The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-04-16

| in very recent years the only quicksil- | yer mines in the world, and California, | once her own territory, has been for many years now her only rival in the | production of quicksilver. Her gold
 mines and mines of the lesser minerals
 are immensely productive; hence Spain | has always been a country to covet, if | her people are left out of the consider | ation.
 The next page that Spain writes in
 history ushers in the second Punic war,
 about 206 B. C., when Spain became the ! bloody battlefield where Rome and Carthage fought for supremacy, and ! the wage was almost to the finish. ! First, the Roman army was nearly ex- | terminated and her two great generals
 the two Scipios. killed; then the Car thaginians all but annlhilated by the | desperate Romans, who came off vic- | tors, with Spain the spoil of war. The Romans then divided Spain into two | provinces, and these were governed by | proconsuls, practors, or what ever 1t < might be the fancy to call them for the 1 time.
 | All Romans cared for Spain was to | get all the tribute out of her possible. | The people were miserably poor, and | were held as slaves by their oppres- 1 sors. They toiled for the old "nobles" l and feudal lords, and suffered wrongs l and crimes that have never plotted the pages of any book, and appear only in | the state papers of the secret archives. | Their expressions and outrages were | constantly goading the miserable peo- | pie to revolt, and one authority says | that these revolts were repelled by I cavalry charges and dripping swords. l For half a century" says Abbott,
 there was seldom a day in which some | of the tribes were not in open inSurrec- | tion Not unfrequently the whole pen- l insula would be in haze of war" One hundred and thirty-two B. c. oc | cured the destruction of Numidia, which so paralyzed the energies of
 Spain that they gave up the struggle, | and for few hundred years remained without objection under Roman rule. l Just the same they murdered and as- | sassinated; rapine, lust, cruelty, and l inhuman barbarities marked each and | all of the bloody years in which Sylla and Sertorius, Pompey and Perpenna ] were the knights upon horseback, 1 playing the people as pawns, marking the battle trail with bleaching bones l and ruined homes. Then there came l upon the scene great Caesar, who made 1 blood flow like water. On the plains l of Monda, not far from Malaga, Pom- 1 pey and Caesar met, and when the bat | tie was ended, full 50000 men lay dead upon the field of honor CD.
 As though sated with carnage, the l Spanish people then rounded up their l prejudices and getting into their own l reservations began to raise a little corn ! and less hades, and to work their won I drously rich mines The condition con- | tinued for nearly 80 years, and then the l government, which had been growing
 more and more corrupt, declined; the l imperial arm weakened, robbers infest- | ed the mountain passes, plunder was | the motto of all, and the people were 1 so poor that they concluded they might l as well fight the government to fin- | ish as to let poverty lay them out. The | Bible tells about the time when the | devil shall be chained for a thousand | years, but history demonstrates that he I was turned loose in Spain for about I that length of time.
 l The Goths and Vandals, the Sueves | and Alans came pouring their barbar- 1 ian hordes over the mountains, and l Spain was steeped in infamy. Mariana, | a Spanish historian, says:
 The irruption of these nations was l followed by the most dreadful calam- | ities. As the barbarians exercised their | indiscriminate cruelty on the fortunes i of the Romans and the Spanish, and
 ravaged with equal fury the cities and l the open country, the progress of fam | inc reduced the miserable inhabitants | to feed on the flesh of their fellow creatures, and even the wild beasts who multiplied without control in the 1 desert were exasperated by the taste of 1 blood and the in1patiene of hunger | boldly to attack and devour their hu- man prey. Pestilence soon appeared, l the inseparable companion of famine. 1 A large proportion of the people was l swept away, and the groans of the dy- l ing excited only the envy of their sur viving friends. At length the barbar- | ians satiated with carnage and rapine, ! afflicted with contagious diseases l which they themselves had introduced, fixed their permanent seats in the de- l populated country.
 Then the Goths again came down on | the Vandals and the other barbarians,
 and battled for supremacy for years,
 and before they got things settled, the l Huns took hand in the general melee. l About the time things warmed up for these three, the Heruli landed, and 1 four-handed game was inaugurated.
 Into this interesting game the Wis., l igoths pumped themseves, followed by the Ostrogaths, and finally the Wis., l igoths cleaned out the whole shooting
 match, and their leader, Athauf,
 crowned himself king. For about 200
 years the troubles of Spain were in- ternecine, and confined to poisoning court favorites, murdering kings,
 crowning usurpers, deposing self-made
 monarchs, and general treachery, though as a matter of fact such busi- ness as this has extended all through | the years from then to now.
 Disease and vices, both the result of lives spent in feasting, drinking and | pleasure seeking, sapped the strength of the once vigorous Gau1s, and when | the Moslem Moors raided the kingdom 1 of Gaul it went down before them like
 paper house. The Spanish people had
 managed to get considerable education, l they had made some advances in liter k ature, manners were somewhat more | polished, and splendid cities had been 1 raarad whau the Gothic rajpn was at