posed Continent, and arrive at the Colonies of Panama and Nata erected on those shores, the bounds of the Golden Castile, and whosoever at that time shall be governor of that province called Golden Castile is to give us intelligence of his success."* Cabot now found himself within striking distance of these regions, and the intelligence received quickened his eagerness to reach them. The intervening obstacles were nothing to his restless activity and indomitable spirit, and the opposition to be encountered not worth a thought when he knew that a war-party of the savages, whom his own little band had so severely chastised, were able to overrun the Empire of Peru and carry off its treasures. But however well disposed the Emperor might be to yield a ready belief to the representations of Cabot, the means were absolutely wanting to furnish the promised aid. The only key to this part of the history of Charles V., is a recollection of his struggles with pecuniary embarrassment. The soldiers of Bourbon had mutinied for want of pay, and were brought back to duty only by the great personal exertions and influence of their chief, and by the hope of plunder; and even after the sack of Rome, they refused to quit that city until the arrears due to them should be discharged, "a condition," says Dr Robertson,† "which they knew to be impossible." During the very year in which Cabot's messengers arrived, the Cortes had refused the grant of money solicited by the Emperor. We have already had occasion to advert to the mortgage of the Moluccas to Portugal in 1529, as security for a loan, to the infinite chagrin of his Castilian subjects. Pizarro had the advantage of being able to employ personal importunity, and he asked no money. On 26th July 1528, the Emperor yielded to that adventurer a grant of the entire range of coast, which it had been part of Cabot's plan of 1524 to visit. At his own expense Pizarro engaged to raise a large force, "and to provide the ships, arms, and warlike stores requisite, towards subjecting to the Crown of Castile the *Peter Martyr, Dec. vii. cap. vi. country of which the government was allotted to him."* He proceeded at once to the task, though it was not until February 1531 that he was enabled to set out from Panama on his successful, but infamous, career. It were idle to indulge the imagination, in speculating on the probable result had the expedition to Peru been conducted by Cabot. With all the better qualities of Pizarro, it is certain that the very elevation of his moral character must have stood in the way of that rapid desolation, and fierce exaction, which have made the downfall of the Peruvian Empire a subject of vulgar admiration. In following Pizarro, the heart sickens at a tissue of cruelty, fraud, treachery, and cold-blooded murder, unrelieved even by the presence of great danger; for after the resistance at the island of Puna, which detained him for six months, no serious obstacles were encountered. Even the Guaranis, who had achieved an easy conquest over the unwarlike Peruvians, in the preceding reign, were guiltless of the atrocities which marked his progress. Of one thing we may be certain. Had the conquest fallen to the lot of Cabot, the blackest page of the History of Spanish America would have been spared. The murder of the Inca, to gratify the pique of an illiterate† ruffian, forms one of the most horrid images of History. It was no less impolitic than atrocious, and roused the indignation even of the des Robertson's History of America, book vi. "Among all the European Arts, what he admired most was that of reading and writing; and he long deliberated with himself, whether he should regard it as a natural or acquired talent. In order to determine this, he desired one of the soldiers who guarded him, to write the name of God on the nail of his thumb. This he showed successively to several Spaniards, asking its meaning; and to his amazement, they all, without hesitation, returned the same answer. At length Pizarro entered; and on presenting it to him, he blushed, and with some confusion was obliged to acknowledge his ignorance. From that moment, Atahualpa considered him as a mean person, less instructed than his own soldiers; and he had not address enough to conceal the sentiments with which this discovery inspired him. To be the object of a barbarian's scorn not only mortified the pride of Pizarro, but excited such resentment in his breast, as added force to all the other considerations which prompted him to put the Inca to death." (Robertson's Hist. America. peradoes who accompanied Pizarro. The career of Cabot who, at the Council Board of the Indies, had been a party to the order forbidding even the abduction of a Native, could not have been stained by crimes which make us turn with horror from the guilty splendour of the page that records them. Reverting to the Despatch of Cabot to the Emperor, it remains to notice a charge against him of having conferred the name of Rio de la Plata, or River of Silver, with a view to colour his failure, and to encourage deceptive hopes. Now Gomara, who wrote half a century before Herrera, tells us expressly that this designation was given by the original discoverer, De Solis (cap. lxxxix.). "Topo con un grandissimo Rio que los Naturales llaman Paranaguaca, que quiere decir Rio como Mar o Agua grande; vido en el muestra de Plata, i nombrolo de ella," ("He fell in with an immense river which the natives called Paranaguaca, that is to say, a river like the sea or great water; he saw in it specimens of silver, and named it from that circumstance.”) Thus in a work dedicated to the Emperor, we find the origin of that name which Cabot is represented to have fraudulently conferred so long afterwards for the purpose of misleading him! The same statement is made by Lopez Vaz (Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 788), "The first Spaniard that entered this river and inhabited the same, was called Solis, who passed up a hundred leagues into it, and called it by the name of Rio de La Plata, that is to say, The River of Silver." Herrera gives a somewhat different account. In the chapter devoted to Garcia's expedition, he says after speaking of the precious metals obtained by Cabot, "Tambien Diego Garcia huvo alguna cantidad de Plata de los Indios, desde donde se llamo este Rio de la Plata porque fue la primera que se traxo a Castilla de las Indios, i era de la que los Indios Guaranis traian en planchas i otras piecas grandes de las Provincias del Peru."* Herrera, Dec. iv. lib. i. cap. i. "Diego Garcia also obtained some portion of silver from the Indians, whence it was called Rio de La Plata, or River of Silver, because this was the first of that metal brought to Spain from the Indies, and it was part of that which the Guaranis Indians obtained in plates and other large pieces from the Provinces of Peru." Let us, then, for a moment, suppose Gomara and Lopez Vaz in error; and further, that the title was not a device of Garcia who was struggling to connect himself ostentatiously with this region-who boasts of his superior activity in exploring it-and with whose name, previously rendered infamous, Herrera more immediately associates the appellation. After all these concessions it would then appear that the epithet was one popularly applied (like Brazil, the Spice Islands, the Sugar Islands, &c.), from the article-the Silver of Potosi-which had been brought thence and attracted general attention and interest. There is not the least reason to suppose that it was conferred by Cabot, or that he concealed the quarter whence the treasure came a fact which Herrera is found correctly stating from his Report. That document was doubtless full and explicit; giving a prominent place to the hopes which had been excited, but with a statement, also, of the great fertility of the country, its healthy climate, and general advantages for colonization, aside from the avenue it offered to those regions of the precious metals embraced in the plan of 1524. But while of the Spanish writers, evil-disposed as they are to Cabot, no one has ventured to put forth any such charge of deception, his own countrymen have exhibited an eager anxiety to fasten on him the odious accusation. Two specimens may suffice : "Cabot, in the mean time, contrived to send home to the Emperor an account of his proceedings; and as he had found among the savages of the interior some ornaments of gold and silver, which he easily obtained in exchange for various trinkets, he took advantage of this slender circumstance to represent the country as abounding in those metals; and in conformity with his description, he gave the river the name of La Plata."* "Juan Dias de Solis had discovered a prodigious river to which he gave his own name, and where he was killed and eaten by an ambush of savages. In 1525, [this error has already been exposed] Cabot, following the tract of Magalhaens, arrived at the same stream, and explored it as high as the Paraguay. A little gold and silver, which had been obtained from the natives, raised his opinion of the • Dr Lardner's Cyclopædia, History of Maritime and Inland Discovery, vol. ii. p. 89. importance of the country; the river was named Rio de la Plata, and many an adventurer was lured to his destruction by this deceptive title."* It is scarcely necessary to add that the statement that Cabot was "sent to the coast of Brasil, where he made the important discovery of the Rio de la Plata,"+ advances for him an unfounded claim. Some difference of opinion exists as to the time of the discovery by De Solis. Herrera, in the "Description de las Indias Occidentales" (cap. xxiv.), prefixed to his History, says, "Juan Diaz de Solis descubrio el Rio de la Plata ano de 1515 i Sebastian Gaboto Ingles iendo con armada por orden del Emperador," &c. ("Juan Diaz de Solis discovered the Rio de la Plata, and Sebastian Cabot, an Englishman, proceeding afterwards with a squadron by order of the Emperor," &c.). According to some accounts, the discovery of De Solis took place a few years before the date here mentioned; but no doubt exists as to the fact of an antecedent visit by him. It is not necessary to inquire here into the yet earlier claims of others. Quarterly Review, vol. iv. p. 459. † Historical Account of Discoveries, &c. by Hugh Murray, Esq. (Vol. i. p. 65). The same idle assertion is made by Mr Barrow, in the Chronological History of Voyages, &c. p. 35. |