right to say that "they loved their neighbour as themselves." Let us see how the Spaniards and Columbus himself followed up this sublime lesson.
Columbus being now left on the coast of the new world with but one crazy vessel,—for Pinzon the commander of the other, had with true Spanish treachery, set off on his way homewards to forestall the glory of being the first bearer of the tidings of this great discovery to Europe,—he resolved to leave the number of men which were now inconvenient in one small crowded vessel, on the island. To this Guacanahari consented with his usual good nature and good faith. Columbus erected a sort of fort for them; gave them good advice for their conduct during his absence, and sailed for Spain. In less than eleven months he again appeared before this new settlement, and found it levelled with the earth, and every man destroyed. Scarcely had he left the island when these men had broken out in all those acts of insult, rapacity, and oppression on the natives which only too soon became the uniform conduct of the Christians! They laid violent hands on the women, the gold, the food of the very people who had even kindly received them; traversed the island in the commission of every species of rapacity and villany, till the astonished and outraged inhabitants now finding them fiends incarnate instead of the superior beings which they had deemed them, rose in wrath, and exterminated them.
Columbus formed a fresh settlement for his newcomers, and having defended it with mounds and ramparts of earth, went on a short voyage of discovery among the West Indian isles, and came back to find that the same scene of lust and rapine had been acted
