Preface

and which involved the destruction not only of thousands of unoffending peoples but of a most fair and hopeful culture, is not in its results the most pleasing of pictures. But neither in this pit of Acheron nor in that garden of Hesperides may we expect to discover the full significance of omnipotent intention. From the perpetual snow-cap springs the imperceptibly moving glacier. A grain of sand gives no conception of the earth, nor a drop of water of the sea, nor the soft breathing of an infant of a hurricane; yet worlds are made of atoms, and seas of drops of water, and storms of angry air-breaths. Though modern Mexico can boast a century more of history than the northern nations of America, as compared with the illimitable future her past is but a point of time.