The Carib races whom the Spaniards found in Cuba and St. Domingo had
withered before them as if struck by a blight. Many died under the lash
of the Spanish overseers; many, perhaps the most, from the mysterious
causes which have made the presence of civilisation so fatal to the Red
Indian, the Australian, and the Maori. It is with men as it is with
animals. The races which consent to be domesticated prosper and
multiply. Those which cannot live without freedom pine like caged eagles
or disappear like the buffaloes of the prairies.
Anyway, the natives perished out of the islands of the Caribbean Sea
with a rapidity which startled the conquerors. The famous Bishop Las
Casas pitied and tried to save the remnant that were left. The Spanish
settlers required labourers for the plantations. On the continent of
Africa were another race, savage in their natural state, which would
domesticate like sheep and oxen, and learnt and improved in the white
man's company. The negro never rose of himself out of barbarism; as his
fathers were, so he remained from age to age; when left free, as in
Liberia and in Hayti, he reverts to his original barbarism; while in
subjection to the white man he showed then, and he has shown since, high
capacities of intellect and character.
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