The Newfoundlanders were the first to grow sick. He fancied that they suffered less from the cold than from the privation of light; when the lanterns were shown to them they seemed to revive. But, by degrees, a strange melancholy grew upon them, and they went mad. Next followed, in the same sad course, the Esquimaux dogs, and none remained but his little slut, Flora, the wisest little thing—as he calls her—and she neither went mad nor died. I believe this is the only point, in his fearfully interesting narrative, at which you can perceive that that brave, stern heart, for an instant sank.
MAN'S WAR UPON THE RACES OF THE SEA.
On reviewing the whole history of Voyages, we are impressed by two quite contrary feelings:
1. We admire the courage and genius with which man has conquered the seas, and dominated his whole planet.
2. We are astonished to find him so unskilful in all that concerns the conciliation of the inhabitants of the various seas and lands, that he has conquered. Every where, the voyager has gone, as the enemy of the young populations, whether human or brute, whether terrestrial or maritime, which, properly treated, would have been, each in its own limited sphere, so servicable to him. Man, as to the globe on which he has made such grand discoveries, is like a musical novice, before some immense Organ, from which he can produce but a few notes. Emerging from the middle ages, after so much of philosophy and theology, he still remained barbarous; of the sacred instrument, he only knew how to break the keys.
The gold seekers, as we have seen, sought only gold, nothing but that; man they pitilessly crushed. Columbus, though the last of them, shows this with a quite terrible plainness and simplicity, in his own journal. His words make us shudder, anticipating, prophesying, as they do, what would be done by his successors. No sooner has he landed in Haiti, than he enquires, "where is the gold? Who has got gold?" The natives smiled, in their innocent astonishment, at this fierce desire for gold. They promised him that they would search for it for him, and in the mean time, gave their rings and ornaments to satisfy the earlier, that eager appetite.
He gives us a most touching description of that unfortunate race, so interesting for its beauty, its kindness, and its tender confidence. But the Geonese, touchingly as he described that people, had his own mission of avarice, his hard, stern habits of thought. The Turkish wars, the atrocious galleys, and their wretched slaves, piracy and manstealing, were the common life of that day. The sight of that young, unarmed community, those poor, naked children, and lovely and innocent women, inspired him only with the horrible mercantile thought, that they might be very easily enslaved.