The landing of Cortes, and his safe progress through a difficult country to the frontier of Tlaxcallan, were facilitated by the circumstance that the people of the country, who had groaned for the greater part of a century under the cruel tyranny of Mexico, welcomed him everywhere as a deliverer. The coast tribes mistook him for the ancient Toltec god Quetzalcohuatl. The Tlaxcaltecs, who had never beheld a friendly force on their borders, at first mistook him for an ally of the Mexicans; but on learning the true aspect of affairs they joined him as allies. Thus Cortes, from the territory of Tlaxcallan as his base, conducted his campaign against the Lake pueblos with the help of auxiliaries who possessed a complete knowledge of the country, and a military experience gained by a century’s constant fighting. At first he posed as a friendly emissary of the great European monarch his master. Having on these terms obtained admittance to Mexico for himself and his armed force, he seized the Tlatohuani’s person, put him in chains, and assumed the government. These proceedings naturally led to a rising on the part of the Mexican warriors, who attacked the Spaniards and drove them from the pueblo with great loss, taking many prisoners and sacrificing them to the Nahuatlacan gods. Driven ignominiously from Mexico, and chased by an infuriated enemy through and out of the Valley, Cortes retired by a circuitous route to Tlaxcallan, and laid his plans anew. Having refreshed his troops and renewed his supplies, he built two brigantines for action on the Lake; launched them from Tezcuco, which he occupied with little difficulty; assaulted Mexico by water; gained possession of its streets and buildings by slow degrees; and at length broke the resolute resistance of its warriors, and rased its clay-built edifices to the ground. He had won for the Castilian Crown the dominion of the confederated Lake pueblos—a tract of country extending from the Pacific to the Mexican gulf, 800 miles in length on the Pacific shore, and somewhat less on the other, comprising many large towns and above five hundred agricultural villages, and the seat of the most advanced communities of the New World.
This conquest was no barren victory over mere barbarians. Though no ethnologist would concede to the Nahuatlacan polity the title of a civilisation, it possessed the foundations on which all civilisation is built—a numerous and docile peasantry, an organised system of labour, and physical elements adequate to wealth-production. In these circumstances an unique social state had been evolved, to which the nearest analogue in the Old World is the gross barbarism of Ashanti or Dahomey. It was lower than these in that, except man himself, there were no animals kept for labour, nor were any kept for food except man and the dog. In other respects the arts of life were better developed: and to the superficial observation of the Conquistadores the large territory dominated by the Lake pueblos had an aspect sufficiently civilised to justify them in giving it the name of “New Spain.” What was of most importance in the eye of the European invaders, it possessed stores of the precious metals, which had been accumulating in the hands of dominant tribes for seven centuries. Immense quantities of treasure steadily poured henceforth into Spain; and America assumed an entirely new aspect for the nations of Western Europe. Almost from the first Spain perceived that other European powers would dispute with her, and perhaps one day wrest from her, the possession of the rich New World which accident had given to her. The conquest of Mexico nearly corresponded with the opening of a period of hostility between Spain and France, which lasted, though with considerable intermissions, from 1521 to 1556. Cortes, who entered Mexico in the former year, despatched at the end of 1522 two vessels to Spain laden with Mexican treasure; Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine in the French service, captured these near the Azores, and about the same time took a large vessel homeward bound from Española, laden with treasure, pearls, sugar, and hides. Enriched by these prizes, he gave large complimentary presents to the French King and High Admiral; and general amazement was felt at the wealth which was pouring into Spain from its transatlantic possessions. “The Emperor,” Francis exclaimed, “can carry on the war against me by means of the riches he draws from the West Indies alone!” Of the immense inheritance obtained by Spain in America the only parts actually reduced to possession by the Spanish monarch were the four great Antilles, and those portions of the continent which had been settled by the Nahuatlaca. Southward, the shores from Yucatan as far as the Plate River had been explored by Spain and Portugal; and all that seemed to remain to the future adventurer was the North American shore from the Mexican Gulf to Newfoundland. Jocosely refusing to acknowledge the claim of the peninsular powers to make a bipartite division of the sphere between them until they should “produce the will of Adam, constituting them his universal heirs,” Francis commissioned the successful Florentine captain to reconnoitre the whole shore from Florida to Newfoundland. This being done, he intimated to Europe that he claimed it, by right of discovery, as the share of France in the great American heritage. He called it New France,—a term familiar in French ears since the beginning of the thirteenth century as the title of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, and now less inappropriately applied by transfer to the New World.
The commission thus entrusted to and accomplished by Verrazzano was masked under the pretence of seeking a North-west passage to the Far East. But its real object was to lay a foundation for the claim of France to the whole of America north of Mexico, put forward in the belief, which ultimately proved well warranted, that this tract would, like Mexico, prove rich in the precious metals. Having completed the voyage by which his name is chiefly remembered, Verrazzano resumed the profitable practice of plundering the Spanish homeward-bound ships, and took some prizes between Spain and the Canaries. On his return he fell in with a squadron of Spanish war vessels, surrendered to them after a severe engagement, and in 1527 was hanged as a pirate at Colmenar de Arenas. France strenuously maintained, and sought by repeated efforts to substantiate, the right to North America which Verrazzano’s coasting-voyage was supposed to have acquired. In periods of war no attempts at possession were made; but in the intervals of peace expeditions were undertaken to the Gulf of St Lawrence, with the view of exploring the passage to the Far East of which it was imagined to be the beginning. Cartier made two voyages for this purpose in 1534 and 1535; and in 1540 he sailed up the great river of Canada, and selected a site for the colony which in 1542 Roberval attempted to establish. Cartier brought to France news of the two principal native nations of North America—nations on which later French settlers bestowed the names “Iroquois” and “Algonquin,” each being a purely French word embodying a peculiarity in the sound of their respective languages. The Algonquins, who were the earlier immigrants, were partially cultivators of the soil, but chiefly relied for subsistence on hunting and fishing. The more advanced Iroquois, who appear to have driven the Algonquins from the choicest parts of their territory, had nearly reached the stage in which agriculture is the main source of subsistence, though they were accomplished hunters and formidable warriors: and their compact territory was parcelled out among five tribes, who formed the confederation so well known in later history as the “Five Nations.” Though Roberval’s attempt failed, the example thus set was followed in a later generation in other latitudes, and other nations were encouraged to imitate it. Meanwhile the aspect of American enterprise was greatly modified, and the effect produced by the discovery of the treasures of Mexico greatly enhanced, by the discovery and conquest of Peru, the richest district of the New World hitherto revealed.
Here, again, we are struck by the comparatively modern date of the aboriginal dominion which the Spanish adventurers found established along the coast and in the valleys of the Andes. This dominion, of which the centre was at Cuzco, was very much more extensive than that of the federated Mexican pueblos. Unlike the Nahuatlaca, the Peruvian people had no reckoning of years; nor can the date of any fact in Peruvian history anterior to the conquest be accurately ascertained. All that we know is that the settlement of the nation or people who then dominated the sierra and the coast from Cuzco, where the traditions of their arrival were still fresh, was of comparatively modern date. They called themselves Inca, or “people of the sun” (Inti). They were probably an offshoot from a large group of warlike tribes, in which the Tupi-Guarani were included, long settled on the margins of the vanished Argentine sea and of a chain of great lakes to the north of it, where they subsisted by fishing and hunting. From this district they ascended to the sierra, where the huanaco and vicuña, two small cognate species of the camel genus, furnished abundant food and material