Wanderers from
the Old World grew weary of seeking the tropics only to sink into
flowery graves. They turned away sick at heart from the great desolation
where the splendid empire of the Children of the Sun had so lately
flourished. The accumulated treasures had been squandered. The cruel
crusades of the Paulists against the Jesuit missions had ceased for
the inhuman slave-hunters had utterly destroyed the smiling gardens
in the wilderness. A remnant of the escaped converts had gone back to
a wild life in the woods, and the Fathers, who had done their Master's
work so well, drifted away to mingle in other scenes or die of broken
hearts. Then, in the sober eighteenth century, when the disillusion
was complete, Spain woke up to the fact that in the temperate part of
the continent, shared by her with Portugal, she possessed a new bright
little Spain worth cultivating. About the same time, Portugal discovered
that the acquisition of this pretty country, with its lovely Lusitanian
climate, would nicely round off her vast possessions on the south side.
Forthwith these two great colonising powers fell to fighting over the
Banda, where there were no temples of beaten gold, or mythical races
of men, or fountains of everlasting youth. The quarrel might have
continued to the end of time, so languidly was it conducted by both
parties, had not great events come to swallow up the little ones.
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