384
LIFE
A N D
V O Y A G E S
OF
[BOOK V I .
dignities of Spanish gentlemen, and insulting the honor of the nation. Columbus may have been too strict and indiscriminate in his regulations.
There are cases in which even justice may become
oppressive, and where the severity of the law should be tempered with indulgence.
What was mere toilsome labor to a common
man, became humiliation and disgrace when forced upon a Span ish cavalier.
Many of these young men had come out, not in the
pursuit of wealth, but with romantic dreams inspired by his own representations; hoping, no doubt, to distinguish themselves by heroic achievements and chivalrous adventure, and to continue in the Indies the career of arms which they had commenced in the recent wars of Granada.
Others had been brought up in 30ft,
luxurious indulgence, in the midst of opulent families, and were little calculated for the rude perils of the seas, the fatigues of the land, and the hardships, the exposures, and deprivations which attend a new settlement in the wilderness. ill, their case soon became incurable.
When they fell
The ailments of the body
were increased by sickness of the heart.
They suffered under
the irritation of wounded pride, and the morbid melancholy of disappointed hope; their sick-bed was destitute of all the tender care and soothing attention to which they had been accustomed; and they sank into the grave in all the sullenness of despair, cursing the day of their departure from their country. The venerable Las Casas, and Herrera after him, record, with much solemnity, a popular belief current in the island at the time of his residence there, and connected with the untimely fate of these cavaliers. In after years, when the seat of the colony was removed from