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AND CHRISTIANITY.
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and he effected a great amount of good in the reduction of civil disorder; but the protection of the Indians was beyond even his power and sagacity, and he left them to their fate.


CHAPTER X.


THE SPANIARDS IN PARAGUAY.


One more march in the bloody track of the Spaniards, and then, thank God! we have done with them—at least, in this hemisphere. In this chapter we shall, however, have a new feature presented. Hitherto we have seen these human ogres ranging through country after country, slaying, plundering, and laying waste, without almost a single arm of power raised to check their violence, or a voice of pity to plead successfully for their victims. The solitary cry of Las Casas, indeed, was heard in Hispaniola; but it was heard in vain. The name of Christianity was made familiar to the natives, but it was to them a terrible name, for it came accompanied by deeds of blood, and lust and infamy. It must have seemed indeed, to them, the revelation of some monstrous Moloch, more horrible, because more widely and indiscriminately destructive than any war-god of their own. How dreadful must have appeared the very rites of this religion of the