54 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Bookll. 



And he farther adds, that there was judicial evidence taken of many 

 of the things the Francifcan mentions, by the Procurator-Fifcal of the 

 Council of India, which was flill preferved*. Las Cafas further ap- 

 peals, for the truth of what he fays, to letters written by another 

 Biihop, the Biihop of St Martha, to the Catholic King. 



A relation fo authenticated may, I think, be credited, notwith- 

 ftanding that the fads, which he relates, are fo enormoufly cruel and 

 barbarous, that they are difficult to be believed. He fays, that in 

 the forty years, during which the Spaniards had been, at the time 

 he wrote, in poffeffion of the Weft Indies and America, they had 

 deftroyed 50 millions of people, which he computes to be a half of 

 the human race ; and in Peru fmgly, he fays, they defti'oyed 40 mil- 

 lions. The iflands, he fays, being firft difcovered, were firft depo- 

 pulated, and much more depopulated than any part of the continent; 

 for he tells us, in two feveral places, that, in above 50 iflands off the 

 coaft of New Spain, which formerly fwarmed with people, (more 

 than 500,000), there were not left more than eleven of the natives: 

 And this, he fays, was difcovered by a fhip that was employed two 

 years in the fearchf. And I was informed by a Britifh Admiral 

 now living, who had been in thofe iflands of the Weft Indies, which 

 .are or had been poifeflTed by the Spaniards, that there was hardly any 

 of the race of the natives to be found : And he faid he had been 

 through the greateft part of them. 



Charlevoix J, in his hiftory of Hifpaniola and Paraguay, gives a 

 very different account of this work of Las Cafas. He fays, tha; Las 

 Cafas made the number of Indians, deftroyed by the Spaniards, 4:o 

 be no more than 15 millions; and he oblerves, that even this ac- 

 count is exaggerated. How to reconcile what Charlevoix fays, with 

 the French tranflation of the Bifliop's book, I do not know ; but 



one 



* rage 209. t p. 286. X P- 478. 



