ancestors—isles of elysian beauty and fertility; where all pain and death were unknown, and where their friends and relations, living in heavenly felicity, needed only their society to render that felicity perfect!—that these beatified relatives had prayed them to hasten and bring them to their own scene of enjoyment—now waited impatiently for their arrival—and that they were ready to convey them thither, to the fields of heaven, in fact, without the black transit of death! The simple creatures, hearing a story which chimed in so exactly with their fondest belief, flocked on board with a blind credulity, not even to be exceeded by the Bubble-dupes of modern England, and soon found themselves in the grasp of fiends, and added to the remaining numbers of the Hispaniolan wretches in the mines and plantations. Forty thousand of these poor people were decoyed by this hellish artifice; and Satan himself, on witnessing this Spanish chef d'ouvre, must have felt ashamed of his inferiority of tact in his own profession![1]
- ↑ How affecting is Peter Martyr's account of these poor Lucayans, thus fraudulently decoyed from their native countries. "Many of them, in the anguish of despair, obstinately refuse all manner of sustenance, and retiring to desert caves and unfrequented woods, silently give up the ghost. Others, repairing to the sea-coast on the northern side of Hispaniola, cast many a longing look towards that part of the ocean where they suppose their own islands to be situated; and as the sea-breeze rises, they eagerly inhale it—fondly believing that it has lately visited their own happy valleys, and comes fraught with the breath of those they love, their wives and their children. With this idea, they continue for hours on the coast, until nature becomes utterly exhausted, when, stretching out their arms towards the ocean, as if to take a last embrace of their distant country and relatives, they sink down and expire without a groan. . . . . . One of them, who was more desirous of life, or had greater courage than most of his
