subject to a particular illusion. He is struck with a complexion so different from our own, and the uniformity of this complexion conceals for a long time from him the diversity of individual features. The new colonist at first can hardly distinguish the natives, because his eyes are less fixed on the gentle, melancholy, or ferocious expression of the countenance, than on the red coppery colour, and black coarse hair, so straight and glossy that it always appears wet.

As to the moral faculties of the Indians, it is difficult to appreciate them with justice, if we only consider this long oppressed caste in their present state of degradation. The better sort of Indians, among whom a certain degree of intellectual culture might be expected, perished in great numbers, at the commencement of the Spanish conquest, the victims of European ferocity. The Christian fanaticism was particularly directed against the Aztec priests; and the Teopixqui, or ministers of the divinity, and all those who inhabited the Teocalli, or houses of God, who might be considered as the depositories of the historical, mythological, and astronomical knowledge of the country, were exterminated; the priests observed the meridian shades in the gnomons, and regulated the calendar. The monks burned the hieroglyphical paintings, by which every kind of knowledge was transmitted from generation to generation. The people, deprived of these means of instruction, were plunged

in an ignorance so much the deeper, as the Missionaries were unskilled in the Mexican languages,, and could substitute few new ideas in the place of the old. The remaining natives then consisted only of the most indigent race, poor cultivators, artisans, among whom were a great number of weavers, porters, who were used like beasts of burden, and especially of those dregs of the people, those crowds of beggars, who bore witness to the imperfection of the social institutions, and the existence of feudal oppression, and who filled, in the time of Cortez, the streets of all the great cities of the Mexican empire. How shall we judge, then, from these miserable remains of a powerful people, of the degree of cultivation to which it had risen from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, and of the intellectual development of which it is susceptible? If all that remained of the French or German nation were a few poor agriculturists, could we read in their features that they belonged to nations which had produced a Descartes and Clairaut, a Kepler and a Leibnitz?

How is it possible to doubt that a part of the Mexican nation had arrived at a certain degree of cultivation, when we reflect on the care with which their hieroglyphical books were composed, and when we recollect that a citizen of Tlascala, in the midst of the tumults of war, took advantage of the facility offered him by our Roman alphabet to write in his own language five large volumes on the

history of a country of which he deplored the subjection?

In the portrait which we draw of the different races of men composing the population of New Spain, we shall merely consider the Mexican Indian in his actual state. We perceive in him neither that mobility of sensation, gesture, or feature, nor that activity of mind, for which several nations of the equinoctial regions of Africa are so advantageously distinguished. There cannot exist a more marked contrast than that between the impetuous vivacity of the Congo Negro, and the apparent phlegm of the Indian. From a feeling of this contrast, the Indian women not only prefer the Negros to the men of their own race, but also to the Europeans. The Mexican Indian is grave, melancholy, and silent, so long as he is not under the influence of intoxicating liquors. This gravity is peculiarly remarkable in Indian children, who at the age of four or five display much more intelligence and maturity than White children. The Mexican loves to throw a mysterious air over the most indifferent actions. The most violent passions are never painted in his features; and there is something frightful in seeing him pass all at once from absolute repose to a state of violent and unrestrained agitation. The Peruvian Indian possesses more gentleness of manners; the energy of the Mexican degenerates into harshness. These differences may have their origin in the different

religions and different governments of the two countries in former times. This energy is dis

played particularly by the inhabitants of Tlascala. In the midst of their present degradation, the descendants of the citizens of that republic are still to be distinguished by a certain haughtiness of character, inspired by the memory of their former grandeur.

The Americans, like the Hindoos and other nations who have long groaned under a civil and military despotism, adhere to their customs, manners, and opinions, with extraordinary obstinacy*. I say opinions; for the introduction of Christianity has produced little other effect on the Indians of

* It is of the utmost importance to the prosperity and security of the great undertaking which now occupies so large a share of the public attention, that all the Officers and Servants sent out by the Mining Companies of England should observe the most inviolable respect for the religious opinions and institutions of the natives. The Protestant opinions of Englishmen are sufficiently obnoxious, without being called into notice by any injudicious and absurd and fruitless attempts at conversion. How totally these attempts have failed to produce any thing but disgust among the Hindoos, to whom the Baron de Humboldt here compares the Mexican Indians, is well known to every calm and well-informed man in our Eastern possessions.

If the utility and policy of agitating such a source of discord, where we are undisputed masters, may be questioned, we presume it will be admitted by all but fanatics, that it would be little short of insanity to do it in a country where our establishments will stand in need of the countenance and protection of all classes. We have pressed this subject the more warmly

K

Mexico than to substitute new ceremonies, the symbols of a gentle and humane religion, to the ceremonies of a sanguinary worship. This change from old to new rites was the effect of constraint, and not of persuasion, and was produced by political events alone. In the new continent, as well as in the old, half-civilized nations were accustomed to receive from the hands of the conqueror new laws and new divinities; and the vanquished Indian gods appeared to them to yield to the gods of the strangers.

Accustomed to a long slavery, as well under the domination of their own sovereigns as under that of the first conquerors, the natives of Mexico patiently suffer the vexations to which they are frequently exposed from the Whites. They oppose to them only cunning, veiled under the most deceitful appearances of apathy and stupidity. As the Indian can very rarely revenge himself on the Spaniards, he delights in making common cause with them for the oppression of his own fellow citizens. Oppressed for ages, and compelled to a blind obedience, he wishes to tyrannize in his turn. The Indian villages are governed by magistrates of

upon our readers, as we know that among many of the inferior Officers, the motive to the course of action so earnestly deprecated will be found in peculiar force. However we may respect the disinterestedness of this motive, we are bound to repeat, that the safety of our establishments is absolutely dependant on caution and forbearance on this point.