We must now quit South America, to follow the European _Christians_ in their colonial career in another quarter of the globe. And in thus taking leave of this immense portion of the New World, where such cruelties have been perpetrated, and so much innocent blood shed by the avarice and ambition of Europe, we may ask,—What has been done by way of atonement; or what is the triumph of civilization? We have already quoted Mr. Ward on the present state of the aborigines of Mexico, and Mr. Luccock on those of Rio Janeiro. Baron Humboldt can furnish the reader with ample indications of a like kind in various parts of South America. Maria Graham tells us, so recently as 1824, that in Chili, Peru, and the provinces of La Plata, the system of Spain, which had driven those realms to revolt, had diffused “sloth and ignorance” as their necessary consequences. That in Brazil, “the natives had been either exterminated or wholly subdued. The slave-hunting, which had been systematic on the first occupation of the land, and more especially after the discovery of the mines, had so diminished the wretched Indians, that the introduction of negroes was deemed necessary: _they_ now people the Brazilian fields; and if here and there an Indian aldea is to be found, the people are wretched, with less than negro comforts, and much less than negro spirit or industry: _the Indians are nothing in Brazil_.” That the system of exterminating the Indians has been continued to the latest period where any remained, we may learn from a horrible fact, which she tells us she relates on good authority. “In the Captaincy of Porto Seguro, _within these twenty years_, an Indian tribe had been so troublesome that the Capitam Môr resolved to get rid of it. It was attacked, but defended itself so bravely, that the Portuguese resolved to desist from open warfare; but with unnatural ingenuity exposed ribbons and toys, infested with small-pox matter, in the places where the poor savages were likely to find them. The plan succeeded. The Indians were so thinned that they were easily overcome!”—_Voyage to Brazil_, p. 9.