Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The story,' he says, and he repeats, 'does not suffer itself to be told in any one conquest, or in any one discovery. It sometimes lies wholly in the New World, sometimes wholly at the court of Spain. It depends at one time on some powerful minister; at another, upon some resolute conqueror. It follows the course of the remarkable men of the day, and now rises up in one colony, now in another; its direction not being governed by the relative importance of the colonies. Guatemala, for instance, a country of which we have heard but little in Europe, becomes, at one period, a most im portant field for investigation in a general history of Spanish con quest in America. A number of remarkable men happen to be in Guatemala at the same time. Their proceedings give the most apt illustration of their theories respecting slavery, colonisation, and colonial government. Hence Guatemala becomes, for several years, the geographical centre of the narrative, as the Pearl Coast had been at a former period.'