The best example of the effect produced by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas’ theoretical writings concerning the just title Spain held to America occurred in Peru during the rule of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, wise law-giver, energetic administrator, and greatest viceroy Spain ever sent to Peru, who laid the basis for Spanish rule there during the years 1569–1582. Before his coming, Peru had had a most turbulent and bloody history, and Toledo arrived with one great aim—to establish without question in this territory the position of the King of Spain. One of his earliest acts was to execute the Inca, Lord Tupac Amaru, the Indian leader who refused to accept Spanish rule. Presently, with a view to establishing Spain’s juridical title to Peru, he undertook an extensive historical investigation which attempted to demonstrate the unjust nature of the Inca regime and thus demolish the doctrines of Las Casas.

If the “Good Neighbor Policy” were a fact rather than a political slogan or at best a pious wish, the life, work, and death of one of the great thinkers, writers, and teachers of the Western Hemisphere could hardly have passed almost without being noticed in the Anglo-Saxon part of the American continent. On March 6th of this year died in Mexico City Antonio Caso, mourned by Mexico and her Ibero-American sister republics as well as by three generations of students who in their minds and hearts bear indelibly the moral stamina which they received in the classes taught by their beloved maestro in the Escuela Preparatoria and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of Mexico. José Vasconcelos, in his funeral oration, recognized in his departed compatriot “the most eloquent voice of Mexican philosophy, that voice which kindled in human minds the love for truth and beauty”, and then recalled in this personal apostrophe the great scholarly and human qualities of Antonio Caso: “You were,” he said, “a despiser of everything vile and wicked; you were disdainful of money, and you turned your back on power…. With your great gifts you might have gained materially comfortable positions of influence. Many times Fortuna knocked at your door, but you refused to open because you had decided to remain loyal to your vocation as a thinker. … Meanwhile, your conscience stayed wide awake, sensitive to noble actions and sublime ideas…. Those who follow your leadership recognized in your balanced mind the marks of the classicist; in your sensitivity, those of the romanticist; in the integrity of your conduct, those of the gentleman. Maestro completo: wherever there is a school, there is your fatherland. Mexicano universal: through you our nation occupies a distinguished place in contemporary thought.”

Spain and Portugal during the eighteenth century made two attempts to establish official boundaries between their possessions in America. Through the treaties of 1750 and 1777 joint commissions were appointed by these powers to procede with the task of determining lines of demarcation, in the Amazon region as well as in other parts of the South American domain. Neither of these two undertakings was successful. In spite of the preliminary treaties, the expeditions, the explorations, the reports, and the maps that had been made, the commissioners of Spain and Portugal could never agree upon a common boundary satisfactory to their conflicting claims. At the close of the century, therefore, the problem of the Amazon boundaries, which had so long remained a point of contention between the two Iberian nations, was still unsolved.

It remains, in the study we are pursuing, to cite those Catholic Mexicans whose literary contributions during the Díaz era were made almost exclusively in prose. Among these, too, several survived the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz and continued to write and publish during the turbulent years that followed. But in keeping with the time-limit set for our study only such works of theirs will be considered as were written and published before the year 1910.

In a preceding article we have tried to draw a provisional list of the diarios describing the voyages of exploration and the life of the pioneers of Upper California during the period covering the years 1769 to 1784. We should now like to introduce two new documents which have hitherto been unknown. They bring to a fitting completion the list of Crespi’s diarios, first by adding a sensational new item; and, secondly, by giving us a new transcript of the five diarios up to 1772, which is decidedly superior to the copy of Palou-Figueroa, either in manuscript or in the México and San Francisco editions. Furthermore, as a result of this discovery, we can infallibly re-assemble the complete text of Serra’s original Diario, which has been missing until today.