common-sense after they had been de- 66 in losing Isabella the Indians had lost their best friend. Ferdinand granted the license to import the Lucayans, and we may be sure it was quickly enough acted on, though not, perhaps, in so decidedly missionary a spirit as, from the language of the application, we might have felt at liberty to expect. Mr. Helps well reminds us that San Salvador, the land first seen by Columbus, was one of these same Lucayan Islands, and we agree with him in thinking it peculiarly shocking, that, of all others, this should have been the spot on which was perpetrated the atrocity now to be recorded. "The first Spaniards who went to entrap these poor Lucayans, did it in a way that brings to mind the old proverb of 'seething a kid in its mother's milk-for they told the simple people that they had come from the heaven of their forefathers, where these forefathers, and all whom the Indians had loved in life, were now drinking in the delights of heavenly ease and the good Spaniards would convey the Lucayans to join their much-loved ancestors, who had gone thither. We may fancy how the more who felt this life to be somewhat dreary, crowdsimple amongst them, lone women and those ed round the ships which were to take them to the regions of the blest.* "This hideous pretense of the Spaniards did its work; but there were other devices, not mentioned to us, which were afterward adopted, and the end was, that in five years forty thousand of these deluded Lucayans were carried to Hispaniola."† But notwithstanding these successive attempts to recruit its numbers, the native population of Hispaniola continued to diminish. We confess to thinking the ut er ineptitude of the remedy almost as disgraceful as the remedy itself, or the conduct which had made it needful. There This began at length to tell visibly to the injury of the Spaniards. How should they repair it? By humanity, manage ment, thrift? Nay; that process would require time, and, yet more, it would require a complete revolution in their treatment of the natives. There was a shorter method ready to their hand. In 1507, they reported to King Ferdinand that the number of Indians in Hispaniola had materially decreased; that the Lucayan Islands, a group to the north of Cuba, were fall of Indians, and that it would be a very good action to bring them to Hispaniola in order that they might en joy the preaching and political customs which the Indians in Hispaniola enjoyed. Besides," it was added, "they might assist in getting gold, and the King be much out his doubts of these Spanish inducements, but *"I picture to myself some sad Indian, not withserved." The royal-hearted Isabella was willing to take the chance of regaining the loved no longer by her husband's side to tell past, and saying, like the King Arthur of a beautiful him what this information and these sug-modern poem to his friend Sir Belvidere upon the gestions really amounted to. She had died in November, 1504,* hastened to her grase by the tidings, received three or four months earlier, of the shocking treatment of Anacaona and her chiefs. And We saw her coffin a few summers ago, covered with silk velvet, well preserved in the marble mausoleum under the dome of the cathedral of Granada in Spain. It lies beside the coffins of Ferdinand, Philip and his queen, their children.-EDITOR ECLEC TIC. "I am going a long way With these thou seest if indeed I go- Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, ALFRED TENNYSON: Morte d'Arthu`, `i. 15 1861.] Το the profligate queen, have obtained treacherous possession of the eastern half of this same island of Hispaniola, now called Hayti. They have seized on Dominica, which includes Higuey and some other districts; they demand the whole, and are calling on the governments of Europe and America to admit the justice of their claim! is no language which could adequately | 1514, notwithstanding the importation of describe either the infatuation or the cri- the 40,000 Lucayans, the whole Indians minality of Spain. It was surely not by of the island did not exceed 14,000! To the descent of armed pirates on the inno- him who has ears to hear, these figures cent Lucayans that the evils of an organ- speak for themselves. Thus, at the end ized and ruthless destruction could be of the fifteenth and the beginning of the met and counteracted. A Bond-street sixteenth centuries, was it done by the gambler might as well attempt to repair Spaniards in Hispaniola; and in the sixtyhis shattered fortune by stopping car- first year of this nineteenth century, riages in Pall Mall, and presenting the descendants of these same Spaniards, like usual alternative of money or life. A city them in religion, like them in avarice and being decimated by the plague might as pride, but unlike them in being the subwell seek to recruit its numbers by send-jects of a decrepit government and a ing the press-gang into the surrounding country to crowd all the inhabitants into its already over-crowded streets. If the gambling highwayman is not shot on the spot, he has only deferred for a day or two a fate which will be aggravated by the crimes which have for the moment staved it off. The besotted city has done no more than gather victims to augment the virulence of the pestilence, and hasten its doom. What was needed by the was thorough reformation. gambler What was needed by the city was, fire, air, and water, rightly used-nature's own sanitary commissioners. What was needed by Hispaniola was a wise statesmanship, exercising power and affording protection. By such means, and by such means alone, could the devastation have been staid. How far that statesmanship was wanting; how far the plain admonitions of impending calamity led, or did not lead, to measures of prevention, may be gathered from the following figures. We have only to beg for them the attention they require, in order that the facts they denote may not be wholly unrecognized. In 1492, the year of its discovery, the population of Hispaniola is reckoned by Las Casas to have amounted to 3,000,000; by the Licentiate Zuazo it was reckoned at 1,130,000. For safety, we accept the lower estimate, 1,130,000. By 1508, the year in which the first Lucayans arrived, in the ordinary course of things, and allowing for all ordinary casualties, it would have amounted to at least 1,700,000. Inquiring for the fact, we find that it Thus, in adamounted to only 70,000! dition to putting aside the operation of those laws by which populations grow, there remain to be accounted for at the end of fifteen years' administration, 1,060,000 souls! In a very short time after this the Indians amounted to only 40,000. In A sufficient answer ought to be found in their scandalous maladministration in the past. We devoutly trust that their claim will be treated according to its merits-namely, rejected with indignation, as an insult to the understandings and the morality of civilized men.* But, returning to the early part of the sixteenth century, it is proper to remind our readers of what we have said on a previous page, on the comparative efficacy of the decisions of the Spanish Court at home and in the colonies. We do not, indeed, plead this in excuse, but only in palliation. We believe that, in strict justice, or in any thing within a hundred leagues of justice, the case admits of no excuse; for, at the period of which we write, Spain was neither harassed by foreign wars nor torn by intestine feuds. She had rest even from the Moors, Granada itself having been added to the Spanish crown. There was no longer a jealous nobility in possession of power so inordinate that, by the least skillful combination, the monarch could be thwarted, and his government crippled. There was no longer even the ancient disadvantage involved in the independence on each other of Castille and Arragon. And though it is true that somehow the royal treasurers contrived always to have the finances in an embarrassed condition, and that, except on *Since this article was written, it has given us much satisfaction to see that Lord Brougham has called the attention of the House of Peers to these proceedings, and that he took the same ground for his objections as is taken above. state occasions the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella was distinguished for the modesty and economy of its appearance, yet there can be no apology for the wretched mismanagement and blundering which made it needful to view the Spanish conquest in America as a sort of a royal, commercial, and religious speculation. In fact, also, the speculation was an extremely bad one-it did not bring adequate returns in money, in converts, or in national greatness. interview, that the matter should be touched upon again on the following Sunday. Antonio preached again, and not only touched on the topic, but gave avigorous specimen of the "free handling" of it. The large congregation had expected an apology and recantation; they were not only disappointed, but almost infuriated; as, indeed, knowing what were their opinions on the subject, and what were those of Father Antonio, we can not much wonder they should have been. The colonists felt it would be useless to attempt any further remonstrance at the monastery, and resolved to complain to the King. The controversy which followed was extremely interesting; but having no space to detail it, we will only say that it led to the bringing of the grievances of the Indians before the Court of Spain for the first time in a public manner, and that it gave occasion to the first attempt at legislation to remove such grievances. We have now given as full an account of the conquest and administration of Hispaniola as we can possibly find room for. It is fragmentary and imperfect, but it is still composed of fragments such as the intelligence of the reader may combine into a sufficiently just conception of the whole. But, after so much that is painful, it is with no small pleasure that our eyes rest on the whitening sails of the ships which, in 1510, made the port of St. Domingo with a company of Dominican monks. So far as we have been able to make out, the monks who sailed under Father Buil never did any thing at all. The Dominicans under Pedro de Córdova, their vicar, came in earnest. Their object was to spread civilization and Christianity. No sooner did they find themselves in the new country than they increased the severity of their already stringent rules, and amidst the general hardness of living, felt it right not only to go without the ordinary luxuries which to most of us are necessaries, but to content themselves with short supplies of the poorest food. The zeal with which they addressed themselves to their work soon informed them of a state of things which it had long been the interest of the colonists to conceal. They saw what they never would have been able to credit on any testimony but that of personal knowledge. They were horrified and struck dumb. But by and by the power of speech returned, and they relate effectually to repair. What are the solved to use it. After days of fasting and prayer, they determined on presenting an unanimous protest. A discourse which embodied the opinions of the college, some twelve or fifteen in all, was drawn up, and each man signed it. They then selected Brother Antonio Montesino to preach it on the Sunday following. A very innocent device led to the attendance of an unusually large and influential congregation. The colonists were at first dismayed at the sublime audacity of the preacher, and then they passed to indignation and wrath. A deputation of remonstrants appeared at the little hut of a monastery in the afternoon, and said some very strong things; in answer to which it was promised, at the end of a lengthy The Spanish administration had by this time had a fair trial. We have looked at its chief results at the end of twenty years of government. We think that what good it had effected, when the Dominicans' protest had produced the Law of Burgos, in 1512 was likely to remain ; and that the evil it had done it was too palpable and undeniable results?—that the native population of the island had all but perished; that the Spaniards themselves were most of them corrupted and degraded, and many of them almost imbruted; that the religion they had been so specially enjoined to teach had been openly betrayed; and that, besides having frequently to endure great sufferings from their own follies, the Spaniards were to Hispaniola itself every thing short of an absolute and unmitigated curse. We have said so much about one conquest and its administration-not indeed by inadvertence, but design-that at the other conquests and their administration we have scarcely time even to glance. It is proper, however, to mention a few of Soon after the conquest and settlement of Hispaniola, various expeditions sailed from it in quest of new adventures and new territory. Among them was one in 1494, under the command of Ojeda, the man who entrapped Caonabó. He discovered Venezuela and the Pearl Coast, including the island of Trinidad, and skirted the whole northern shore of South-America, from Cape de Vela in the west to the extremity of Surinam in the south-east. them, premising only that, with two ex-1 of his maladministration in Darien. After ceptions, the maxim holds to its fullest he was dead the monks marked their sense extent, Ex uno disce omnes. of his merits by calling him Furor Domini. Furor Diaboli would have been nearer the mark. His term of government can scarcely be called a long one; yet, not counting his judicial murders among his own countrymen, his implacable resentments, his barbarous warfare, and his flagrant misgovernment were the destruction of two millions of souls! Let our readers consider what such a statement really means. Not reckoning the few weeks by which his government exceeded its sixteenth year, it amounts to this: That every Sabbath-day succeeding the first, Pedrarias was entitled to declare, that since he last heard the bell which summoned him to worship God, he had slain more than two thousand four hundred of His creatures; that on every anniversary of his arrival in a most important colony, in which he exercised despotic power, he had dispatched into the presence of their Maker, during the twelve months preceding, one hundred and twenty-five thousand persons; that, in fact, the average effect he produced on the bills of mortality, (which were surely kept somewhere,) was equal to rather more than fourteen deaths per hour, night and day, for sixteen successive years. Another captain, named Nicuesa, taking Cape de Vela as a starting-point, and sailing west, discovered Darien and Panamá. Thus was another vast extent of country added to the overgrown empire of Spain. We have a right to inquire what she did with it? We can not enter further into facts and details, and are not disposed to take blame if we are, as we confess to be, weary and disgusted with details so barbarous, so brutal, so bloody. The needful particulars are at the service of any one who chooses to inquiresufficient of them in Mr. Helps's second volume, book ninth. But the conclusion on the facts we are unwilling to suppress. In the words of the author it is this: That the Spanish administration along the whole Pearl Coast, reviewed after the lapse of many years, was "A tissue of stupid enormities, reminding the reader of certain melancholy periods in the history of France and Italy, when all the worst passions of men were let loose for the smallest ends; and when intrigues, revolts, massacres, and murders followed one another without any man, or any set of men, being the better for such things even in this world. . . . Indeed, all along that immense line of coast which stretches from the mouths of the river Orinoco to the Isthmus of Panamá, it might be said of each respective Governor, in the language of Scripture, not taking it literally, perhaps, but adopting the spirit of the passage, that He wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord, and did worse than all that were before him.'” . Darien and Panamá fared no better. One Pedrarias de Avila, a hard old man, who had gained some notoriety as a jouster at tournaments, was sent thither from Spain, in 1513, at the head of a colony and with the rank of governor. To the great misfortune of mankind and to his own eternal infamy, he lived to the ninetieth year of his age, and the seventeenth The other principal possession of the Spaniards in the West-Indies was Cuba. It was discovered by Columbus in the course of his first voyage, though it was not effectively occupied till nineteen years later. The disposition of the natives had appeared no less pleasing than that of the Indians in Hispaniola. Some Spaniards who were accidentally thrown upon their coasts, unarmed and half-drowned, experienced from them, they said, nothing but kindness. They had shown every hospitable attention to the Admiral, and had been described by him as without knowing what evil is, neither very gentle, killing nor stealing." Their houses were found to be "very clean and well swept, and their furniture very well arranged. All their houses were made of palm branches, and were very beautiful. Our men found in these houses many statues of women, and several heads fashioned like masks, and very well wrought." In 1511 it was resolved to subdue Cuba, and Captain Diego Velazquez was ordered to subdue it accordingly. Some Indians who attempted to resist his invasion were immediately killed or routed, as, fighting | a few years the natives were almost exwith naked bodies and childish weapons tinct, and who had received the goveragainst well-armed and well-clad Europeans, they could not but be. Then commenced the usual hunting pastimes of the Spaniards. "They put to death as many men, women and children as they pleased, and the rest they tied together and drove before them like cattle." After great efforts, the Spaniards captured the sovereign Cacique. They considered he had been guilty of a great crime. He had presumed to attempt a defense of his subjects and his country. He was sentenced to be burned alive, and the sentence was executed. norship of the island in acknowledgment of the services thus rendered, began fitting out or otherwise promoting maritime expeditions for profit and discovery. The most important of these expeditions sailed in 1518. After considerable hesitation the command of it had been conferred on a young Spanish gentleman who had made himself studiously agreea ble to Velazquez, and who welcomed his appointment the more warmly as he was suffering inconvenience from poverty and debt. On the strength of it, our gallant young gentleman contracted addi"At the stake the attendant priest exhorted tional obligations, and went so far as to him to be baptized, and to become a Christian, set up a white plume in his hat. This as he would then go to heaven. The Cacique promotion of Cortes gave great offense to asked, in reply, if the Christians went to heaven; various persons who were not his friends, and finding that some of them were expected to do so, he said he had no wish to go to that and they gave the governor no rest till he place. More sarcasm has been supposed to be- had dispatched orders of recall. These long to this answer than it really contains; it orders met Cortes at the first place he was probably no more than the simple expres- touched at, but it appeared that the Govsion of a wish not to meet his enemies and per- ernor had reckoned without his host; secutors in a future life, whatever regions of Cortes declined being recalled. There bliss they might be enjoying."* were more orders at the next place, with such additional inducements as we can easily imagine a haughty and choleric viceking thus bearded would be apt to offer. They were answered with blank refusal, none of the authorities on shore being at all disposed to risk the consequence of attempting to put them in force. It had become clear that Cortes had a wonderful and confidence, though it was true withal power of inspiring men with attachment that he had bitter enemies, both in Cuba and in his fleet. But every man not purblind perceived that however much the plans of Cortes might be alloyed with ambition, they were by no means merely selfish; and that they were, in any case, the plans of a sagacious and bold commander, who had vast resources in himself, and who, having an object to attain, could contrive, and dare, and do, as is given only to the born kings of men. led his followers to the discovery, and afterward to the conquest of Mexico. Shortly after this a large number of Indians were massacred in cold blood, on no provocation and no pretext whatever, incredible as that may seem. After they had gone through long and horrible sufferings, and had been hunted by dogs trained for that purpose, they could bear up no longer: "The Indians then had recourse to suicide as a means of escape, for they believed in a future state of being, where ease and felicity, they thought, awaited them. Accordingly, they put themselves to death, whole families doing so together, and villages inviting other villages to join them in their departure from a world which was no longer tolerable to them. Some hanged themselves, others drank the poisonous juice of the Yuca." t We are not able to dwell at length on the maladministration of this part of the Spanish conquest, nor is it necessary to do so. It will suffice to say that in 1537 the Empress of Spain was informed that the Indians in Cuba had become very few, so few, indeed, that the visitor or visitors of twenty several estancias (settlements) found they did not contain an average of seven Indians each! In 1517, Captain Diego Velazquez, who had so successfully subdued Cuba that in *Vol. i. p. 450. + Vol. i. p. 475. He The story of the siege of Mexico forms one of those epics in which grandeur and sublimity attain their highest. It tells of perils, labors, wonders, disasters, victories, whose fascination is irresistible, and which have never been exceeded from the days of Assyria and Babylon and Troy, to the days of Delhi, Lucknow, and Pekin. When, after seventy-five days' siege, it |