238 FBEQUEtfCY OE SUICIDES. 



tions. It is related that the Dominican monk, Fray Luyi 

 Bertram, who was persecuted* by the encomenderos, as the 

 Methodists now are by some English planters, predicted 

 that "the 200,000 Indians which Cuba contained, would 

 perish the victims of the cruelty of Europeans." If this be 

 true, we may at least conclude, that the native race was far 

 from being extinct between the years 1555 and 1569 ; but 

 according to Gomara (such is the confusion among the 

 historians of those times) there were no longer any Indians 

 on the island of Cuba in 1553. To form an idea of the 

 vagueness of the estimates made by the first Spanish travel- 

 lers, at a period when the population of no province of the 

 peninsula was ascertained, we have but to recollect that the 

 number of inhabitants which Captain Cook and other 

 navigators assigned to Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands, 

 at a time when statistics furnished the most exact compa- 

 risons, varied from one to five. "We may conceive that the 

 island of Cuba, surrounded with coasts adapted for fishing, 

 might, from the great fertility of its soil, afford sustenance 

 for several millions of those Indians who have no desire for 

 animal food, and who cultivate maize, manioc, and other 

 nourishing roots ; but had there been that amount of popu- 

 lation, would it not have been manifest by a more advanced 

 degree of civilization than the narrative of Columbus de- 

 scribes ? Would the people of Cuba have remained more 

 backward in civilization than the inhabitants of the Lucayes 

 Islands ? Whatever activity may be attributed to causes ot 

 destruction, such as the tyranny of the conquistador es> the 

 faults of governors, the too severe labours of the gold- 

 washings, the small-pox, and the frequency of suicides,t 



* See the curious revelations in Juan de Marieta, Hist, de todos lot 

 Santos de Espaha, libro vii, p. 174. 



f The rage of hanging themselves by whole families, in huts and 

 caverns, as related by Garcilasso, was no doubt the effect of despair ; yet 

 instead of lamenting the barbarism of the sixteenth century, it was 

 attempted to exculpate the conquistadores, by attributing the disappear- 

 ance of the natives to their taste for suicide. See Patriota, torn, ii, p. 

 50. Numerous sophisms of this kind are found in a work published by 

 M. Nuix, on the humanity of the Spaniards in the conquest of America. 

 This work is entitled, " Reflexiones imparciales sobre la humanidad de los 

 Epafloles contra los pretendidos filnsofos y politicos, para illustrar las 

 historias de Raynal y Robertson ; escrito en Italiano por el Abate Don 



