Portugal, with an extraordinary generosity, flung her handful of white colonists into the vast lands she had discovered, and hoped by this means to raise the leaven of the whole.  In India, as exemplified in Goa, the result has met with scant success.  In Brazil, however, where the proportion of white to black was greater, a race of intellect and culture has been developed, although occasionally subject to the mental paroxysms of the dwellers in the tropics.  In any case it may be said that the colour question has never existed in Brazil—­so far, at all events, as the Indian is concerned.  It was necessarily in evidence to a certain extent upon the first introduction of the negro slave, but even here the question has become of less and less importance, until, at the present day, the negro has in Brazil probably a more congenial resting-place than anywhere else in the world.

It must never be forgotten that these remarks as regards the Spanish colonies, and to almost as great an extent as regards the Portuguese, apply to the general run of the population.  The majority of the leaders, both social and political, in all the South American colonies have been in the first instance, and have continued, men of good blood, and generally of ancient lineage, who have floated along with the rest, until they met with the inevitable current which bore them to the topmost of the new social layers.  And once there, having been found the most fitting, they have remained.

CHAPTER V

THE CONQUEST OF PERU

The story of Pizarro and the Incas has been told many hundreds of times, yet owing to the sheer audacity of which its elements are composed it would seem to retain its interest almost unimpaired.  That a mere handful of men should have banded themselves together to conquer a nation which counted its subjects by the hundred thousand, and which could claim a civilization that included great armies, remains almost beyond belief.  The Incas themselves, moreover, were a conquering race, and their troops had marched to the north and to the south in their thousands, conquering nations less important than their own, and thus adding to the extent of the one formidable Empire of the Southern Continent.

Yet the downfall of these armies in this victorious State was achieved by less than two hundred European soldiers, led by the two fearless adventurers, Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro.  These, accompanied by Hernando Luques, had begun to explore the neighbourhood of Panama in 1524.  Every member of the force, it may be taken for granted, had a keen nose for gold, and it was not long before they came across some treasure of the kind which determined the leaders to possess themselves the country where the metal was to be found.