into the spirit of the gospel and conformity to Rome.  The conquistadores drove with a whip, the missionaries with a dogma.  The spirit of the nation and of the age sternly asked for theological conformity:  it was seriously understood that a man should believe or burn.  For one of those two things he was preordained.  Everybody was convinced that a drop of water on the dusky forehead of these natives quenched the flames of hell.  The methods used to get that holy drop applied lighted flames, to escape from which anybody would take his chance of the remoter kind.

The cacique Hatuey understood the Spaniards.  He was the first man in the New World who saw by instinct what an after-age perceived by philosophical reflection.  He should have been the historian of the Conquest.  The Spaniards had destroyed his people, and forced him to fly to Cuba for safety.  There he also undertook a conversion of the natives.  “Do you expect to defend yourselves against this people,” he said, “while you do not worship the same God?  This God I know; he is more powerful than ours, and I reveal him to you.”  With this he shows them a little piece of gold.  “Here he is; let us celebrate a festival to honor him, that his favor may be extended to us.”  The natives hold a solemn smoking around the Spanish God, which is followed by singing and dancing, as to one of their own Zemes.  Having adroitly concentrated their attention in this way upon the article of gold, Hatuey the next morning reassembles the people and finishes his missionary labors.  “My mind is not at ease.  There can be no safety for us while the God of the Spaniard is in our midst.  They seek him everywhere.  Their devotion is so great that they settle in a place only for the convenience of worship.  It is useless to attempt to hide him from their eyes.  If you should swallow him, they would disembowel you in the name of religion.  Even the bottom of the sea may not be too far, but there it is that we must throw him.  When he can no longer be found with us, they will leave us in peace.”

Admirable counsel, if the gold in veins, or their own blood, were not also the object of search.  The natives collected all their gold and threw it into the sea.  A party of Spaniards landing upon the island not long after, Hatuey was taken prisoner, and condemned to be burnt alive because he refused to be converted!

  “Was conduct ever more affronting? 
  With all the ceremony settled! 
  With the towel ready”—­

and all the other apparatus for a first-class baptism, and the annexation to Rome and heaven of a tribe!  When he was tied to the stake, and a priest conjured him to profess Christianity and make a sure thing of paradise, he cut him short with,—­

“Are there Spaniards in this place of delights of which you speak?”

“There are indeed, but only good ones.”

“The best of them is good for nothing,” said the cacique.  “I would rather not go where I might have to meet them.”