Brown states that,
"notwithstanding his commanding appearance and the strictness with which he guards the property of his master, he is possessed of the greatest mildness of conduct, and is as grateful for any favours bestowed upon him as is the most diminutive of the canine tribe. There is a remarkable and peculiar warmth in his attachments. He is aware of all the duties required of him, and he punctually discharges them. In the course of the night he several times examines every thing with which he is intrusted with the most scrupulous care, and, by repeated barkings, warns the household or the depredator that he is at the post of duty."[1]
mastiff from Cuba requires some mention, and will call up some of the most painful recollections in the history of the human race. He was not a native of Cuba, but imported into the country.
The Spaniards had possessed themselves of several of the South American islands. They found them peopled with Indians, and those of a sensual, brutish, and barbarous class — continually making war with their neighbours, indulging in an irreconcilable hatred of the Spaniards, and determined to expel and destroy them. In self-defence, they were driven to some means of averting the destruction with which they were threatened. They procured some of these mastiffs, by whose assistance they penetrated into every part of the country, and destroyed the greater portion of the former inhabitants.
Las Casas, a Catholic priest, and whose life was employed in endeavouring to mitigate the sufferings of the original inhabitants, says that
"it was resolved to march against the Indians, who had fled to the mountains, and they were chased like wild beasts, with the assistance of bloodhounds, who had been trained to a thirst for human blood, so that before I had left the island it had become almost entirely a desert."
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