Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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By Chastising
The Natives, We Facilitate Their Conversion." These Principles, Which
Degrade Humanity, Were Certainly Not Common To All The Members Of A
Society Which, In The New World, And Wherever Education Has Remained
Exclusively In The Hands Of Monks, Has Rendered Service To Letters And
Civilization.
But the entradas, the spiritual conquests with the
assistance of bayonets, was an inherent vice in a system, that tended
to the rapid aggrandizement of the Missions.
It is pleasing to find
that the same system is not followed by the Franciscan, Dominican, and
Augustinian monks who now govern a vast portion of South America; and
who, by the mildness or harshness of their manners, exert a powerful
influence over the fate of so many thousands of natives. Military
incursions are almost entirely abolished; and when they do take place,
they are disavowed by the superiors of the orders. We will not decide
at present, whether this amelioration of the monachal system be owing
to want of activity and cold indolence; or whether it must be
attributed, as we would wish to believe, to the progress of knowledge,
and to feelings more elevated, and more conformable to the true spirit
of Christianity.
Beyond the mouth of the Rio Paruasi, the Orinoco again narrows. Full
of little islands and masses of granite rock, it presents rapids, or
small cascades (remolinos), which at first sight may alarm the
traveller by the continual eddies of the water, but which at no season
of the year are dangerous for boats.
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