nce of
gold apiece for passing them, and his subordinates their respective
rights, who shall get them out again, or even find them?

This idea struck us as we sat looking at the Indians hard at work,
loading and unloading; and finding an intelligent Spaniard, we fell to
talking with him. Indians had been carried off to Cuba, he said, but
very few, none since 1854, when two Englishmen came to the coast with a
schooner on pretence of trading, and succeeded in getting clear off
with a cargo of seventy-two natives on board. But being caught in a
heavy gale of wind, they put in for safety--of all places in the
world--into the British part of Belize. There some one found out what
their cargo consisted of, the vessel was seized, the Indians sent back,
and the two adventurers condemned to hard labour, one for four years,
the other for two and a half. In a place where the fatigue and exposure
of drill and mounting guard is death to a European soldier, this was
most likely a way of inflicting capital punishment, slow, but pretty
sure.[2]

When the Spaniards came to these countries, as soon as they had leisure
to ask themselves what could be the origin of the people they found
there, the answer came at once, "the lost tribes of Israel," of course.
And as we looked at these grave taciturn men, with their brown
complexions, bright eyes, and strikingly aquiline noses, it did not
seem strange that this belief should have been generally held,
considering the state of knowledge on such matters in those days. We
English found the ten tribes in the Red men of the north; Jews have
written books in Hebrew for their own people, to make known to them
that the rest of their race had been found in the mountains of Chili,
retaining unmistakable traces of their origin and conversing fluently
in Hebrew; and but lately they turned up, collected together and
converted to Christianity, on the shores of the Caspian. The last two
theories have their supporters at the present day. Crude as most of
these ideas are, one feels a good deal of interest in the first inquiry
that set men thinking seriously about the origin of races, and laid the
foundation of the science of ethnology.

Our return on board was a long affair, for there was a stiff breeze,
almost in our teeth; and our unwieldy craft was obliged to make tack
after tack before we could reach the steamer. Great Portuguese
men-of-war were floating about, waiting for prey; and we passed through
pa