CHAPTER III.

THE PINE-TREE.

While we were not tickling frogs, we were talking lumber with the

Umbagog damster. I had already coasted Maine, piloted by Iglesias, and

knew the fisherman-life; now, under the same experienced guidance, I

was to study inland scenes, and take lumbermen for my heroes.

Maine has two classes of warriors among its sons,--fighters of forest

and fighters of sea. Braves must join one or the other army. The two

are close allies. Only by the aid of the woodmen can the watermen

build their engines of victory. The seamen in return purvey the

needful luxuries for lumber-camps. Foresters float down timber that

seamen may build snips and go to the saccharine islands of the South

for molasses: for without molasses no lumberman could be happy in the

unsweetened wilderness. Pork lubricates his joints; molasses gives

tenacity to his muscles.

Lumbering develops such men as Pindar saw when he pictured Jason, his

forest hero. Life is a hearty and vigorous movement to them, not a

drooping slouch. Summer is their season of preparation; winter, of

the campaign; spring, of victory. All over the north of the State,

whatever is not lake or river is forest. In summer, the Viewer, like

a military engineer, marks out the region, and the spots of future

attack. He views the woods; and wherever a monarch tree crowns the

leafy level, he finds his way, and blazes a path. Not all trees are

worthy of the axe. Miles of lesser timber remain untouched. A Maine

forest after a lumber-campaign is like France after a _coup

d'état:_ the _bourgeoisie_ are prosperous as ever, but the

great men are all gone.

While the viewer views, his followers are on commissariat and

quartermaster's service. They are bringing up their provisions and

fortifying their camp. They build their log-station, pile up barrels

of pork, beans, and molasses, like mortars and Paixhans in an arsenal,

and are ready for a winter of stout toil and solid jollity.

Stout is the toil, and the life seemingly dreary, to those who cower

by ingle-nooks or stand over registers. But there is stirring

excitement in this bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires

vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men who wield axes and breathe

hard have lungs. Blood aërated by the air that sings through the

pine-woods tingles in every fibre. Tingling blood makes life

joyous. Joy can hardly look without a smile or speak without a

laugh. And merry is the evergreen-wood in electric winter.

Snows fall level in the sheltered, still forest. Road-making is

practicable. The region is already channelled with watery ways. An

imperial pine, with its myriads of feet of future lumber, is worth

another path cut through the bush to the frozen riverside. Down goes

his Majesty Pinus I., three half-centuries old, having reigned fifty

years high above all his race. A little fellow with a little weapon

has dethroned the quiet old king. Pinus I was very strong at bottom,

but the little revolutionist was stronger at top. Brains without much

trouble had their will of stolid matter. The tree fallen, its branches

are lopped, its purple trunk is shortened into lengths. The teamster

arrives with oxen in full steam, and rimy with frozen breath about

their indignant nostrils. As he comes and goes, he talks to his team

for company; his conversation is monotonous as the talk of lovers, but

it has a cheerful ring through the solitude. The logs are chained and

dragged creaking along over the snow to the river-side. There the

subdivisions of Pinus the Great become a basis for a mighty

snow-mound. But the mild March winds blow from seaward. Spring

bourgeons. One day the ice has gone. The river flows visible; and now

that its days of higher beauty and grace have come, it climbs high up

its banks to show that it is ready for new usefulness. It would be

dreary for the great logs to see new verdure springing all around

them, while they lay idly rotting or sprouting with uncouth funguses,

not unsuspect of poison. But they will not be wasted. Lumbermen, foes

to idleness and inutility, swarm again about their winter's

trophies. They imprint certain cabalistic tokens of ownership on the

logs,--crosses, xs, stars, crescents, alphabetical letters,--marks

respected all along the rivers and lakes down to the boom where the

sticks are garnered for market. The marked logs are tumbled into the

brimming stream, and so ends their forest-life.

Now comes "the great spring drive." Maine waters in spring flow under

an illimitable raft. Every camp contributes its myriads of brown

cylinders to the millions that go bobbing down rivers with

jaw-breaking names. And when the river broadens to a lake, where these

impetuous voyagers might be stranded or miss their way and linger,

they are herded into vast rafts, and towed down by boats, or by

steam-tugs, if the lake is large as Moosehead. At the lake-foot the

rafts break up and the logs travel again dispersedly down stream, or

through the "thoro'fare" connecting the members of a chain of

lakes. The hero of this epoch is the Head-Driver. The head-driver of a

timber-drive leads a disorderly army, that will not obey the word of

command. Every log acts as an individual, according to certain

imperious laws of matter, and every log is therefore at loggerheads

with every other log. The marshal must be in the thick of the fight,

keeping his forces well in hand, hurrying stragglers, thrusting off

the stranded, leading his phalanxes wisely round curves and angles,

lest they be jammed and fill the river with a solid mass. As the great

sticks come dashing along, turning porpoise-like somersets or leaping

up twice their length in the air, he must be everywhere, livelier than

a monkey in a mimosa, a wonder of acrobatic agility in biggest

boots. _He_ made the proverb, "As easy as falling off a log."

Hardly less important is the Damster. To him it falls to conserve the

waters at a proper level. At his dam, generally below a lake, the logs

collect and lie crowded. The river, with its obstacles of rock and

rapid, would anticipate wreck for these timbers of future

ships. Therefore, when the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver

is armed with his jackboots and his iron-pointed sceptre, the damster

opens his sluices and lets another river flow through atop of the

rock-shattered river below. The logs of each proprietor, detected by

their marks, pay toll as they pass the gates and rush bumptiously down

the flood.

Far down, at some water-power nearest the reach of tide, a boom checks

the march of this formidable body. The owners step forward and claim

their slicks. Dowse takes all marked with three crosses and a

dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two crescents and a star. Rowse

pokes about for his stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip.

Nobody has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The tale is complete. The

logs go to the saw-mill. Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen

junket. So ends the log-book.

"Maine," said our host, the Damster of Umbagog, "was made for

lumbering-work. We never could have got the trees out, without these

lakes and dams."

[To be continued.]

TO WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM,

AFTER SEEING TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIM.

The trumpet, now on every gale,

For triumph or in funeral-wail,

One lesson bloweth loud and clear

Above war's clangor to my ear.

The blood that flows in bounding veins,

The blood that ebbs with lingering pains,

Springs living from the self-same heart:

Courage and patience act one part.

Doers and sufferers of God's will

Tread in each other's footprints still;

Soldier or saint hath equal mind,

When vows of truth the spirit bind.

Two portraits light my chamber-wall,

Hero and martyr to recall;

Lines of a single face they keep,

To make beholders glow or weep.

With gleaming hilt, girt for the fray

Freedom demands, he cannot stay:

Forward his motion, keen his glance:

'Tis victory painted in a trance.

But, lo! he turns, he folds his hands;

With farther, softening gaze he stands;

His sword is hidden from his eyes;

His head is bent for sacrifice.

Through looks that match each varied thought

Of holy work or offering brought,

Upon the sunbeam's shifting scroll

Shines out alike the steady soul.

Young leader! quick to win a name

Coeval with thy country's fame,

For either fortune thou wast born,--

The crown of laurel or of thorn.

THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO.

CHAPTER III.

CARIB SLAVES--INTRODUCTION OF NEGROES--LAS CASAS--DECAY OF SAN

DOMINGO.

Among the natives captured by the Spaniards in the neighboring islands

and upon the Terra Firma, as the South-American coast was

called,--were numerous representatives of Carib tribes, who had been

released by Papal dispensation from the difficulties and anxieties of

freedom in consequence of their reputation for cannibalism. This

vicious taste was held to absolve the Spaniards from all the

considerations of policy and mercy which the Dominicans pressed upon

them in the case of the more graceful and amiable Haitians. But we do

not find that Las Casas himself made any exception of them in his

pleadings for the Indians;[1] for, though he does not mention

cannibalism in the list of imputed crimes which the Spaniards held as

justification in making war upon the natives to enslave them, he

vindicates them from other charges, such as that of sacrificing

infants to their idols. The Spaniards were touched with compassion at

seeing so many innocent beings perish before arriving at years of

discretion, and without having received baptism. They argued that such

a practice, which was worse than a crime, because it was a theological

blunder, could not be carried on in a state of slavery. "This style

of reasoning," says Las Casas, "proves absolutely nothing; for God

knows better than men what ought to be the future destiny of children

who die in the immense countries where the Christian religion is

unknown. His mercy is infinitely greater than the collective charity

of mankind; and in the interim He permits things to follow their

ordinary course, without charging anybody to interfere and prevent

their consequences by means of war."[2]

The first possessors of Hayti were startled at the multitude of human

bones which were found in some of the caverns of the island, for they

were considered as confirming the reports of cannibalism which had

reached them. These ossuaries were accidental; perhaps natives seeking

shelter from the hurricane or earthquake were overwhelmed in these

retreats, or blocked up and left to perish. We have no reason to

believe that the caves had been used for centuries. And even the

Caribs did not keep the bones which they picked, to rise up in

judgment against them at last, clattering indictments of the number of

their feasts. Nor do they seem to have shared the taste of the old

Scandinavian and the modern Georgian or Alabamian, who have been known

to turn drinking-cups and carve ornaments out of the skeletons of

their enemies.

But they liked the taste of human flesh. The difference between them

and the Spaniard was merely that the latter devoured men's flesh in

the shape of cotton, sugar, gold. And the native discrimination was

not altogether unpraiseworthy, if the later French missionaries can be

exonerated from national prejudice, when they declare that the Caribs

said Spaniards were meagre and indigestible, while a Frenchman made a

succulent and peptic meal. But if he was a person of a religious

habit, priest or monk, woe to the incautious Carib who might dine upon

him! a mistake in the article of mushrooms were not more fatal. Du

Tertre relates that a French priest was killed and smoke-dried by the

Caribs, and then devoured with satisfaction. But many who dined upon

the unfortunate man, whom the Church had ordained to feed her sheep

less literally, died suddenly: others were afflicted with

extraordinary diseases. Afterwards they avoided Christians as an

article of food, being content with slaying them as often as possible,

but leaving them untouched.

The Caribs were very impracticable in a state of slavery. Their

stubborn and rigid nature could not become accommodated to a routine

of labor. They fled to the mountains, and began marooning;[3] but they

carried with them the scar of the hot iron upon the thigh, which

labelled them as natives in a state of war, and therefore reclaimable

as slaves. The Dominicans made a vain attempt to limit this branding

to the few genuine Caribs who were reduced to slavery; but the custom

was universal of marking Indians to compel them to pass for Caribs,

after which they were sold and transferred with avidity, the

authorities having no power to enforce the legal discrimination. The

very existence of this custom offered a premium to cruelty, by

furnishing the colonists with a technical permission to enslave.

But the supply could not keep up with the insatiable demand. The great

expeditions which were organized to sweep the Terra Firma and the

adjacent islands of their population found the warlike Caribs

difficult to procure.[4] The supply of laborers was failing just at

the period when the colonists began to see that the gold of Hayti was

scattered broadcast through her fertile soil, which became transmuted

into crops at the touch of the spade and hoe. Plantations of cacao,

ginger, cotton, indigo, and tobacco were established; and in 1506 the

sugar-cane, which was not indigenous, as some have affirmed, was

introduced from the Canaries. Vellosa, a physician in the town of San

Domingo, was the first to cultivate it on a large scale, and to

express the juice by means of the cylinder-mill, which he invented.[5]

The Government, seeing the advantages to be derived from this single

article, offered to lend five hundred gold piastres to every colonist

who would fit up a sugar-plantation. Thus stimulated, the cultivation

of the cane throve so, that as early as 1518 the island possessed

forty sugar-works with mills worked by horse-power or water. But the

plantations were less merciful to the Indians than the mines, and in

1503 there began to be a scarcity of human labor.

At this date we first hear that negroes had been introduced into the

colony. But their introduction into Spain and Europe took place early

in the fifteenth century. "Ortiz de Zuñigo, as Humboldt reports, with

his usual exactness, says distinctly that 'blacks had been already

brought to Seville in the reign of Henry III of Castile,' consequently

before 1406. 'The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western

coast of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer at least forty-five

years before the epoch at which Don Henry the Navigator commenced his

series of discoveries beyond Cape Nun.'"[6]

But the practice of buying and selling slaves in Europe can be traced

as far back as the tenth century, when fairs were established in all

the great cities. Prisoners of war, representing different nations at

different times, according to the direction which the love of piracy

and conquest took, were exposed at those great periodical sales of

merchandise to the buyers who flocked from every land. The Northern

cities around the Baltic have the distinction of displaying these

human goods quite as early as Venice or any commercial centre of the

South: the municipal privileges and freedom of those famous cities

were thus nourished partly by a traffic in mankind, for whose sake

privilege and right are alone worth having. Seven thousand Danish

slaves were exposed at one fair held in the city of Mecklenburg at the

end of the twelfth century. They had the liberty of being ransomed,

but only distinguished captives could be saved in that way from being

sold. The price ranged from one to three marks. It is difficult to

tell from this how valuable a man was considered, for the relation of

the mark to other merchandise, or, in other words, the value of the

currency, cannot be represented by modern sums, which are only

technically equivalent,--as a mark, for instance, was then held equal

to eight ounces of silver.[7] That was not exorbitant, however, for

those times, and shows that men were frequently exposed for sale. The

merchants of Bristol used to sell a great many captives into Ireland;

but it is recorded that the Irish were the first Christian people who

agreed at length to put a stop to this traffic by refusing to have any

more captives brought into their country. The Church had long before

forbidden it; and there are no grounds for supposing that any other

motive than humanity induced the Irish people to show this superiority

to the conventions of the age.[8]

From the essay by Schoelcher, entitled "The Slave-Trade and its

Origin," which has been prepared with considerable research, we gather

that the first negroes seen in Portugal were carried there in

1441. Antonio Gonzales was the name of the man who first excited his

countrymen by offering for sale this human booty which he had

seized. All classes of people felt a mania like that which turns the

tides of emigration to Australia and California. Nothing was desired

but the means of equipping vessels for the coast of Guinea. Previously

to this a few Guanches from the Canaries had been exposed for sale in

the markets of Lisbon and Seville, and there were many Moorish slaves

in Spain, taken in the wars which preceded the expulsion of that

nation. But now there was a rapid accumulation of this species of

property, fed by the inexhaustible soil of Africa, whence so many

millions of men have been reaped and ploughed into the soils of other

lands.

In 1443, an expedition of six caravels, commanded by a gentleman of

the Portuguese court, went down the coast on one of these ventures,

ostensibly geographical, but really mercenary, which then excited the

popular enterprise. It managed to attack some island and to make a

great number of prisoners. The same year a citizen of Lisbon fitted

out a vessel at his own expense, went beyond the Senegal, where he

seized a great many natives, discovered Cape Verde, and was driven

back to Lisbon by a storm.

Prince Henry built the fort of Mina upon the Gold Coast, and made it a

depot for articles of Spanish use, which he bartered for slaves. He

introduced there, and upon the island of Arguin, near Cape Blanco, the

cultivation of corn and sugar; the whole coast was formally occupied

by the Portuguese, whose king took the title of Lord of Guinea. Sugar

went successively to Spain, Madeira, the Azores, and the West Indies,

in the company of negro slaves. It was carried to Hayti just as the

colonists discovered that negroes were unfit for mining. Charlevoix

says that the magnificent palaces of Madrid and Toledo, the work of

Charles V., were entirely built by the revenue from the entry-tax on

sugar from Hayti.

At first, all prisoners taken in war, or in attacks deliberately made

to bring on fighting, were sold, whatever their nation or color. This

was due to the Catholic theory that all unbaptized people were

infidels. But gradually the same religious influence, moved by some

scruples of humanity, made a distinction between negroes and all other

people, allowing only the former to become objects of traffic, because

they were black as well as heathen. Thus early did physiology come to

the aid of religion, notifying the Church of certain physical

peculiarities which seemed to be the trade-marks of the Creator, and

perpetual guaranties, like the color of woods, the odor of gums, the

breadth and bone of draught-cattle, of their availability for the

market. What renown has graced the names of Portuguese adventurers,

and how illustrious does this epoch of the little country's life

appear in history! Rivers, bays, and stormy headlands, long reaches of

gold coast and ivory coast, and countries of palm-oil, and strange

interiors stocked with new forms of existence, and the great route to

India itself, became the charter to a brilliant fame of this mercenary

heroism. Man went as far as he was impelled to go. While the stimulus

continued, and the outlay was more than equalled by the income and the

glory, unexplored regions yielded up their secrets, and the Continent

of Africa was established by this insignificant nation to be for

centuries the vast slave-nursery of the world.

When the habit of selling men began to be restricted to the selling of

negroes, companies were formed to organize this business and to have

it carried on with economy. The Portuguese had a monopoly of the trade

for a long time. They went up and down the African coast, picking

quarrels with the natives when the latter did not quarrel enough among

themselves to create a suitable supply of captives. Slaves were in

great demand in Spain, and quite numerous at Seville. The percentage

which the Portuguese exacted induced the Spaniards at length to enter

into the traffic, which they did, according to Zuñigo, in 1474.

At that time negroes were confined, like Jews, to a particular quarter

of a Spanish city. They had their places of worship, their own

regulations and police. "A _Cédula_ [order] of November 8, 1474,

appoints a negro named Juan de Valladolid mayoral of the blacks and

mulattoes, free and slaves, in Seville. He had authority to decide in

quarrels and regular processes of law, and also to legalize marriages,

because, says the _Cédula_, 'it is within our knowledge that you

are acquainted with the laws and ordinances.' He became so famous that

people called him _El Conde Negro_, The Black Count, and his name

was bestowed upon one of the streets of the negro quarter."

Thus men were born in Europe into a condition of slavery before

1500. In that year the introduction of negroes into Hayti was

authorized, provided they were born in Spain in the houses of

Christian masters. Negroes who had been bred in Morisco[9] families

were not allowed to be carried thither, from a well-grounded fear that

the Moorish hatred had sunk too deeply into a kindred blood.

A great many slaves were immediately transported to Hayti; for in

1503, "Ovando, the Governor-General of the Indies, who had received

the instructions of 1500, asked the court 'not to send any more

negroes to Española, because they often escaped to the Indians, taught

them bad habits, and could never be retaken.'"

Schoelcher seems to think that these first slaves were so difficult to

manage because they had been reared in a civilized country; and he

notices that Cardinal Ximenes, who was well acquainted with the

Spanish negro, constantly refused to authorize a direct slave-trade

with Hayti, because it would introduce into the colony so many

enterprising and prolific people, who would revolt when they became

too numerous, and bring the Spaniards themselves under the yoke. This

was an early presentiment of the fortune of Hayti, but it was not

justly derived from an acquaintance with the Spanish-bred negro alone;

for the negroes who were afterwards transported to the colony directly

from Africa had the same unaccommodating temper, which frequently

disconcerted the Cardinal's theory that an African should be born and

bred in a Christian city to render him unfit for slavery. This

unclerical native prejudice against working for white men is so

universal, and has been so consistently maintained for three hundred

years, as to present a queer contradiction to those divine marks which

set him apart for that condition. The Cardinal attributed, in fact, to

intercourse with the spirit of his countrymen that disposition of the

negro which seems to be derived from intercourse with the spirit of

his Creator.

No sooner did the negro enter the climate of Hayti, and feel that more

truculent and desolating one of the Spanish temper, than he began to

revolt, to take to the mountains, to defend his life, to organize

leagues with Caribs and other natives. The colonists were often slain

in conflicts with them. The first negro insurrection in Hayti occurred

in November, 1522. It began with twenty Jolof negroes belonging to

Diego Columbus; others joined them; they slew and burned as they went,

took negroes and Indians along with them, robbed the houses, and were

falling back upon the mountains with the intent to hold them

permanently against the colony. Oviedo is enthusiastic over the action

of two Spanish cavaliers, who charged the blacks lance in rest, went

through them several times with a handful of followers, and broke up

their menacing attitude. They were then easily hunted down, and in six

or seven days most of them were hanging to the trees as warnings. The

rest delivered themselves up. In 1551, Charles V. forbade negroes,

both free and slave, from carrying any kind of weapon. It was

necessary subsequently to renew this ordinance, because the slaves

continued to be as dexterous with the _machete_ or the sabre as

with the hoe.

Humboldt and others have alluded to a striking prediction made by

Girolamo Benzoni, an Italian traveller who visited the islands and

Terra Firma early in the sixteenth century, and witnessed the

condition and temper of the blacks. It is of the clearest kind. He

says,[10] after speaking of marooning in Hayti,--_"Vi sono molti

Spagnuoli che tengono per cosa certa che quest' Isola in breve tempo

sarà posseduta da questi Mori. Et per tanto gli governatori tengono

grandissima vigilanza"_ etc.: "There are many Spaniards who hold it

for certain that in a brief time this island will fall into the hands

of the Africans. On this account the governors use the greatest

vigilance." He goes on to remark the fewness of the Spaniards, and

afterwards gives his own opinion to confirm the Spanish anticipation.

Nothing postponed the fulfilment of this natural expectation till the

close of the eighteenth century, but the sudden decay into which the

island fell under Spanish rule, when it became no longer an object to

import the blacks. Many Spaniards left the island before 1550, from

an apprehension that the negroes would destroy the colony. Some

authorities even place the number of Spaniards remaining at that time

as low as eleven hundred.

The common opinion that Las Casas asked permission for the colonists

to draw negroes from Africa, in order to assuage the sufferings of the

Indians, does not appear to be well-founded. For negroes were drawn

from Guinea as early as 1511, and his proposition was made in 1517.

The Spaniards were already introducing these substitutes for the

native labor, regardless of the ordinance which restricted the

possession of negroes in Hayti to those born in Spain. It is not

improbable that Las Casas desired to regulate a traffic which had

already commenced, by inducing the Government to countenance it. His

object was undoubtedly to make it easier for the colonists to procure

the blacks; but it must have occurred to him that his plan would

diminish, as far as possible, the miseries of an irregular transfer of

the unfortunate men from Africa. (See Bridge's _Jamaica, Appendix,

Historical Notes on Slavery._ The Spaniards had even less scruple

about their treatment of the negroes than of the Indians, alleging in

justification that their own countrymen sold them to the traders on

the Guinea coast!)

The horrors of a middle passage in those days of small vessels and

tedious voyages would have been great, if the number of slaves to be

transported had not been limited by law. There is no direct evidence,

however, that Las Casas made his proposition out of any regard for the

negro. Charles V. resolved to allow a thousand negroes to each of the

four islands, Hayti, Ferdinanda, Cuba, and Jamaica. The privilege of

importing them was bestowed upon one of his Flemish favorites; but he

soon sold it to some Genoese merchants, who held each negro at such a

high price that only the wealthiest colonists could procure

them. Herrera regrets that in this way the prudent calculation of Las

Casas was defeated.

This was the first license to trade in slaves. It limited the number

to four thousand, but it was a fatal precedent, which was followed by

French, Spanish, and Dutch, long after the decay of the Spanish part

of Hayti, till all the islands, and many parts of Central America,

were filled with negroes.

It is pleasanter to dwell upon those points in which the brave and

humane Las Casas surpassed his age, and prophesied against it, than

upon those which he held in common with it, as he acquiesced in its

instinctive life. At first it seems unaccountable that the argument

which he framed with such jealous care to protect his Indians and

recommend them to the mercy of Government was not felt by him to apply

to the negroes with equal force. Slavery uses the same pretexts in

every age and against whatsoever race it wishes to oppress. The

Indians were represented by the colonists as predestined by their

natural dispositions, and by their virtues as well as by their vices,

to be held in tutelage by a superior race: their vices were excuses

for colonial cruelty, their virtues made it worth while to keep the

cruelty in vigorous exercise. In refuting this interested party, Las

Casa anticipates the spirit and reasoning of later time. He was the

first to utter anti-slavery principles in the Western hemisphere. We

have improved upon his knowledge, but have not advanced beyond his

essential spirit, for equity and iniquity always have the same leading

points to make through their advocates. When we see that such a man

as Las Casas was unconscious of the breadth of his own philanthropy,

we wonder less at the liability of noble men to admit some average

folly of their age. This is the ridiculous and astonishing feature of

their costume, the exceptional bad taste which their spiritual

posterity learn to disavow.

The memory of Las Casas ought to be cherished by every true democrat

of these later times, for he announced, in his quality of Protector of

the Indian, the principles which protect the rights of all men against

oppressive authority. He was eager to convince a despotic court that

it had no legal or spiritual right to enslave Indians, or to deprive

them of their goods and territory. In framing his argument, he applied

doctrines of the universal liberty of men, which are fatal to courts

themselves; for they transfer authority to the people, who have the

best of reasons for desiring to be governed well. It is astonishing

that the republicanism of Las Casas has not been more carefully noted

and admired; for his writings show plainly, without forced

construction or after-thought of the enlightened reader, that he was

in advance of Spain and Europe as far as the American theory itself

is. Our Declaration of the Rights of Man shows nothing which the first

Western Abolitionist had not proclaimed in the councils and

conferences of Seville.

It is worth while to show this as fully as the purpose of this article

will admit. One would expect to find that he counselled kings to

administer their government with equal regard to the little and the

great, the poor and the rich, the powerful and the miserable; for this

the Catholic Church has always done, and has held a lofty theory

before earthly thrones, not-withstanding its own ambitious

derelictions. But Las Casas tells the Supreme Council of the Indies

that no charge, no servitude, no labor can be imposed upon a people

without its previous and voluntary consent; for man shares, by his

origin, in the common liberty of all beings, so that every

subordination of men to princes, and every burden imposed upon

material things, should be inaugurated by a voluntary pact between the

governing and the governed; the election of kings, princes, and

magistrates, and the authority with which they are invested to rule

and to tax, anciently owed their origin to a free determination of

people who desired to establish thereby their own happiness; the free

will of the nation is the only efficient cause, the only immediate

principle and veritable source of the power of kings, and therefore

the transmission of such power is only a representative act of a

nation giving free expression to its own opinion. For a nation would

not have recourse to such a form of government, except in accordance

with its human instinct, to secure the advantage of all; nor does it,

in thus delegating power, renounce its liberty, or have the intention

of submitting to the domination of another, or of conceding his right

to impose burdens and contributions without the consent of those who

have to bear them, or to command anything that is contrary to the

general interest. When a nation thus delegates a portion of its power

to the sovereign, it is not done by subscribing any written contract

or transaction, because primitive right presides, and there are

natural reserves not expressed by men, such as that of preserving

intact their individual independence, that of their property, and the

right of never submitting to a privation of good or an establishment

of taxes without a previous consent. People existed before kings and

magistrates. Then they were free, and governed themselves according to

their untrammelled intent. In process of time people make kings, but

the good of the people is the final cause of their existence. Men do

not make kings to be rendered miserable by their rule, but to derive

from them all the good possible. Liberty is the greatest good which a

people can enjoy: its rights are violated every time that a king,

without consulting his people, decrees that which wounds the general

interest; for, as the intention of subjects was not to grant a prince

the ability to injure, all such acts ought to be considered unjust and

altogether null. "Liberty is inalienable, and its price is above that

of all the goods of this world."[11]

Las Casas follows the fashion of his time in resting all his glorious

axioms upon the authority of men and councils. He quotes Aristotle,

Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, the different Popes, the Canons, and the

Scriptures; but it is astonishing to find how democratic they all are

to the enthusiastic Bishop, or rather, how the best minds of all ages

have admitted the immutable principles of human nature into their

theology and metaphysics. When will the Catholic Church, which has

nourished and protected so many noble spirits, express in her average

sentiment and policy their generous interpretations of her religion,

and their imputations to her of being an embodiment of the universal

religion of mankind?

Men complained of Las Casas for being severe and unsparing in his

speech. In this respect, of calling the vices and enormities of

Slavery by their simple names, and of fastening the guilt of special

transactions not vaguely upon human nature, but directly upon the

perpetrators who disgraced the nature which they shared, he also

anticipated the privilege and ill-repute of American Abolitionists. He

told what he saw, or what was guarantied to him by competent

witnesses. His cheek grew red when it was smitten by some fierce

outrage upon humanity, and men could plainly read the marks which it

left there. Nor did they easily fade away; he held his branded cheek

in the full view of men, that they might be compelled to interpret the

disgrace to which they were so indifferent. Men dislike to hear the

outcries of a sensitive spirit, and dread to have their heathenism

called by Christian names. How much better it would be, they think, if

philanthropy never made an attack upon the representatives of cruelty!

they would soon become converted, if they were politely let alone. No

doubt, all that the supporters of any tyranny desire is to be let

alone. They delight in abstract delineations of the vices of their

system, which flourishes and develops while moral indignation is

struggling to avoid attacking it where only it is dangerous, in the

persons of its advocates. If there were nothing but metaphysical

wickedness in the world, how effective it would be never to allude to

a wicked man! If Slavery itself were the pale, thin ghost of an

abstraction, how bloodless this war would be! Fine words, genteel

deprecation, and magnanimous generality are the tricks of

villany. Indignant Mercy works with other tools; she leaps with the

directness of lightning, and the same unsparing sincerity, to the spot

to which she is attracted. What rogue ever felt the clutch of a stern

phrase at his throat, with a good opinion of it? Shall we throttle the

rascal in broad day, or grope in the dark after the impersonal weasand

of his crime?

And those amiable people who think to regenerate the world by

radiating amenity are the choice accomplices of the villains. They

keep everything quiet, hush up incipient disturbances, and mislead the

police. No Pharisee shall be called a Devil's child, if they can help

it: they say "Fie!" to the scourge of knotted cord in the temple, or

eagerly explain that it was used only upon the cattle, who cannot, of

course, rebel. "These people who give the fine name of prudence to

their timidity, and whose discretion is always favorable to

injustice!"[12]

"I have decided to write this history," says Las Casas, in his "Memoir

upon the Cruelty of the Spaniards," "by the advice of many pious and

God-fearing persons, who think that its publication will cause a

desire to spring up in many Christian hearts to bring a prompt remedy

to these evils, as enormous as they are multiplied." He designates

the guilty governors, captains, courtiers, and connects them directly

with their crimes. He does not say that they were gentlemen or

Christians: "these brigands," "executioners," "barbarians," are his

more appropriate phrases. If he had addressed them as gentlemen, the

terrible scenes would have instantly ceased, and the system of

_Repartimientos_ would have been abandoned by men who were only

waiting to be converted by politeness! He calls that plan of

allotting the natives, and reducing them to Spanish overseership,

"atrocious." Yet for some time it was technically legal: it was

equivalent to what we call constitutional. So that it was by no means

so bad as the anarchical attack which Las Casas made upon it! He tells

where an infamous overseer was still living in Spain,--or at least, he

says, "his family was living in Seville when I last heard about him."

What a disgraceful attack upon an individual! how it must have hurt

the feelings of a respectable family!--"How malignant!" cried the

_hidalgos_; "How coarse!" the women; and "How ill-judged!" the

clergy. He speaks of Cortés with contempt: why should he not? for he

was only the burglar of a kingdom. But we read these sincere pages of

Las Casas with satisfaction. The polished contemporaries of

Abolitionists turn over the pages of antique denunciation, and their

lymph really quickens in their veins as they read the prophetic

vehemence of an Isaiah, the personality of a Nathan, the unmeasured

vernacular of Luther, the satire and invective of all good upbraiders

of past generations, until they reach their own, which yet waits for a

future generation to make scripture and history of its speech and

deeds. Time is the genial critic that effaces the contemporary glosses

of interested men. It rots away the ugly scaffolding up which the bold

words climbed, and men see the beautiful and tenacious arch which only

genius is daring enough and capable to build. It is delightful to

walk across the solid structure, with gratitude and taste in a

glow. We love to read indictments of an exploded crime which we have

learned to despise, or which we are committing in a novel form.

Charlevoix takes up this complaint of the imprudence of Las Casas,

and, to illustrate it, thinks that he could not have anticipated the

bad effects of the publication of his "Memoir upon the Cruelty of the

Spaniards," for it appeared during the war with the revolted

Netherlands, and was translated into Dutch by a Frenchman. "Nothing,"

he says, "so animated those people to persist in their rebellion, as

the fear, that, if they entered into any accommodation with Spain,

they would be served as the natives had been in the American

Provinces, who were never so badly oppressed as when they felt most

secure upon the faith of a treaty or convention." If the book of Las

Casas really lent courage and motive to that noble resistance, as it

undoubtedly did by confirming the mistrust of Spanish rule in the Low

Countries, the honorable distinction should be preserved by history.

While a bad institution is still vigorous and aggressive, the divine

rage of conscientious men is not so exhilarating. A different style of

thought, like that which prevailed among the French missionaries to

the Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is more

acceptable to colonial susceptibility. A South-side religion is a

favorable exposure for delicate and precarious products like indigo,

sugar, coffee, and cotton. Las Casas had not learned to wield his

enthusiastic pen in defence of the negro; but when the islands became

well stocked with slaves, later Catholics eagerly reproduced the

arguments of the Spanish _encomiendas_, and vindicated afresh the

providential character of Slavery. "I acknowledge," says one, "and

adore with all humility the profound and inconceivable secrets of God;

for I do not know what the unfortunate nation has committed to deserve

that this particular and hereditary curse of servitude should be

attached to them, as well as ugliness and blackness." "It is truly

with these unfortunates that the poet's saying is verified,--

"'Dimidium mentis Jupiter illis aufert,'--

"as I have remarked a thousand times that God deprives slaves of half

their judgment, lest, recognizing their miserable condition, they

should be thrown into despair. For though they are very adroit in many

things which they do, they are so stupid that they have no more sense

of being enslaved than if they had never enjoyed liberty. Every land

becomes their country, provided they find enough to eat and drink,

which is very different from the state of mind of the daughters of

Zion, who cried, on finding themselves in a foreign country,--

'_Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini in terra aliena?_'"[13]

Another missionary, in describing his method of administering baptism,

says: "After the customary words, I add, 'And thee, accursed spirit, I

forbid in the name of Jesus Christ ever to dare to violate this sacred

sign which I have just made upon the forehead of this creature, whom

He has bought with His blood.' The negro, who comprehends nothing of

what I say or do, makes great eyes at me, and appears confounded; but

to reassure him, I address to him through an interpreter these words

of the Saviour to St. Peter: 'What I do thou knowest not now; but thou

shalt know hereafter.'"

He complains that they do not appear to value the mystery of the

Trinity as a necessary means of salvation: the negro does not

understand what he is made to repeat, any more than a parrot. And here

the knowledge of the most able theologian will go a very little

ways. "Still, a missionary ought to think twice before leaving a man,

of whatever kind, to perish without baptism; and if he has scruples

upon this point, these words of the Psalmist will reassure his mind:

'_Homines et jumenta salvabis, Domine_': 'Thou, Lord, shall save both

man and cattle!'"[14]

Father Labat is scandalized because the English planters refused to

have their slaves baptized. Their clergymen told him, in excuse, that

it was unworthy of a Christian to hold in slavery his brother in

Christ. "But may we not say that it is still more unworthy of a

Christian not to procure for souls bought by the blood of Jesus Christ

the knowledge of a God to whom they are responsible for all that they

do?" This idea, that the negroes had been first bought by Christ, must

have been consoling and authoritative to a planter. The missionary has

not advanced upon the Spanish theory, that baptism introduced the

natives into a higher life.[15] "However," says Labat, "this notion of

the English does not affect them, whenever they can get hold of our

negroes. They know very well that they are Christians, they cannot

doubt that they have been made by baptism their brothers in Christ,

yet that does not prevent them from holding them in slavery, and

treating them like those whom they do not regard as their

brothers."[16] This English antipathy to baptizing slaves, for fear of

recognizing them as men by virtue of that rite, appears to have

existed in the early days of the North-American Colonies. Bishop

Berkeley, in his "Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in our

Foreign Plantations," etc., alludes to the little interest which was

shown in the conversion of negroes, "who, to the infamy of England and

scandal of the world, continue heathen under Christian masters and in

Christian countries; which could never be, if our planters were

rightly instructed and made sensible that they disappointed their own

baptism by denying it to those who belong to them." This receives an

explanation in a sermon preached by the Bishop in London, where he

speaks of the irrational contempt felt for the blacks in the

Plantation of Rhode Island, "as creatures of another species, who had

no right to be instructed or admitted to the sacraments. To this may

be added an erroneous notion that the being baptized is inconsistent

with a state of slavery. To undeceive them in this particular, which

had too much weight, it seemed a proper step, if the opinion of his

Majesty's attorney and solicitor-general could be procured. This

opinion they charitably sent over, signed with their own hands; which

was accordingly printed in Rhode Island, and dispersed throughout the

Plantation. I heartily wish it may produce the intended effect."[17]

In a speech upon West-Indian affairs, which Lord Brougham delivered in

the House of Commons in 1823, there is some account of the religious

instruction of the slaves as conducted by the curates. He alludes in

particular to the testimony of a worthy curate, who stated that he had

been twenty or thirty years among the negroes, "and that no single

instance of conversion to Christianity had taken place during that

time,--all his efforts to gain new proselytes among the negroes had

been in vain; all of a sudden, however, light had broken in upon their

darkness so suddenly that between five and six thousand negroes had

been baptized in a few days. I confess I was at first much surprised

at this statement. I knew not how to comprehend it; but all of a

sudden light broke in upon my darkness also. I found that there was a

clue to this most surprising story, and that these wonderful

conversions were brought about, not by a miracle, as the good man

seems himself to have really imagined, and would almost make us

believe, but by a premium of a dollar a head paid to this worthy

curate for each slave that he baptized!"

We return to Las Casas once more, to state precisely his complicity in

the introduction of the race whose sorrows have been so fearfully

avenged by Nature in every part of the New World. Many of the writers

who have treated of these transactions, as Robertson, for instance,

have accused Las Casas, on the strength of a passage in Herrera, of

having originated the idea that the blacks could be profitably

substituted for the Indians. It is supposed, that, in his eagerness to

save the Indians from destruction, he sought also to save colonial

interests, by procuring still a supply of labor from a hardier and

less interesting race. Thus his indignation at the rapid extinction of

the Indians appears sentimental; to indulge his fancy for an amiable

race, he was willing to subject another, with which he had no graceful

associations, to the same liabilities. We have seen, however, that

the practice of carrying negroes to Hayti was already established,

seven years before Las Casas suggests his policy. The passage from

Herrera has been misunderstood, as Llorente, Schoelcher, the Abbé

Grégoire, and others, conclusively show. That historian says that Las

Casa, disheartened by the difficulties which he met from the colonists

and their political and ecclesiastical friends at home, had recourse

to a new expedient, to solicit leave for the Spaniards to trade in

negroes, "in order that their labor on the plantations and in the

mines might render that of the natives less severe." This proposition,

made in 1517, has been wrongly supposed to signalize the first

introduction of blacks into America. Nor was Las Casas the first to

make this proposition; for another passage of Herrera discloses that

three priests of St. Jerome, who had been despatched to the colony by

Cardinal Ximenes, for the experiment of managing it by a Board instead

of by a Governor, recommended in 1516 that negroes should be sent out

to stock the plantations, in order to diminish the forced labor of the

natives. This was a concession by the Jeromites to the public opinion

which Las Casas had created.[18] Negroes already existed there; the

priests perceived their value, and that the introduction of a greater

number would both improve the colony and diminish the anti-slavery

agitation of the Dominicans. The next year this project was taken up

by Las Casas, borrowed from the Jeromites as the only alternative to

preserve a colony, to relieve the natives, and to keep the people

interested in the wholesome reforms which he was continually urging

upon the colonial administration.

He had no opportunity to become acquainted with the evils of negro

slavery, but it is strange that he did not anticipate them. It was

taken for granted by him that the blacks were enslaved in Africa, and

he accepted too readily the popular idea that their lot was improved

by transferring them from barbarous to Christian masters. Their number

was so small in Hayti, and the island fell so suddenly into decay,

that no formidable oppression of them occurred during his lifetime to

replace his recollections of the horrors of Indian servitude. His plan

did not take root, but it was remembered. Thus the single error of a

noble man, committed in the fulness of his Christian aspirations, and

at the very moment when he was representing to a generation of hard

and avaricious men the divine charity, betrayed their victims to all

the nations that sought wealth and luxury in the West, and pointed out

how they were to be obtained. His compromise has the fatal history of

all compromises which secure to the present a brief advantage, whose

fearful accumulation of interest the future must disgrace, exhaust,

and cripple itself to pay.

In 1519 the colony had already begun to decay, though all the external

marks of luxury and splendor were still maintained. That was the date

of a famous insurrection of the remnant of Indians, who occupied the

mountains, and defended themselves for thirteen years against all the

efforts of the Spaniards to reduce them. It was hardly worth while to

undertake their subjection. Adventurers and emigrants were already

leaving San Domingo to its fate, attracted to different spots of the

Terra Firma, to Mexico and Peru, by the reported treasures. That

portion of the colony which had engaged in agriculture found Indians

scarce and negroes expensive. There was no longer any object in

fitting out expeditions to reinforce the colony, and repair the waste

which it was beginning to suffer from desertion and disease. The war

with the natives was ignominiously ended by Charles V. in 1533, who

found that the colony was growing too poor to pay for it. He

despatched a letter to the cacique who had organized this desperate

and prolonged resistance, flattered him by the designation of Dom

Henri[19] and profuse expressions of admiration, sent a Spanish

general to treat with him, and to assign him a district to inhabit

with his followers. Dom Henri thankfully accepted this pacification,

and soon after received Las Casas himself, who had been commissioned

to assure the sole surviving cacique and representative of two million

natives that Spain was their friend! At last the Protector of the

Indians has the satisfaction of meeting them with authoritative

messages of peace. And this was the first salutation of Dom Henri,

after his forty years' experience of Spanish probity, and thirteen

years of struggle for existence: "During all this war, I have not

failed a day to offer up my prayers, I have fasted strictly every

Friday, I have watched with care over the morals and the conduct of my

subjects, I have taken measures everywhere to prevent all profligate

intercourse between the sexes";[20] thus nobly trying to recommend

himself to the good Bishop, who had always believed in their capacity

for temporal and spiritual elevation. He retired to a place named

Boya, a dozen leagues from the capital. All the Indians who could

prove their descent from the original inhabitants of the island were

allowed to follow him. A few of them still remained in 1750; their

number was only four thousand when Dom Henri led them away from

Spanish rule to die out undisturbed.[21]

After its passionate and blood-thirsty life, the colony was sinking to

sleep, not from satiety nor exhaustion, for the same race was holding

its orgies in other countries, but from inability to gather fuel for

its excesses. A long list of insignificant governors is the history of

the island for another century. They did nothing to improve the

condition of the inhabitants, whose distress was sometimes severe; but

they continued to embellish the capital, which Oviedo described to

Charles V. as rivalling in solidity and beauty any city in Spain. He

wrote in 1538, and possessed a beautiful residence in the plain of

St. John. The private houses were built substantially, in several

stories, of stone, embowered in charming gardens; the public edifices,

including the cathedral, displayed all the strength and rich

ornamentation which had been common for a hundred years in the Spanish

cities. There were several well-endowed convents, and a fine

hospital. When Sir Francis Drake took possession of San Domingo in

1586, he attempted to induce the inhabitants, who had fled into the

country, to pay an enormous ransom for their city, by threatening to

destroy a number of fine houses every day till it was paid. He

undertook the task, but found that his soldiers were scarcely able to

demolish more than one a day, and he eventually left the city not

materially damaged.

Antonio Herrera, in his "Description of the West Indies," gives the

number of inhabitants of the city in 1530 as six hundred, and says

that there were fourteen thousand Castilians, many of them nobles, who

carried on the different interests of the colony. He has a list of

seventeen towns, with brief descriptions of them.

It appears by this that the island had speedily recovered from the ill

reports of the early emigrants, many of whom returned to Spain broken

in purse and person, with excesses of passion and climate chronicled

in their livid faces[22]. There was a period when everybody who could

get away from the colony left it in disgust, and with the expectation

that it would soon become extinct. It was to prevent such a

catastrophe, which would have effectually terminated the explorations

of Columbus, that he proposed to the Government, in 1496, to commute

the punishments of all criminals and large debtors who were at the

time in prison to a perpetual banishment to the island, persons

convicted of treason or heresy being alone excepted. The advice was

instantly adopted, without a thought of the consequences of

reinforcing the malignant ambition of the colony with such

elements. Persons capitally convicted were to serve two years without

wages; all others were to serve on the same terms for one year; and

they went about with the ingenious clog of a threat of arrest for the

old crimes in case they returned to Europe.

The Government improved upon the hint of Columbus by decreeing that

all the courts in Spain should condemn to the mines a portion of the

criminals who would in the course of nature have gone to the

galleys.[23] Thus a new country, which invited the benign organization

of law and religion, and held out to pure spirits an opportunity

richer than all its crops and mines, was poisoned in its cradle. What

wonder that its vigor became the aimless gestures of madness, that a

bloated habit simulated health, and that decrepitude suddenly fell

upon the uneasy life?

At the same time it was expressly forbidden to all commanders of

caravels to receive on board any person who was not a born subject of

the crown of Castile. This was conceived in the exclusive colonial

policy of the time. It was a grotesque idea to preserve nationality by

insisting that even criminals must respect the Spanish birthright.

History counts the fitful pulses of this bluest blood of Europe,

and hesitates to declare that such emigrants misrepresented

the mother-country.

But after the middle of the sixteenth century, the inhabitants were

pillaged by the public enemies of the mother-country, and by private

adventurers of all lands. And yet, in 1587, the year after Drake's

expedition, their fleet carried home 48 quintals of cassia, 50 of

sarsaparilla, 134 of logwood, 893 chests of sugar, each weighing 200

pounds, and 350,444 hides of every kind. There is no account of

indigo, and the cultivation of cotton had not commenced. Coffee was

first introduced at Martinique during the reign of Louis XIV., who

died in 1715. Its cultivation was not commenced in Jamaica till

1725.[24]

The negroes whom Hawkins procured on his first voyage to Africa were

carried by him to San Domingo. This was in 1563, the date of England's

first venture in the slave-trade. The English had sent vessels to the

African coast as early as 1551, on private account, for gold and

ivory; but as they had no West-Indian colony, and the trade in slaves

was a monopoly, they had no object to increase the risks of a voyage

which infringed upon the Portuguese right to Africa by carrying

negroes away. Vessels were fitted out in 1552 and 1553 to trade for

ivory and pepper; in the two following years the English interest in

Africa increased, and a negro was occasionally carried away and

brought to England.[25] This appears to have been the first

circumstance which attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth, and

drew remonstrances from her before it became clear that a good deal of

money could be made out of such transactions. She blamed Captain

Hawkins, who had succeeded by treachery and violence in getting hold

of three hundred negroes whom he carried to San Domingo, and disposed

of in the ports of Isabella, Puerto-de-Plata, and Monte Christi. Her

virtue was proof against this first speculation, although it was an

exceedingly good one, for Hawkins filled his three vessels with hides,

ginger, and a quantity of pearls, and freighted two more with hides

and other articles which he sent to Spain. It was after his third

voyage, in 1567, when he sold his negroes in Havana at a profit

greater than he could derive from the decaying San Domingo, that the

Queen forgot her scruples, and gave Hawkins a crest symbolical of his

wicked success: "a demi-Moor, in his proper color, bound with a cord,"

made plain John a knight.[26]

But the Portuguese jealously watched their privilege to export men

from Africa, so that only about forty thousand negroes were brought

yearly by lawful and contraband channels to the different

islands. Cuba obtained most of these. The greater part of the

Portuguese trade took the direction of Brazil, for the sugar-cane had

been carried from Madeira to Rio Janeiro in 1531. Formidable rivalry

in selfishness was thus sown in every direction by the early splendor

of San Domingo. When the Genoese merchants bought the original

privilege to transport four thousand, they held the price of negroes

at two hundred ducats. Their monopoly ceased in 1539, when a great

market for slaves was opened at Lisbon; Spain could buy them there at

a price varying from ten to fifty ducats a head, but their price

delivered in good condition at San Domingo, including the inevitable

percentage of loss, made them almost as expensive as before.

The capital was shattered by an earthquake in 1684. The people melted

away, and fine houses, which were deserted by their owners, remained

tenantless, and went to ruin. Valverde,[27] a Creole of the island, is

the chronicler of its condition in the middle of the eighteenth

century. He observes that the Spanish Creoles were living in such

poverty that mass was said before daylight, so that mutual scandal at

dilapidated toilets might not interfere with the enjoyment of

religion. The leprosy was common, and two lazarettos were filled with

its victims. The negro blood had found its way into almost every

family; a female slave received her freedom as a legacy of piety or of

lust. She could also purchase it for two hundred and fifty dollars;

and if she was with child, an additional twelve dollars and fifty

cents would purchase for the new-comer all the glories and immunities

of Creole society. These were to doze and smoke in hammocks, and to

cultivate listlessly about twenty-two dilapidated sugar-plantations

and a little coffee. The trade in cattle with the French part of the

island absorbed all the business and enterprise that remained. Still

Valverde will not admit that the Spanish Creole was indolent: it is in

consequence of a deficiency of negroes, he explains, that they cannot

labor more!

A great injury was inflicted upon the colony by the exclusive

commercial spirit of the mother-country. Spain was the first European

government which undertook to interfere with the natural courses of

trade, on the pretence of protecting isolated interests. In the

eleventh century a great commercial competition existed between some

Italian, French, and Spanish cities. To favor the last, when they were

already enjoying their just share of trade, the King of Aragon

prohibited, in 1227, "all foreign vessels from loading for Ceuta,

Alexandria, or other important ports, if a Catalan ship was able and

willing to take the cargo"; the commerce of Barcelona was in

consequence of this navigation act seriously damaged.[28] Spain

treated her colonies afterward in the same spirit; and other

countries, France in particular, pursued this narrow and destructive

policy, wherever colonial success excited commercial jealousy and

avarice.

"The commerce of the colony was all confined to the unwise arrangement

of a Government counting-house, called the _Casa de la Contratacion_,

(House of Trade,) through which all exports were sent out to the

colonies and all remittances made in return. By this order of things,

the want of free competition blasted all enterprise, and the

exorbitant rates of an exclusive traffic paralyzed industry.

The cultivation of the vine, the olive, and other staple productions

of Spain, was prohibited. All commerce between the colonies was

forbidden; and not only could no foreigner traffic with them, but

death and confiscation of property were decreed to the colonist who

should traffic with a foreigner,--slave-vessels alone being

excepted."[29]

Thus the policy which ought to have favored the island first settled

by Spaniards, against the attractions of Peru, Mexico, and Cuba,

towards which the mother-colony was rapidly emptying her streams of

life, was not forthcoming. These Spaniards, who were enslaved by the

tenacious fancy that El Dorado still glittered for them in some

distant place, needed to be attached to the soil by generous

advantages, such as premiums for introducing and sustaining the

cultivation of new productions, immunity from imposts either by

Government or by the middle-men of a company, and liberty to exchange

hides, tallow, and crops of every kind with the French, Dutch, and

English, in every port of the island, to convert a precarious illicit

trade with those nations into a natural intercourse, so that different

articles of food, which were often scarce, and sometimes failed

entirely, might be regularly supplied, until by such fostering care

the colony should grow strong enough to protect itself against its own

and foreign adventurers. But if all these measures had been accordant

with the ideas of that age, they would have been defeated by its

passions.

Other people now appear upon the scene, to put the finishing touch to

this decay, while they freshen the old crimes and assume the tradition

of excess and horror which is the island's history.

[To be continued.]

FOOTNOTES:

1. Herrera says, however, that Las Casas declared them to be

legitimately enslaved, the natives of Trinity Island in

particular. Schoelcher (_Colonies Étrangèrés et Haiti_,

Tom. II. p. 59) notices that all the royal edicts in favor of the

people of America, miserably obeyed as they were, related only to

Indians who were supposed to be in a state of peace with Spain; the

Caribs were distinctly excepted. It was convenient to call a great

many Indians Caribs; numerous tribes who were peaceful enough when let

alone, and victims rather than perpetrators of cannibalism, became

slaves by scientific adjudication. "These races," said Cardinal

Ximenes, "are fit for nothing but labor."

2. _Fifth Memoir: Upon the Liberty of the Indians._

Llorente, Tom. II. p. 11.

3. _Cimarron_ was Spanish, meaning _wild:_ applied

to animals, and subsequently to escaped slaves, who lived by hunting

and stealing.

4. "Gimlamo Benzoni, of Milan, who, at the age of

twenty-two, visited Terra Firma, took part in some expeditions in 1542

to the coasts of Bordones, Cariaco, and Paria, to carry off the

unfortunate natives. He relates with simplicity, and often with a

sensibility not common in the historians of that time, the examples of

cruelty of which he was a witness. He saw the slaves dragged to New

Cadiz, to be marked on the forehead and on the arms, and for the

payment of the _quint_ to the officers of the crown. From this

port the Indians were sent to the island of Hayti, after having often

changed masters, not by way of sale, but because the soldiers played

for them at dice."--Humboldt, _Personal Narrative_, Vol. I. p.

176.

5. Schoelcher, _Hayti_, Vol. II. p. 78. The Arabs introduced the

cane, which had been cultivated in the East from the remotest

times, into Sicily in the ninth century, whence it found its

way into Spain, and was taken to the Canaries: Madeira sent sugar to

Antwerp in 1500. See Bridge, _Annals of Jamaica_, Vol.I. p.594,

who, however, makes the mistake of saying that a variety of the

sugar-cane was indigenous to the Antilles. See Humboldt, _Personal

Narrative_, Vol. II. p. 28, who says that negroes were employed in

the cultivation of the sugar-cane in the Canaries from its

introduction.

6. Schoelcher, _La Traile et son Origine_, in

_Colonies Etrengères_, Tom. I. p. 364.

7. Upon the subject of changes in the value of money, and

some comparisons between the past and present, see Hallam's _Europe,

during the Middle Ages_, Vol. II. pp. 427--432, and _Supplement_,

p. 406. Dealing in money, banking, bills of exchange, have a very

early date in Europe. The Bank of Venice was founded in 1401.

Florentines dealt in money as early as 1251, and their system

of exchange was in use throughout the North early in the

fifteenth century.--McCullagh's _Industrial History of Free

Nations_ Vol. II. p. 94.

8. See in Hallam's _Supplement to Europe during the Middle

Ages_, p. l33, and in Motley's _Dutch Republic_, Vol. I. pp.

32, 33, various causes mentioned for voluntary and compulsory

servitude in the early European times. See also Summer's _White

Slavery_, p. 11.

9. Moors, living In Spain as subjects, and nominally

Christianized.

10. _La Historia sel Mondo Nuovo_, Venetia, 1565, Book

II. p.65, a duodecimo filled with curious plates representing the

habits of the natives and the Spanish dealings with them. Benozi

elsewhere has a good deal to say about the cruelty exercised towards

the negroes. For a failure to perform a daily stint in the mines, a

negro was usually buried up to his chin, and left to be tormented by

the insects. Wire whips were used in flogging, and hot pitch was

applied to the wounds.

11. _Fifth Memoir: Upon the Liberty of the Indians who

have been reduced to the Condition of Slavery_; Morente,

Tom. II. pp. 34, 35. _Sixth Memoir: Upon the Question whether Kings

have the Power to alienate their Subjects, their Towns and

Jurisdiction_, pp. 64 et seq. _Letter of Las Casas to Miranda,

resident in England with Philip, in 1555_.--The Sixth Memoir is a

remarkable production. Its closing words are these: "The dignity of a

king does not consist in usurping rights of which he is only the

administrator. Invested with all the necessary power to govern well

and to make his kingdom happy, let him fulfil that fine destiny, and

the respect of the people will be his reward."

12. "Ces hommes qui donnent le beau nom de prudence à leur

timidité, et dont la discrétion est toujours favorable à

l'injustice."--Hilliard d'Aubertueil, _Considérations sur l'Ètat

Présent de la Colonie Françoise de St. Domingue_, 1776.

13. _Histoire Générale des Isles de St. Christophe_, etc., 1654,

par Du Tertre.

14. From a letter by the Jesuit father Le Pers, quoted by

Charlevoix, _Histoire de St. Domingue_, Tom. IV. p. 369. Amsterdam,

1733.

15. Upon the reputed effects of baptism, and some anecdotes

connected with the administration of this rite, see Humboldt's

_Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain_, London, 1811,

Vol. I. p. 165, note.

16. _Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l'Amerique_, A la

Haye, 1724, Tom. V. p. 42. Father Labat is delighted because the Dutch

asked him to confess their slaves; and he records that many masters

take great pains to have their Catholic slaves say their prayers

morning and evening, and approach the sacrament; nor do they undertake

to indoctrinate them with Calvinism.

17. _A Sermon preached before the Incorporated Society for

the Propogation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at their Anniversary

Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday,

February 18, 1731_.

18. Oviedo says nothing about this Jeromite proposition, but

records the arrival of this priestly commission, (_Hist. Ind._,

Book IV. ch. 3,) and that one object of it was to provide for the

Indians,--"_buen tractamiento é conserveçion de los indios_." He

says that all the remedial measures which it undertook increased the

misery and loss of the natives. He was not humane. It seemed absurd

to him that the Indians should kill themselves on the slightest

pretext, or run to the mountains; and he can find no reason for it,

except that their chief purpose in life (and one which they had always

cherished, before the Christians came among them) was to eat, drink,

"_folgar, é luxuriar, é idolatrar, é exercer otras muchas suçiedades

bestiales_."

19. The priests gave him the name of Henri, when they

baptized him, long previous to his revolt. He was called Henriquillo

by way of Catholic endearment. But the consecrating water could not

wash out of his remembrance that his father and grandfather had been

burnt alive by order of a Spanish governor. What, indeed, can quench

such fires? Yet this dusky Hannibal loved the exercises and pure

restraints of the religion which had laid waste his family.

20. Oviedo, _Hist. Ind._, Book V. ch. 11, who gives the

cacique little credit for some of his prohibitions, but on the whole

praises him, and, after mentioning that he lived little more than a

year from the time of this pacification, and died like a Christian,

commends his soul to God. Oviedo hated the Indians, and wrote about

colonial affairs coldly and in the Spanish interests.

21. _Histoire Politique et Statistique._ Par Placide Justin.

22. "The Indies are not for every one! How many heedless

persons quit Spain, expecting that in the Indies a dinner costs

nothing, and that there is nobody there in want of one; that as they

do not drink wine in every house, why, they give it away! Many,

Father, have been seen to go to the Indies, and to have returned from

them as miserable as when they left their country, having gained from

the journey nought but perpetual pains in the arms and legs, which

refuse in their treatment to yield to sarsaparilla and _palo

santo_, [_lignum vitae_,] and which neither quicksilver nor

sweats will eject from their constitution." From a Spanish novel by

Yanez y Rivera, "_Alonzo, el Donado Hablador_": "Alonzo, the

Talkative Lay-Brother," written in 1624. New York, 1844.

23. Charlevoix, _Histoire de St. Domingue_, 1733,

Tom.I. p.185, who notices the admission of Herrera that the Admiral

made a great mistake, since malefactors should not be selected for the

founders of republics. No, neither in Virginia nor in any virgin

world.

24. Some slips of Mocha fell into the hands of Europeans

first by being carried to Batavia. It was then transplanted to

Amsterdam in the end of the sixteenth century; and a present of some

shrubs was made to Louis XIV., at the Peace of Utrecht. They

flourished in his garden, and three shrubs were taken thence and

shipped to Martinique in the care of a Captain de Cheu. The voyage was

so prolonged that two of them died for want of moisture, and the

captain saved the third by devoting to it his own ration of water.

25. Hüne, _Geschichte des Sclavenhandels_, I. 300.

26. When John's son, Richard, was fitting out a vessel for a

voyage into the South Sea, ostensibly to explore, his mother-in-law

had the naming of it at his request; and she called it "The

Repentance." Sir Richard was puzzled at this; but his mother would

give him no other satisfaction "then that repentance was the safest

ship we could sayle in to purchase the haven of Heaven." The Queen

changed the name to "Daintie."--_Observations of Sir Richard

Hawkins, Knight, in his Voyage into the South Sea,_ A. D. 1593.

27. _Idea del Valor,_ etc., Madrid, 1785: _An Idea of

the Value of the Spanish Island,_ etc. By A.S. Valverde.

28. McCullagh's _Industrial History of Free Nations; the

Dutch_, Vol. II. p. 51.

29. _The History and Present Condition of St.

Domingo_, by J. Brown, M. D., 1837, p. 40. Even this exception in

favor of slave-traders appears afterwards to have been withdrawn; for

Charlevoix relates (_Histoire de St. Domingue_, Tom. III. p. 36)

that the Governor of San Domingo got Tortuga away from the French, in

1654, by means of two negroes whom he had purchased cheap from some

Dutchmen, and who showed him a path by which he drew up two cannon to

command the fort. He was recalled, and beheaded at Seville, because he

had bought negroes of foreigners.

MY LOST ART.

I was born in a small town of Virginia. My father was a physician,

more respected than employed; for it was generally supposed, and

justly, that he was more devoted to chemical experiment and

philosophical speculation than to the ordinary routine of his

profession. It was quite natural, that, in course of time, another

physician should come to dash by, with fine turnout, my father's

humble gig; and such, indeed, was the result. It was equally natural,

that, as the dear old man looked his own fate straight in the eyes,

and saw his patients falling away one by one, he should adjourn

practical success to his only son,--myself. Quiet, but unremitting,

were his efforts to make me avoid the rock on which his worldly

fortunes had been wrecked. In vain: to me there was a light in his eye

which lured me on to those visionary shores from which he warned me;

and whilst he was holding out the labors and duties of a regular and

steadfast practitioner as merciful and honorable among the highest,

there was an undertone in his voice, of which he was unconscious,

which told me plainly that the knowledge he most valued in himself was

that apparently most unproductive. My mother had died several years

before; my father's affection, pride, and hope rested utterly upon

me. I knew not then how sad it was to disappoint him. Often, when he

returned to his office, hoping to find me studying the "Materia

Medica," I was discovered poring over some old volumes on the "Human

Humors, or the Planetary Sympathies of the Viscera." A sincere grief

filled his eyes at such times, but I could not help feeling that it

was mingled with respect. The heaviest cross I had to bear was that

the curious old volumes which attracted me were gradually abstracted

from the library.

One day, walking with my father on the outskirts of the town, we found

a merry throng gathered about the car of a travelling daguerrotypist.

Having nothing more entertaining on hand, we entered the car

and sat, whilst the village belles, and the newly affianced,

and the young brides came for their miniatures. This was interesting;

but when they were gone, my father and the artist entered upon a

conversation which was far more absorbing to me, and indeed colored

the whole of my subsequent life. My father made inquiries concerning

the materials used in daguerrotyping, and the progress of the art; and

the artist, finding him an intelligent man, entered with spirit upon

his relation.

"It is, indeed, wonderful," he said, "that more has not been

accomplished through this discovery; and I can attribute this to

nothing but the lack amongst our poor fraternity of the capital

necessary for carrying on and out the many experiments suggested to us

daily in the course of our operations."

"About what point," asked my father, "do these suggestions usually

gather?"

"That which chiefly excites our speculation is the unfathomed mystery

of the nitrate of silver. The story of this wonderful agent is not

half unfolded; and every artist knows that its power is limited only

by the imperfection of the materials with which it has to act. Its

sensitiveness approaches that of thought itself. I have a very small

quantity of highest quality which I use on rare occasions and

generally for experiments. A few days ago I caught with it this first

flash of sunrise,--see, is it not perfect?"

The picture which he showed us was, indeed, beautiful. A wave of light

bursting upon the plate to a foamy whiteness, almost beyond the power

of the eye to bear. But that which excited me most was the photograph

of a star, which he had fixed after highly magnifying it. What a

fascination there was about that little point of fire!

It turned out to be the star under which I was born: its fatal

influences were already upon me: I returned home to pass a night

sleepless, indeed, but not without dreams.

Why is it that a new idea, taking possession of the young, raising

some new object for their pursuit, does, in the proportion of its

power, foreclose even the most accustomed confidences? My father was

precisely the one man living who would have sympathized in the purpose

which from the time of this visit sucked into its whirl all my desires

and powers; but that purpose seemed at once to turn my heart to

stone. For a week I was acting a part before the kindest and simplest

of men; and I deliberately went forward to reach my object over his

happiness and even life.

When the daguerrotypist left town, I easily found the direction he had

taken; and, after waiting several days to prevent any suspicious

coincidence in the time of our departure, I one night, soon after

midnight, crept from my bed and followed him. I overtook him at a

village some twenty miles distant, where he was remaining a day or

two, and easily procured an engagement with him, since I desired

nothing but to serve him and be taught the mechanical details of his

art. My father had no clue whatever to my direction, for he had not

dreamed of anything unusual in my thoughts or plans. He was now

entirely alone. But I knew that I was helpless against the phantom

which was leading me forth; it also contained a stimulant which was

able to bear me safely through seasons of self-reproach and

depression.

For about six months I got along with the artist very well. My desire

to learn made me attentive, prompt, and respectful. But at the end of

that time I had learned all that he could teach me, and, as I had

engaged with him for an ulterior object, the business began to lose

its interest for me, and the inconveniences of wandering about in a

car, hitherto unthought of, were now felt. The relations between my

master and myself had been so agreeable that for a long time this

change in my feelings was not alluded to in words. He was a thrifty

Yankee, and with a Yankee's sense of justice; so he offered me a fair

proportion of the profits. But at the end of the year he told me that

he thought I was "too much of a Virginian" ever to follow this

occupation, and that, having seen my father and known his position, he

was surprised that he had ever favored such a pursuit for me. This

was, indeed, the falsehood I had told him.

It was in a Canadian village that I parted with this gentlemanly and

generous New-Englander. When I left him, I was not penniless, but a

bitter sense of my loneliness was upon me, and a consciousness of the

uncandid and cruel turn I had done my father brought me almost to the

verge of suicide. On Sunday morning I entered a church in Toronto, and

tears flowed down my face as I heard the minister read the parable of

the Prodigal Son. It seemed to me as a voice from home, and I

determined to go to my father. Without hesitating, or stopping an

hour, I took all the money I had to pay my way, and in about six days

afterward, sitting beside the driver on the stage-coach, looked from a

hill upon the house in which I was born. A pang shot through my heart

at that instant. Until that moment I had dreamed of my father's

seeing me whilst I was yet a great way off, of resting my weary head

upon his warm, infolding heart. But now the dream faded, and a pain

as of an undying worm gnawed already on my soul. I paused at the gate,

nearly paralyzed by fear. Was he dead? No; I felt this was not the

case; but I felt that something worse than this was about to befall

me. I gained strength to enter the hall, and sat down there. I heard

several voices. I went on to the well-known chamber. A physician and a

nurse were there. Standing in the door a moment, I heard my father say

in a whisper, "If he ever comes back, let him have all; tell him his

father loved him to the last; but do not tell him more, do not make

_him_ suffer,--mark you!" A moment more, and I was kneeling by

his dying bed. "My father, my father, I have murdered you!" After some

moments it was impressed upon the old man that his penitent son was by

his side. I almost looked for the curse that I deserved; but a

peaceful light was on his face as he said,--"I'm sorry I hid the books

from you, child. I meant well,--I meant well,--I erred. If I can help

you from up there, I will." Life departed with these words.

It will not be wondered that I became a recluse. The recluse is

usually one cast up from such bleak experiences of sin and grief that

he fears to launch upon life again, and only seeks to hide him in any

cavern that may be found along the shore that has received him. Thus

it was with me, at least. I dreaded to look one of my townsmen in the

face,--they knew all: and many years after, when the harsh judgments

which would have received me were softened by my lonely penance and

sadness, and proffers came from society, my solitude had become sacred

to me; and that old star which the daguerrotypist had shown me still

reigned.

My father had left me enough property to enable me to carry forward

the investigations and experiments to which all voices seemed to call

me. I had an upper room prepared with a skylight and all other

appliances. I purchased an excellent instrument, and some very strong

diameters for magnifying photographs. The trials I had made convinced

me that the minuteness and extent of objects photographed were limited

only by the comparative coarseness of the materials _through_ and

_on_ which the object passed. So I was very particular in

selecting lenses. Further trials, however, led me to believe that the

plate was still more important. Obtaining a steel of perfect grain, I

spent days in giving it the highest polish it would bear, and kept it

ready for any important office. By means of a long and bright tin

reflector, (the best,) my artificial light was ready, in case I should

desire to photograph at night; and, indeed, it was the hope of making

some astronomic discovery that was leading me on.

Calm and clear was the night on which I brought these my treasures

forth. Jupiter was blazing in the heavens, and challenged Art to seize

his majestic lineaments. It turned out a point of fire much like that

which my master had exhibited to me. I mixed a finer nitrate,

repolished my plate, and was this time rewarded by seeing, under all

the diameters which I had, the satellites also. Very much thrilled

even with this degree of success, and taking the picture on paper, I

put my plate away, and set myself to study what I should do next. It

had not yet occurred to me to inquire of myself what definite thing I

really was after. My deepest hope was in the undefinableness of its

object: I knew only that a clear idea (and Plato says all clear ideas

are true) of the subtile susceptibilities of nitrate of silver,

_limited only by materials_, had engendered within me, through

much pondering, an embryo idea, to the development of which my life

was intuitively consecrated. I would not define it to myself, because

I felt (intuitively, also) that it was something illimitable,

therefore indefinable.

I began to experiment now with lenses, placing various kinds and

powers one above another. It occurred to me that I had hitherto

brought their power to bear only upon _whole_, objects. But what

would be the result of magnifying an object daguerrotyped until it

covered the disc of the reflector, then photographing it, and

afterward magnifying a central segment of the picture to its utmost,

and again renewing the experiment on this? An infinite series of

analyses might be carried into the heart of an image; and might not

something therein, invisible not only to the naked eye, but to the

strongest magnifier, be revealed? Following this reflection, I took a

common stereoscopic view and subjected it to my lenses. It was an

ordinary view of a Swiss hamlet, the chief object of which was an inn

with a sign over the door surmounted by a bush. The only objects upon

the sign discernible with a common convex eye-glass were a mug of beer

on one side and a wine-bottle on the other. Their position indicated

that something else was on the sign: the stronger diameters presently

brought out "CARL ELZNERS"; the strongest I had were exhausted in

bringing out "GARTEN UND GASTHAUS." When this, the utmost dimension,

was reached, I photographed it. Then, taking ordinary magnifiers, I

began upon that part of the sign where, if anything remained unevoked,

it would be found. The reader will observe, that, each time that the

result of one enlargement was made the subject for another, the loss

was in the field or range which must be paid for intensity and

minuteness. Thus, in the end, there might appear but one letter of a

long sentence, or a part of a letter. In this case, however, the

result was better than I had expected: I read distinctly, "--EIN,

WEI--"; and Luther's popular lines, "_Wer liebt nicht wein,

weib_," etc., were brought to my mind at once. Thus I had the sign

in full: the powerful agent of the sun on earth had fixed Carl Elzner

and his Protestant beer-garden on the stereoscopic view forever,

whether the dull eyes of men could read them or not.

Thrilled and animated by this success, I hastened to apply the same

plan of magnifying segment by segment to my photograph of

Jupiter. But, alas, although something suggestive did appear, or so I

fancied, the image grew dimmer with each analysis, until, under the

higher powers, it disappeared, and the grainings of the card

superseded the planet. Had I not proved that my principle was good in

the case of the Swiss sign-board, I should now have given it up as the

whim of an over-excited brain. But now I thought only of the assertion

of the daguerrotypist, that "the nitrate was limited in sensitiveness

only by the imperfection of the materials," (i. e. plates, glass,

reflectors, etc.,) and I had heard the same repeated by the paper

which had finally replaced the picture it held. I now determined to

risk on the experiment the elegant steel plate on whose polish I had

spent so much pains and time. I took the portrait of Jupiter thereon,

and fixed it forever. This time I could not be mistaken in supposing

that as the field of vision shrank some strange forms appeared; but I

could be certain of none which were essentially different from those

revealed by the largest telescopes. My narrowing and intensifying

process then began to warn me of another failure: when I had reached

the last point at which the image could be held at all, the grain of

the steel plate was like great ropes, and it was only after resting my

eyes for some time, then suddenly turning them upon it, that I could

see any picture at all. For an instant it would look like an

exceedingly delicate lichen,--then nothing was visible but huge bars

of steel.

Ah, with what despair did I see the grand secret which had so long

hovered before me and led my whole life now threatening to elude and

abandon me forever! "But," I cried, "it shall not go so easily, by

Heaven! If there be a genius in the casket, unsealed it shall be!"

I resolved to give up steel for some metal or substance of finer

grain. I almost impoverished myself in purchasing plates of the finer

metals, before it occurred to me to try glass, and had to laugh at my

own stupidity when I discovered that in the last analysis glass showed

much smoother than any of the rest. I immediately obtained a great

many specimens of glass, and spent much time in subjecting them to my

lenses only to see how much fibrous appearance, or unevenness, could

be brought before the eye from a smooth surface. I found one excellent

specimen, and gave myself up to grinding it to the utmost extent

consistent with its strength.

I felt now that I was about to make a final test. It would be not only

a test of my new plate, but of my own sanity, which I had at various

times doubted. I felt, that, unless my idea should be proved true, I

could no longer trust my reason, which had at every step beckoned me

on to the next. I had studied medicine enough in my father's office

long ago to know that either sanity or insanity may come as a reality

from a mind's determined verdict on itself. When, therefore, I again

sat down to analyze my daguerrotype of the planet, it was with the awe

and fear which might beset one standing on a ledge between a frightful

chasm and a transcendent height, and not knowing which was to receive

him.

From the first burst of the sunlight over the world, I sat at my

task. Each instrument, each lens I used, I spent an hour or hours

over, giving it the finest polish or nicety of adjustment to which it

could be brought. Into that day I had distilled my past; into it I was

willing to distil the eternity that was before me. With each now

application, the field of the planet shrank a thousand leagues, but

each time the light deepened. According to my principle, there was no

doubt that some object would be revealed before the space became too

limited, provided nothing interfered with the distinctness of the

picture. At length I calculated that I was selecting about twenty

square miles from about seven hundred. Forms were distinct, but they

were rigid, and painfully reminded me of the astronomic maps. About

five removes from this, I judged that the space I was looking at must

be about ten feet square. I was sure that the objects really occupying

those ten feet must be in my picture, if I could evoke them.

On this I placed a mild power, and was startled at finding something

new. The picture which had been so full of rigid and sharp outlines

now became a confusion of ever-changing forms. Now it was light,--now

shadow; angles faded into curves; but out of the swarming mass of

shapes I could not, after hours of watching, obtain one that seemed

like any form of life or art that I had ever seen.