Here then we have a thinly populated country inhabited, so far as it is inhabited at all, by men that are inspired towards each other by the spirit of fiends. It is impossible that civilization can ever come there except by some fresh and powerful revolution. We hear of the new republics of South America, and naturally look for more evidences of good from the spirit of liberty: but in the towns we find the people indolent, ignorant, superstitious, and most filthy; and in the country naked Indians on horseback, scouring the wilds, and making use of the very animals by which the Spaniards subjugated them, to scourge and exterminate their descendants. In the opinion of Captain Head, they only want fire-arms, which one day they may get, to drive them out altogether! And what are they whom they would drive out? Only another kind of savages. People who, calling themselves Christians, live in most filthy huts swarming with vermin—sit on skeletons of horses’ heads instead of chairs—lie during summer out of doors in promiscuous groups—and live entirely on beef and water; the beef, chiefly mare’s flesh, being roasted on a long spit, and every one sitting round and cutting off pieces with long knives. The cruelty and beastliness of their nature exceeding even that of the Indians themselves. This then is the result of three centuries of bloodshed and tyranny in those regions—one species of barbarism merely substituted for another. What a different scene to that which the same countries would now have exhibited, had the Jesuits not been violently expelled from their work of civilization by the lust of gold and despotism. “When we compare,” says Captain Head, “the relative size of America with the rest of the world, it is singular to reflect on the history of these fellow-creatures, who are the aborigines of the land; and after viewing the wealth and beauty of so interesting a country, it is painful to consider what the sufferings of the Indians have been, and still may be. Whatever may be their physical or natural character[12] ... still they are the human beings placed there by the Almighty; the country belonged to them; and they are therefore entitled to the regard of every man who has religion enough to believe that God has made nothing in vain, or whose mind is just enough to respect the persons and the rights of his fellow-creatures.” The view I have been enabled in my space to take of the treatment of the South Americans by their invaders, is necessarily a mere glance,—for, unfortunately for the Christian name and the name of humanity, the history of blood and oppression there is not more dreadful than it is extensive. I have not staid to describe the conduct of the French, Dutch, and English, in their possessions on the southern continent, simply because they are only too much like those of the Spaniards and Portuguese—they form no bright exception, and we shall only too soon meet with these refined nations in other regions.