cruelty thereof, and strange kind of torment, presently gave up the ghost. The cacique her father, understanding the matter, took thirty of his men and went to the house of the captain, who was then absent, and slew his wife, whom he had married after that wicked act committed, and the women who were companions of the wife, and her servants every one. Then shutting the door of the house, and putting fire under it, he burnt himself and all his companions that assisted him, together with the captain's dead family and goods." This is no fiction or poet's romance. It is a tale of wrath and revenge, which in sober dreadful truth enacted itself upon this earth, and remains among the eternal records of the doings of mankind upon it. As some relief to its most terrible features, we follow it with a story which has a touch in it of diabolic humor. desert; the gold was in the mines, and there were no poor slaves left remaining to extract it. One means which the Spaniards dared to employ to supply the vacancy, brought about an incident which in its piteous pathos exceeds any story we have ever heard. Crimes and criminals are swept away by time, nature finds an antidote for their poison, and they and their ill consequences alike are blotted out and perish. If we do not forgive them, at least we cease to hate them, as it grows more clear to us that they injured none xaxia, the enormous wickedness by which so deeply as themselves. But the Onpions humanity itself has been outraged and disgraced, we cannot forgive, we cannot cease to hate that; the years roll away, but the tints of it remain on the pages of history, deep and horrible as the day on which they were en tered there. "When the Spaniards understood the simple opinion of the Yucaian islanders concerning the souls of their departed, which, after their sins purged in the cold northern mountains should pass into the south, to the intent that, leaving their own country of their own accord, they might suffer themselves to be brought to Hispaniola, they did persuade those poor wretches, that they came from those places where they should see their parents and children, and all their kindred and friends that were dead, and should enjoy all kinds of delights with the embracements and fruition of all beloved things. And they, being infected and tions, singing and rejoicing left their country, and possessed with these crafty and subtle imaginafollowed vain and idle hope. But when they saw that they were deceived, and neither met their parents nor any that they desired, but were compelled to undergo grievous sovereignty and command, and to endure cruel and extreme labor, they either slew themselves, or, choosing to famish, gave up their fair spirits, being persuaded by no The slave-owners finding their slaves escaping thus unprosperously out of their grasp, set themselves to find a remedy for so desperate a disease, and were swift to avail themselves of any weakness, mental or bodily, through which to retain them in life. One of these proprietors being informed that a number of his people intended to kill themselves on a certain day, at a particular spot, and knowing by experience that they were too likely to do it, presented himself there at the time which had been fixed upon, and telling the Indians when they arrived, that he knew their intention, and that it was vain for them to attempt to keep anything a secret from him, he ended with saying, that he had come there to kill himself with them; that as he had used them ill in this world, he might use them worse in the next; "with which he did dissuade them presently from their purpose." With what efficacy such believers in the immortality of the soul were likely to recommend either their faith or their God; rather, how terribly all the devotion It was once more as it was in the days of and all the earnestness with which the poor the apostles. The New World was first priests who followed in the wake of the con- offered to the holders of the old traditions. querors labored to recommend it were shamed They were the husbandmen first chosen for and paralyzed, they themselves too bitterly the new vineyard, and blood and desolation lament. It was idle to send out governor were the only fruits which they reared upon after governor with orders to stay such prac-it. In their hands it was becoming a kingdom tices. They had but to arrive on the scenes to become infected with the same fever, or if any remnant of Castilian honor, or any faintest echoes of the faith which they professed, still flickered in a few of the best and noblest, they could but look on with folded hands in ineffectual mourning; they could do nothing without soldiers, and the soldiers were the worst offenders. Hispaniola became a mere reason or violence to take food. So these miserable Yucaians came to their end." not of God, but of the devil, and a sentence of blight went out against them and against their works. How fatally it has worked, let modern Spain and Spanish America bear witness. We need not follow further the history of their dealings with the Indians. For their colonies, a fatality appears to have followed all attempts at Catholic colonization. Like shoots from an old decaying tree which Indians, he came down suddenly upon the forts, and, taking them by storm, slew or afterwards hanged every man he found there, leaving their bodies on the trees on which they had hanged the Huguenots, with their own inscription reversed against them-"Not as Spaniards, but as murderers." For which exploit, well deserving of all honest men's praise, Dominique de Gourges had to fly his country for his life; and, coming to England, was received with honorable welcome by Elizabeth. There is no occasion to look for superstitious causes to explain it. The Catholic faith had ceased to be the faith of the large mass of earnest thinking capable persons; and to It was at such a time, and to take their those who can best do the work, all work in part amidst such scenes as these, that the this world sooner or later is committed. Amer- English navigators appeared along the shores ica was the natural home for Protestants; of South America, as the armed soldiers of persecuted at home, they sought a place the Reformation, and as the avengers of huwhere they might worship God in their own manity; and as their enterprise was grand way, without danger of stake or gibbet, and and lofty, so was the manner in which they the French Huguenots, as afterwards the bore themselves in all ways worthy of it. English Puritans, early found their way there. They were no nation of saints, in the modern The fate of a party of Coligny's people, who sentimental sense of that word; they were had gone out as settlers, shall be the last of prompt, stern men--more ready ever to strike these stories, illustrating, as it does in the an enemy than to parley with him; and, prihighest degree, the wrath and fury with which vate adventurers as they all were, it was the passions on both sides were boiling. A natural enough that private foolishness and certain John Ribault, with about 400 com- private badness should be found among them panions, had emigrated to Florida. They as among other mortals. Every Englishman were quiet inoffensive people, and lived in who had the means was at liberty to fit out peace there several years, cultivating the soil, a ship or ships, and if he could produce building villages, and on the best possible tolerable vouchers for himself, received at terms with the natives. Spain was at the once a commission from the Court. The battime at peace with France; we are, therefore, tles of England were fought by her children, to suppose that it was in pursuance of the at their own risk and cost, and they were at great crusade, in which they might feel se- liberty to repay themselves the expense of cure of the secret, if not the confessed, their expeditions by plundering at the cost sympathy of the Guises, that a powerful of the national enemy. Thus, of course, in a Spanish fleet bore down upon this settlement. mixed world, there were found mixed maThe French made no resistance, and they rauding crews of scoundrels, who played the were seized and flayed alive, and their bodies game which a century later was played with hung out upon the trees, with an inscription such effect by the pirates of Tortuga. But suspended over them, "Not as Frenchmen, we have to remark, first, that such stories are but as heretics." At Paris all was sweetness singularly rare; and then, that the victims and silence. The settlement. was tranquilly are never the Indians, never any but the surrendered to the same men who had made Spaniards or the French, when the English it the scene of their atrocity; and two years were at war with them; and, on the whole, later, 500 of the very Spaniards who had the conduct and character of the English been most active in the murder were living sailors, considering what they were and the there in peaceable possession, in two forts work which they were set to do, present us which their relation with the natives had all through that age with such a picture of obliged them to build. It was well that there gallantry, disinterestedness, and high heroic were other Frenchmen living, of whose con- energy, as has never been overmatched; the sciences the Court had not the keeping, and more remarkable, as it was the fruit of no who were able on emergencies to do what drill or discipline, no tradition, no system, no was right without consulting it. A certain organized training, but was the free native privateer named Dominique de Gourges, growth of a noble virgin soil. secretly armed and equipped a vessel at Rochelle, and, stealing across the Atlantic and in two days collecting a strong party of Before starting on an expedition, it was usual for the crew and the officers to meet and arrange among themselves a series of ar ticles of conduct, to which they bound themselves by a formal agreement, the entire body itself undertaking to see to their observance. It is quite possible that strong religious profession, and even sincere profession, might be accompanied, as it was in the Spaniards, with everything most detestable. It is not sufficient of itself to prove that their actions would correspond with it, but it is one among a number of evidences; and, coming, as they come before us, with hands clear of any blood but of fair and open enemies, these articles may pass at least as indications of what they "With a general consent of all our company, it was ordained that there should be a palmer or ferula which should be in the keeping of him who was taken with an oath; and that he who had the palmer should give to every one that he took swearing, a palmada with it and the ferula; and whosoever at the time of evening or morning prayer was found to have the palmer, should have three blows given him by the captain or the master; and that he should still be bound to free himself by taking another, or else to run in danger of continuing the penalty, which, being executed a few days, reformed the vice, so that in three days together was not one oath heard to be sworn." The regulations for Luke Fox's voyage commence thus: "For as much as the good success and prosperity of every action doth consist in the due service and glorifying of God, knowing that not only our being and preservation, but the prosperity of all our actions and enterprises do immediately depend on His Almighty goodness and mercy; it is provided "First, that all the company, as well officers as others, shall duly repair every day twice at the call of the bell to hear public prayers to be read, such as are authorized by the church, and that in a godly and devout manner, as good Christians ought. Secondly, that no man shall swear by the name of God, or use any profane oath, or blaspheme His holy name." To symptoms such as these, we cannot but attach a very different value when they are the spontaneous growth of common minds, unstimulated by sense of propriety or rules of the service, or other official influence lay or ecclesiastic, from what we attach to the somewhat similar ceremonials in which, among persons whose position is conspicuous, important enterprises are now and then inaugurated. We have said as much as we intend to say of the treatment by the Spaniards of the Indian women. Sir Walter Raleigh is commonly represented by historians as rather defective, if he was remaakable at all, on the moral side of his character. Yet Raleigh can declare proudly, that all the time he was on the Oronoko, "neither by force nor other means had any of his men intercourse with any woman there;" and the narrator of the incidents of Raleigh's last voyage acquaints his correspondent pondent "with some particulars touching the government of the fleet, which, although other men in their voyages doubtless in some measure observed, yet in all the great volumes which have been written touching voyages, there is no precedent of so godly severe and martial government, which not only in itself is laudable and worthy of imitation, but is also fit to be written and engraven on every man's soul that coveteth to do honor to his country." Once more, the modern theory of Drake is, as we said above, that he was a gentleman-like pirate on a large scale, who is indebted for the place which he fills in history to the indistinct ideas of right and wrong prevailing in the unenlightened age in which he lived, and who therefore demands all the toleration of our own enlarged humanity to allow him to remain there. Let us see how the following incident can be made to coincide with this hypothesis: A few days after clearing the channel on his first great voyage, he fell in with a small Spanish ship, which he took for a prize. He committed the care of it to a certain Mr. Doughtie, a person much trusted by, and personally very dear to him, and this second vessel was to follow him as a tender. In dangerous expeditions into unknown seas, a second smaller ship was often indispensable to success; but many finely-intended enterprises were ruined by the cowardice of the officers to whom such ships were entrusted; who shrank as danger thickened, and again and again took advantage of darkness or heavy weather to make sail for England and forsake their commander. Hawkins twice suffered in this way; so did Sir Humfrey Gilbert; and, although Drake's own kind feeling for his old friend has prevented him from leaving an exact account of his offence, we gather from the scattered hints which are let fall, that he, too, was meditating a similar piece of treason. However, it may or may not have been thus. But when at Port St. Julien, "our General," says one of the crew, "Began to inquire diligently of the actions of Mr. Thomas Doughtie, and found them not to be such as he looked for, but tending rather to contention or mutiny, or some other disorder, whereby, without redresse, the success of the voyage might greatly have been hazarded. Whereupon the company was called together and made acquainted with the particulars of the cause, which were found, partly by Mr. Doughtie's own confession, and partly by the evidence of the fact, to be true, which, when our General saw, although his private affection to Mr. Doughtie (as he then, in the presence of us all, sacredly protested) was great, yet the care which he had of the state of the voyage, of the expectation of Her Majesty, and of the honor of his country, did more touch him, as indeed it ought, than the private respect of one man; so that the cause being thoroughly heard, and all things done in good order as near as might be to the course of our law in England, it was concluded that Mr. Doughtie should receive punishment according to the quality of the offence. And he, seeing no remedy but patience for himself, desired before his death to receive the communion, which he did at the hands of Mr. Fletcher, our minister, and our General himself accom panied him in that holy action, which, being done, and the place of execution made ready, he, having embraced our General, and taken leave of all the company, with prayers for the Queen's Majesty and our realm, in quiet sort laid his head to the block, where he ended his life. This being done, our General made divers speeches to the whole company, persuading us to unity, obedience, love, and regard of our voyage, and for the better confirmation thereof, willed every man the next Sunday following to prepare himself to receive the communion, as Christian brethren and friends ought to do, which was done in very reverent sort, and so with good contentment every man went about his business." The simple majesty of this anecdote can gain nothing from any comment which we might offer upon it. The crew of a common English ship organizing, of their own free motion, on that wild shore, a judgment hall more grand and awful than any most elaborate law court, with its ermine and black cap, and robes of ceremony for mind as well as body, is not to be reconciled with the pirate theory, which we may as well henceforth put away from us. Of such stuff were the early English navigators; we are reaping the magnificent harvest of their great heroism; and we may see once more in their history and in what has arisen out of it, that on these deep moral foundations, and on none others, enduring prosperities, of what kind soevor, politic or religious, material or spiritual, are alone in this divinely-governed world permitted to base themselves and grow. Wherever we find them they are still the same. In the courts of Japan or of China, fighting Spaniards in the Pacific, or prisoners among the Algerines, founding colonies which by and by were to grow into enormous transatlantic republics, or exploring in crazy pinnaces the fierce latitudes of the Polar seas, they are the same indomitable God-fearing men whose life was one great liturgy. "The ice was strong, but God was stronger," says one of Frobisher's men, after grinding a night and a day among the icebergs, not waiting for God to come down and split them, but toiling through the long hours, himself and the rest fending off the vessel with poles and planks, with death glaring at them out of the ice rocks, and so saving themselves and it. Icebergs were strong, Spaniards were strong, and storms, and corsairs, and rocks, and reefs, which no chart had then noted-they were all strong, but God was stronger, and that was all which they cared to know. Out of the vast number it is difficult to make wise selections, but the attention floats loosely over generalities, and only individual men can seize it and hold it fast. We shall attempt to bring our readers face to face with some of these men; not, of course, to write their biographies, but to sketch the details of a few scenes, in the hope that they may tempt those under whose eyes they may fall to look for themselves to complete the perfect figure. Some two miles above the port of Dartmouth, once among the most important harbors in England, on a projecting angle of land which runs out into the river at the head of one of its most beautiful reaches, there has stood for some centuries the Manor House of Greenaway. The water runs deep all the way to it from the sea, and the largest vessels may ride with safety within a stone's throw of the windows. In the latter half of the sixteenth century there must have met, in the hall of this mansion, a party as remarkable as could have been found anywhere in England. Humfrey and Adrian Gilbert, with their half brother, Walter Raleigh, here, when little boys, played at sailors in the reaches of Long Stream; in the summer evenings doubtless rowing down with the tide to the port, and wondering at the demonstrate a channel to the north, corresponding to Magellan's Straits in the south, he believing, in common with almost every one of his day, that these straits were the only opening into the Pacific, the land to the south being unbroken to the Pole. He prophesies a market in the East for our man "The Easterns greatly prizing the same, as appeareth in Hester, where the pomp is expressed matched the colored clothes wherewith his houses of the great King of India, Ahasuerus, who and tents were apparelled, with gold and silver, as part of his greatest treasure.' quaint figure-heads and carved prows of the These and other such arguments were the best analysis which Sir Humfrey had to offer of the spirit which he felt to be working in him. We may think what we please of them. But we can have but one thought of the great grand words with which the memorial concludes, and they alone would explain the love which Elizabeth bore him : "Never, therefore, mislike with me for taking in hand any laudable and honest enterprise, for if the pleasure vanisheth, but the shame abideth for through pleasure or idleness we purchase shame, Homer and Aristotle are pressed into service to prove that the ocean runs round the three old continents, and America therefore is necessarily an island. The gulf stream which he had carefully observed, eked out by a theory of the primum mobile, is made to I ever. "Give me leave, therefore, without offence, always to live and die in this mind: that he is not worthy to live at all that, for fear or danger of death, shunneth his country's service and his own honor, seeing that death is inevitable and the fame of virtue immortal, wherefore in this behalf mutare vel timere sperno." Two voyages which he undertook at his own cost, which shattered his fortune, and failed, as they naturally might, since inefficient help or mutiny of subordinates, or other disorders, are inevitable conditions under which more or less great men must be content to see their great thoughts mutilated by the feebleness of their instruments, did not dishearten him, and in June, 1583, a, last fleet of five ships sailed from the port of Dartmouth, with commission from the Queen to discover and take possession from latitude 45° to 50° north-a voyage not a little noteworthy, there being planted in the course of it the first English colony west of the Atlantic. Elizabeth had a foreboding that she would never see him again. She sent him a jewel as a last token of her favor, and she desired Raleigh to have his picture taken before he went. The history of the voyage was written by a Mr. Edward Hayes, of Dartmouth, one of the principal actors in it, and as a composition it is more remarkable for fine writing |