2. We are astonished to find him so unskilful in all that concerns the conciliation of the inhabitants of the various seas and lands, that he has conquered. Every where, the voyager has gone, as the enemy of the young populations, whether human or brute, whether terrestrial or maritime, which, properly treated, would have been, each in its own limited sphere, so servicable to him. Man, as to the globe on which he has made such grand discoveries, is like a musical novice, before some immense Organ, from which he can produce but a few notes. Emerging from the middle ages, after so much of philosophy and theology, he still remained barbarous; of the sacred instrument, he only knew how to break the keys. The gold seekers, as we have seen, sought only gold, nothing but that; man they pitilessly crushed. Columbus, though the last of them, shows this with a quite terrible plainness and simplicity, in his own journal. His words make us shudder, anticipating, prophesying, as they do, what would be done by his successors. No sooner has he landed in Haiti, than he enquires, "where is the gold? Who has got gold?" The natives smiled, in their innocent astonishment, at this fierce desire for gold. They promised him that they would search for it for him, and in the mean time, gave their rings and ornaments to satisfy the earlier, that eager appetite. He gives us a most touching description of that unfortunate race, so interesting for its beauty, its kindness, and its tender confidence. But the Geonese, touchingly as he described that people, had his own mission of avarice, his hard, stern habits of thought. The Turkish wars, the atrocious galleys, and their wretched slaves, piracy and manstealing, were the common life of that day. The sight of that young, unarmed community, those poor, naked children, and lovely and innocent women, inspired him only with the horrible mercantile thought, that they might be very easily enslaved. He would not, however, consent to have them carried away from the beautiful island; they and it, belonged, said he, to the King and Queen, Ferdinand and Isabella. But he said these darkly and terribly significant words--"They are timid and well fitted for obedience. They will do whatever they are ordered to do; a thousand of them would retreat before three or four of ours. If your Highnesses give me the order to carry them off or to enslave them here, there is nothing to hinder it; fifty men will suffice to do it." Thus wrote he in his Journal, or Despatch, of 14 and 16, December. Presently came from Europe the wholesale sentence of that whole poor innocent people. They were ordered to be the slaves of gold--all subjected to compulsory labor, some to seek gold, and others to feed the goldseekers. Columbus confesses that in twelve years, six sevenths of that once happy population had perished; and Herrera adds that in twenty-five years, that population had fallen from a million of souls to fourteen thousand.