32.  As the discovery of America was at first the source of much good to the Spaniards, it afterwards occasioned them many and considerable evils.  One has been, the depriving that kingdom of its subjects, by the great numbers necessarily required to people the colonies:  another was, the infecting the world with a disease, which was before unknown only in the new world and particularly in the island of Hispaniola.  Several of the companions of Christopher Columbus returned home infected with this contagion, which afterwards spread over Europe.  It is certain that this poison, which taints the springs of life, was peculiar to America, as the plague and small-pox, were diseases originally endemial to the southern parts of Numidia.

33.  We are not to believe, that the eating of human flesh, practised by some of the American savages, occasions this disorder.  There were no cannibals on the island of Hispaniola, where it was most frequent and inveterate; neither are we to suppose, with some, that it proceeded from too great an excess of sensual pleasures.  Nature had never punished excesses of this kind with such disorders in the world; and even to this day, we find that a momentary indulgence, which has been passed for eight or ten years, may bring this cruel and shameful scourge upon the chastest union.

34.  The great Columbus, after having built several houses on these islands, and discovered the continent, returned to Spain, where he enjoyed a reputation unsullied by rapine or cruelty, and died at Validolid in 1506.  But the Governors of Cuba and Hispaniola, who succeeded him, being persuaded that these provinces furnished gold, resolved to make the discovery at the price of the lives of the inhabitants.  In short, whether they thought the natives had conceived an implacable hatred to them, or that they were apprehensive of their superior numbers; or that the rage of slaughter when once begun, knows no bounds, they in the space of a few years entirely depopulated Hispaniola and Cuba, the former of which contained three millions of inhabitants, and the latter above six hundred thousand.

35.  Bartholomew de la Cases, bishop of Chiapa, who was an eye-witness to these desolations, relates that they hunted down the natives with dogs.  These wretched savages, almost naked and without arms, were pursued like wild beasts in the forest, devoured alive by dogs, shot to death, or surprised and burnt in their habitations.

36.  He further declares, from occular testimony, that they frequently caused a number of these miserable wretches to be summoned by a priest to come in, and submit to the Christian religion, and to the king of Spain; and that after this ceremony, which was only an additional act of injustice, they put them to death without the least remorse.—­I believe that De la Cases has exaggerated in many parts of his relation; but, allowing him to have said ten times more than is truth, there remains enough to make us shudder with horror.