Thus the policy which ought to have favored the island first settled by Spaniards, against the attractions of Peru, Mexico, and Cuba, towards which the mother-colony was rapidly emptying her streams of life, was not forthcoming. These Spaniards, who were enslaved by the tenacious fancy that El Dorado still glittered for them in some distant place, needed to be attached to the soil by generous advantages, such as premiums for introducing and sustaining the cultivation of new productions, immunity from imposts either by Government or by the middle-men of a company, and liberty to exchange hides, tallow, and crops of every kind with the French, Dutch, and English, in every port of the island, to convert a precarious illicit trade with those nations into a natural intercourse, so that different articles of food, which were often scarce, and sometimes failed entirely, might be regularly supplied, until by such fostering care the colony should grow strong enough to protect itself against its own and foreign adventurers. But if all these measures had been accordant with the ideas of that age, they would have been defeated by its passions. Other people now appear upon the scene, to put the finishing touch to this decay, while they freshen the old crimes and assume the tradition of excess and horror which is the island's history. [To be continued.] FOOTNOTES: 1. Herrera says, however, that Las Casas declared them to be legitimately enslaved, the natives of Trinity Island in particular. Schoelcher (_Colonies Etrangeres et Haiti_, Tom. II. p. 59) notices that all the royal edicts in favor of the people of America, miserably obeyed as they were, related only to Indians who were supposed to be in a state of peace with Spain; the Caribs were distinctly excepted. It was convenient to call a great many Indians Caribs; numerous tribes who were peaceful enough when let alone, and victims rather than perpetrators of cannibalism, became slaves by scientific adjudication. "These races," said Cardinal Ximenes, "are fit for nothing but labor." 2. _Fifth Memoir: Upon the Liberty of the Indians._ Llorente, Tom. II. p. 11. 3. _Cimarron_ was Spanish, meaning _wild:_ applied to animals, and subsequently to escaped slaves, who lived by hunting and stealing.