inventions for
punishing these unhappy children of Nature. The dogs, perhaps, were
merciful, for they killed and ate a native on the spot. Cutting off the
ear and nose was an ordinary barbarity,--in its origin it was a way to
save time in collecting ornaments; shutting fifty or more into a house
and setting it in flames was a favorite method of extemporizing a
bonfire; pricking a crowd of insurgent natives over a precipice into the
sea was an exceptional act of mercy,--they would place one hand over
their eyes and take the plunge. It was a common sport to match
stout Indians with the hounds, and bet upon their wrestling. In the
pearl-fisheries, in rowing galleys, in agriculture, in the mines, in
carrying ship-timber, anchors, and pieces of ordnance, in transporting
produce, the Spaniards wasted the natives as if they were wind-and
water-power which Nature would supply without limit. How can this
ferocity be accounted for? It consulted neither interest nor personal
safety. They raged like men stung to madness by poisonous clouds of
insects; the future received no consideration; plans for improving the
methods of cultivating different crops, or for introducing new staples,
could not be carried out. Once having tasted native blood, like their
own dogs, the hunting mania possessed them, till two millions of
Haytians alone had perished. The population had become so reduced as
early as 1508 that they were obliged to organize great Indian chases on
the main-land, and a Coolie trade sprang up in the Lucayan Islands,
to keep the Haytian mines and plantations supplied with hands. Forty
thousand of these Lucayans were transported, on the assurance of the
Spaniards that they would be restored to the souls of their ancestry,
who had gone to reside in that Mountain-land of the West. Was there
a touch of grim Spanish humor in this inducement to emigrate? For
certainly the Lucayans did very soon rejoin those departed souls.

Wine and the climate maddened these unbridled Europeans. Avarice is a
calculating passion; but here were aimless and exhausting horrors, like
those which swarm in the drunkard's corrupted brain. What were vices at
home became transformed into manias here. The representatives of other
nations were not slow to imitate the example of the possessors of Hayti.
Venezuela was ceded to a company of Germans in 1526, whose object was
simply to strip the country of its treasures. Las Casas tries to believe
that the Spaniards