Note 41 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

For this great experiment in colonization, the greatest the world has ever known, he had received a grant of land extending from Paria to Santa Marta, and from the Caribbean Sea to Peru. In his colossal undertaking he planned to have the coöperation of an order of knights—the Knights of the Golden Spur—specially created to aid him in the work of civilizing and christianizing the Indians. It was his dream to bring within the fold of the Church all the Indians of Central and South America, and to establish for their behoof and benefit an ideal Christian state such as a century and a half later was realized in the fertile basins of the Parana and Paraguay.41