The year 1492, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, witnessed the discovery of America. Spain had become consolidated into one empire from the Pyrenees to the strait of Gibraltar, and civil wars were at an end. Maritime exploration was the task of the age, and under the patronage of Isabella, Columbus planted the flag of Spain in the West Indies. This grand achievement led to the opening of a splendid continent, teeming with riches, for Spanish adventure and despoliation. In 1498, Columbus landed on the continent of South America, and in a few years the entire western coast was explored by subsequent adventurers. In 1512, Ponce de Leon discovered Florida, and the following year, Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and gazed for the first time upon the Pacific. The history of Spain, in connection with its discovery and settlement of the New World, is one long record of revolting crime. New England was settled by a people who came to turn the wilderness into a city, but the Spanish invaders went to the southern shores to turn the cities of the natives into a wilderness. In Mexico and Peru they found a civilization the equal and in many respects the superior of their own. With cross and sword in hand, in the name of religion, but with the lust for gold in their hearts, their coming was invariably a signal for every kind of attack that malignity could devise or avarice invent. Wherever they went, desolation followed them. They looted the towns, pillaged the cities, murdered the people; they burned alike the hovels of the poor, and the palaces of the rich. The value of the treasure that Spain secured from Mexico and Peru never can be known accurately; but it is certain that within sixty years from the time of the landing of Columbus she had advanced to the position of the richest and most powerful nation in Europe. Victorious in Africa and Italy, Philip II, who was then the reigning monarch, carried war into France, and ruled in Germany, as well as in those provinces now known as Belgium and Holland. The money necessary to carry on these vast wars of conquest was undoubtedly acquired in the New World. When Cortez approached the palace of Montezuma, the King's messengers met him, bearing presents from their lord. These gifts included 200 pounds of gold for the commander, and two pounds of gold for each of his army. Prescott, in his "Conquest of Peru," says that when the Spanish soldiers captured the capital of that country they spent days in melting down the golden vessels which they found in temples and palaces. On one voyage a single ship carried to Spain $15,500,000 in gold, besides vast treasures of silver and jewels. THE HORRORS OF THE INQUISITION.