a tale of wrath and revenge,
which in sober dreadful truth enacted itself upon this earth, and
remains among the eternal records of the doings of mankind upon it. As
some relief to its most terrible features, we follow it with a story
which has a touch in it of diabolical humour.

The slave-owners finding their slaves escaping thus unprosperously out
of their grasp, set themselves to find a remedy for so desperate a
disease, and were swift to avail themselves of any weakness, mental or
bodily, through which to retain them in life. One of these proprietors
being informed that a number of his people intended to kill themselves
on a certain day, at a particular spot, and knowing by experience that
they were too likely to do it, presented himself there at the time which
had been fixed upon, and telling the Indians when they arrived that he
knew their intention, and that it was vain for them to attempt to keep
anything a secret from him, he ended with saying, that he had come there
to kill himself with them; that as he had used them ill in this world,
he might use them worse in the next; 'with which he did dissuade them
presently from their purpose.' With what efficacy such believers in the
immortality of the soul were likely to recommend either their faith or
their God; rather, how terribly all the devotion and all the
earnestness with which the poor priests who followed in the wake of the
conquerors laboured to recommend it were shamed and paralysed, they
themselves too bitterly lament.

It was idle to send out governor after governor with orders to stay such
practices. They had but to arrive on the scene to become infected with
the same fever; or if any remnant of Castilian honour, or any faintest
echoes of the faith which they professed, still flickered in a few of
the best and noblest, they could but look on with folded hands in
ineffectual mourning; they could do nothing without soldiers, and the
soldiers were the worst offenders. Hispaniola became a desert; the gold
was in the mines, and there were no slaves left remaining to extract it.
One means which the Spaniards dared to employ to supply the vacancy,
brought about an incident which in its piteous pathos exceeds any story
we have ever heard. Crimes and criminals are swept away by time, nature
finds an antidote for their poison, and they and their ill consequences
alike are blotted out and perish. If we do not for give the villain, at
least we cease to hate him,