£14 
SEVERE RULE OF THE MISSIONARIES. 
highly useful to us in the sequel, hut who now refused to 
accompany us. He was born in the Mission of Atures ; but 
his father was a Maco, and his mother a native of the nation 
of the Maypures. He had returned to the woods (al 
monte), and having lived some years with the unsubdued 
Indians, he had thus acquired the knowledge of several 
languages, and the missionary employed him as an inter- 
preter. We obtained with difficulty the pardon of this 
young man. “ Without these acts of severity,” we were 
told, “ you would want for everything. The Indians of the 
Eaudales and the Upper Orinoco are a stronger and more 
jaborious race than the inhabitants of the Lower Orinoco. 
They know that they are much sought after at Angostura. 
If left to their own will, they would all go down the river to 
sell their productions, and live in full liberty among the 
whites. The Missions would be totally deserted.” 
These reasons, I confess, appeared to me more specious 
than sound. Man, in order to enjoy the advantages of a 
social state, must no doubt sacrifice a part of his natural 
rights, and his original independence ; but, if the sacrifice 
imposed on him be not compensated by the benefits of civi- 
lization, the savage, wise in his simplicity, retains the wish 
of returning to the forests that gave him birth. It is because 
the Indian of the woods is treated like a person in a state 
of villanage in the greater part of the Missions, because ho 
enjoys not the fruit of his labours, that the Christian esta- 
blishments on the Orinoco remain deserts. A government 
founded on the ruins of the liberty of the natives extin- 
guishes the intellectual faculties, or stojis their progress. 
To say that the savage, like the child, can be governed 
only by force, is merely to establish false analogies. The 
Indians of the Orinoco have something infantine in the 
expression of their joy, and the quick succession of their 
emotions, but they arc not great children; they are as little 
so as the poor labourers in the east of Europe, whom the 
barbarism of our feudal institutions has held in the rudest 
state. To consider the employment of force as the first ana 
sole means of the civilization of the savage, is a principle a 3 
far from being true in the education of nations as in the 
education of youth. Whatever may be the state of weak* 
ness or degradation in our species, no faculty is entirel* 
