IRVING'S COLUMBUS.

A firebrand in their present forlorn situation. aded himself he should find a ready way | asperation of them might be fatal to the Spaniards thrown into their wooden fortress might wrap it in flames, and leave them defenceless amidst hostile thousands."

to the shores of the Ganges: The extreme severity of the season, and the miserable condition of his ships, compelled him, however, to abandon this great enterprise; the account of which Mr. Irving winds up with the following quaint and not very felicitous observaexpection: "If he was disappointed in his tation of finding a strait through the Isthmus of Darien, it was because nature herself had been disappointed-for she appears to have attempted to make one, but to have attempted it in vain."

After this he returned to the coast of Veragua, where he landed, and formed a temporary settlement, with a view of searching for certain gold mines which he had been told were in the neighbourhood. This, however, was but the source of new disasters. The natives, who were of a fierce and warlike character, attacked and betrayed him-and his vessels were prevented from getting to sea, by the formation of a formidable bar at the mouth of the river.

At last, by prodigious exertions, and the heroic spirit of some of his officers, he was enabled to get away. But his altered fortune still pursued him. He was harassed by perpetual storms, and after having beat up nearly to Hispaniola, was assailed by

"The envy," says Mr. Irving, "which had once
sickened at the glory and prosperity of Columbus,
heritage in the world he had discovered; the tenant
could scarcely have devised for him a more forlorn
of a wreck on a savage coast, in an untraversed
moment, from precarious friends, might be trans
ocean, at the mercy of barbarous hordes, who, in a
formed into ferocious enemies; afflicted, too, by
bed, and by the pains and infirmities which hard-
excruciating maladies which confined him to his
But Columbus had not yet exhausted his cup
ship and anxiety had heaped upon his advancing
of bitterness. He had yet to experience an evil
worse than storm, or shipwreck, or bodily anguish,
or the violence of savage hordes, in the perfidy of
those in whom he confided."

age.

The account of his sufferings during the twelve long months he was allowed to remain in this miserable condition, is full of the deepest interest, and the strangest variety of adTwo of his brave and devoted adherents unventure. But we can now only refer to it.dertook to cross to Hispaniola in a slender Indian canoe, and after incredible miseries, at length accomplished this desperate undertaking-but from the cold-hearted indecision, or paltry jealousy, of the new Governor Ovando, it was not till the late period we have mentioned, that a vessel was at length des"A sudden tempest, of such violence, that, acBut he was not the only, or even the most cording to the strong expression of Columbus, it patched to the relief of the illustrious sufferer. seemed as if the world would dissolve. They lost three of their anchors almost immediately, and the memorable sufferer. From the time he was caravel Bermuda was driven with such violence superseded in command, the misery and opupon the ship of the admiral, that the bow of the pression of the natives of Hispaniola had inone, and the stern of the other, were greatly shat-creased beyond all proportion or belief. By tered. The sea running high, and the wind being boisterous, the vessels chafed and injured each other dreadfully, and it was with great difficulty that they were separated. One anchor only remained to the admiral's ship, and this saved him from being driven upon the rocks; but at daylight the cable was found nearly worn asunder. Had the darkness continued an hour longer, he could scarcely have escaped shipwreck.

His proud career seemed now to be hastening to a miserable end. Incapable of strug gling longer with the elements, he was obliged to run before the wind to Jamaica, where he was 20: aven in a condition to attempt to make any harbour.

the miserable policy of the new governor, their services were allotted to the Spanish settlers, who compelled them to work by the cruel infliction of the scourge; and, withholding from them the nourishment necessary for health, exacted a degree of labour which could not have been sustained by the most vigorous men.

At the end of six days, the weather having "If they fled from this incessant toil and barbamoderated, he resumed his course, standing eastward for Hispaniola: his people,' as he says, 'dis-rous coercion, and took refuge in the mountains, mayed and down-hearted, almost all his anchors they were hunted out like wild beasts, scourged in lost, and his vessels bored as full of holes as a the most inhuman manner, and laden with chains to prevent a second escape. Many perished long honeycomb." who survived their term of six or eight months, before their term of labour had expired. Those were permitted to return to their homes, until the next term commenced. But their homes were often forty, sixty, and eighty leagues distant. They but a few roots or agi peppers, or a little cassava. had nothing to sustain them through the journey bread. Worn down by long toil and cruel hard. ships, which their feeble constitutions were incapa. ble of sustaining, many had not strength to perform the journey, but sunk down and died by the way; some by the side of a brook, others under the shade of a tree, where they had crawled for shelter from the sun. I have found many dead in the road,' Those who reached their says Las Casas, others gasping under the trees, and others in the pangs of death, faintly crying, Hunger; hunger!' homes most commonly found them desolate. Du. ring the eight months that they had been absent their wives and children had either perished or wandered away; the fields on which they depended for food were overrun with weeds, and nothing was left them but to lie down, exhausted and despairing, and die at the threshold of their habitations.

"His ships, reduced to mere wrecks, could no longer keep the sea, and were ready to sink even in port. He ordered them, therefore, to be run aground, within a bow-shot of the shore, and fastened together, side by side. They soon filled with water to the decks. Thatched cabins were then erected at the prow and stern for the accommodation of the crews, and the wreck was placed in the best possible state of defence. Thus castled in the sea, Columbus trusted to be able to repel any sudden attack of the natives, and at the same time to keep his men from roving about the neighbourhood and indulging in their usual excesses. No one was allowed to go on shore without especial licence, and the utmost precaution was taken to prevent any offence from being given to the Indians. Any ex

It is impossible to pursue any farther the picture drawn by the venerable Las Casas, not of what he had heard, but of what he had seen-nature and humanity revolt at the details. Suffice it to say that, so intolerable were the toils and sufferings inflicted upon this weak and unoffending race, that they sunk under them, dissolving as it were from •he face of the earth. Many killed themselves in despair, and even mothers overcame the powerful instinct of nature, and destroyed the infants at their breasts, to spare them a life of wretchedness. Twelve years had not elapsed since the discovery of the island, and several hundred thousands of its native inhabitants had perished, miserable victims to the grasping avarice of the white men.'

"Sometimes," says Mr. Irving, tney would hunt down a straggling Indian, and compel him, by torments, to betray the hiding-place of his com panions, binding him and driving him before them as a guide. Wherever they discovered one of these places of refuge, filled with the aged and the infirm, with feeble women and helpless children, they massacred them without mercy! They wished to inspire terror throughout the land, and to frighten the whole tribe into submission. They cut off the hands of those whom they took roving at large, and sent them, as they said, to deliver them as letters to their friends, demanding their surrender. Numberless were those, says Las Casas, whose hands were amputated in this manner, and many anguish and loss of blood. of them sunk down and died by the way, through

44

these things,' says he, and others revolting to human nature, my own eyes beheld! and now I almost fear to repeat them, scarce believing myself, or whether I have not dreamt them.'

These pictures are sufficiently shocking; but they do not exhaust the horrors that cover The conquerors delighted in exercising strange the brief history of this ill-fated people. The and ingenious cruelties. They mingled horrible province or district of Xaragua, which was levity with their bloodthirstiness. They erected ruled over by a princess, called Anacaona, gibbets long and low, so that the feet of the suf celebrated in all the contemporary accounts ferers might reach the ground, and their death be for the grace and dignity of her manners, and lingering. They hanged thirteen together, in reverence, says the indignant Las Casas, of our blessed her confiding attachment to the strangers, had Saviour and the twelve apostles! While their hitherto enjoyed a happy exemption from the victims were suspended, and still living, they hacktroubles which distracted the other parts of ed them with their swords, to prove the strength the island, and when visited about ten years of their arm and the edge of their weapons. They before by the brother of Columbus, had im- wrapped them in dry straw, and setting fire to it, terminated their existence by the fiercest agony. pressed all the Spaniards with the idea of an "These are horrible details; yet a veil is drawn earthly paradise both from the fertility and over others still more detestable. They are related sweetness of the country, the gentleness of by the venerable Las Casas, who was an eye-witzess its people, and the beauty and grace of the of the scenes he describes. He was young at the women. Upon some rumours that the neigh-time, but records them in his advanced years. 'All bouring caciques were assembling for hostile purposes, Ovando now marched into this devoted region with a well-appointed force of near four hundred men. He was hospitably and joyfully received by the princess: and affected to encourage and join in the festivity which his presence had excited. He was even himself engaged in a sportful game with his officers, when the signal for massacre was given-and the place was instantly covered with blood! Eighty of the caciques were burnt over slow fires! and thousands of the unarmed and unresisting people butchered, without regard to sex or age. "Humanity, Mr. Irving very justly observes, "turns with horror from such atrocities, and would fain discredit them: But they are circumstantially and still more minutely recorded by the venerable Las Casas-who was resident in the island at the time, and conversant with the principal actors in the tragedy."

Still worse enormities signalised the final subjugation of the province of Higuey-the last scene of any attempt to resist the tyrannical power of the invaders. It would be idle to detail here the progress of that savage and most unequal warfare: but it is right that the butcheries perpetrated by the victors should not be forgotten-that men may see to what incredible excesses civilised beings may be tempted by the possession of absolute and unquestioned power-and may learn, from indisputable memorials, how far the abuse of delegated and provincial authority may be actually carried. If it be true, as Homer has alleged, that the day which makes a man a slave, takes away half his worth-it seems to be still more infallibly and fatally rue, that the master generally suffers a yet larger privation.

"The system of Columbus may have borne hard upon the Indians, born and brought up in untasked freedom; but it was never cruel nor sanguinary. punishments; his desire was to cherish and civilise the Indians, and to render them useful subjects, not to oppress, and persecute, and destroy them. When he beheld the desolation that had swept them from the land during his suspension from authority, he could not restrain the strong expression of his feelto Spain, he thus expresses himself on the subject: ings. In a letter written to the king after his return

He inflicted no wanton massacres nor vindictive

The Indians of Hispaniola were and are the riches of the island; for it is they who cultivate and make the bread and the provisions for the Christians, who dig the gold from the mines, and perform all the informed that, since I left this island, (that is, in less offices and labours both of men and beasts. I am than three years,) six parts out of seven of the natives are dead, all through ill treatment and inhumanity! some by the sword, others by blows and cruel usage, and others through hunger. The greater part have perished in the mountains and glens, whither they had fled, from not being able to support the labour imposed upon them.'

The story now draws to a close. Columbus returned to Spain, broken down with age and affliction--and after two years spent in unavailing solicitations at the court of the cold-blooded and ungrateful Ferdinand (his generous patroness, Isabella, having died immediately on his return), terminated with characteristic magnanimity a life of singular energy, splendour, and endurance. Indepen dent of his actual achievements, he was un doubtedly a great and remarkable man; and Mr. Irving has summed up his general char acter in a very eloquent and judicious way.

"His ambition," he observes, "was lofty and noble. He was full of high thoughts, and anxious

Mr. Irving, we believe, was not in Egland when his work was printed: and we must say he has been very insufficiently represented by the corrector of the press. We do not recollect ever to have seen so handsome a Yet, with all this fervour of imagination," as book with so many gross typographical errors. Mr. Irving has strikingly observed, its fondest dreams fell short of the reality. He died in igno. In many places they obscure the sense-and rance of the real grandeur of his discovery. Until are very frequently painful and offensive. his last breath he entertained the idea that he had It will be absolutely necessary that this be merely opened a new way to the old resorts of opu- looked to in a new impression; and the auent commerce, and had discovered some of the thor would do well to avail himself of the wild regions of the east. He supposed Hispaniola to be the ancient Ophir which had been visited by same opportunity, to correct some verbal inthe ships of Solomon, and that Cuba and Terra accuracies, and to polish and improve some Firma were but remote parts of Asia. What visions passages of slovenly writing.

(June, 1827.)

Memoirs of ZEHIR-ED-DIN MUHAMMED BABER, Emperor of Hindustan, written by himself, an the Jaghatai Turki, and translated, partly by the late JOHN LEYDEN, Esq. M.D., partly by WILLIAM ERSKINE, Esq. With Notes and a Geographical and Historical Introduction: to gether with a Map of the Countries between the Oxus and Jaxartes, and a Memoir regarding its Construction, by CHARLES WADDINGTON, ESQ., of the East India Company's Engineers. London: 1826.

THIS is a very curious, and admirably edited | work. But the strongest impression which the perusal of it has left on our minds is the boundlessness of authentic history; and, if we might venture to say it, the uselessness of all history which does not relate to our own fraternity of nations, or even bear, in some way or other, on our own present or future condition.

Tartars to the Celestial Empire of China. It will not do to say, that we want something nobler in character, and more exalted in intellect, than is to be met with among those murderous Orientals-that there is nothing to interest in the contentions of mere force and violence; and that it requires no very finedrawn reasoning to explain why we should turn with disgust from the story, if it had been preserved, of the savage affrays which have drenched the sands of Africa or the rocks of New Zealand-through long generations of murder-with the blood of their brutish population. This may be true enough of Madagascar or Dahomy; but it does not apply to the case before us. The nations of Asia generally-at least those composing its great states -were undoubtedly more polished than those of Europe, during all the period that preceded their recent connection. Their warriors were as brave in the field, their statesmen more subtle and politic in the cabinet: In the arts of luxury, and all the elegancies of civil life, they were immeasurably superior; in inge. nuity of speculation-in literature-in social politeness-the comparison is still in their

We have here a distinct and faithful account of some hundreds of battles, sieges, and great military expeditions, and a character of a prodigious number of eminent individuals,-men famous in their day, over wide regions, for genius or fortune-poets, conquerors, martyrs -founders of cities and dynasties-authors of immortal works-ravagers of vast districts abounding in wealth and population. Of all these great personages and events, nobody in Europe, if we except a score or two of studious Orientalists, has ever heard before; and it would not, we imagine, be very easy to show that we are any better for hearing of them now. A few curious traits, that happen to be strikingly in contrast with our own manners and habits, may remain on the memory of a reflecting reader-with a gene-favour. ral confused recollection of the dark and gor- It has often occurred to us, indeed, to congeous phantasmagoria. But no one, we may sider what the effect would have been on the fairly say, will think it worth while to digest fate and fortunes of the world, if, in the fouror develope the details of the history; or be teenth, or fifteenth century, when the germs at the pains to become acquainted with the of their present civilisation were first disclosed, leading individuals, and fix in his memory the the nations of Europe had been introduced to series and connection of events. Yet the ef- an intimate and friendly acquaintance with fusion of human blood was as copious-the the great polished communities of the East, display of talent and courage as imposing- and had been thus led to take them for their the perversion of high moral qualities, and the masters in intellectual cultivation, and their waste of the means of enjoyment as unspar-models in all the higher pursuits of genius, ing, as in other long-past battles and intrigues and revolutions, over the details of which we still pore with the most unwearied attention; and to verify the dates or minute circumstances of which, is still regarded as a great exploit in historical research, and among the noblest employments of human learning and sagacity.

polity, and art. The difference in our social and moral condition, it would not perhaps be easy to estimate: But one result, we conceive, would unquestionably have been, to make us take the same deep interest in their ancient story, which we now feel, for similar reasons, in that of the sterner barbarians of early Rome, or the more imaginative clans and colonies It is not perhaps very easy to account for of immortal Greece. The experiment, howthe eagerness with which we still follow the ever, though there seemed oftener than once fortunes of Miltiades, Alexander, or Cæsar-to be some openings for it, was not made. of the Bruce and the Black Prince, and the Our crusading ancestors were too rude theminterest which yet belongs to the fields of selves to estimate or to feel the value of the Marathon and Pharsalia, of Crecy and Ban-oriental refinement which presented itself to nockburn, compared with the indifference, or rather reluctance, with which we listen to the details of Asiatic warfare-the conquests that transferred to the Moguls the vast sovereignties of India, or raised a dynasty of Manchew

their passing gaze, and too entirely occupied with war and bigotry, to reflect on its causes or effects; and the first naval adventurers who opened up India to our commerce, were both too few and too far off to communicate to