The Indians of Havane, seeing themselves reduced to a state of severe slavery, and that there was no remedy left, but they were irrecoverably undone, began to take refuge in the deserts and mountains to secure themselves if possible from death; some strangled themselves in despair. Parents hanged themselves together with their children, to put the speedier end to their misery by death. Above two hundred Indians perished here after this manner to avoid the cruelty of the Spaniards, and abundance of them afterwards voluntarily condemned themselves to this kind of death, hoping thus in a moment to put a period to the miseries their persecutors inflicted on 'em.
A certain Spaniard, who had the title of Sovereign in this island and had three hundred Indians in his service, destroyed a hundred and sixty of them in less than three months by the excessive labor he continually exacted of them. The recruits he took to fill up their places were destroyed after the same manner; and he would in a short time have unpeopled the whole island if death, which took him out of the way, very happily for those poor wretches, had not sheltered 'em from his cruelties. I saw with my own eyes above six thousand children die in the space of three or four months, their parents being forced to abandon 'em, being condemned to the mines. After this the Spaniards took up a resolution to pursue those Indians that were retired into the mountains, and massacred multitudes of 'em; so that this island was depopulated and laid waste in a very little time. And it is a most lamentable spectacle to see so fine a country thus miserably ruined and unpeopled.
BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE
(1478-1529)
he interest to be found in the literary work of "il conte Baldassare Castiglione"—in the one prose volume he wrote, 'Il Cortegiano' (The Courtier)—arises not only from the historical value it now has, but from its representing the charming character of a gentleman. And it does this not merely by intentionally describing the ideal gentleman of the fifteenth century, but by unconsciously revealing the character of its author. Castiglione was himself distinctively a gentleman. Without eminent abilities or position, his life unmarked by any remarkable deeds or any striking events, he yet deserves remembrance as making vivid to us those admirable qualities and conditions which are the result, in individuals, of the long moral and intellectual cultivation of a large group of men and women.
Castiglione