* SPANISH ADVENTURERS *

IT IS NOT necessary to have to explain to any great extent to any person today, the great influence the Spanish adventurers of the early centuries had on the people of both the South American countries and Mexico. It is a very well-established tact. These same adventurers and explorers, who came in droves at the offset of the great exploration period in the New World, and conquered the great Hispanic empire in the Southern part of the New Land, brought to these Mexican people more than their language and dress and religion. But it wasn't anything worthwhile or concrete. They carried, along with their guns and clubs, an entirely unshakeable faith in the divinity and omnipotence of all kings. There was a certain something about all kings of all countries, but expressly this was true of the king which ruled the Spanish Empire. The King of Spain was placed before God and the Catholic Church, and almost unbelievably, before the Matador who was the favorite of the day, too. This great monarch, overlooking the fact that the blood in his veins may have been too closely mixed with relatives in marriages, which probably made him quite simple in the head, was given the honor of being the fountain-head of all right, privilege and property. He was master supreme and unchallenged, and all others counted themselves his humble vassals regardless of their distance from the throne. Their main point on being on earth was to serve their king, whether they lived in Spain, or were forced to live in the New Spain in the New Continent, Mexico.

It has nothing to do whatsoever with this problem now being discussed, that the Spaniards settled in the New World more than a full century earlier than the British began to settle their colonies. This is not the reason for the more intense medievalism of this Spanish belief in the omnipotent King.

BUT the adventurers who came to win the rich and beautiful land for their decayed-mind of a monarch, were in all probability just as wretchedly bad as be, and they pillaged and destroyed the land from which they stole, and took from it only its riches and left it nothing, and gave it nothing in return.

But they were in all probability following the orders of their present leader, men such as Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV, Charles II, Philip V, and Ferdinand VI, the latter always being described as displaying tendencies toward melancholia and even insanity. Such a thing in a king is more than probable. It is taken for granted.

These men arbitrarily ruled the destinies of their vassals in Spain and in the New World, as well as all the conquered millions overseas on this side of the world in the new land, who had unwittingly become the vassals' vassals. Today, the characters and personalities oi these kings are deemed of little importance when reading of the Mexican history. They are only important to biographical writers, and the tendency is for more knowledge about the men who carried out their masters' bidding, and went out for new land and wealth to bring back to Spain, and became the adventurers who made so great an impression On the lives of the Mexicans. This impression has not became dimmer even today in the politics and way of living for the Mexican. But it must be remembered that these monarchs were still the only source oi all authority, initiative, and direction in the Hispanic domain, and everything the least bit Spanish must all be directed back to the throne for its beginning and conception. This happens to be the one time that the adventurers who should receive the credit (and the discredit, too, in this case) must of necessity take n back seat.

 L. King