The history of early Portuguese adventure--this strange history, full of the admirable and the terrible, attractive at the same time and hateful--owes nothing of its romance or its horror to the fancy of the poet or of the people. It does not come to us gathered up from tradition, to be cavilled at and perhaps rejected,--nor woven into ballad and legend. It has been preserved by sober and exact chroniclers. The earliest and most ample of its recorders, called to his task by the King of Portugal, was historiographer of the kingdom and keeper of its archives. Long a member of the household of Prince Henry, and the intimate acquaintance of his captains, he heard the story of each voyage from the lips of those who conducted it. He makes us present at Henry's consultations before the fitting out of an expedition,--at his interviews with his returning adventurers. He gives us the report of the obstacles they met with, and the encouragements. We follow the long disappointment of the sandy coast; gain from the deck of the caravel the first glimpse of the green land, with its soft meadows, quietly feeding cattle, and inviting shade. We receive the first kindly welcome of the wondering inhabitants, and meet their later defiance. These earliest witnesses to the character of the black man are among the most sincere. They were not tempted to deny to him the qualities they found in him. They had no doubt of the validity of the principle, that the stronger and wiser are called upon to make property of the faculties and possessions of the weaker and simpler; they were as sincerely persuaded that the privileges of superiority were with themselves. They believed in the duty and glory of extirpating heathenism, and with it the heathen, if need were. They acted under the command of "their lord Infant," to whose bounty and favor their past and their future were bound by every tie of gratitude and expectation. They had no occasion, then, to malign their victims in order to justify themselves. They did not call in question the patriotism of the people whom they intended to dispossess, nor its right to defend a country well worth defending. This people was odious to them for its supposed worship of "the Demon," and for its use of weapons of defence strange to the invaders, and therefore unlawful. But, even while grieving for the losses and smarting under the shame of an incredible defeat, they admitted and admired the courage by which they suffered. If they seized and carried away the children left on the river-side in barbarian security, with as little remorse as any marauders that came after them, they made themselves no illusions in regard to the feelings of the father, who, discovering his loss, rushed down to the beach in a vain attempt at rescue, "without any fear, through the fury of his paternal love." They made no scruple of employing guile, when it served better than force,--the civilized and