The collisions with the various peoples of the Continent had now afforded the conquistadores an opportunity of testing the power of each.  The force of the impact had, it is true, swept into the background the first peoples with whom they had come into contact; but, as the scanty numbers of the pioneers filtered across the new territories, they found that the task of annexation was by no means so easy in every case.

So far as a warlike spirit was concerned, the difference between the aboriginal tribes of the tropics and those of the southern regions was most marked.  The Incas were, in many respects, a warlike race—­that is to say, they had possessed themselves by force of arms of the country in the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca, wresting this from whatever tribe of the Aymaras it was which, highly civilized, had held the land before them.  This nucleus of empire, once obtained, they had spread to the south and to the north, and to a certain extent to the east, conquering all with whom they had come into contact, with the notable exception of the Araucanians in Southern Chile.

The Chibchas, too, in the far north, whose civilization in some respects equalled that of the Incas, might be termed a conquering race.  They dominated the north of the Continent, and upheld their empire securely by force of arms.  Yet it is curious that both these nations, representing the chief civilizing and inventive powers of the Continent, presented nothing beyond the most futile resistance to the invaders.  Their gods desecrated, their faith outraged, stung to utter fury and hate, even these passions failed to lead them to a single victory of consequence, notwithstanding the fact that their tens of thousands of warriors were faced by no more than a few dozen Spaniards.  Disheartened by the terrifying onslaught of the men in mail mounted on gigantic horses, they appear to have reconciled themselves with melancholy submission to a fate which only on two or three occasions during the following centuries they endeavoured with any earnestness at all to disturb.

How different were the battles of the south!  The Spaniards who found themselves face to face with the Araucanian Indians, and with those of the Pampa on the other side of the Andes, had a far more strenuous tale to tell.  The armour which had resisted with such contempt the more delicate weapons of the Peruvians and of the northern warriors in general was crushed in and dented beneath the tremendous blows dealt by the clubs of the muscular and warlike Araucanians, who charged into the battle with a wild joy that left them as drunk with triumph at the end of the combat as they had been with their native spirit at the beginning.