Ch. XX.] INIQUITY OF SPANIARDS. 361 



dominion of the Spaniard, and now all the toil and labour 

 fall to the lot of the weaker sex. One custom still 

 remaining amongst the Masaya Indians may be a relic of 

 the old days of woman's superiority. When they marry, 

 the goods that the wife had before her marriage still 

 belong to her, and if she had a mule or horse, and her 

 husband had none, he cannot use hers without her 

 permission. 



The poor Indians were ground down to the dust by 

 the Spaniards with pitiless barbarities. All their pos- 

 sessions were seized, and they themselves exported to 

 Panama and Peru, and sold as slaves to work at the 

 mines. Even in Pascual's time the country had been 

 greatly depopulated by these means. The people were 

 harmless and patient, but there was a noble independ- 

 ence about them that could not be eradicated, and the 

 Spaniards found it was cheaper to bring the negro from 

 Africa, with his light and careless heart, than to try to 

 enslave a people who did not resist, but who sought 

 a refuge from their persecutors in the grave rather than 

 continue in slavery. I shall not harrow the feelings of 

 my readers with the mass of treachery, avarice, blas- 

 phemy, and horrible cruelties with which the conquerors 

 rewarded the noble people who entertained them so 

 courteously. To me the conquest of Mexico, Central 

 America, and Peru appears one of the darkest pages in 

 modern history. One virtue indeed shone out un- 



V 



daunted courage ; and the human mind is so constituted 

 that this single redeeming point irresistibly enlists our 

 sympathies. But for this, Pizarro would be execrated 

 as a monster of cruelty, and even the fame of Cortez. 



*/ 7 



immeasurably superior as he was to the rest of the 



