a Marta, on the sea-shore, on
December 17. His last words were: "The people send me to the tomb, but I
forgive them."

[Sidenote: Bolivar's career]

In Bolivar, South America lost the most fiery of her liberators. Born at
Caracas, in 1783, he was pre-eminently a child of the modern spirit
engendered by the French Revolution of 1792. He saw Spain in the days of
its quasi-medieval darkness, and was in Paris at the close of the great
revolution. Later he was a witness of Napoleon's coronation as King of
Italy, and saw for himself the benefits of republican institutions in North
America. The turning-point in his career was the loss of his young wife
after two years of domestic happiness. As he said himself: "I loved my wife
so much that at her death I made a vow never again to marry. I have kept my
oath. Perhaps, had I not lost her, my career would have been different. I
might not, then, have been General of the Liberators. My second visit to
Europe would never have been made. The ideas which I imbibed during my
travels would not have come to me, and the experience I have had, the study
of the world that I have made, and of men and things--all this, which has
so well served me, would never have been. Politics would never have
attracted me. But the death of my wife caused the love of my country to
burn in my heart, and I have followed the chariot of Mars rather than
Ceres' plow."

[Sidenote: Van Diemen's Land]

[Sidenote: Extermination of natives]

In the new English penal colony of Van Diemen's Land in Australia, the
Tasmania of latter days, the self-assertive and domineering traits of the
Anglo-Saxon race were no less apparent among the convicts than among the
few free settlers. A few years before this the colonists had proclaimed
themselves independent of New South Wales and established a separate
government. The Van Diemen's Land Company received a grant of twenty-five
thousand acres; white population increased; religious, educational and
commercial institutions were founded. The natives were all but
exterminated. During this year Governor Arthur made an extraordinary
attempt to settle the native problem. His idea was to catch all the
aborigines of the island and pen them up on the narrow neck of land known
as Tasman's Peninsula. Upward of three thousand five hundred white persons,
including three hundred soldiers, turned out for the exciting operation of
clearing Van Diemen's Land by means of a cordon across the is