o Spanish cruelty in America at forty millions. This wild
estimate has been often quoted. Mr. Wilson, instead of "vindicating" it,
as he was bound to do, triumphantly refutes it. "There never probably
existed," he most justly remarks, "more than forty millions of savage
races at one time on our globe."

It is not merely the arithmetic of his authorities that Mr. Wilson
undertakes to rectify. When they describe a pitched battle, he asserts
that it was a mere skirmish. When they speak of a large town, he tells
us it was a rude hamlet. When they portray the magnificence of the city
of Mexico, he says that they are "painting wild _figments_"--whatever
that may mean,--and that Montezuma's capital was a mere collection of
huts. Cortes tells us, that, in his retreat, he lost a great portion
of his treasure. Mr. Wilson writes, "The _Conquistador_ was too good a
soldier to hazard his gold; it was _therefore_, in the advance, and came
safely off." Cortes states, that, in a certain battle, he retired from
the front in order to make a new disposition of his rear. Mr. Wilson
replies, that Cortes did _not_ go to the rear, because, though his
presence was greatly needed there, the press must have been too great to
allow of his reaching it. The presents which Cortes, while at Vera Cruz,
received from Montezuma, he transmitted to the Emperor Charles the
Fifth, sending, at the same time, an inventory of the articles, among
which was "a large wheel of gold, with figures of strange animals on it,
and worked with tufts of leaves,--weighing three thousand eight hundred
ounces." The original inventory is still in existence. We have the
evidence of persons who were then at the imperial court of the reception
of these presents, of the sensation which they produced, and of the
ideas which they suggested in regard to the wealth and civilization
of the New World; and we have minute descriptions of the different
articles, including the wheel of gold, from persons who saw them at
Seville and at Valladolid. Mr. Wilson,--without making the least
allusion to this testimony, which we cannot help regarding as of the
strongest possible kind, intimates that the presents were of very little
value,--represents the workmanship, which excited the admiration of the
best European artificers, as a mere specimen of "savage ingenuity,"--and
as for the wheel of gold, tells us that it "never existed but in the
fertile fancy of Cortez."

In general, Mr. Wilson conten