uman beings fit for all that beauty, man is alone to blame; and
when we saw approach us, as the only priest of such a temple, a wild
brown man, who feeds his hogs on Moriche fruit and Mombin plums, and
whose only object was to sell us an ant-eater's skin, we thought to
ourselves--knowing the sad history of the West Indies--what might
this place have become, during the three hundred and fifty years
which have elapsed since Columbus first sailed round it, had men--
calling themselves Christian, calling themselves civilised--
possessed any tincture of real Christianity, of real civilisation?
What a race, of mingled Spaniard and Indian, might have grown up
throughout the West Indies. What a life, what a society, what an
art, what a science it might have developed ere now, equalling, even
surpassing, that of Ionia, Athens, and Sicily, till the famed isles
and coasts of Greece should have been almost forgotten in the new
fame of the isles and coasts of the Caribbean Sea.

What might not have happened, had men but tried to copy their Father
in heaven? What has happened is but too well known, since, in July
1498, Columbus, coming hither, fancied (and not so wrongly) that he
had come to the 'base of the Earthly Paradise.'

What might not have been made, with something of justice and mercy,
common sense and humanity, of these gentle Arawaks and Guaraons.
What was made of them, almost ere Columbus was dead, may be judged
from this one story, taken from Las Casas:--{155}

'There was a certain man named Juan Bono, who was employed by the
members of the Audiencia of St. Domingo to go and obtain Indians.
He and his men, to the number of fifty or sixty, landed on the
Island of Trinidad. Now the Indians of Trinidad were a mild,
loving, credulous race, the enemies of the Caribs, who ate human
flesh. On Juan Bono's landing, the Indians, armed with bows and
arrows, went to meet the Spaniards, and to ask them who they were,
and what they wanted. Juan Bono replied, that his crew were good
and peaceful people, who had come to live with the Indians; upon
which, as the commencement of good fellowship, the natives offered
to build houses for the Spaniards. The Spanish captain expressed a
wish to have one large house built. The accommodating Indians set
about building it. It was to be in the form of a bell, and to be
large enough for a hundred persons to live in. On any great
occasion it would hold m