from fever-stricken mangrove thickets, and the gloom of impenetrable forests; from hiding-places in the clefts of rocks, and the solitude of invisible caves; from the eternal snows of the Andes, where there was no witness but the all-seeing Sun, there went up to God a cry of human despair. By millions upon millions, whole races and nations were remorselessly cut off. The Bishop of Chiapa affirms that more than fifteen millions were exterminated in his time! [Sidenote: The crime of Spain.] From Mexico and Peru a civilization that might have instructed Europe was crushed out. Is it for nothing that Spain has been made a hideous skeleton among living nations, a warning spectacle to the world? Had not her punishment overtaken her, men would have surely said, "There is no retribution, there is no God!" It has been her evil destiny to ruin two civilizations, Oriental and Occidental, and to be ruined thereby herself. With circumstances of dreadful barbarity she expelled the Moors, who had become children of her soil by as long a residence as the Normans have had in England from William the Conqueror to our time. In America she destroyed races more civilized than herself. Expulsion and emigration have deprived her of her best blood, her great cities have sunk into insignificance, and towns that once had more than a million of inhabitants can now only show a few scanty thousands. The discovery of America agitated Europe to its deepest foundations. All classes of men were affected. The populace at once went wild with a lust of gold and a love of adventure. Well might Pomponius Lætus, under process for his philosophical opinions in Rome, shed tears of joy when tidings of the great event reached him; well might Leo X., a few years later, sit up till far in the night reading to his sister and his cardinals the "Oceanica" of Anghiera. * * * * * [Sidenote: Vasco de Gama. African coasting voyages.] If Columbus failed in his attempt to reach India by sailing to the west, Vasco de Gama succeeded by sailing to the south. He doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and retraced the track of the ships of Pharaoh Necho, which had accomplished the same undertaking two thousand years previously. The Portuguese had been for long engaged in an examination of the coast of Africa under the bull of Martin V., which recognised the possibility of reaching India by passing round that continent. It is an amusing instance of making scientific discoveries by contract, that King Alphonso made a bargain with Ferdinand Gomez, of Lisbon, for the exploration of the African coast, the stipulation being that he should discover not less than three hundred miles every year, and that the starting-point should be Sierra Leone.