The conquest of Mexico and Peru by the Spaniards will ever remain one of "the bloodiest pictures in the book of Time." By millions upon millions, whole races and nations were ruthlessly destroyed. It was one unspeakable outrage, one unutterable ruin, without discrimination of age, sex or character. Those who fell not by the sword, died under the lash in a tropical clime, or perished in the darkness and dampness of the mines. From the fever-stricken coast of Mexico, and the gloom of dense forests in Central America; from hiding places in the clefts of the rocks, and from the eternal snows of the Andes, where there was no witness but the all-seeing eye of God, there went up to Him a cry of human despair. The Bishop of Chiapa affirms that more than fifteen millions were destroyed in his time. From Mexico and Peru was crushed out a civilization that might have instructed Europe. What treasures would now be given for a view of that wonderful civilization and people that met the gaze of Cortez and his companions! {108} [Image: Ancient Peruvian Residence.] Is it for nothing that Spain has been made a hideous skeleton among the 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." She has been the instrument in the hands of Rome of ruining two civilizations: an eastern and a western: and both of the {109} seed of Abraham; and in turn she has been ruined thereby herself. With circumstances of dreadful barbarity, she expelled the Jews and Saracens who had become the children of her soil by a residence of more than seven hundred years, and in America destroyed nations, in some respects more civilized than herself. By expulsion she lost some of her best citizens; and the wealth of Mexico and Peru, induced habits of luxury and effeminacy among the remainder. Her great cities have sunk into insignificance, and towns that once boasted of more than a million inhabitants can now only show a few scanty thousands. Surely the hand of God is visible in the degradation of Spain. It is not alone the massive ruins of Central America, Yucatan, Peru and Mexico, that astonish the beholder. In almost every part of the western continent may be found the footprints of a mighty race, now vanished from the earth. In the copper mines on the shores of Lake Superior, have been found the implements of those who worked in those mines many centuries ago. These instruments are made of copper, yet some of them are of so fine a temper that they will turn the edge of the best steel instruments of our times.