HALL’S EXCURSIONS, 349 
requires of him a tribute of 31 dollars, so that for the 
annual support of himself and family he has remaining 
about 103 dollars. This sum, however, is not paid him in 
money, but in grain, potatoes, and other produce of the 
estate, at the same time that every loss on the property, as 
of sheep, cattle, or whatever he may be charged with, is 
inexorably placed to his account. In this situation he 
necessarily gets into his employer’s debt; and this debt, 
which goes on continually augmenting, is made a pretext to 
enslave him and his family for ever; for though he may 
change his master, as the debt is transferred with him, he is 
equally the slave of each succeeding employer. It is super- 
fluous to enumerate all the petty vexations, frauds and 
tyrannies to which such a state exposes him. Where power 
and avarice are placed in competition with ignorance and 
weakness, the result is easily calculated. It is true that in 
each district there is a magistrate, called ** Protector of the 
Indians," whose duty it is to see justice done them, in the 
settlement of their accounts and other disputes with their 
masters; but if justice is in South America a rare commodity, 
we may imagine how much of it falls to the share of the 
unfortunate Indian. I now continue the extracts from the 
* Secret Memoirs."—** Whatever may have been said of the 
tyranny of the Encomenderos towards the Indians at the 
time of the conquest, we can scarcely believe, after what 
we have seen, that it equalled that of the Spaniards and half 
castes at present. If they were then the slaves of the 
Encomendero, at least they had but one master; but they 
have now the Corregidor, the manufacturer, the farmer, his 
Overseers, and what is still more scandalous, the very ministers 
of the altar, all of whom treat the defenceless Indians with 
greater cruelty than the greatest exercised on Negro slaves. 
To form a perfect idea of the manufactories (obrages), we 
must consider them as a galley rowing incessantly during a 
calm, and destined never to reach a haven of rest. The 
labour commences before the light of day, when each Indian 
is locked into the room in which is assigned him his daily 
