_Note._—The fate of Venezuela ought not to be quite passed over. It is a striking instance of the indifference with which the lives and fortunes of a whole nation are often handed over by great kings to destruction as a mere matter of business. Charles V. of Spain being deeply indebted to a trading house of Augsburgh, the Welsers, gave them this province. They, in their turn, made it over to some German military mercenaries, who overrun the whole country in search of mines, and plundered and oppressed the people with the most dreadful rapacity. In the course of a few years their avarice and exactions had so completely exhausted and ruined the province that the Germans threw it up, and it fell again into the hands of the Spaniards, but in such a miserable condition that it continued to languish and drag on a miserable existence, if it has even recovered from its fatal injuries at the present time. CHAPTER XIII. THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. Son mui buenos Catolicos, pero mui malos Christianos;—They are very good Catholics, but nevertheless very bad Christians indeed. _Saying of an old Catholic priest. Ward’s Mexico._ Most of the countries in India have been filled with tyrants who prefer piracy to commerce—who acknowledge no right but that of power; and think that whatever is practicable is just. _The Abbé Raynal._ Scarcely had Columbus made known the New World when the Portuguese, under Vasco de Gama, opened the sea-path to the East Indies. Those affluent and magnificent regions, which had so long excited the wonder and cupidity of Europe, and whose gems, spices, and curious fabrics, had been introduced overland by the united exertions of the Arabs, the Venetians, and Genoese, were now made accessible by the great highway of the ocean; and the Pope generously gave all of them to the Portuguese! The language of the Pontiff was like the language of another celebrated character to our Saviour, and founded on about as much real right: “All these kingdoms will I give unto thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” The Portuguese were nothing loath. They were, in the expressive language of a great historian, “all on fire for plunder and the propagation of their religion!” Away, therefore, they hastened, following the sinuous guidance of those African coasts which they had already traced out—on which they had already commenced that spoliation and traffic in men which for three centuries was to grow only more and more extensive, dreadful, and detestable—“those countries where,” says M. Malte Brun, “tyranny and ignorance have not had the power to destroy the inexhaustible fecundity of the soil, but have made them, down to the present times, the theatre of eternal robbery, and one vast market of human blood.”