This was in 1527, and in the following year the first attempt to establish a permanent footing on the Plate was made by the building of a fort at Rosario, but this was soon abandoned for a site on the sea coast of what is now a part of Brazil to the north of the river. In the meantime the Portuguese were busy advancing their posts to the north of the delta in order to assert their claims; and in face of this, rather than because remunerative metallic treasure from the new territory was to be expected, Charles V. authorised an extensive colonising experiment to be made and the great waterway and its banks claimed for Spain. The stirring history of Mendoza's attempts to found a settlement on the Paraná, the establishment of Buenos Aires and its abandonment again and again, the fateful colonisation of Asuncion, far up the river in the heart of the continent, the heroic adventures of Irala, Ayolas, and Cabeza de Vaca, and the reconquest of the river territories down to the sea from the isolated Spanish post of Asuncion eight hundred miles up stream, is adequately told in Mr. Hirst's pages, and need not be related here. The permanent fixing of the flag of Spain on the territory east of the Andes was not less heroic an achievement than the more showy conquests of Peru and Mexico; for in the former case the incentive of easily won gold was absent, and the object was more purely national than was the case elsewhere. But, though it was necessary for Spain to assert her ownership over these endless pampas and the unexplored wastes beyond, the new territory was always subordinated to the gold-producing viceroyalty of Peru across the Andes. A glance at the map will show the almost incredible obstacles wilfully interposed by the home authorities upon the River Plate colonies in forcing the latter not only to be subject in government to the Viceroy of Peru, but to carry on most of their commercial communications with the mother country across the wide continent from the Pacific coast by way of Panama and Peru. The law was, of course, extensively evaded, and the luxuriant fertility of the pampa both for agriculture and grazing made the River Plate colonies prosperous in spite of Government restrictions.