 certainly a less intellectual
existence, than the self-complacent European.
    The naked wretch who shivers beneath the bleak skies and starves among the
inhospitable wilds of Tierra-del-Fuego might indeed be made happier by
civilisation, for it would alleviate his physical wants. But the voluptuous
Indian, with every desire supplied, whom Providence has bountifully provided
with all the sources of pure and natural enjoyment, and from whom are removed so
many of the ills and pains of life - what has he to desire at the hands of
civilisation? She may cultivate his mind, - may elevate his thoughts, - these, I
believe, are the established phrases - but will he be the happier? Let the once
smiling and populous Hawaiian Islands, with their now diseased, starving, and
dying natives, answer the question. The missionaries may seek to disguise the
matter as they will, but the facts are incontrovertible; and the devoutest
Christian who visits that group with an unbiased mind, must go away mournfully
asking - »Are these, alas! the fruits of twenty-five years of enlightening?«
    In a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though few and
simple, are spread over a great extent, and are unalloyed; but civilisation, for
every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve; - the
heart-burnings, the jealousies, the social rivalries, the family dissensions,
and the thousand self-inflicted discomforts of refined life, which make up in
units the swelling aggregate of human misery, are unknown among these
unsophisticated people.
    But it will be urged that these shocking unprincipled wretches are
cannibals. Very true; and a rather bad trait in their character, it must be
allowed. But they are such only when they seek to gratify the passion of revenge
upon their enemies; and I ask whether the mere eating of human flesh so very far
exceeds in barbarity that custom which only a few years since was practised in
enlightened England: - a convicted traitor, perhaps a man found guilty of
honesty, patriotism, and suchlike heinous crimes, had his head lopped off with a
huge axe, his bowels dragged out and thrown into a fire; while his body, carved
into four quarters, was with his head exposed upon pikes, and permitted to rot
and fester among the public haunts of men!
    The fiend-like skill we display in the invention of all manner of
death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and
the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves
to distinguish the white civilised man as the
