Chapter Seventeen - Page 2

by all the luxurious provisions of nature, enjoyed an infinitely
happier, though 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 civilization, 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
Civilization? 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 Hawiian
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 Civilization, for every advantage she imparts,
holds a hundred evils in reserve;--the heart-burnings, the
jealousies, the social rivalries, the family dissentions, 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 cut 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
civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the
earth.

His remorseless