and condoled with them in their misfortune. But as if this was not enough, the next morning, when Columbus had removed to one of his other vessels, the good Guacanahari appeared on board to comfort him, and to offer all that he had to repair his loss!” This beautiful circumstance is moreover still more particularly related by Columbus himself, in his letter to his sovereigns; and it was on this occasion that he gave that character of the country and the people to which I have just referred. Truly had he a great right to say that “they loved their neighbour as themselves.” Let us see how the Spaniards and Columbus himself followed up this sublime lesson. Columbus being now left on the coast of the new world with but one crazy vessel,—for Pinzon the commander of the other, had with true Spanish treachery, set off on his way homewards to forestall the glory of being the first bearer of the tidings of this great discovery to Europe,—he resolved to leave the number of men which were now inconvenient in one small crowded vessel, on the island. To this Guacanahari consented with his usual good nature and good faith. Columbus erected a sort of fort for them; gave them good advice for their conduct during his absence, and sailed for Spain. In less than eleven months he again appeared before this new settlement, and found it levelled with the earth, and every man destroyed. Scarcely had he left the island when these men had broken out in all those acts of insult, rapacity, and oppression on the natives which only too soon became the uniform conduct of the _Christians_! They laid violent hands on the women, the gold, the food of the very people who had even kindly received them; traversed the island in the commission of every species of rapacity and villany, till the astonished and outraged inhabitants now finding them fiends incarnate instead of the superior beings which they had deemed them, rose in wrath, and exterminated them.