rage. When they needed their aid to defend them from their enemies, out marched the natives under their Jesuit leaders, and fought for them; and the first act of the colonists, when the victory was won, was to seize on their benefactors and portion them out as slaves. The man-hunters broke into the villages and caried off numbers, having, in fact, depopulated the whole country besides. There is no species of kidnapping, no burnings of huts, no fomenting of wars between different tribes; no horror, in short, which has made the names of Christians so infamous for the last three hundred years in Africa that had not its parallel then in Brazil.
Besides, for more than a hundred years, Brazil was the constant scene of war and contention between the European powers terming themselves Christian. French, English, and Dutch, were in turn endeavouring to seize upon one part or other of it; and every description of rapine, bloodshed, and treachery which can disgrace nations pretending to any degree of civilization was going on before the eyes of the astonished natives. What notions of Christianity must the Indians have had, when these people called themselves Christians? They saw them assailing one another, fighting like madmen for what in reality belonged to none of them; burning towns, destroying sugar plantations; massacring all, native or colonist, that fell into their hands, or seizing them for slaves. They saw bishops contending with governors, priests contending with one another; they saw their beautiful country desolated from end to end (down to 1664), and every thing which is sacred to heaven or honourable or valuable to men, treated with contempt.
