AliOltlGIXES 07 TE>'EHIF1'E. 
121 
it not to be presumed, that the polymorphous species, which 
are so abundant in the isle of Bourbon, are assignable to the 
nature of the soil and climate rather than to the newness of 
the vegetation P 
Before we take leave of the old world to pass into the 
new, I must advert to a subject which is of general interest, 
because it belongs to the history of man, and to those 
fatal revolutions which have swept off whole tribes from the 
face of the earth. We inquire at the isle of Cuba, at St. 
Domingo, and in Jamaica, where is the abode of the primi- 
tive inhabitants of those countries ? We ask at Toueriffe 
what is become of the Guanches, whose mummies alone, 
buried in caverns, have escaped destruction? In the fif- 
teenth century almost all mercantile nations, especially the 
Spaniards and the Portuguese, sought for slaves at the 
Canary Islands, as in later times they have been sought on 
the coast of Guinea.* The Christian religion, which in its 
origin was so highly favourable to the liberty of mankind, 
served afterwards as a pretext to the cupidity of Europeans. 
Every individual, made prisoner before be received the rite 
of baptism, became a slave. At that period no attempt had 
vet been made to prove that the blacks were an interme- 
diate race between man and animals. The swarthy Guanehe 
and the African negro were simultaneously sold in the market 
of Seville, without a question whether slavery should be the 
doom only of men with black skins and woolly hair. 
The archipelago of the Canaries was divided into several 
small states hostile to each other, and in many instances the 
same island was subject to two independent princes. The 
trading nations, influenced by the hideous policy still exer- 
cised on the coast of Africa, kept up intestine warfare. One 
Guanehe then became the property of another, who sold 
him to the Europeans; several, who preferred death to 
slavery, killed themselves and their children. The popu- 
lation of the Canaries had considerably suffered by the slave 
trade, by the depredations of pirates, and especially by a 
long period of carnage, when Alonzo de Lugo completed the 
conquest of the Guanches. The surviving remnants of the 
* The Spanish historians speak of expeditions made by the Huguenots 
of Rochelle to carry off Guanehe slaves. 1 have some doubt respect- 
ing these expeditions, which arc said to have taken place subsequently ti 
dir yea; 1530. 
