tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">447

BARON OF CAXIAS
    From an old woodcut. 453 PRINCESS ISABEL IN 1889 456 PAMPAS OF THE RIO GRANDE 460 OLD MARKET IN SÃO PAULO 465 GOVERNER'S PALACE IN SÃO PAULO 469 HOSPITAL AND OLD CHURCH AT PORTO ALEGRE 475 BRIDGE AT MENDANHA 480 CITY OF OURO PRETO 483 EMPEROR DOM PEDRO IN 1889 491 MILITARY SCHOOL OF RIO JANEIRO 493 GENERAL BENJAMIN CONSTANT
    From a woodcut. 496 THE EMPRESS IN 1889 498 AMERICAN LEGATION NEAR RIO 505 CAMPOS SALLES
    From a woodcut. 510   MAPS MAP OF ARGENTINA, PARAGUAY, URUGUAY, BOLIVIA, AND CHILE 38 OUTLINE MAP OF BRAZIL 288 MAP OF SOUTH AMERICA
    Showing the progress of settlement and present populated area. At end

INTRODUCTORY

THE DISCOVERIES AND THE CONQUEST

Spain's Discovery of America.—Town or communal government has been characteristic of Spain since before the Roman conquest. The Visigoths, who destroyed the advanced civilisation they found in the Peninsula, never really amalgamated with the subject population, and, happily, they did not succeed in destroying the municipalities. The liberal, civilised, and tolerant Saracens who drove out the Goths, left their Christian subjects free to enjoy their own laws and customs. The municipalities gave efficient local self-government while a system of small proprietorships made the Peninsula prosper, as in the best days of the Roman dominion. The population of Spain reached twenty millions under the Moors, but finally dynastic civil wars enabled the remnant of Visigoths who had taken refuge in the northern mountains to begin the gradual expulsion of the Mahometans. In the midst of these currents of war and conquest setting to and fro, the old municipalities survived unchangeable, and always supplying local self-government.

A tendency toward decentralisation was ingrained in the Spanish people from the earliest times. It was increased by the method in which the Christian conquest of Mahometan Spain was achieved. The Visigothic nobility, starting from separate points in Asturias and Navarre, advanced into Saracen territory and established counties and earldoms which were virtually independent of their mother-kingdoms. The Asturians expanded into Leon and thence over Galicia, northern Portugal, Old and New Castile. The power of the Leonese monarch over Galicia was nominal; Castile and Portugal separated from Leon almost as soon as they were wrested from the Mahometans. The Basques were always independent, and Navarre, though it became the mother of Aragon, had little connection with the latter region. On the Mediterranean shore Charlemagne drove the Moors from Catalonia and made it a province of his empire, but no sooner was he dead than it became independent. Toward the end of the thirteenth century. The Christian conquest was virtually completed, and the Peninsula had been divided into four kingdoms. Each of these was, however, in reality only a federation of semi-independent feudal divisions and municipalities united by personal allegiance to a single sovereign. In the course of the continual quarrelling of the monarchs their kingdoms frequently divided, coalesced, and separated again. The death of a king or the marriage of his daughter was often the signal for war and a readjustment of boundaries, but these overturnings did not much affect the component and really vital political units.

More significant than the political kingdoms were the linguistic divisions. Spain then spoke, and still speaks, three