Such were the aborigines of Hayti, the “Mountain-land.”  But as our narrative does not propose a minute and consecutive survey, it will detain us too long from certain essential points which deserve to be made clear, if we follow step by step the dealings of the Spaniards with these natives.  All this can be found delightfully told by Mr. Irving in his “Life of Columbus,” in such a way as to render an attempt at repeating it hazardous and useless.  Our task is different,—­to make prominent first, the character of the natives, which we have just striven to do, and next, the style of treatment in converting and in enslaving them, which gave its first chapter of horrors to San Domingo, and laid violent hands on the whole sequence of her history.

What influence could the noble elements of the Spanish character have, when theology, avarice, and lust controlled the conquest?  Pure minds and magnanimous intentions went in the same ships with adventurers, diseased soldiers, cold and superstitious men of business, and shaven monks with their villanous low brows and thin inquisitorial smile.  The average character speedily obtained ascendency, because the best men were to some extent partakers of it.  Columbus was eager to make his great discovery pay well, to preserve the means of continued exploration.  In one hand he lifted high the banner of possession with its promise of a cross, which direful irony fulfilled; with the other he kept feeding the ravenous nation with gold, to preserve its sympathy and admiration, that the supply of men and vessels should not fail.  Las Casas himself, a just and noble man, the first advocate of the natural rights of men in the New World, soon found that the situation was too strong and cruel; his wishes and struggles went under before the flood of evil passions which swept the island.  He maintained his fight against Indian slavery by not discountenancing negro slavery.  And his fight was unavailing, because mercy had no legitimate place upon the new soil.  The logic of events was with the evil majority, which was obliged at last to maintain its atrocious consistency in self-defence.  He might as well have preached the benefits of Lenten diet to shipwrecked men upon a raft, insane with thirst and the taste of comrade’s flesh.  It was a Devil’s problem, which is the kind that cannot hold back from its devilish conclusion.

But bad passions were not alone to blame.  The Spanish notion of conversion desolated like avarice.  The religious bodies which from time to time controlled the affairs of the island differed in their humanity and general policy:  the Dominicans were friends of the Indian and haters of the turbulent oppressor; the Franciscans were the instruments of the bad men whose only ambition was to wring pleasure and fortune out of the Indian’s heart; the monks of St. Jerome undertook in vain a neutral and reconciling policy.  But they all agreed that the Indians must be baptized, catechized, and more or less chastised