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COLONIZATION

in their South-American colonies. I must confess that his own History of Brazil does not give me that impression. It is true that they did not succeed in so speedily depopulating the country; but that in part, must be attributed to the more warlike and hardy character of the people, and to the fact that Brazil did not for a long time become a mining country. By the time that it did, all the Indians that the horrible man-hunters of San Paulo could seize in their wild excursions, were wanted in the cultivated lands and sugar plantations, and negroes were imported in abundance—the English for a long time supplying by contract four thousand annually. The final expulsion of the Jesuits deprived the Indians of the only body of real friends that they ever knew. Finer materials than those poor people for civilization, no race on the earth ever presented. Had the Jesuits been permitted to continue their peaceful labours, the whole continent would have become one wide scene of peace, fertility, and happiness. What a contrast does Brazil present, after the lapse of three centuries, and even after the introduction of European royalty! The people are described by modern travellers as living in the utmost filth, idleness, licentiousness, and dishonesty. "The Indians are driven into the interior, where," says Mr. Luccock, "they form a great bar to civilization; their animosity to the whites being of the bitterest sort, and their purposes of vengeance for injuries received, so long bequeathed from father to son, as to be rooted in their hearts as firmly as the colour is attached to their skin. Under the influence of this passion, they destroy every thing belonging to the Europeans or their descendants, which falls in their