that was native to the island of Espanola seems to have had some of the
happiest and most lovable qualities known to dwellers on this planet.
They had none of the brutalities of the African, the paralysing wisdom of
the Asian, nor the tragic potentialities of the European peoples. Their
life was from day to day, and from season to season, like the life of
flowers and birds. They lived in such order and peaceable community as
the common sense of their own simple needs suggested; they craved no
pleasures except those that came free from nature, and sought no wealth
but what the sun gave them. In their verdant island, near to the heart
and source of light, surrounded by the murmur of the sea, and so enriched
by nature that the idea, of any other kind of riches never occurred to
them, their existence went to a happy dancing measure like that of the
fauns and nymphs in whose charmed existence they believed. The sun and
moon were to them creatures of their island who had escaped from a cavern
by the shore and now wandered free in the upper air, peopling it with
happy stars; and man himself they believed to have sprung from crevices
in the rocks, like the plants that grew tall and beautiful wherever there
was a handful of soil for their roots. Poor happy children! You are all
dead a long while ago now, and have long been hushed in the great humming
sleep and silence of Time; the modern world has no time nor room for
people like you, with so much kindness and so little ambition . . . .
Yet their free pagan souls were given a chance to be penned within the
Christian fold; the priest accompanied the gunner and the bloodhound, the
missionary walked beside the slave-driver; and upon the bewildered
sun-bright surface of their minds the shadow of the cross was for a moment
thrown. Verily to them the professors of Christ brought not peace, but a
sword.