this laborious suit; and, if he had not been enabled to borrow some money at Seville, the expedition must have fallen to the ground from sheer want of means to initiate it.

This would have been the more to be regretted, as Las Casas had succeeded in obtaining an extent of territory large enough for the most ample experiment

of colonization. It reached from the province of Paria to that of Santa Martha, about two hundred and sixty leagues along the coast, and was to extend right through the country to the Pacific, a distance of two thousand five hundred leagues, and so, it seems, would have included the country lying immediately northward of Peru, and some part of Peru itself.* If Las Casas had been a rich and powerful man, or had been

"Se le encomendava desde la Provincia de Pária inclusive, hasta la de Santa Marta exclusive, que son de costa de Mar Leste oueste doscientas y sesenta leguas poco mas o menos, y ambos á dos límites corriendo por cuerda derecha hasta dar á la otra costa del Sur, ó mediodía, que son (como despues ha parecido) mas de dos mill y quinientas leguas por la tierra dentro, porque no hay otra mar hasta el estre

well supported by the rich and powerful, he might easily have altered the fate of South America.

The narrative, after many turnings and windings in the difficult navigation of affairs at court, has now come to that point where Las Casas, having conquered his troubles in Spain, was ready to start for the Terra-firma, tolerably well equipped with all the things that were necessary for a great enterprise of colonization in that part of the world. It remains to be seen how far the Terra-firma was ready to receive him, and whether there would be that concurrence of favorable circumstances upon which success in any enterprise depends, or at least without which success is in the highest degree difficult. For this purpose, it is necessary for the writer to go back a long way in the history of the Indies, to resuscitate Columbus, who had now for many years found the true rest of the tomb, and to describe, at some length, the discovery and settlement of that part of the Terra-firma which had been granted by the King of Spain to the Clerigo Las Casas.

Nay, further, to bring the subject with any thing like completeness before the mind of the reader, it will be advisable to anticipate the Spanish Conquest, and to make some endeavor, at least, to describe the inhabitants of the coast of Cumaná (otherwise called the Pearl Coast), and their mode of life, before they had seen the face of a white man. Hitherto, in the course of this narrative, when the word "Indians" has occurred, it has conveyed little more information than if the words "savages," "aborigines," or "copper-colored men" had been used. And, indeed, so much is our

cho de Magallanes."-LAS CASAs, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. iii., cap. 154.

knowledge of different tribes intermingled and confused, that it would be presumptuous to say with respect to any account given, even after the utmost research, of the inhabitants of any particular part of the coast, that it was exactly faithful. Still, some attempt must be made; and as there was a general resemblance in the languages spoken by the adjacent tribes, even though they could not understand each other,* so in

* "The Cumanagotos, the Tamanacs, the Chaymas, the Guarons, and the Caribbees, do not understand each other, in spite of the frequent analogy of words and of grammatical structure exhibited in their respective idioms."-HUMBOLDT's Personal Narrative, vol. i., chap. ix.

the life of these several tribes there was a general basis of accordance, which we must endeavor to bring before our minds if we would take the full interest in their story which its importance to the world demands for it.

The traveler of modern days sees these various tribes under a very different aspect from that which they must have presented to the Spanish conquerors, and especially from that which they would have presented to any thoughtful and scientific explorer who had accompanied or preceded those conquerors. The stagnant life of the Indian in the Missions-the suppressed life of the Indian under the civil rule of another race, essentially different from his own-will give but little idea of what that life was before the Indians had seen any vessels other than their own swift piraguas hollowed from the trunks of trees.

Even the laws which were meant to be most considerate for the Indians, and which were obtained with such difficulty by benevolent churchmen like Las Casas, or kind-hearted statesmen like Charles the Fifth, have proved a sad restraint upon the energies of the race, as no man leans long on any person or thing without losing some of his own original power and energy. It was ordained, for instance, that no Indian should have any transaction of buying or selling which involved a sum greater than a certain small specified amount. This law was passed to protect the Indian: the modern traveler naturally and justly sees in it an instance of the childlike subjection under which the Indians have been kept. No wonder that he observes, in going into their huts, that he can discern little or no difference between the countenances of the father and the son,* so few and so flaccid have been the emotions that

* "All the Chaymas have a sort of family look; and this resem

have passed through the mind, and impressed themselves upon that unerring indicator, the visage, even in the Indian whose time of life is such that, had he been a man of different race and country, the cruel wrinkles would have been in abundance, like the lines in a map, telling no slight portion of his troubled history. From all that I have been able to learn of the Indians on the coast of Cumaná at the period preceding the Spanish Conquest, I should certainly not be inclined to class them under the head of savage tribes. They had ceased to be nomadic. They lived in villages. They were expert fishermen. And here it may be noticed that the sea performs the same function in civilizing men that the settlement and cultivation of lands do, giving them a fixed place of work and a settled occupation. These Indians were skillful in hunting, but were not hunters only, for they had domestic animals, which the women tended. An immense love for the solitude of nature,* the reminiscence perhaps. blance, so often observed by travelers, is the more striking, as between the ages of twenty and fifty, difference of years is no way denoted by wrinkles of the skin, color of the hair, or decrepitude of the body. On entering a hut, it is often difficult among adult persons to distinguish the father from the son, and not to confound one generation with another. I attribute this air of family resemblance to two different causes, the local situation of the Indian tribes, and their inferior degree of intellectual culture." - HUMBOLDT's Personal Narrative, vol. i., chapter ix.

See also the account of the missionary GUMILLA: "El cabello en todos sin excepcion alguna es negro, grueso, laso y largo, con el apreciable privilegio, que necesita de largo peso de años para ponerse canos: argumento nuevo que robora la opinion antigua de que las canas son parto mas legítimo de las pesadumbres y cuidados que de los muchos años. Ello es así, que no creo se hallen gentes que disimulen tanto la edad, y la demuestren ménos que los Indios, cuyas canas apénas comienzan á pintar á los sesenta años."-Historia Natural, Civil y Geográfica de las Naciones del Orinoco, vol. i., cap. 5.

* "The irresistible desire the Indians have to flee from society, and