States, since the last visit of a Frenchman to America. As for England, she was almost as unheard of still on this side of the earth as though she had never existed.

Between De Leon and De Soto, Florida was visited in 1518 by Francisco de Garay, the conqueror of Tampico. He came to subdue the Flowery Land, but failed, and died soon after in Mexico,--the probability being that he was poisoned by order of Cortez. He left even less mark on Florida than did De Leon, and belongs to the class of Spanish explorers who, though real heroes, achieved unimportant results, and are too numerous to be even catalogued here.

In 1527 there sailed from Spain the most disastrous expedition which was ever sent to the New World,--an expedition notable but for two things, that it was perhaps the saddest in history, and that it brought the man who first of all men crossed the American continent, and indeed made one of the most wonderful walks since the world began. Panfilo de Narvaez--who had so ignominiously failed in his attempt to arrest Cortez--was commander, with authority to conquer Florida; and his treasurer was Alvar Nu?ez Cabeza de Vaca. In 1528 the company landed in Florida, and forthwith began a record of horror that makes the blood run cold. Shipwreck, savages, and starvation made such havoc with the doomed band that when in 1529 Vaca and three companions found themselves slaves to the Indians they were the sole survivors of the expedition.

Vaca and his companions wandered from Florida to the Gulf of California, suffering incredible dangers and tortures, reaching there after a wandering which lasted over eight years. Vaca's heroism was rewarded. The king made him governor of Paraguay in 1540; but he was as unfit for such a post as Columbus had been for a viceroy, and soon came back in irons to Spain, where he died.

But it was through his accounts of what he saw in that astounding journey that his countrymen were roused to begin in earnest the exploration and colonization of what is now the United States,--to build the first cities and till the first farms of the greatest nation on earth.

The thirty years following the conquest of Mexico by Cortez saw an astounding change in the New World. They were brimful of wonders. Brilliant discovery, unparalleled exploration, gallant conquest, and heroic colonization followed one another in a bewildering rush,--and but for the brave yet limited exploits of the Portuguese in South America, Spain was all alone in it. From Kansas to Cape Horn was one vast Spanish possession, save parts of Brazil where the Portuguese hero Cabral had taken a joint foothold for his country. Hundreds of Spanish towns had been built; Spanish schools, universities, printing-presses, books, and churches were beginning their work of enlightenment in the dark continents of America, and the tireless followers of Santiago were still pressing on. America, particularly Mexico, was being rapidly settled by Spaniards. The growth of the colonies was very remarkable for those times,--that is, where there were any resources to support a growing population. The city of Puebla, for instance, in the Mexican State of the same name, was founded in 1532 and began with thirty-three settlers. In 1678 it had eighty thousand people, which is twenty thousand more than New York city had one hundred and twenty-two years later.

SPAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.

Cortez was still captain-general when Cabeza de Vaca came into the Spanish settlements from his eight years' wandering, with news of strange countries to the north; but Antonio de Mendoza was viceroy of Mexico, and Cortez' superior, and between him and the traitorous conqueror was endless dissension. Cortez was working for himself, Mendoza for Spain.

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