HEEXANDO DE SOIO. 
239 
it would be dilBcult to conceive liow in thirty or forty years 
three or four hundred thousand Indians could entirely dis- 
appear. The war with the Cacique Hatuey was short, aiui 
Was confined to the most eastern paid of the island. Few 
complaints arose against the administration ot the two first 
Spanish governors, Diego Velasquez and Pedro de Barba. 
Tile oppression of the natives dates from the arrival of the 
cruel Hernando de Soto, about the year 1539. Supposing, 
with Gomara. that fifteen years later, under the government 
of Diego de Majariegos (1551-1561), there were no longer 
any Indians in Cuba, we must necessarily admit that con- 
siderable remains of that people saved themselves by means 
of canoes in Florida, believing, according to ancient tradi- 
tions, that they were returning to the country of their 
ancestors. Tlie mortality of the negro slaves, observed in 
our days in the AVest Indies, can alone throw some li^ht on 
these numerous contradictions. To Columbus and A^elas- 
quez, the island of Cuba must have appeared well peopled,* 
■Tuan Nuix, y traiUicido al Castellano pov Don Pedro Varela y TJUoa, del 
Consejo de S. M., 1782.” [Impartial reflections on the humanity ot the 
Spaniards, intended to contravert pretended philosophers and politicians, 
and to illustrate the liistories of Rayual and Robertson s written in Italian 
ty the Abate Don Juan Nui.x, and translated into Castilian by Don Pedro 
Varela y Ulloa, member of His Majesty’s Council.] The author, who 
calls the expulsion of the Moors under Philip HI, a meritorious and 
religious act, terminates his work by congratulating the Indians of Ame- 
Fica “ on having fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, whose conduct has 
been at all times the most liumane, and their government the wisesr.^^ 
Several pages of this book recall “ the salutary rigour of the Dragonades ; 
^nd that odious passage, in which a man distinguished for Ins talents and 
bis private virtues, the Count de Maistre (Soirees de St. Petersbourg, 
l^oin, ii, ]). 121), justifies tlie Inquisition of Portugal, “ which he obserses 
has only caused some drops of guilty blood to ilp’y* * what sophisms 
must they have recourse, who would defend religion, national honour, oi 
the stability of governments, bv exculpating all that is offensive to huma- 
^^ity in the actions of the clcrgj% the people, or kings ! It is vain to seek 
to destroy the power most firmly established on earth, viz. the testi- 
mony of history. . , , 
* Columbus relates that the island of Hayti was sometimes attacked by 
a race of black men, (gente uegra), who lived more to the south or ®°“th- 
He hoped to visit them in his third voyage, because those black 
men possessed a metal, of which the admiral had procured some pieces in 
bis second voyage. These pieces were sent to Spain, and found to be 
composed of *63 of gold, -14 of silver, and *19 of copper. In fact. 
