This then is the result of three centuries of bloodshed and tyranny in those regions—one species of barbarism merely substituted for another. What a different scene to that which the same countries would now have exhibited, had the Jesuits not been violently expelled from their work of civilization by the lust of gold and despotism. "When we compare," says Captain Head, "the relative size of America with the rest of the world, it is singular to reflect on the history of these fellow-creatures, who are the aborigines of the land; and after viewing the wealth and beauty of so interesting a country, it is painful to consider what the sufferings of the Indians have been, and still may be. Whatever may be their physical or natural character[1] . . . still they are the human beings placed there by the Almighty; the country belonged to them; and they are therefore entitled to the regard of every man who has religion enough to believe that God has made nothing in vain, or whose mind is just enough to respect the persons and the rights of his fellow-creatures."
The view I have been enabled in my space to take of the treatment of the South Americans by their invaders, is necessarily a mere glance,—for, unfor-
- ↑ "I sincerely believe they are as fine a set of men as ever existed, under the circumstances in which they are placed. In the mines I have seen them using tools which our miners declared they had not strength to work with, and carrying burdens which no man in England could support; and I appeal to those travellers who have been carried over the snow on their backs, whether they were able to have returned the compliment; and if not, what can be more grotesque than the figure of a civilized man riding upon the shoulders of a fellow-creature whose physical strength he has ventured to despise?"
Head's Rough Notes, p. 112.