South American Fights and Fighters | Page 3

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"THE POOR LITTLE GOVERNOR . . . DISTANCED HIS FIERCE
PURSUERS AT LAST" . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece Drawing by
Seymour M. Stone
FACING PAGE
"OJEDA GALLOPED OFF WITH HIS . . . CAPTIVE" . . . . . . . . 6
Drawing by Seymour M. Stone

"THE INDIANS POURED A RAIN OF POISONED
ARROWS" . . . . . . . 7 Drawing by Seymour M. Stone
"BALBOA . . . ENGAGED IN SUPERINTENDING THE ROOFING
OF A HOUSE" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Drawing by George
Gibbs
"THE EXPEDITION HAD TO FIGHT ITS WAY THROUGH
TRIBES OF WARLIKE AND FEROCIOUS
MOUNTAINEERS" . . . . . . 35 Drawing by George Gibbs
"HE TOOK POSSESSION OF THE SEA IN THE NAME OF
CASTILE AND LEON" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Drawing by
George Gibbs
"HE THREW THE SACRED VOLUME TO THE GROUND IN A
VIOLENT RAGE" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Drawing by George
Gibbs
"THEY BURST UPON THE RANKS OF THE UNARMED
INDIANS" . . . . . 86 Drawing by George Gibbs
"THE THREE PIZARROS . . . SALLIED OUT TO MEET
THEM" . . . . 87 Drawing by George Gibbs
"HE THREW HIS SOLE REMAINING WEAPON IN THE FACES
OF THE ESCALADERS" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Drawing by
George Gibbs
FERNANDO CORTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 From a picture
in the Florence Gallery
THE DEATH OF MONTEZUMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 From an
old engraving
"HE DEFENDED HIMSELF WITH HIS TERRIBLE SPEAR" . . . . . . .
179 Drawing by George Gibbs
"THE SHIP CAME TO A DEAD STOP" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Drawing by W. J. Aylward
THE KILLING OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON BY AARON
BURR . . . . . . 233 Drawing by J. N. Marchand
The publishers wish to acknowledge their indebtedness to The
Cosmopolitan Magazine and Munsey's Magazine for permission to use
several of the illustrations in this volume.

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PART I
SOUTH AMERICAN FIGHTS AND FIGHTERS
I
Panama and the Knights-Errant of Colonization
I. The Spanish Main
One of the commonly misunderstood phrases in the language is "the
Spanish Main." To the ordinary individual it suggests the Caribbean
Sea. Although Shakespeare in "Othello," makes one of the gentlemen
of Cyprus say that he "cannot 'twixt heaven and main descry a sail,"
and, therefore, with other poets, gives warrant to the application of the
word to the ocean, "main" really refers to the other element. The
Spanish Main was that portion of South American territory
distinguished from Cuba, Hispaniola and the other islands, because it
was on the main land.
When the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea were a Spanish lake,
the whole circle of territory, bordering thereon was the Spanish Main,
but of late the title has been restricted to Central and South America.

The buccaneers are those who made it famous. So the word brings up
white-hot stories of battle, murder and sudden death.
The history of the Spanish Main begins in 1509, with the voyages of
Ojeda and Nicuesa, which were the first definite and authorized
attempts to colonize the mainland of South America.
The honor of being the first of the fifteenth-century {4} navigators to
set foot upon either of the two American continents, indisputably
belongs to John Cabot, on June 24, 1497. Who was next to make a
continental landfall, and in the more southerly latitudes, is a question
which lies between Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci.
Fiske, in a very convincing argument awards the honor to Vespucci,
whose first voyage (May 1497 to October 1498) carried him from the
north coast of Honduras along the Gulf coast around Florida, and
possibly as far north as the Chesapeake Bay, and to the Bahamas on his
return.
Markham scouts this claim. Winsor neither agrees nor dissents. His
verdict in the case is a Scottish one, "Not proven." Who shall decide
when the doctors disagree? Let every one choose for himself. As for