"
Amyas spoke truth; for almost every atrocity against savages which had
been committed by the Spaniards, and which was in later and worse times
committed by the English, was wont to be excused in that same base fear
of treachery. Amyas's plan, like that of Drake, and Cook, and all
great English voyagers, had been all along to inspire at once awe
and confidence, by a frank and fearless carriage; and he was not
disappointed here. He bade the men step boldly into their canoes, and
follow the old Indian whither he would. The simple children of the
forest bowed themselves reverently before the mighty strangers, and then
led them smilingly across the stream, and through a narrow passage in
the covert, to a hidden lagoon, on the banks of which stood, not Manoa,
but a tiny Indian village.
CHAPTER XXIV
HOW AMYAS WAS TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL
"Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In always climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease."
TENNYSON.
Humboldt has somewhere a curious passage; in which, looking on some
wretched group of Indians, squatting stupidly round their fires,
besmeared with grease and paint, and devouring ants and clay, he
somewhat naively remarks, that were it not for science, which teaches
us that such is the crude material of humanity, and this the state from
which we all have risen, he should have been tempted rather to look upon
those hapless beings as the last degraded remnants of some fallen and
dying race.
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