Stronghand by Gustave Aimard

In Spanish America, and especially in Peru and Mexico, all the Creoles of the pure white breed pretend to be descended in a straight line from the first Conquistadors. We have no need to discuss this claim, whose falsehood is visible to any man at all conversant with the sanguinary history of the numberless civil wars -- a species of organized massacre -- which followed the establishment of the Spaniards in these rich countries.

Still there are in America some families, very few in number it is true, which can justly boast of this glorious origin. Most of these families live on the estates conceded to their ancestors -- they only marry among themselves, and only interfere against the grain in the political events of the day. With their eyes turned to the past, which is so full of great memories for them, they have kept up the old traditions of the chivalrous loyalty of the time of Charles V., which are forgotten everywhere else. They maintain the national honour unsullied, and those patriarchal virtues of the old time which they alone still practise with a proud and simple majesty.