52 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
whites in intellect; but they do not differ so much from the 
Europeans as they do from each other. The Negro will 
work hard for a short while, on rare occasions, or when 
compelled by another, but is innately lazy. The Indian is 
industrious by nature, and works steadily and well for him- 
self; but if compelled to work for another, loses all heart, 
and pines away and dies. The Negro is 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 condition 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 enslaved 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 multiplied in captivity as readily 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 comparative 
scarcity of the Negro element makes these countries 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, robbery, 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 seem to suffer in the 
estimation of their neighbours. This is greatly due in 
Nicaragua, as it is throughout Central and South America, 
to the profligate lives led by the priests, who, with few rare 
exceptions, live in concubinage more or less open. The 
