Even here prevailed the socialism which so strongly characterized the races of the centre and north of the Continent.  Despotism was unknown, and even the chieftain, in the proper sense of the word, had no existence.  In times of war an elder was chosen, it is true, but with the laying down of the weapons he became again one of the people, and was lost in their ranks.  Such crude organization as existed was left to the hands of a Council of Elders.  There is no doubt that witch-doctors attained to a certain degree of power, but even this was utterly insignificant as compared with that which was wont to be enjoyed by the savage priests of Central Africa.

Taken as a whole, the Indians of Southern America represented some of the most simple children who ever lived in the lap of Nature.  Unsophisticated, credulous, and strangely wanting in reasoning powers and organized self-defence, they fell ready victims to the onslaughts of the Spaniards, who burst with such dramatic unexpectedness on their north-eastern shores.

CHAPTER II

COLUMBUS

Columbus was admittedly a visionary.  It was to the benefit of his fellow Europeans and to the detriment of the South American tribes that to his dreams he joined the practical side of his nature.  Certainly the value of imagination in a human being has never been more strikingly proved than by the triumph of Columbus.

The enthusiasm of the great Genoese was of the kind which has tided men over obstacles and difficulties and troubles throughout the ages.  He was undoubtedly of the nervous and highly-wrought temperament common to one of his genius.  He loved the dramatic.  There are few who have not heard the story of the egg with the crushed end which stood upright.  But there are innumerable other instances of the demonstrative powers of Columbus.  For instance, when asked to describe the Island of Madeira, he troubled not to utter a word in reply, but snatched up a piece of writing-paper and, crumpling it by a single motion of his hand, held it aloft as a triumphant exhibition of the island’s peaks and valleys.

Fortunately for the adventurers of his period, his belief in his mission was unshakable.  It was, of course, a mere matter of chance that Columbus should have found himself in the service of the Spaniards when he set out upon his voyage which was to culminate in the discovery of the New World.  He himself had been far more concerned with the Portuguese than with their eastern neighbours.  Indeed, until the discovery of America, the Spaniards, fully occupied with the expulsion of the Moors from within their frontiers in Europe, could give but little attention to the science of navigation.