between the Baltic and France. The territorial riches of the Germans; their various resources in trade; their learning; their ancient free spirit, which, in spite of general political enslavement, has produced many ameliorations in their laws; and their unchanging military prowess, requiring only a better direction to restore political freedom;--all these things give them enough influence in the world to justify a high degree of national selfrespect.

But what the Germans have accomplished in one most important branch of human relations is both remarkable in extent and peculiar in variety and character. This branch relates to "THE

INTERCOURSE BETWEEN THE MORE AND THE LESS CIVILIZED

RACES," between powerful Christian nations, and the comparatively feeble natives of the New World, of Africa, Asia, and the South Seas. This intercourse, as is well-known, has hitherto been fatal to the weaker and less civilized parties. But the generally destructive character which it bore during many centuries, has of late been considerably modified through good men's efforts, largely, although indirectly, shared by the Germans.

Of these efforts the obvious examples are, the attempts to abolish the slave-trade from Africa to America; the more humane treatment of slaves; and the partial abolition of negro slavery: yet these are only the commencements of humane enterprizes, calculated to change the condition of all the remoter regions of the earth.

It will not be attempted here to follow out completely any of the operations of the German mind, which have promoted these results; but the vastness of that inquiry far exceeds our limits; but the sketch proposed to be made of these operations will open a subject less studied than its importance deserves. The missionaries of that country, such as the Moravian brethren; its philosophical writers, such as Herder, Schiller, and Schlegel; its linguists, travellers, and geographers, the Forsters, Adelungs, Chamissos, and Von Humboldts, have altogether produced materials which throw a clear light upon the subject; and it will not be difficult to infer from these some distinct views of what has long been contemplated by eminent Germans, and to conclude how far their objects have been realized. The utility of such an inquiry is obvious. Vices common to all Europe, and false opinions prevalent among the most civilized people, contribute to the ruin of the coloured races; and to rescue them it is indispensable to improve both the conduct and the sentiments of the enlightened Christian generally on the whole subject, in order that the oppressed may have some chance of protection; that the ignorant may be adequately instructed; and the debased elevated every where.

The grand characteristic of Germany on this head is, that a national colonial interest does not exist there to bias the national judgment, and harden the popular feelings in regard to uncivilized tribes. The German consequently has during three centuries looked impartially upon the relations between those tribes on one side and colonists and the maritime government on the other. The union of Spain and its American dominions with the German empire in the person of Charles V. created a brief exception to this exclusion from colonial power and prejudice. Two hundred years afterwards, a vigorous attempt was made by another Emperor of Germany, Charles VI., to obtain a share of the Indian trade; but without success. This was in the beginning of the last century, when the Ostend Company was formed under favorable auspices, but was finally ruined through the jealousy of the Dutch and English. The Prussians have subsequently met with less formidable difficulties in the same quarter; and since the general peace of 1815, as many as 20,000 Germans emigrate yearly to America and other new countries to the west, and a large number to Russia; but in no part of the world have they yet formed colonial settlements of their own;-a fact which is particularly worth attention at this moment when three other great nations, the Russians, the people of the United States of North America, and the English, are literally bringing the ends of the earth together, and covering large portions of the uncivilized world with new settlements, beyond all example extensive and rapidly formed; and when France and Portugal are struggling to pursue the same career in Northern, Western and Eastern Africa. It is well in this state of things that one great civilized people should stand apart; and exercise a calm, disinterested, and enlightened judgment upon the way in which other nations use their power and prosperity.

The history of the German race has indeed been very remarkable in regard to the nature of its migratory intercourse with other nations. That intercourse for a long time varied but little from the common career of a powerful people: it was characterised by unscrupulous conquests, and not unfrequently by a merciless extermination of the conquered, such, for example, as took place in at least a large portion of Britain after the first Saxon invasion; and presents but few claims to the love or respect of mankind. Rovers by sea and land, the Germans were long characterised by several of the bad as well as good qualities which spring from a precarious course of life. A brief record preserved by Procopius of the Erulians aptly illustrates their early history. This tribe, which inhabited a country north of the Danube, were highly superstitious, and addicted to human sacrifices: they even required wives to put themselves to death at the graves of their

husbands. They were powerful, and prone to war; savage, and incessantly occupied in making predatory incursions upon their neighbours. At length they were completely defeated by the Lombards; whom they had grievously oppressed, and foully insulted. Meeting with deserved chastisement from this kindred tribe, the Erulians migrated, and were kindly received by the Roman Emperor Anastasius, until their insolence again brought down a severe vengeance. Under Justinian they preserved their old perverse character as a people, but were incorporated with the provincial Romans in the north of Italy. A portion of this tribe, however, emigrated to a far more remote land;-the real Thule perhaps of the ancients a country lying beyond the ocean, west of Denmark, of ten times the extent of Britain, and where the sun did not set for forty days in summer, and in winter was entirely lost for many weeks. This country, the Greenland of our days, was then peopled by numerous tribes, of whom the Scrithifins, or Esquimaux, fed on little but animals, and were clothed in skins.

The Erulians were received in Thule with great cordiality; obtained lands: and became sufficiently flourishing to furnish their people who took refuge in Italy, with a king from the royal stock which accompanied the Transatlantic emigration.*

It deserves a passing notice, that, three or four centuries later, the same parts of the world were visited by the North-men, accompanied, it is recorded, by Germans who recognized the grape of America from its resemblance to the fruit of their own vine. Ou this occasion the conduct of the voyagers to the Scrithifins, who appear still to have existed, was not such as to ensure them a warm welcome in the new country. †

But we hasten to less apocryphal times. The discovery of America found the Germans of the 15th century perfectly capable of appreciating all the wonders, present and probable, of that great event. If they were not yet nationally interested in the fiuancial results of this opening of supposed new routes to the rich countries of the East, or in those of the real benefits Europe was to derive from the West, still no people devoted more intense, or more continued attention to all that was daily related and written concerning the latter land. At this period Germany itself was the fairest country in Europe, no extensive part of even Italy excepted, and supplied, almost alone, all other lands with the finer products of its industry. The gold and raw productions of other countries flowed thither to reward that industry. The

* Procopius, de Bello Gothico, lib. ii., cap. xiv. and xv.

Antiquitates Americana Ante-Columbanæ, Hafniæ. 4to. 1837; and see alse Foreign Quarterly Review, No. XLI. p. 96, &c.

splendour of its public buildings was only equalled by the refined adornment of private habitations. If the Germans did not keep up with the Spaniards and Portuguese in their progress over the ocean to the West and South, they were remarkable for the ability with which they studied all the important branches of knowledge connected with the extension of geographical science, and with the spread of civilization into remote regions. It was a native of Franconia, John Muller (Regiomontanus), whose astronomical Ephemerides, published at Nuremberg in the fifteenth century, were used on the coasts of Africa, America, and India by Diaz, Columbus, Vesputius, and Gama; and it is justly said by the writer whom we are following, and who in this particular department of science has himself done so much for the honour of his country, that the names of Regiomontanus, and Martin Behem, a native of Nuremberg and the friend of Columbus, alone give to Germany a large share in the glory of discovering the new world; and that the geographical renown of the latter has even suggested, for America, the German name of Western Bohemia.*

It is probable, indeed, that more books on all topics concerning African and American discovery were, during the half centuries before and after the voyages of Gama and Columbus, published in Germany than in any other country; and Von Humboldt again justly notices the extent to which the earlier writers carried their speculations upon the nature of the newly-found tribes of men, almost anticipating the philosophical inquiries of later times.

But these speculations produced no beneficial effect upon any of the practical men who then went to the new world to get gold, and who were all utterly regardless at what cost of blood and tears to the natives it was obtained. Germany in the sixteenth century must be included within the strict terms of this condemnation. The Emperor Charles the Fifth gave a province in America to the great merchants of Augsburg, the Welzers, who had lent him large sums of money. This cession led to the occupation of Venezuela by Germans for above twenty-six years. Some of them wrote full accounts of the country at that period, and their books were published in the original language soon afterwards. They have been lately republished in French in the collection of M. Henri Ternaux; and more impartial testimonies could not be desired to show how little German DOMINATION in the new world differed from that of Spain, or England, or Portugal.

One of those works, the narrative of Nicolas Federmann, appeared originally in print at Haguenau in 1557. The author

Examen critique et historique de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent. Par Alexandre de Humboldt. Paris. 8vo. 1836. vol. i. p. 274.

commanded a party of Spanish soldiers and German miners sent in 1529 to Venezuela: and his first intercourse with the natives does not place him in a favourable point of view. He very calmly, and quite as a thing of course, set about seizing the natives for interpreters and guides; and exhibits the recklessness of the practice by taking prisoner a poor woman who complained of the injustice of their conduct, as she and all her tribe were the Christians' friends. He also mentions without a word of reprobation the marauding expedition of another German commander during eight months in the interior, where one hundred of the men were either killed in attacking the natives, or died of diseases. These disasters did not daunt Federmann, who, in his turn, set out in September 1530 upon an expedition that might procure him some "advantage." The party consisted of one hundred and ten armed footmen and sixteen cavalry with one hundred friendly Indians. They were absent six months, making a circuitous route through an unknown country towards the Pacific which they reached at Xaragua. The remotest point of their route was at seventy miles distance from Coro, the place of departure. The objects of the expedition were, to collect gold by any means; to subjugate the natives to the emperor and to his grantees, the bankers of Augsburg; and to convert them to Christianity by force if persuasion should fail. All these objects Federmann pursued with a spirit of perseverance worthy of a better cause, and quite regardless of the claims of humanity.

He encountered twenty-two tribes upon this expedition: eleven were friendly, and eleven hostile.

With the former, amicable communications were held by means of interpreters, before the arrival of the whites at the villages of the Indians. In the latter, the Indians were never approached with caution or consideration, and were often attacked by surprise. This uniform correspondence of various results with the various character of the proceedings of the party, speaks powerfully in favour of the more humane system of conciliating the friendship of strange and uncivilized tribes by at least the simple step of opening communications with them through competent interpreters. The following summary account of a part of the occurrences will be found highly characteristic; and leaves no doubt of the fact, that German authorities in the sixteenth century in America differed little from those of other Christians in regard to the rights of the Indians.

After describing several sanguinary conflicts, which he attributes to their treachery, Federmann states, that he caused two of the chiefs who had accompanied him willingly, to be seized and tortured, in order to compel them to confess why they had assem