arquebus not to shoot him; he sure
their artillery is safe enough," said Yeo.

"Look at the proud villains," whispered another, "to make dumb beasts of
human creatures like that!"

"Ten shot," counted the business-like Amyas, "and ten pikes; Will can
tackle them up above."

Last of this troop came some inferior officer, also in his chair, who,
as he went slowly up the hill, with his face turned toward the gang
which followed, drew every other second the cigar from his lips, to
inspirit them with those pious ejaculations to the various objects of
his worship, divine, human, anatomic, wooden and textile, which earned
for the pious Spaniards of the sixteenth century the uncharitable
imputation of being at once the most fetish-ridden idolaters and the
most abominable swearers of all Europeans.

"The blasphemous dog!" said Yeo, fumbling at his bow-string, as if
he longed to send an arrow through him. But Amyas had hardly laid his
finger on the impatient veteran's arm, when another procession followed,
which made them forget all else.

A sad and hideous sight it was: yet one too common even then in those
remoter districts, where the humane edicts were disregarded which the
prayers of Dominican friars (to their everlasting honor be it spoken)
had wrung from the Spanish sovereigns, and which the legislation of that
most wise, virtuous, and heroic Inquisitor (paradoxical as the words may
seem), Pedro de la Gasca, had carried into effect in Peru,--futile and
tardy alleviations of cruelties and miseries unexampled in the
history of Christendom, or perhaps on earth, save in the conquests of
Sennacherib and Zingis Khan. But on the frontiers, where negroes were
imported to endure the toil which was found fatal to the Indian, and all
Indian tribes convicted (or suspected) of cannibalism were hunted down
for the salvation of their souls and the enslavement of their bodies,
such scenes as these were still too common; and, indeed, if we are to
judge from Humboldt's impartial account, were not very much amended even
at the close of the last century, in those much-boasted Jesuit missions
in which (as many of them as existed anywhere but on paper) military
tyranny was superadded to monastic, and the Gospel preached with fire
and sword, almost as shamelessly as by the first Conquistadores.

A line of Indians, Negroes, and Zambos, naked, emaciated, scarred with
whips and fetters, and chained together by their left wrists, toiled
upwar