ill in this world, he might use
them worse in the next; "with which he did dissuade
them presently from their purpose." With what efficacy
such believers in the immortality of the soul were likely
to recommend either their faith or their God; rather,
how terribly all the devotion and all the earnestness
with which the poor priests who followed in the wake
of the conquerors laboured to recommend it were
shamed and paralyzed, they themselves too bitterly
lament. It was idle to send out governor after governor
with orders to stay such practices. They had but to
arrive on the scenes to become infected with the same
fever, or if any remnant of Castilian honour, or any
faintest echoes of the faith which they professed, still
flickered in a few of the best and noblest, they could
but look on with folded hands in ineffectual mourning;
they could do nothing without soldiers, and the soldiers
were the worst offenders. Hispaniola became a mere
desert; the gold was in the mines, and there were no
poor slaves left remaining to extract it. One means
which the Spaniards dared to employ to supply the
vacancy, brought about an incident which in its piteous
pathos exceeds any story we have ever heard. Crimes
and criminals are swept away by time, nature finds an
antidote for their poison, and they and their ill
consequences alike are blotted out and perish. If we do
not forgive them, at least we cease to hate them, as it
grows more clear to us that they injured none so deeply
as themselves. But the Theriodes kakia, the enormous
wickedness by which humanity itself has been outraged
and disgraced, we cannot forgive, we cannot cease to
hate that; the years roll away, but the tints of it remain
on the pages of history, deep and horrible as the day
on which they were entered there.

"When the Spaniards understood the simple opinion
of the Yucaian islanders concerning the souls of their
departed, which, after their sins purged in the cold northern
mountains should pass into the south, to the intent that,
leaving their own country of their own accord, they might
suffer themselves to be brought to Hispaniola, they did
persuade those poor wretches, that they came from those
places where they should see their parents and children,
and all their kindred and friends that were dead, and
should enjoy all kinds of delights with the embracements
and fruition of all beloved beings. And they, being infected
and possessed with these crafty and sub