74 
WANDERINGS IN 
FIRST 
■TOURNEY, 
Leaves 
St. Tho¬ 
mas’s, 
and is at¬ 
tacked by 
a tertian 
ague, and 
returns to 
England. 
Experi¬ 
ments in 
London 
of the 
Avourali 
poison. 
western world. While you admire their undaunted 
courage, you lament that it was often stained with 
cruelty; while you extol their scrupulous justice to 
each other, you will find a want of it towards the 
rest of mankind. Often possessed of enormous 
wealth, often in extreme poverty, often triumphant 
on the ocean, and often forced to fly to the forests; 
their life was an ever-changing scene of advance and 
retreat, of glory and disorder, of luxury and famine. 
Spain treated them as outlaws and pirates, while 
other European powers publicly disowned them. 
They, on the other hand, maintained, that injustice 
on the part of Spain first forced them to take up 
arms in self-defence; and that, whilst they kept in¬ 
violable the laws which they had framed for their 
own common benefit and protection, they had a right 
to consider as foes, those who treated them as out¬ 
laws. Under this impression they drew the sword, 
and rushed on as though in lawful war, and divided 
the spoils of victory in the scale of justice. 
After leaving St. Thomas’s, a severe tertian ague, 
every now and then, kept putting the traveller in 
mind, that his shattered frame, “ starting and shiver¬ 
ing in the inconstant blast, meagre and pale, the 
ghost of what it was,” wanted repairs. Three years 
elapsed after arriving in England, before the ague 
took its final leave of him. 
During that time, several experiments were made 
with the wourali poison. In London, an ass was 
inoculated with it, and died in twelve minutes. The 
poison was inserted into the leg of another, round 
