<U THE NATURALIST IX NICARAGUA. [Ch. V. 



talkative, vivacious, vain, and sensual ; the Indian 

 taciturn, stolid, dignified, and moderate. As freemen, 

 regularly though poorly paid and kindly treated, the 

 Indians work well and laboriously in the mines ; but the 

 Negro seldom engages either in that or any other settled 

 employment, unless compelled as a slave, in which con- 

 dition he is happy and thoughtless. I do not defend 

 slavery, but I believe it to be a greater curse to the 

 masters than to the slaves, more deteriorating to the 

 former than to the latter. The Spaniards at first en- 

 slaved the Indians, but they died away so rapidly that in 

 a very short time the indigenes of the whole of the once- 

 populous islands of the West Indies were exterminated, 

 and large numbers of Indians were carried off from, the 

 mainland to supply their places, but died with equal 

 rapidity ; so that the Spaniards found it more profitable 

 to bring negroes from Africa, who thrived and multi- 

 plied in captivity as quickly as the enslaved Indians 

 pined away and died. In Central America there never 

 were many black slaves ; since the States threw off the 

 yoke of Spain there have been none ; and this compara- 

 tive scarcitv of the Ne^ro clement makes these countries 



J 



much more pleasant and safer to dwell in than the West 

 Indies, where it is much larger. The Indian seldom or 

 never molests the whites, excepting in retaliation for 

 some great injury; whilst amongst the free Negroes, rob- 

 bery, violence, and murder need no other incentives than 

 their own evil passions and lust. 



The women at Santo Domingo are much the same as 

 those found at all the small provincial towns of Central 

 America. Morality is at a low ebb, and most of them 

 live as mistresses, not as wives, for which they do not 



