and his heirs. He was to be their viceroy in those countries, with a tenth of the free profits upon all the productions and the commerce of those realms. This was pretty well for monarchs professing to be Christians, and who ought to have been taught—"thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." But they had been brought up in another faith: the Pope had exclaimed—
Creation's heir! the world, the world is mine!
and they took him literally and really at his word. And it will soon be seen that Columbus, though naturally of an honorable nature, was not the less the dupe of this fearful system. He proceeded on his voyage, discovered a portion of the West Indies, and speedily plunged into atrocities against the natives that would have been pronounced shocking in Timour or Attila. James Montgomery, in his beautiful poem, the West Indies, has strongly contrasted the character of Columbus and that of his successors.
The winds were prosperous, and the billows bore
The brave adventurer to the promised shore;
Far in the west, arrayed in purple light,
Dawned the New World on his enraptured sight.
Not Adam, loosened from the encumbering earth.
Waked by the breath of God to instant birth,
With sweeter, wilder wonder gazed around,
When life within, and light without he found;
When all creation rushing o'er his soul.
He seemed to live and breathe throughout the whole.
So felt Columbus, when divinely fair
At the last look of resolute despair.
The Hesperian isles, from distance dimly blue,
With gradual beauty opened on his view.
