Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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To Form An Idea Of The Vagueness Of The
Estimates Made By The First Spanish Travellers, At A Period When
The
population of no province of the peninsula was ascertained, we have
but to recollect that the number of inhabitants
Which Captain Cook and
other navigators assigned to Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands, at a
time when statistics furnished the most exact comparisons, varied from
one to five. We may conceive that the island of Cuba, surrounded with
coasts adapted for fishing, might, from the great fertility of its
soil, afford sustenance for several millions of those Indians who have
no desire for animal food, and who cultivate maize, manioc, and other
nourishing roots; but had there been that amount of population, would
it not have been manifest by a more advanced degree of civilization
than the narrative of Columbus describes? Would the people of Cuba
have remained more backward in civilization than the inhabitants of
the Lucayes Islands? Whatever activity may be attributed to causes of
destruction, such as the tyranny of the conquistadores, the faults of
governors, the too severe labours of the gold-washings, the small-pox
and the frequency of suicides,* it would be difficult to conceive how
in thirty or forty years three or four hundred thousand Indians could
entirely disappear. (* The rage of hanging themselves by whole
families, in huts and caverns, as related by Garcilasso, was no doubt
the effect of despair; yet instead of lamenting the barbarism of the
sixteenth century, it was attempted to exculpate the conquistadores,
by attributing the disappearance of the natives to their taste for
suicide. See Patriota tome 2 page 50. Numerous sophisms of this kind
are found in a work published by M. Nuix on the humanity of the
Spaniards in the conquest of America. This work is entitled
Reflexiones imparciales sobre la humanidad de los Epanoles contra los
pretendidos filosofos y politicos, para illustrar las historias de
Raynal y Robertson; escrito en Italiano por el Abate Don Juan Nuix, y
traducido al castellano par Don Pedro Varela y Ulloa, del Consejo de
S.M. 1752. [Impartial reflections on the humanity of the Spaniards,
intended to controvert pretended philosophers and politicians, and to
illustrate the histories of Raynal and Robertson; written in Italian
by the Abate Don Juan Nuix and translated into Castilian by Don Pedro
Varela y Ulloa, member of His Majesty's Council.] The author, who
calls the expulsion of the Moors under Philip III a meritorious and
religious act, terminates his work by congratulating the Indians of
America "on having fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, whose
conduct has been at all times the most humane, and their government
the wisest." Several pages of this book recall the salutary rigour of
the Dragonades; and that odious passage, in which a man distinguished
for his talents and his private virtues, the Count de Maistre (Soirees
de St. Petersbourg tome 2 page 121) justifies the Inquisition of
Portugal "which he observes has only caused some drops of guilty blood
to flow." To what sophisms must they have recourse, who would defend
religion, national honour or the stability of governments, by
exculpating all that is offensive to humanity in the actions of the
clergy, the people, or kings!
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