proceed from the partial oblivion of an old religion brought from an old country, what little was remembered being mingled with the growth of a new natural religion, varying in each sweep of the coast according to the peculiar circumstances of the tribe among which it was growing to maturity.

The whole subject well merits the largest and profoundest inquiry; and the laws of thought, which create and modify natural religion, might perhaps be more easily discovered from a consideration of all that was noticed in the discovery of the New World than from any other body of evidence which exists on that subject, gathered from the religions of the rest of the world.

The curious observer of human nature might here see how the shrewd and strong man imposes upon the credulity of the simple beings around him till he becomes the wizard of his tribe, and a kind of witchcraft their religion; how the hero is honored by those he has served and succored until they worship him almost as a god, and when he dies, give up to him the life-blood of those who were dearest to him, and whom he would have died to serve; how the king, a descendant probably of this hero, though perhaps a very unworthy one, is honored in the same way as his great ancestor, until royal obsequies drink up rivers of human blood.

The same observer will notice, not without a sad smile on his countenance, how that which was fluent and occasional becomes fixed, formal, and established; for the savage and the semi-civilized man are essentially conservative; and the cruelty which has once, on some great occasion, been committed in honor of the gods, or the heroes, or the wise men, must never more be pretermitted for fear of their avenging wrath. And this avenging wrath, how natural, from all they

saw around them, to imagine its existence! Looking at this world, at the terrors and difficulties within a man and without him, beholding the fierceness of Nature, for she has a fierce aspect, and not fiercer any where than in the New World, what more natural to suppose than that there were cruel beings to appease, and then what more inevitable than that men should offer up to these beings the most beautiful and noblest creature in creation, their fellow-man ?*

The gloomy cleft of superstition once entered, how hard to retrace the steps! One wise man or one hero (alas, how little understood!) is the cause of introducing a cruel, a barbarous, or a silly rite. How many heroes and how many wise men must battle for ages to subdue that one small item of superstition! For all the dread past is summoned up against them; and whatever is dark, fierce, stupid, or intolerant in the minds of their fellow-men of the present generation, comes forth to fight against the few wise and heroic men, if any such there be, who discern the magnitude of the superstition.

In considering the Conquest of the Indies, we see that there was urgent need of the presence of some greater beings than the natives, who should cancel the past for them, and lift these savages out of their homicidal ways. Accordingly, the Spaniards-themselves not the least stern and fanatical of men—appeared upon the scene.

* Human sacrifices, though very horrible, are not by any means the most cruel things that are done under the sun, being full of motive. Considering what we know of each other's sufferings, how the most prosperous life is thick with concealed disaster and disappointment, no more to be relied upon than the smooth surface of the sea near a rocky coast, how any man can needlessly molest another is astonishing; but nothing is to be wondered at when the logical faculty is once fairly applied to the service of superstition or of resentment.

CHAPTER VI.

LAS CASAS AS A COLONIST.-OCAMPO'S EXPEDITION.

RETU

ETURNING to the religion of the inhabitants of the coast of Cumaná, with whom this history has at present most concern, it was no other than it appeared to the voyagers in the "Santa Flor," namely, a religion of the simplest kind, where the priesthood is not established, where the civil government does not claim in any way the power of a priesthood, and where the religion is little better than a course of small superstitious observances, conjoined with a belief in witcheraft.

For a characteristic manifestation of the religious feeling of these tribes, the way in which they received the coming of an eclipse may be taken. They supposed it to be a sign of the anger of the sun and moon at their idleness or ingratitude. On the appearance, therefore, of the eclipse, a sudden and wondrous activity pervaded the Indian villages of that coast. The warriors sounded their musical instruments of war, and couched their lances to demonstrate their valor and their resolution to defend the gods in the field of battle. The husbandmen began to busy themselves in digging and cutting wood. The women cast maize and reeds into the air, uttering lamentations, and confessing aloud their indolence and their objection to labor. This sudden demonstration of activity was undertaken distinctly in the hope of appeasing the anger

which, they said, the moon on these occasions meant to show on account of their feeble ways of proceeding, and of their inveterate idleness.* When the eclipse was over, they were "very contented in having appeased their god with these feigned promises and vain offerings; and they concluded the unwelcome labor of the day by a dance, which ended in a bout of drunkenness, being their ordinary way of winding up their festivals."†

That practice which seems so unaccountable, if it be once seriously thought upon, of worshiping some of the lower animals, was not unknown on the coast of Cumaná; and their treatment of toads may be mentioned as a curious and ludicrous instance of that kind of superstition. They held the toad to be, as they said, "the lord of the waters," and therefore they were very compassionate with it, and dreaded by any accident to kill a toad, though, as has been found the case with other idolaters, they were ready, in times of difficulty, to compel a favorable hearing from their pretended deities; for they were known to keep these toads with care under an earthen vessel, and to whip them with little switches when there was a scarcity of provisions and a want of rain.‡ Another superstition worthy of note was, that when they hunted down any game, before killing it, they were wont to open its

* "Unos tocan instrumentos bélicos, y alistan sus armas en demostracion de su valentía, y prevencion para defenderlos en campal batalla. Otros echan mano á las herramientas, cortan leña, y hacen otros exercicios, y faginas (qy., faénas) laboriosas, para aplacar el enojo, que dicen muestra la Luna por su floxedad, y desidia.”—ANTONIO CAULIN, Historia Corographica Natural y Evangélica de la Nueva Andalucía, lib. i., cap. 13. CAULIN, lib. i., cap. 13.

"Se ha experimentado tenerlos con cautela debajo de una olla, y azotarlos con varillas, quando hay escasez, y falta de lluvias."-CAULIN, Hist. de la Nueva Andalucía, lib. i., cap. 13.

mouth and introduce some drops of maize wine, in order that its soul, which they judged to be the same as that of men, might give notice to the rest of its species of the good entertainment which it had met with, and thus lead them to think that, if they came too, they would participate in this kindly treatment.*

I mention these vain and trifling superstitions with a view of showing the low state of religious intelligence among the inhabitants of that coast, which corresponds with their general simplicity in other matters.

Having prepared the way for introducing the departure of Las Casas from Spain to his territory on the Pearl Coast by narrating the discovery of that coast and its occupation by the Spaniards, together with some account of its primitive inhabitants, their customs and religion, the clerigo himself may reappear upon the scene with more hope of his mission being understood, and of his project of colonization meeting with that sympathy from the reader which it so much needed from his contemporaries and fellow-countrymen. Unfortunately, some of the most interesting events to read about are those which were thought very tiresome and very small affairs at the time when they were being transacted.

Las Casas, having completed his preparations, embarked at San Lucar on the 11th of November, 1520. He took with him some laborers, "humble and simple people, in order that they might respond to the sim

* "Introducen algunos tragos de ella, para que su alma (que juzgan es como la de los hombres) dé noticia á las demas de su especie el buen recibimiento, que ha tenido, y que los demás que viniesen, participarán de aquel agasajo.”—CAULIN, Hist. de la Nueva Andalucía, lib. i., c. 13.