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has been a pest, a plague equally unfortunate and prompt of diffusion." 1

1 "Justice and peace, tired of mortals by whom they were daily insulted, these celestial ones withdrew to a corner of North America; yes, to the village of Dominguello. This little hamlet, simple in appearance, unadorned by any meritricious works of art, but rich and charming from its site and the confluence of the Rio Grande and that of Las Vueltas, appeared to them worthy of their abode; and here I enjoyed the mild presence of these estimable but slighted powers. The circumstance which called forth this remark, I shall relate. While I was at supper, I sent for a topith, with whom I had entered into contract for horses. The knave had the address to cheat me of three piastres, without my noticing the fraud. The keeper of the cassa reale, however perceived it, and pointed it out to me: but the topith was out of sight. In the meantime, after the procession, while walking in the public square, I saw two Indians carrying each a staff six feet long, on which they rested both their hands. I paid at first but little attention to this incident, till at length I heard a cry repeated thrice in the Mexican language. In an instant my rogue of a guide presents himself out of breath running, and makes a number of bows to the men with the staffs, the distinctive marks of their office. The one was the Alcalde, the other his assessor. I saw them advancing towards me; I met them half way. In my presence, in a very deliberate manner, they interrogated the topith respecting the number of horses I had ordered, and the price he had asked. He confessed the sum with the exception of two reals. They next inquired of me how much I paid. I told them the exact sum. Turning to the topith, they asked him, if he had shewn me the table of fares, and on his confession that he had never mentioned it to me, the Alcalde very severely, though without the least symptom of passion, reprimanded him; first, for having exacted more than the prescribed ordinance; and secondly, for having stated the sum he had received, two reals less than it really was. While they were speaking, 1 minutely examined the countenances of these guileless officers. They exhibited not the least symptom of anger or arrogance. Immutable as the law; they judged and decided by its rule; and never did senator, counsellor, or judge, with all their sumptuous paraphranalia of office, in silk and ermined robes, in scarlet, or in black, in coronets, caps, or perriwigs; never, I say, did either look more august or majestic, than did, on this occasion, these poor tattered Indians." Mennonville, in Pink. Coll.

225

HAYTIANS.

ALTHOUGH the following notices of Hayti, whose history is that of all the Western Islands, cannot be said to augment the sum of historical and internal proof, which it is the object of this work to point out; it furnishes in that identity of suffering which at the same period marked the race wherever it existed, that kind of relative and subordinate evidence which cannot be withheld without impairing the homogenity of the piece. Nor are the coincidences which contribute to the unity of the eventful portraiture to be overlooked; for neither was it fortuitous that Columbus should have been not only of the same race, but of a royal lineage of that race, of whose territorial seclusion he was the discoverer; or that the same year had to record (in this discovery of his) an accession to the crown of Spain of one portion of his kindred: and the expulsion of six hundred thousand of another portion from the Spanish dominions. See Appendix.

"It is impossible," writes the late biographer of Columbus, "to refrain from dwelling on the picture given by the first discoverers of the state of manners in this eventful Island before the arrival of the white men. The people of Hayti existed in that state of primitive simplicity which some philosophers have fondly pictured as the most enviable on earth: surrounded by natural blessings without even the knowledge of artificial wants. Hospitality was with them a law of nature universally observed; there was

no need of being known to receive its succour ; every house was open to the stranger as his own." Charlevoix's History of St. Domingo.

Columbus was neither insensible to the virtue and happiness of the inhabitants of the Western Islands, nor reluctant in eulogising it; the inconsistency, therefore, between his conduct and those benevolent feelings to which he was naturally disposed, is to be attributed to that pernicious system of theology, with which he was blindly identified, and with the inebriating spirit of which he was deeply imbued.

1

Those who are acquainted with his early determination, stimulated as it was by the promptings of genius and those peculiar studies to which he devoted his attention, may, in some measure be enabled to account for the confidence with which he pledged himself, in an appeal to the avarice of the sovereign, to make rich returns to Spain in the event of the contemplated discovery of the Western Indies.

The position in which he stood:-alive as he was to those impressions of honour which chivalry had borrowed from the slumbering lion of his race; was that of one at once bound

"In his tender years he applied himself to the study of cosmography, astrology, and geometry, because those sciences are linked together; and because Ptolemy, at the beginning of his Cosmography, says, that no man can be a good cosmographer unless he be a painter too, therefore he learned to draw, in order to describe lands and set down bodies, planes, and rounds," &c.

To their Catholic majesties in the year 1501, he thus writes: "Most serene princes, I went to sea very young and have continued to this day; and this art inclines those that follow it to be desirous to discover the secrets of the world. It is now forty years since I have been sailing to all those parts at present frequented, and our Lord has been favourable to this my inclination, and I have received from Him the spirit of understanding," &c. "God hath given me a genius, and hands apt to draw this globe," &c. Filled with this desire, I come to your highnesses. All that heard of my undertaking rejected it with contempt and scorn," &c. Life of Chris. Colon, by his son, in Pinkerton's Collection.

2" Weep with me o'er the Lion the pride of our sires,
Who lighted all Spain with his beam-

While the west was illumin'd by the orient fires,
Which old chivalry borrowed from him."-Da Costa.

to redeem his pledge to Europe in that demonstration of which he had declared his nautical principles capable; and to the allied Sovereigns in realizing those "profits” which in their minds were identified with the term "Indies." But together with these motives there was the ambition of adding his name to those of an illustrious lineage. See Appendix.

These considerations may explain the solicitude with which Columbus sought to effect the objects of his enterprize; but for the methods which he took in the transfer of those fatal profits to the treasury of Spain, involving as these did, the practical inversion of the Law of God, a solution must be found in that sorcery, which by ecclesiastical "decrees," could convert crimes of the deepest moral turpitude into consecrated auxiliaries in promoting the views and maintaining the interests of the Church; and into meritorious "acts of the faith" in extending and enforcing her authority.

"Thou shalt not covet,"-" rob" "murder" could have been evaded by ingenuously torturing the words out of their integrity, or by stigmatising them as legal vestiges of that Law which the infallibility of the Church had superseded; but it was more expedient to grant absolution to these crimes, and constitute them at once commendable and holy, as means subserving the all-redeeming end of "compelling" the victims of these crimes "to come into that salvation" of which the Church was the administratrix, guardian, monopolist, and "fold."

Thus we find Columbus consoling himself with the available donation which out of this guiltily acquired gain he had devoted towards a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in order to aid in rescuing the holy sepulchre out of the hands of the comparatively God-honouring disciples of the false prophet. At other times we find him in the midst of storms at sea,

vowing to go barefoot' to one and another image and shrine of our lady,' under the 'strong delusion' that acts of will worship could supply the want of obedience; and that such penances' were not only advantageous as the means of obtaining pardon and reconciliation; but in procuring an indemnity for such meditated acts of transgression, as expediency might render equally indispensable in future.

In writing to the Castilian sovereigns, the Admiral thus characterizes the inhabitants of Hayti and Lucaya, &c. "I swear to your Majesties that there is not a better people in all the world than these-more affectionate or mild—they love their neighbour as themselves; their language is the sweetest and most cheerful, for they always speak smiling," Again he writes, "I have before protested to your Highnesses that the profits of the enterprise shall be employed in the conquest of Jerusalem, at which your Highnesses smiled, and said, "You had the same inclination." "He expressed his belief that a ton of gold would be collected against his return; and that the seamen would find the mines, &c. so that before three years the king and queen might undertake the recovery 2

1 On occasion of a violent storm in which the Pinta was parted and lost sight of during the night-on their return in a leaky state to Spain, the biographer states that "therefore betaking themselves to prayers and religious acts, those a-board cast lots which of them should go in pilgrimage (for the whole crew) to our Lady of Guadaloupe, which fell to the Admiral; afterwards they drew for another to go to Loretto, and the lot fell upon one Petre de Villa. They then cast lots for a third who was to watch a night at Saint Olive of Meguer; and the storm still increasing, they all made a vow to go barefoot, and in their shirts, at the first land they came to, to some church of our lady. On a subsequent storm on the same homeward passage, the tempest was so great that at midnight it split their sails; therefore, being in great danger, they made a vow to send one on pilgrimage to our lady de Cuita a Gueboa, whither he was to go barefoot and in his shirt. The lot fell again upon the Admiral, God thereby shewing that his offering was more acceptable than those of others."

2 "The Admiral had vowed that within seven years of his discovery, he would furnish himself with 50,000 foot, and 5000 horse, for this pious object."

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* "Columbus was fully imbued with the religion of the times, and might have sincerely believed that with the miseries of bondage, he introduced a panacea for all evils, in the faith which he taught." See Gordon's Hist.

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