The Argentine Republic is the modern representative of the Spanish colonies on the east coast of South America, as Brazil is that of the Portuguese. Fifteen years after the landing of Cabral, Spanish sailors first sighted the entrance to the Rio Plata, and in 1535 Mendoza established a settlement on the site which later was Buenos Aires. No gold or silver, however, was to be found, and the Spaniards looked on their holdings on the South Atlantic merely as a back door to their richer possessions on the Pacific. Till the eighteenth century all their South American territories were under the Viceroy of Peru, and in order to suit the convenience of that colony no ship was allowed to trade direct with Buenos Aires; all the merchandise from Europe had to be fetched over the Andes. It was not till the first richness of the mines was exhausted that attention was drawn to the grass-covered plains of the east. The Napoleonic wars, which turned Brazil from a colony to an empire, ultimately led to the establishment of republican rule in the Spanish colonies. Pitt, however, made a mistake in judging in 1806 that the discontent felt by the younger nation with the rule of their mother-country would make them unite in the war against her. He sent an armed force to the River Plate, but his full expectation that there would be a local rising was grievously disappointed; Buenos Aires was captured, but the British were subsequently heavily defeated and obliged to return home. The anniversary of the “reconquest” is yearly celebrated, and the newly arrived Briton, who probably never heard of the occurrence, finds that in Argentina his country is regarded as a defeated nation. The loyalty of the colonists to the Crown of Spain was not, however, of long duration. Seeing that in the old country all authority was in the melting-pot, a secret society was formed in Buenos Aires, of which Belgrano was a leading member, to work for representative government; popular desire for freedom became too strong to be resisted, and on May 25th, 1810, the viceroy resigned. From that date the independence of Argentina is officially reckoned. The Argentines then successfully assisted the revolutionaries of Chile. Disputes subsequently arose as to the boundary between the two countries; these differences were referred, at the beginning of this century, to the Crown of England, which appointed a commission to deal with the matter, and a treaty was agreed upon in accordance with its recommendations.