Here, for the first time, the history of the Spanish conquests in the Americas is related in a one-volume survey of the great movement that forever transfigured the nations and cultures of both sides of the Atlantic. F.A. Kirkpatrick , well known for his contributions to the Cambridge Modern History and for his splendid History of the Argentine REpublic, follows the course of the Spanish envelopment of Latin America from the four voyages of Columbus to the invasion of the river Plate six years later, including vivid descriptions of the voyage of Magellan, Cortés' march on Mexico, the discovery of the Pacific, the conquest of Incan Peru, the great adventures in the land of Cinnamon and the River of the Amazons, the wars of Las Salinas and Chupas, the Spanish Main, and the spice trade. The main misdeeds of the Conquistadores are catalogued, but Mr. Kirkpatrick's work is free of political and religious attitudes so that we have one of the few histories of early America written in the English language which is eminently fair and is, at the same time, a scholarly and penetrating history of a great phase of the emergence of the Western Hemisphere -- Back cover.