en, who were ganged and
chained to a labour in the mines which was only to cease
with their lives, in a land where but a little before they
had lived a free contented people, more innocent of
crime than perhaps any people upon earth. If we can
conceive what our own feelings would be, if, in the
"development of the mammalia" some baser but more
powerful race than man were to appear upon this planet,
and we and our wives and children at our own happy
firesides were degraded from our freedom, and became
to them what the lower animals are to us, we can
perhaps realize the feelings of the enslaved nations of
Hispaniola.

As a harsh justification of slavery, it is sometimes
urged, that men who do not deserve to be slaves will
prefer death to the endurance of it; and that if they
prize their liberty, it is always in their power to assert
it in the old Roman fashion. Tried even by so hard a
rule, the Indians vindicated their right, and before
the close of the sixteenth century, the entire group of
the Western Islands in the hands of the Spaniards,
containing, when Columbus discovered them, many
millions of inhabitants, were left literally desolate from
suicide. Of the anecdotes of this terrible self-immolation,
as they were then known in England, here are a
few out of many.

The first is simple, and a specimen of the ordinary
method. A Yucaian cacique, who was forced with his
old subjects to labour in the mines, at last "calling
those miners into an house, to the number of ninety-
five, he thus debateth with them:"--

"'My worthy companions and friends, why desire we to
live any longer under so cruel a servitude? Let us now go
unto the perpetual seat of our ancestors, for we shall there
have rest from these intolerable cares and grievances which
we endure under the subjection of the unthankful. Go ye
before, I will presently follow you.' Having so spoken, he
held out whole handfuls of those leaves which take away life,
prepared for the purpose, and giving every one part thereof,
being kindled to suck up the fume; who obeyed his command,
the king and his chief kinsmen reserving the last
place for themselves."

We speak of the crime of suicide, but few persons
will see a crime in this sad and stately leave-taking of
a life which it was no longer possible to bear with
unbroken hearts. We do not envy the Indian, who,
with Spaniards before him as an evidence of the fruits
which their creed brought forth, deliberately e