428
LIFE
AND
VOYAGES
OF
[BOOK X V I I .
side of a brook, others under the shade of a tree, where they had crawled for shelter from the sun. “ I have found many dead in the road,” says Las Casas, “ others gasping under the trees, and others in the pangs of death, faintly crying Hunger ! hun ger !”* Those who reached their homes most commonly found them desolate. During the eight months they had been absent, their wives and children had either perished or wandered away ; the fields on which they depended for food were overrun with weeds, and nothing was left them but to lie down, exhausted and despairing, and die at the threshold of their habitations.† It is impossible to pursue auy further the picture drawn by the venerable Las Casas, not of what he had heard, but of what he had seen ; nature and humanity revolt at the details. Suffice it to say that, so intolerable were the toils and sufferings inflicted upon this weak and unoffending race, that they sank under them, dissolving, as it were, from the face of the earth. Many killed themselves in despair, and even mothers overcame the powerful instinct of nature, and destroyed the infants at their breasts, to spare them a life of wretchedness. Twelve years had not elapsed since the discovery of the island, and several hundred thousand of its native inhabitants had perished, miserable victims to the grasping avarice of the white men. * Las Casas, Hist. Ind., lib. ii. can. 14, M S .
†
Idem, ubi sup.