We know how that it was something very different. During the next few years Spain kept sending out expedition after expedition, to find out what sort of new world it was that this bold sailor had thus reached. To Spain fell the enterprise and the conquest first, but not by any natural sequence of events, for it was truly due to the genius of Columbus, who was a man of Genoa, and no son of Spain at all, that the first enterprise of discovery was undertaken. He could not attempt it at his own cost. His native state would not furnish him with the means. For four years he was trying to get his voyage "financed," as we should say now--that is, get its expenses paid--by the Governments either of Spain or of England. He had a brother working to this end at the English Court, while he was pleading his own cause at the Court of Spain. Our Henry VII. was just beginning to listen favourably to the prayer of the brother, when Isabella, joint ruler, with Ferdinand, of Spain, was won by the eloquence of Christopher Columbus. {10} Spain equipped the ships, and England, whether for her good or her ill it is interesting to speculate, but impossible surely to know, lost her chance of achieving the astonishingly rich conquest which thus came to Spain. For what the repeated Spanish expeditions established ever more conclusively was the amazing richness of the new world, or, at least, of that part of it which she was first to conquer. And yet, at the beginning, there was some disappointment. We have seen how one of the great needs of these countries of the old world was men to cultivate their war-wasted lands. This man-power they were constantly hoping to increase by acquiring slaves. Portugal did acquire slaves, who proved excellent workers, from Africa. The slaves which the first conquerors of the West brought to Spain were nearly useless. The Red Indian, as it became the fashion to call him later, has never been of any value, as the African negro and the East Indian "coolie" have been valuable, in the service of the white man. Thence, just at first, arose disappointment in Spain. But later, as the treasures in gold and silver and gems of the new land were brought over and became known and appreciated, there was ever growing joy and triumph over the El Dorado--the Golden Land--which had thus surprisingly been added to the Spanish Crown. There were new riches, without limit, to be brought home, new souls, beyond number, to be saved. Priests went out with the conquerors. It was a spiritual, as well as a material conquest. Immense treasure was taken when in 1521 Cortez made himself master of Mexico, and twelve years later the yet greater wealth of Peru was added by the conquest of Pizarro.