bled their people in arms, and why they had ill-treated a party whom he had left behind, refusing them provisions, which it was his practice to demand without payment. They bore the pain without acknowledging their offence; and one was then shot in cold blood "for an example." Federmann adds that the promise of life induced the other to confess, that an attack upon the Christians had been concerted. Thereupon he amused the followers of these chiefs, above eight hundred in number, with friendly discourse, and taking his measures properly, put five hundred of them to death by surprise; the cavalry of the Christians easily dispersing this body, the infantry "stabbing them like pigs."

Upon another occasion his people, assisting one tribe against another, destroyed great numbers of the enemy and made 600 prisoners, of whom he kept the able-bodied for his own use, but gave the wounded, the children, and old men, as slaves to the chiefs of his Indian allies.

The close of the expedition was signalized by acts of extreme barbarity :

“We now reached the Caquaties," says Federmann, "and took our usual course. Reaching a village at an early hour, when they take breakfast, we suprised them so completely that, not being able to escape, they barricaded their houses. Hereupon I signified to them that their alarm was needless, but that if they would not open their doors I would burn down their town. They then communicated with us, apparently in a friendly manner. But it being soon perceived that the women and children were gradually withdrawing from the place, a step that usually precedes hostilities, I told their cacique that the strange Indians he saw with us in irons were thus punished for endeavouring to betray us; and that if he persevered in his treachery, the same fate awaited him. Alarmed for his personal safety he attempted to escape, and when my men laid hold of him he uttered loud and piercing cries to his people for aid. To prevent a tumult I ordered a soldier to stab him. We then set upon the Indians, and, after killing many of them, came back to the chief's house, where we had deposited all the gold collected in our expedition. Here twelve Indians had concealed themselves in a corn-loft ; having killed eleven of them after a desperate conflict, I caused the survivor to be tied to a post and to be left in that condition when we departed, in order that he might tell his countrymen when they should come in of the vengeance all might expect who should deal treacherously with us. We took some of the people of this village in irons as our guides; and on discovering that they were misleading us, we tortured some, but they persisted in their story. I then ordered two of them to be cut in pieces to terrify the rest; in which object we failed, for they preferred death to being in our service, and hoped to have destroyed us by conducting us throughout a country without provisions, and without water; this plan almost succeeded."-p. 190.

These atrocious acts seem to have excited no attention at the return of the party to the capital of the new colony; and the commander of the expedition proceeded to Europe, undisturbed either by the Imperial prosecutor's investigations or by the stings of conscience.

The cool way in which Federmann pursued his vocation of religious missionary, shows that he was in no very imminent danger from the latter. "One day," says he, "receiving a friendly chief and sixty of his tribe, I caused them all to be baptized, and I explained the Christian doctrines to them as well as I could, which, it will easily be credited, was poorly enough. This preaching is indeed a senseless affair, for it is through compulsion only that their profession of our faith is obtained."

Certainly the clerical aid furnished for the expedition indicates that force, not persuasion, was depended upon for making converts. The religious teacher, a monk, partook more of the character of Friar Tuck than of Las Casas, or Xavier. Upon the only occasion on which he is personally mentioned by Federmann, he saves some of the soldiers from a huge panther at the risk of his own life, by bravely closing with the furious animal, and stabbing it with his halberd.

After a few years, upon the separation of the empire from Spain in the persons of the successors of Charles the Fifth, Germany ceased to have a national interest in America; and whilst the maritime powers of Europe,-Spain, Portugal, Denmark, France, Sweden, England, and Holland, gradually acquired possession of half the new world, Germany shared their acquisitions only through private adventurers; either by occasional drafts of soldiers hired to fight particular battles; or by a few emigrants, such as from time to time have sought a refuge from religious persecution at home; or, finally and indirectly, by the attention which learned men have given to the progress of discovery.

The lead taken by Germany towards the end of the sixteenth century in Geographical studies, independent of any colonial interest, is proved by the encouragement given to these studies there, when it has been refused elsewhere. The works of this class published by our Hakluyt in that period, bear a deservedly high reputation; they unquestionably tended greatly to the founding of our old North American Colonies. But the works of Levinus Hulsius, a refugee, far suspass them, not only in extent but in character. Mr. Asher of Berlin, whose interesting Essay on the Collection of Voyages and Travels, edited and published by him and his successors, ought to have a more extensive circulation than sixty copies can give it, is doing a public service by his enlightened labours on the subject. In pursuing those labours we hope he

will not forget De Bry's early works of the same class, to which Herder attaches the credit of having supplied almost the only drawings of objects found in new countries, used by speculative writers from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

The difference of national position clearly created a difference of principle in the national mind; and accordingly, it was from Germany that first proceeded opposition to the enormous wrongs which coloured men have so long suffered from Christian colonists. Upon this point the testimony of the ablest writer on the general history of the United States of North America is positive, although even short of the whole truth. "On the subject of negro slavery, the German mind," says Mr. Bancroft, the historian alluded to, "was least enthralled by prejudice, because Germany had never yet participated in the slave trade. The little handful of German Friends from the high lands above the Rhine, resolved that it was not lawful for Christians to buy or to keep negro slaves. This occurred when the general meeting of the English Quakers hesitated to make the only just decision on the question!"*

The same freedom from contaminating interests prevails still in Germany; and unless we greatly err, it has long been working a degree of purity in public opinion there on these questions concerning the coloured races, that has produced very remarkable results in the public mind. A rapid survey of more recent facts that seem to justify this observation, will fully explain our meaning, and show clearly in what manner those countries which are less favourably circumstanced, may best and most directly turn this German purity towards the correction of their own errors. To this end it will be found, that large contributions may be obtained from the researches of science as well as through religious conviction, and that the philosophy of German professors may be consulted with advantage by the statesmen of every land, upon most of the great questions which concern mankind at large. It is extremely probable that the condemnation of negro slavery, for example, by those professors, preceded its discussion in England; and no where has British negro emancipation been hailed more cordially than by German writers.

They who claim for Germany the very highest pinnacle of glory, to the exclusion of other nations, are so far at least in the right, that there has been in that country more than elsewhere a continued pursuit of objects tending to the general good of mankind. Although the German language may have been but recently polished, studies and principles, which are prevalent in

* Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. ii. p. 403. VOL. XXIV. NO. XLVII.

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that country at the present day, were in high estimation there in times far removed; and the catalogue of illustrious names, to be selected as those of the men who long represented the genius of the land, will spread not very unequally over the whole of the last four centuries. The age that produced Luther is rightly asserted to have been the true parent of that cheering spirit which the people at large are now beginning to share. Thence besides those who have already been mentioned, and many more who need not be named, came Ulrich von Hutten, Melancthon, Keppler, Leibnitz, Zinzendorf, Haller, Wolff, Moser, Iselin, Lessing, Kant, and Fichte; nor need we prolong the list by the addition of those who have not yet ceased to do their country honour.

Principles which most beneficially affect uncivilized nations might be easily deduced from the writings of those great men, and formed into an admirable system; and missionaries, settlers, geographers, physiologists, but in especial, political philosophers, have all liberally contributed to this result. The land of Luther was not likely to be backward in Missionary efforts among the heathen; and the interest felt in Germany in favour of those efforts has never been confined to, what may be considered a somewhat interested party-namely, the actual Missionary labourers. But such men also as Herder and Goethe studiously consulted their records, watched their proceedings with vigilance, applauded their success, and frankly noted their occasional errors. Those who were sent forth by Count Zinzendorf, originally with a view to visit the whole world, have been pre-eminent from "Greenland's icy mountains" to the pestilential regions of the burning zone. The Moravians, who are in our day almost as much English as German, and to whose example must be attributed much of our English Missionary success, although founded at Herrnhut in Lusatia in 1722 only, came from the ancient Bohemian church, known under the same appellation, in the middle of the fifteenth century. "Watered by the blood of its martyrs, John Huss and Jerome of Prague," says its historian, "it spread in numerous flourishing branches through Poland and Moravia." After many persecutions, and after having been once snatched from the brink of ruin by the timely assistance of the Church of England, this body of Christians assumed their present form of discipline; and they have ever since been the steadiest, if not the most important of Protestant Missionaries to the heathen world. Other German churches are at the present mo

The History of Greeuland, including an Account of the Mission of the United Brethren in that Country. From the German of David Crantz, vol. i. p. 2. 8vo. London, 1820.

ment actively engaged in the same cause. They are swelling the ranks of the spiritual labourers in that most hopeful field of religious cultivation, South Africa; and they have thrown themselves, without counting the risk, into the almost hopeless contest of the savage with the convict in New South Wales.

Whilst they neglect none of the duties of their peculiar calling, they, like worthy followers of the clergy of the Middle Ages, bestow inestimable benefits on the tribes they visit, by carefully teaching the arts of social life, and by curing those diseases" as a work of compassion," which governments ought to endeavour to check by means of adequate establishments.*

In regard to the boundless field of interest opening in China, a German missionary, Gutzlaff, has given perhaps a greater impulse than any other man to the desire and means of promoting the best sort of intercourse between Europeans and the people of that most important empire; which, together with the regions of Central Asia, other German missionaries had in view a century ago, when Count Zinzendorf at Herrnhut planned his gigantic scheme of Christianising the whole heathen world. In British India also, German missionaries are now labouring with

eminent success.

As mere emigrants, seeking new homes, Germans are met with in almost all quarters of the world, where the civilized nations are abusing their power. But it does not appear that German colonists have ever directly made great efforts to stay the evil. Their wide-spreading settlements in North America, where their language is firmly fixed in numerous churches and towns, present no peculiar refuge to the harassed Indian. In South Africa, where they are more dispersed, they have formed no exception to the general rule, when Hottentots, Bosjemen, or Caffres were to be hunted down. In South Australia, where they are now thronging under better auspices for the aborigines, it remains to be seen whether they will take the more humane course, which their own origin, and the kindly dispositions of many colonists, equally recommend.

But it is in Russia that the indirect colonization of Germans has produced the greatest effect in the civilization of barbarous

"The little physical skill of the Middle Ages was in the hands of the clergy, and hence it was a tissue of superstitions: the devil and the cross acted the most conspicuous parts of it. It would have been a truly guardian office, if all Europe had combined against the influx of diseases, as real works of the devil, and left neither smallpox, plague, nor leprosy in the land; but they were permitted to enter, rage, and destroy, till the poison exhausted itself. To THE CHURCH, HOWEVER, WE ARE INDEBTED FOR THE FEW INSTITUTIONS FORMED TO COUNTERACT THEM; this was done as a work of compassion, which men yet wanted skill to perform as a work of art." Herder's Philosophy of History, vol. 2, p. 524, b. xix. c. iii.